A Rookie's Guide to Roam / Rome Alone

I am sleeping on the floor of London's Stansted airport waiting for my 5am flight, the ceiling is so high up and it's a big slumber party - buzzing with a quiet hum of adventure and explorers daydreaming here we go here we go here we go! 

*

When in Rome, you will get on a stranger's motorcycle and explore ancient ruin sites; your heart will be full when you skip down cobble stoned streets and stumble upon the Pantheon towering over you. You will have a romantic dinner alone and the waiter will give you a mini furby toy that's wearing a wizard hat. When in Rome, you will hike to the highest point in the city at 2 in the morning; Dashboard Confessional's Hands Down will play at a sloshy student bar called The Drunken Ship, and you and I will wander to the Trevi Fountain, and it will be still - this night is wild, so calm and dull...When in Rome, you are brave and scared and terrible at speaking Italian, and will leave on a 5am train to Cinque Terre with a full heart.

I still haven't had much experience traveling alone, but I thought I'd share some things to look out for / heads up / mistakes I've made and tips and things with my first time in Italy, for anyone who's doing the same.

* Learn the language - if only a little, I practiced a few basic phrases like buona sera (good afternoon), grazie (thank you), per favore (please), mi scusi (excuse me), parla inglese (do you speak English). Naturally, I got flustered and forgot a lot of the time, by which I would end up saying English words with a bad Italian accent and hope for the best...

* Don't stress about taking photos - Everyone's different on holiday, but personally and in my experience, I just found it much more enjoyable to soak and bask in where ever I am and whatever I'm looking at, and take photos when I feel like it. All my photos of the Colosseum were poo

* Keep your valuables close - I'm sort of paranoid so I had a money pouch around my neck under my shirt that made me look like I was pregnant with a rectangular baby, and also emergency money in my Doc Martens. You wanna steal my $$$ you're gonna have to touch my gross feet ya jerk

* Rocking up solo - if you're worried about traveling to Rome alone and heard horror stories about gypsies throwing their babies at you, this is a sign - do it! - and be cautious and alert. I know I said I got on a stranger's bike / hung out with strangers which is the opposite of aforementioned advice but I can assure you I was being careful and had a shotgun on me (jk)

* Make yourself approachable - I was having a romantic dinner by myself and listening to a podcast about bees when these 2 girls asked if I wanted to join them, and I was being a dweeb and immediately regretted saying uh no sorry gotta listen to my podcast. I started talking to them after dinner and they turned out to be the loveliest people cry cry cry

* Drink your coffee at the bar - in some cafes, coffee is doubly expensive if you drink it sitting down, so go ahead and drink it at the bar and make awkward eye contact with the barrister

* Colosseum + Roman Forum - Buy a ticket from either and you'll automatically get access to both, so I recommend getting tickets at the Roman Forum first and then going to the Colosseum (as opposed to the other way round, which'll take you hours). Once you're done, it's heaps easy to walk to the Spanish steps, the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon (via del Corso) - it'll be around 20 minutes but there's so much to see around you'll barely notice!

* Places I found particularly dope - the Santa Maria church in Trastevere, Pincio hill, Claudio Torce's Gelateria, the vintage shops in via Vecchio in Piazza Navona.

* Sing This Is What Dreams Are Made Of on the streets - fucking do it

Happy traveling!

That time I got Instagram

Some time in May, at some house party, alcohol was consumed, an inflatable pool was inflated, water was present - I was thrown in aforementioned pool (in favor of my drunken self, but against my sober will), and my 3 year old piece of crap Nokia went down with this intoxicated mess of a ship.

And so began my short-lived relationship with Instagram (thanks to a friend who had an old HTC to spare me for a few months):

- The Opera House at 7 in the morning for TEDxSydney -

- Jumping out of a plane or something -

- "That's not a character, it's a fucking map" / Dumpling party -

- First thing in the morning, 7am glow -

- "You can't wear stripes and plaid!" -

- Salad + flowers at TEDxSydney -

- Crowd sourced food fest at TEDxSydney -

- Tacky princesses / surprise parties -

- Birthday / slut day brunch for my favorite girl -

- "HAPPY SLUTDAY!" / With love -

- Cherry fingers -

- Cheesus -

- Sammy boy's pomegranate / lime juice ft. stolen coaster from Frankie's pizza -

- Not a good idea putting up slut bunting up next to a primary school -

- Of course this happened -

- MMMM LOVE ME -

- O hai Benjamin McDonut -

- Homemade breakfasts / Adelaide -

- Last day of interning -

- Most Australian moment of my life / Wild kangaroos! -

And now I use this! No Instagram / Snapchat, no.

20° // 13°

ft Elwood dress, shirt and parka stolen off my unfortunate friends, H&M boots, ugly ass Sportsgirl bag, H&M boots, Royal Aquamarine sunglasses

Whenever I try taking selfies / outfit photos I can feel my brain and the rest of the world going like

I have very little of interest to say - what do I even have to talk about on outfit posts? Lo0k at me these are clothes I lyk dis with dis it looks gud so I wear it!!!11!!!1 me be wit boots ?? F E S H IO N
You know what's actually interesting? This bad ass red as fuck waterfall.

I'd probably be a really shitty geologist (good thing I'm not one!) because the first two things I thought of when I saw this was 1. OH NO we breaked nature and the earth sorry halp 2. Looks like vagina period blood ow 

More skilled geologists than I obvs did their thang and found that this red waterfall is the run-off from a lake beneath the Taylor Glacier, where all these microbes dudes chill out - like literally trapped under a thick layer of ice from the rest of the world, with no light or oxygen - and oozes out red stuff cos it's doped up in iron. So these little dudes basically lived in a natural time capsule, and it shows that life can exist in the most extreme conditions on Earth - how's that for an outfit post

*

Follow me in these social network thingos so we can network socially and sexually I mean what 
Twitter / Tumblr  

Work it out in the morning

ft. ASOS swimsuit and shorts way too small for me

I am so excited and inspired and stoked to blog about shit (great vocab gurl, do I even go to uni) and show you guys what I've been working on! Life's been filthy lately (but equal amounts of great) involving excessive consumption of food (just ate 300g of Bavarian cake, you wanna go?), naked dance parties to Backstreet Boys because I have the house to myself, a solo patisserie crawl along Rozelle, a whiskey + apple mint flavored shisha and showing up to my Marketing exam half drunk from the night before covered in bruises, a swollen lip and a bleeding ear:



I AM NOT EVEN POUTING OKAY I walked around looking like I got botox done by a 5 year old on a street corner in China
Worth it though - that was the night Jackie Onassis was playing and they're d o p e as fuck. Download their whole freaking album here or you're a wrinkled foreskin (that's my new favorite comeback fyi).

FUCK YES NO MAYBE

I'll admit, I get a lot of shit from people for either wearing ugly curtain patterned skirts, or ultra slutty slut crop tops or gross K-Mart granny underpants or loving One Direction unironically but having bad taste and being tacky is too much fun to give up.

So you can imagine my trashy, wet dream delight when a friend was having a thrift shop themed party on Mardi Gras, a holy calling to deck out in my 1970's prom queen gear or as a sequin clad stripper (or both). I ended up wearing this shirt, which didn't fit my aforementioned trashy brief, but who could say no to this shirt? Like actually. So I did a bit of searching and so the story behind 'Cool kids say yes' goes...

---

"There was this cultural movement in France in the 19th century that basically said 'Humans aren't that hard to figure out. All that we are can be found in our actions.' In response to this, Pete Versus Toby deduced that what defines cool is saying yes.
So, if you're having an existential crisis, just say yes and at least you'll be cool."

---

I could liken my own form of an existential crisis to when I boil my broccoli and they come out still kind of hard and raw and chewy, but not enough for me to boil them again, so I eat them anyway, which is kind of like, a lame and mediocre kind of crisis, you know? Either way I definitely dig what the shirt is trying to say. I won't 'Yes Man' that shit (you know, that Jim Carrey movie with beautiful unicorn Jennifer Aniston?), but I'm tired of being scared of doing things, so yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Except maybe to maybe watching Vampire Diaries. I just can't even

I didn't even buy this ugly weird ass actually kind of cute aw it's cute! necklace from a thrift shop, I had it ages ago when a kid was selling it at some school market. 

So okay guys, please tell me, what're you saying yes to this month?

Stray Fashion Week Musings

- Do editors ever tire of saying how leather and florals are this season's trends?

- Let me guess this season's hit color palette is grey and neutrals

- Why does Olivia Palermo have a blog

- Jason Wu Fall 2013 breaks my heart (I liked his Pre-Fall better)

- I know it's really constructive to get criticism from anyone about your work, but when bloggers (see above) or sites like Cosmo comment about how much a collection has 'disappointed' them I just imagine the designer going lol sorry not sorry

Aubrey Plaza x ASOS / 'Evil Hag' Appreciation Post

I usually don't like to post editorials and add to the Internet clutter of mundane and irrelevant commentary, but this is one clutter I must grant aforementioned mundane and irrelevant commentary. I just can't pass up any opportunity to fan girl over Aubrey Plaza, a.k.a my favorite character on Parks and Recreation (Leslie Knope comes a close second). She's genuinely the creepy queen of weird, death stares and social inappropriateness, all the while being hilarious and her no bullshit self and basically everything I want to be in life okay?!

So anyway, she's on the cover of ASOS's magazine app thing this month. While I'm on the topic of ASOS, did they change buyers or something? I swear, all their clothes got uglier.