Loves

School Blazers and Bare Legs

Beautiful Springtime Flowers

Mustard and gingham combinations

Inside My Diary

Peace

Hedi Slimane for Vogue Homme (Japan)

Oh my God.

I need to stop procrastinating.

500 days of Summer

I am so excited about finally seeing this film.

A cute girl with a cute fringe, a cute boy, young love, kisses in the park...cue joy.

God I want a boy in my life.

Science v Literature

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Lewis Carroll

Reason and Truth: these are both lovely, solid concepts on which our modern, intellectual age is built on. Science, the Godfather of Reason, saves lives, after all. Forces are very useful. Chemistry is wonderful, certainly. But does truth and reason always deliver happiness? Certainly not! Perhaps this was why, as an adolescent, I gravitated away from the sciences, seduced by the whispers of literature which promised one solid truth: that of beauty. Words, give me words, my soul cried out in high school and let me not be subjected to the crude indifference of mathematical equations (although, I must admit, science boys thrill me to bits, especially those who understand physics, the most romantic of the lot with its forces, its atoms, its Stephen Hawking Radiation, etc).

More and more now, I shun reality and escape into my world of books - some playful, some serious, but always beautiful. Books make you believe in seemingly impossible things like, say, true love - the kind that destiny controls.

So I say, goodbye rationality- hello wild romanticism, hello impossibilities.

Veronika Decides to Die

Some books can change your life. Veronika Decides to Die is one of them. You wouldn't think so from the morbid title, but this book can resurrect a life. If your soul is crushed, your spirit worn, your will sedated -- pick up this very readable masterpiece from Paulo Coelho and you will find yourself like Lazarus of bible fame, rising back from the dead.

I can guarantee that you will finish it and smile as you ponder all the beauty the world has to offer you - if only you let it.

Junior Boys

There's a lot of substandard electronic music out there. The two gentlemen above (or should I say 'boys') are in the quality end of the electronica spectrum. I simply cannot wait until they play here in Melbourne in early October - the melodies, lyrics and moods of their songs perfectly encapsulate the way I have been feeling lately. I love the way their songs are so reflective of loss and angst and confusion, possessing a gentle aura of melancholy that is oddly relaxing rather than upsetting.

Leers, cheers, whispers and tears

The final taste before you're taken away

Odds, ends, final amends

It's all right to say it

Just as long as you don't really think so

Junior Boys, 'Parallel Lines'

So stay, what for?
Get lost, hit the floor
Cause there's fire all around
It's in my hands, it's out the door

Springtime, you're gonna wish that we were friends
That we talk, you never feel so sure again
So now, there'll be no lessons, no more cures
'Til you get yours, baby in the end

I'll run, give way
Which face, and whose name?
You're falling, from my eyes
To the bottom, you're all the same

Junior Boys, 'The Equalizer'

It's in the details

True style is found on the street in a snapshot of an ordinary existence - carrying a great book to the train, a spare pair of heels to work, a bottle of water, paper bags full of new purchases...

Hold Fast to Dreams!

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow

Langston Hughes, 'Hold Fast to Dreams'

The most important thing in life is to keep a strong mosaic of dreams alive in your head to see you through your every waking moment. Dream of love, of beauty, of friendship and of adventure. Dream in beautiful pastel colours.

Cling to these dreams at all times like a drowning victim to a life raft. Because without them, we are dead.

And remember this: never, ever let anyone take your dreams away from you.

So I'm sitting in my underwear and an old striped t-shirt and I'm watching Woody Allen's Manhattan (which is amazing and feeding some very big NY dreams) on youtube and eating fresh lentil soup when I should be analysing some archaic economics paper by Alfred Marshall and I feel a level of contentment I haven't felt in months.

Besotted by Cardigans

The cardigan: feminine, snuggly, easy and cute.

I love this Moschino pearl cardigan (top) because it is something a prim lady would wear to high tea.

The second is by A.P.C Madras and is a cashmere blend. And we all know cashmere is the heaven of all fibres.

Lastly,a cardigan by Comme Des Garcons, seen here on Alexa Chung (who never misses a beat).

I love this

A big fluffy pink skirt, a glittery bodice and a big black bow

Interpret This

Life is not unlike a grammatical sentence. It has a beginning and it ends with a period. The words in between are a whole lot of lovely nouns with some joyous active verbs and some boring conjunctions in between. And sometimes life can be ambiguous and confusing, just like language.

Things can always be viewed in different ways. As humans we must interpret and process knowledge that comes before us and your interpretation of such knowledge or events perhaps is invariably influenced by your emotions and your personal perceptions which are the product of circumstances and culture.

Amphibolous sentences, I find, are truly interesting. These are sentences that are grammatically ambiguous so as to lead to two different interpretations, depending on how you look at it. Sort of like that popular visual illusion of the drawing which can be interpreted as an old hag or a fair young woman with a bonnet on her head. For example, consider the sentence 'the courageous boy's friend'. Is the boy courageous, or is the friend?

Anyway, life is ambiguous, just like an amphibolous statement. And when people hurt you, you tend to interpret their actions in the worst possible way. And it fucking sucks.

Lady and the Tramp

Life Rule Number 1: all men are tramps. 

Life Rule Number 2: dress like a lady and turn your nose up at them. 

A Golden Afternoon

There is no greater luxury than cupcakes, a cup of tea, snack-foods and a copy of Lula.