I say the right thing, but act the wrong way – If you wanna be with me, baby there’s a price to pay

January 29, 2011

I’ve fallen asleep in so many places in the past week that I haven’t really been home/online/at my desk, thus the slack amount of blogging. I desperately need some form of decent daily routine to up my productiveness, but the calls of partying is just too loud as the end of summer grows closer in sight. This past week has been quite a whirlwind for me, reconnecting with old ties, severing some recent ones and meeting new people all at the same time. I’m definitely guilty of biting off more than I can chew all the time – starting up more projects than I can physically juggle, and keeping up a sort of rotation-like social life. On one hand, I really enjoy it. I thrive off the copious amount of choices I have with anything from what music I want to listen to/play/write, to who I want to see/chat/dance/drink with, to what I want to be reading and writing in bed, before I sleep.

I had a cold a week ago, largely from Big Day Out, being cold, drenched and tired, and then partying too hard. When it finally eased up a couple of days ago though, what did I do? Drank too much and slept too little again. Aka partied too hard. That, and the storm that New Zealand’s been hit with hasn’t really helped the chances of my immune system with keeping up with me. It looks to be a relatively tame Saturday night tonight, but I think my Wednes, Thurs and Friday nights have made up for it, haha.

The other day I caved and bought these killer shoes for half price. Although, having said that, half price was still fucking expensive. They are ridiculously comfortable though (took them out for 5 hours of dancing, standing and walking around to test drive them that very night, haha), and has resulted in me listing a pile of shoes that I don’t wear on Trademe.co.nz. I’m also currently selling a Sufjan Stevens ticket (Wellington), dress and various shoes. Click here for my listings :).

These bad boys make me veeery, very tall. I’m 5’7″ to start with… the platform itself is 1.5″ and then a 4″ heel wedge…

Mum didn’t say much (guilt, guilt, guilt about retail therapy, but I’m happy with them, haha), except that she looooves the leather. So soft and amazing.

So uhh, I don’t know how my legs ended up looking this tanned in the photo, haha. Very messy room though, am tidying out my wardrobe – dirty laundry on the floor, etc. Typical Amanda.

Aaaaand I’ve finally gotten my Laneway Festival Media Pass. Just smudged out my media outlet’s name until I have the photos and write up to link to.

This track – listen to it. I am so hooked it’s not funny. It’s a mash up of The Strokes’ “Hard To Explain” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle”. Asides from being pure genius, they happen to be two of my fave tracks – “Hard To Explain” was the first Strokes song I ever heard, and they’ve been one of my favourite bands ever since, so there we have it.

Conversations from Wednesday and last night have really got me thinking about the chronology of my music tastes. I get really flustered whenever people ask me “what music to you like/listen to?”. Because I honestly listen to such a wide variety that I don’t even know where to begin to describe what my tastes are. I know it seems really superficial, but being the music freak that I am, I really do feel that these days, to a lot of people, what music someone is into makes a big enough difference on the impression they leave – akin to that of a first, visual impression. I can’t be bothered analysing my own musical etymology right now, but put it this way, within the two past weeks I have: gone crazy on a one-woman-dance-rampage over Ratatat + relived the nostalgia of my youth in the Deftones moshpit + creamed myself (awful expression, I know) over Rammstein’s set and pyrotechnics from the 2nd row at BDO + gone clubbing at places where “everyone goes” and they play supposedly the “most popular” tracks + had a blast to Tidball’s set at Cassette 9 + spent the rest of that evening listening to pop favourites from the past decade with friends (think Britney Spears, Blue, Christina Aguilera, Back Street Boys, Liberty X, Mis-Teeq sort of stuff)… not to mention, in the next two weeks I will see an array of bands at Laneway Festival that are more akin to recent music tastes + go to see Rusko + be at Sufjan Stevens’ concert in Wellington… I would also love to see Queens of the Stone Age again, but I can’t really bring myself to fish out $85 ish in my current state of unemployment.

Don’t even mention it – I’ve been looking and applying for jobs. And I know that I’m picky, because I want to keep whatever job I get as a part-time thing for the next two years, like I did with my last job – so I don’t want to hate whatever it is!

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

December 26, 2010

This is the jewellery post that’s been requested a few times… and now you can see why I’ve procrastinated from it.

The days are so happy, the air so warm, my mind is so alive but I keep listening to broken songs. The prose and poetry I keep scribbling in notebooks or drafting but not publishing on my blog are all so full of achiness. Not outright pain, no longer sorrowful, but some sort of deep-reaching ache like that of an old sporting injury that never fully recovered… which you completely forget about until you try to exercise that particular region and suddenly you tense up a little and find no solid strength that you can rely on.

I’m taking a really long drive out to the countryside to a friend’s house tomorrow, so that should inject me with some more positivity and creativity as well as a splash of saltwater and sunshine. Although chances are, knowing myself, I can still derive some other kind of ache to write about late into the night after that, I’m sure.

Anyway, here is the jewellery post that has been requested a few times now. It’s not my entire collection, but its the pieces that are frequently gracing my limbs or are of some kind of special value:

This is the chain that I got for Christmas on which I soldered my charms on today. I had been so careful to not burn my hands a second day in a row, but my sister startled me at one point and I burnt my knee instead. That’s two blistering burns in two days. The really painful background to this bracelet is that earlier this year (I don’t want to go into details again or I might cry), following some unfortunate series of events, I ended up losing my silver charm bracelet which my parents gave me on my tenth birthday. I had been collecting charms on it annually ever since, so I was so shattered when it got lost in rather unexplainable circumstances. Ever since, mum and I have been slowly buying back the same old charms, as well as new ones. I know it’s never going to be the same, but I guess I could think of this as the chain with my adult life on it, rather than childhood. I am the most sentimental person ever, and for better or for worse, I attach a lot of emotions onto possessions, so it seriously felt like I lost my childhood.

It was really hard to photograph all the charms clearly without being really anal about it, so I just couldn’t be bothered and will make a list instead. So far these are the charms I’ve got on the bracelet above, from left to right: Bell – which is a replica of what I got for my 18th birthday, mum’s intentions were that it signified or heralded me into adulthood… Kangaroo bought at the Blue Mountains in Australia; Cable Car I got from San Francisco; State of California (it’s at a funny angle in the picture) from my trip; Mickey Mouse from Disneyland; Spider which was originally from when I was 13; Bear which mum bought me from Yosemite National Park in America; Car for my 17th birthday when I was involved in a car crash and needed a car; Ballerina for my 12th birthday; Quavers and Treble clef originally for my 11th birthday.

I don’t know how I remember all that, but somehow I do – which just truly reflects how attached I was to my bracelet, I guess. It’s like I have to buy all my years back, in the form of a little piece of metal – which I know sounds retarded… but. Every time I think about it – such as now – I seriously feel my eyes well up in a gush of frustration and anger especially at self, with “what if”s and “if I could have changed my actions and reactions” that night. I need to let go.

This picture shows some of my favourite silverware. The write cuff at the back with the turkey stone is actually my mother’s – I just kind of have it on loan from her. She had it custom made for her when she was about my age as she couldn’t find any jewellery that fits her very small wrist. Nowadays, we have yet to find someone other than us two who can comfortably fit it. The turquoise bracelet is a high school graduation gift from mum and the key attached to the side of it is a charm from my sister. It’s not very visible here, but the silver bracelet in the foreground features a heart-shaped clip at the front. I got this for my 19th birthday, and I was supposed to put my aforementioned charms on this one, but I decided not to in the end. The bracelet on top of that is a Pandora bracelet that I got for my 18th birthday. The charms aren’t very clear here, but they are placed in the order which I got them: Rabbit, Mother of Pearl Hearts & Hedgehog from my mum. She was born in the year of the rabbit, and as for the hedgehog, we have an inside joke/nickname between us from when I was younger – she’d tell me I’d be nasty and prickly like a hedgehog whenever I got angry, and so it kinda reads like rabbit loves hedgehog/hedgehog loves rabbit. Just some cute, sweet mother-and-daughter thing I guess, haha.

Next to that I got a Suitcase charm from an old friend, signifying all the places I want to, and will embark on traveling to; the next two are from a handful of friends – a Four-Leafed Clover and a pair of Quavers – all were for my 18th birthday. The last two were from this year – a friendship knot from my friend Cara for my 19th, and a Kangaroo from dad when we went to Australia earlier this year.

The two rings were both self-bought in Taipei earlier this year as well, on separate occasions. The funny thing about this set of jewellery is that I often like to wear these turquoise pieces with my aqua Dr Martens because they’re the same colour!

This is just a bunch of my other bits of silverware. As you can see, I have a preference for silver, and I’m not really into gold. In fact, I don’t think I photographed any gold pieces I have, because I never wear them. The half-heart necklace on the right hand side has my sister’s name, Liv engraved on it, and she has the other half with my name. Mum bought these as Christmas presents for us last year, signifying the two pieces of her heart… Christmas was a bit of an emotional time for us in 2009 because we weren’t sure whether or not my sister would be home for Christmas this year (turns out she is though, but won’t be in 2011). I had worn it every single day since last Christmas, until November… (see below)

The necklace to the left of that was bought at Kinkaku-ji (a.k.a. Temple of the Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto when I went there in February. The huge chunky bracelet in the middle is from a Charlie Brown boutique in Sydney. On the far left is a feather pendant which I wear on a silver chain around my neck. Someone on formspring asked me why I wanted a feather tattoo, which is for the same reason that I have this necklace: the Chinese character for feather is part of my name, and also bares a lot of meanings, symbolism and connotations.

Here are some of the rings that have rotated as favourites of mine for the past few years. The middle one is from Disneyland; the 2nd one from the left is from Japan; 2 to the right of it was bought at the same time as a ring for a very old friend, years and years ago. The ring with the longest history out of this bunch is the band that is 2nd from the right – it dates back to the summer of 2005 when a bunch of mates and I were at the mall, and the boys found it. We all wrangled over it for ages, and took turns keeping it, but somehow I’ve hogged it ever since, haha.

This is by far the prettiest necklace that I own, and its entanglement and stranglehold of my neck was the only reason that I took off my aforementioned half-heart necklace (which my sister wears the other half of) back in November. Liv and I were shopping in Santa Monica and it was love at first sight when I laid eyes on it. Liv was quite taken with it too, but after seeing the little matching heart piece which dangles down the back of my neck when worn, she immediately insisted that it was stunning and that I had to buy it. Ironically she ended up paying for it, and the dress I bought from that store, yay. What I love about it most is how it sparkles in the sunlight… Oh take me back to our afternoon in Santa Monica under the Californian sun…

These are longer necklaces which I like to wear with loose shirts, and a lot of black. The key on the left is the backdoor key to my friend’s old house at which he no longer resides. It hangs off a piece of Kangaroo leather which I bought in Brisbane in 2008. The bullet casing in the middle is indeed a real one, from a friend who does rifle shooting. I’ve often forgotten I was wearing it whilst traveling and worry about it being confiscated at customs. For some reason I always fail metal detectors and even hand metal detectors several times; and my luggage has to get x-rayed over and over, so this doesn’t really help… I made it into a necklace using the chain and ring of an old necklace that had a broken pendant. The hourglass necklace does indeed work, and I bought this at Wasteland on Melrose Ave in LA last month.

The necklace on the left is something that I only ever wear when I’m wearing some nice dress for a fancy ish dinner or something. It looks kinda shit in the photo but based on several compliments about it, I’d have to say it actually looks pretty fancy and expensive in real life. Ironically, I bought it for $5 from Bling when it was shutting down at Botany at the end of 2008, I think. The necklace to the left of it is from the Free People boutique on Cahuenga Blvd, in Hollywood. The left two necklaces were made by me about a week and a half ago, as seen in this post.

Just a bunch of slightly quirky bracelets over the years, the newest addition being the rain and umbrella bracelet at the bottom, which I got for Christmas. See, it is really a widely known fact that I love the rain. The bracelet above that as well as the top two red and blues ones were from Aotea Square market years and years ago, all on separate occasions. The black one is a mass of dagger-like hearts. The fine silver thing above that is actually an anklet, which I don’t wear much because the bells get really loud and I feel as if I sound like a belly dancer when I walk around… The pretty flower bracelet in the middle is a handmade gift from a Japanese friend, from back in 2004, I think.

This is what I wear on my right ear. That’s one earring, looped through the three lobe piercings I have. I didn’t take a picture of the left ear, just in case newly-pierced industrial piercing (which I only got only last month, in Hollywood) was crusty or something… up close is not a good view. I just usually wear plain silver studs on the lobes, and occasionally a single, dangling earring. I’ve actually got quite a collection of quirky earrings, but I hardly ever wear them, so I couldn’t be bothered posting them today.

Wrist candy from this year. I love watches. At one point in time before I cared about comfort whilst bass-playing, I wore three, large-faced watches – each telling the time of a different time zone that was relevant to my family.

So there it is… the heavy metal that adorns me often. I didn’t really want to do this post for ages, because for one, look! It’s turned out fucking huge… since I can’t do something without going into details! and two, it just looks like a narcissistic showy post. But oh whatever, I’d waited until I got a fair few requests for it, so for once I am satisfying someone out there with a blog post haha! As if that’s normal for me.

You’ve been nighttiming baby, you’ve got your pleasures all around you

December 15, 2010

If anyone ever had a doubt in their mind that I was absolutely and utterly crazy, this post would erase all remaining doubt completely. A few nights ago I disappeared from all traces of technological civilisation when a friend and I decided to embark on a night-time swim. My conditions of agreement was that he’d have to acquire a waterproof disposable camera with a flash on it – the flash and disposable parts were managed, but waterproof doesn’t seem to get stocked anywhere these days at all. But no matter, since we didn’t end up swimming, despite the trouble I went to whilst trying to wrangle my bikini onto my body without undressing. Who on earth still does that? The act rather reminded me of primary and intermediate school changing rooms for swimming or P.E. class, where all the girls were too scared of baring even their midriffs to one another. I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Between the hours of midnight and dawn, we managed to visit a golf course, beach and a hedgehog. I’m the sort of person who has balls of steel until my vivid and over-active imagination kicks in with regards to unknown things in the dark. My nose watered from hayfever, and my eyes watered from my paranoid, triple-coating of mozzie repellent: I’m surprised anyone would risk being caught trespassing with me, appearing and smelling the way I did. Although, having said that, I’m not too sure if we actually trespassed anywhere at all. Is it trespassing if you visit a golf course after hours, with no intention of going near a golf ball? The entire day had been so hot and humid, and it stretched far into the night after sundown. Air so warm that even car-induced wind is not a welcome breeze, and even so much as thinking about moving made my shirt stick to my back.

To whatever glorious person it was that asked me on formspring to post more of my outfits: here you go. Although I doubt I would ever do “outfit posts” (if I did, I would probably feel like even more of a narcissistic jerk that what I already do), maybe you’ll start seeing more of me in photos… maybe.

Thank you, 800 fujifilm in a plastic case buddied with blinding flash:

Bed dive, of course!

Apparently my attire of choice for such a night time excursion isn’t really any different to what I usually wear anyway. Loose black crop top, denim shorts (that I DIY’d out of mens’ $12 jeans from Kmart), and my trusty Dr. Martens.

The hedgehog we photographed from behind because we didn’t want to freak it out with the flash. I think it flipped out anyway.

Rolling down a hiiiilll.

Except for one time in calf-deep water earlier this year, I haven’t attempted a cartwheel in at least 6 years! So that’s why I suck at it now.

Apparently I’m not the only one.

You can’t reaaally see it here, but the thing I am doing a bridge-hold on is a pipe which is mostly submerged in seawater. My back, hands and hair got really wet and sandy from doing this.

The edge of the cliff, into darkness.

Being silly.

Free gift that came with the disposable camera. Like a fold-up frisbee thing.

Hot, sexy, dirty, sweaty dancing tonight. These photos are from a couple of hours ago – Lottie had work and I had two hockey games, both ending at 10pm, but we decided to brave the exhaustion and head out to town anyway. I’m unhappy to say that I didn’t get any goals today (but I tried!), but we ended up winning both games – so effectively I am in the #1 and #3 team in our summer grade, haha. Yay for winning a huge meat pack that we are going to BBQ on Sunday. I’ve got another final to play tomorrow, and that particular team wants to opt for the bar tab, so hopefully I will get the best of both worlds this week.

The new McD’s “extra large” fries – I had underestimated its size and well overestimated my appetite.

I got told off and had to delete this picture, umm. Left: Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate sundae. The faux leather pants Lottie is wearing are mine. I do believe she looks better in them than I, thus why I haven’t really worn them much.
Right: Once again, to the glorious person who wanted to see how I dress – well this wasn’t particularly interesting (apart from the view from the front that men rather enjoyed, I do believe), but I was just wearing a black romper that I bought in LA.

Good god, aren’t I such a healthily well-rounded person! Spot the 3x basses, 1x guitar and hockey bag in the background! Also spot the sarcasm! But in all seriousness, I will give a special shout out to anyone who can actually correctly point out where 3 basses are hidden in this picture.

New Rules: I’m learning to be laid back about certain things

July 17, 2010

I can’t stop listening to Kele Okereke’s new album, The Boxer. Being such an avid Bloc Party fan, I’d been very curious as to what Kele’s solo album would sound like. To me it’s like listening to Bloc Party, but with less guitar and grunt, more dancey beats, plus the same lyrical ingenuity that I will quote over and over (ref to title of blog!).

Guilty indulgences aside, the thing that I never feel guilt for splurging copious amounts of money on = books. I’m sure that women the world over will know exactly what I’m on about when I describe the slow, creeping guilt that emerges after a materialistic purchase. Clothing, shoes, magazines, even if it was chocolate, or just some other silly little thing that you weren’t quite completely in love with, and definitely didn’t need. But that feeling never occurs when I buy books. I once bought a $64 hardback adventure novel, just because I couldn’t wait for the library system to offer me the next installment penned by Matthew Reilly – especially after an excruciating cliff hanger! Luckily my special lady-friend works at the local bookstore and helps me out with her 30% staff discounts – which also came in handy yesterday when I decided to buy a $95 book on Jazz: A history of America’s Music. What also helps is that, when I buy books, often my parents will offer to pay for them, if they are present; as well as the fact that I simply don’t need to justify any book purchases – but can easily do so. I mean, surely it’s a given that since I’m spending my bachelor’s degree on learning jazz performance that surely I need to become thoroughly familiar with the ins-and-outs of its history and development through the ages. Not to mention, this semester I also have a compulsory jazz history paper anyway.

Specifics aside, I’m sure many people can relate to the self-righteously intellectual feeling that comes with buying a book. It feels like it adds to me and the growth of my mind as a whole. Sure, you have to read it first, but buying a book generally guarantees that no matter how long I put it off for, eventually I will read it. The same can’t be said for books that I get out from the library: I have a tendency to get too greedy at the library (come on, it’s free), as well as judge a book by it’s cover. Also, the best and most popular books always seem to be unavailable at the library anyway, so unless I’d requested a book, it’s never what I’d really like to read.

Does anyone else do this? Or feel like this too?

I really need to go run some scales on the double bass now because semester two is starting on Monday (impending blisters in the week, I just know it). It’s sad that class hasn’t even started yet and already I am longing for the summer holidays in November already!

Four random photos that all somehow have one thing in common (guesses?):

David’s mini birthday I made him and took along to his farewell party.

The cake again, under a very erotic looking red light. The cool shade that goes with it wasn’t in sight. + Having lunch at the Sydney waterfront: view behind me reflected off the back of a Canon 50d.

The new lights I bought in Sydney and fiiiinally put up in my room. And my beloved poster.

Common thread amongst the photos: all taken by the family buddy, Mr Canon IXUS950IS.

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