Things to do other than sit by your phone waiting for a boy to text back

1. Go for a walk. Leave your phone at home.

2. Write letters to five of your greatest friends complete with illustrations and haikus.

3. Paint your body.

4. Invent a new hairstyle.

5. Bake something.

6. Go to the library and learn something new.

7. Start taking a beginners language course online.

8. Research your family tree.

9. Go to the park and pilfer a bouquet of flowers.

10. Go through all of your non-fiction books and read the opening sentence. Decide which is the best.

11. Draw a self portrait.

12. Take a bath.

13. Go to the movies.

14. Text everyone BUT him.

15. Update your CV.

16. Sew on all your missing clothing buttons.

17. Polish your shoes.

18. Clean your bed.

19. Nap.

20. Sit in a cafe and draw odd people passing by.

I’m waiting honey.

Two Thousand Fifteen

JANUARY is always an amazing month for me. It’s always been quiet time for me as a bartender (post new years atleast!) and gives me the opportunity the dream and scheme and organize my busy brain for the new year.

I’m a film theory graduate at the University of Otago. I love watching, making and discussing films, they’re like literature for a library for me. However, as many film grads experience, the film industry is a tough line of work to get in to, let alone get paid in! Shamefully, I had been offered practical film production experience last year and turned it down due to my paid bartending work commitments and, to be honest, anxiety.

Clockwise from top-left: 1 2 3 4

This year is a no excuse year. I’ve left my life-sucking hospitality life behind and I’m letting myself be open and available to my heart goals. Heart goals are pipe dreams that make my blood warm and my eyes open.

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Heart Goals

Contribute to the film industry – make, create, write, contribute, make a dent.
Make a home – nurture, nest, grow, beautify.
Love thyself – be confident, be content, be self-loving, glow.

Superfluous Goals

Learn the banjo
White wash my own furniture
Host dinner parties

What are your goals? I would love to hear them ♥

Festival Fashion

I’m a week away from my trip to snowy Germany and rainy London but it’s sunny as ever in Dunedin, New Zealand. I’m headed to WaikeriFest in Alexandra next week, 3 hours drive away.

I find fashion at festivals half the fun. At festivals you can push boundaries that you wouldn’t quite get away with on the street. Most importantly, you dress to dance and to have fun. Loose, bohemian kaftans and shirt-dresses to go with loose messy waves, plaits and buns.

Clockwise from top-left: 1 2 3 4 5

I personally always pack all-black and then bring a couple of colourful accessories: bandanas and necklaces and some really bright lipsticks. What do you love to wear to festivals?

What’s your magic number?

A discussion with a man friend today went down the path of past sexual encounters. I was asked what my “magic number” is, how many people I’ve had sex with.

First I rolled back through years of uncomfortable teenage encounters followed by a string of boyfriends mixed in with some break-up one night stands. I narrowed it down to ‘between twenty and twenty-five’. Silence followed by my contemplative friend which lead me to start explaining who, where, what and why and a mish mash of desperate reasoning. My friend reassured me that he was just working his out and managed to round up to fifty.

This conversation prompted an internal monologue: why did I feel the need to defend my sex life to my male compadre? Is twenty-ish a number worth defending? What number is? I started falling down the Google rabbit hole trying to find a general consensus but had to stop after reading the vast amount of misogynist comments aimed at female contributors (this is a rant for another time) /femrant.

Turns out the ideal number is not a lot.

According to the box-office flop What’s Your Number? (2011) twenty is the penultimate number you can reach, thus the main character must seek an ex-partner to marry as she can’t possibly pass this. GQ magazine suggests that ten is the ideal number as “nobody wants a virgin, that’s just plain weird. But, quite frankly, neither do they want someone with so many notches in their bedpost that the mattress falls through the ceiling.” That rules me well out at the ripe age of twenty-three.

Regardless of hegemonic norms broadcast through mass media, my number is special. I remember each and everyone of sexual experiences and they have shaped me. They have helped me to discover my attractions, my sexuality and contributed to me overall identity. I am proud of my magic number, as should we all from twenty-ish to a thousand we have shared a relationship with another human and it has shaped us.

Love and rainbows.

DIY: A Valentine’s Exploding Heart

For Valentine’s day I was beyond dirt poor. As I still had a sweetheart to charm the socks off I decided to go DIY.

 

First, I cut out two matching hearts from a couple sheets of baking paper. 

Then, I started to hand sew a running stitch around the outside of the hearts, leaving a 10cm gap.

Thirdly, I cut up some paper streamers I had lying around from a party and wrote some cutesy wee notes.

I stuffed my exploding heart with all it’s colourful innards and sewed up the gap.

Voila, one adorable, creative and cheap V-day present!

 

Young and Dumb: Simple Recipes for the Dunce or the Destitute

As a 20-something, fresh out of university, being strapped for cash is a regular occurrence. When you work the bar shift until 4am or wait tables all day inspiration for the next meal can fall by the way-side. After a solid year of microwave meals and cheese toasted sandwiches I’ve decide to treat my body better and get new, simple and cheap, recipes under my belt that are suitable for the shift-worker (until I get my high roller job complete with live-in chef anyway).

Earlier is week my Mum, a German in every way, sent me baby potatoes in mail from her garden on the Dunedin Peninsula in the South Island. Every time I get veges I try to wash, prepare and stack them nicely in the fridge so I’ll subliminally grab them and not let it go to waste.

These baby potatoes were the perfect size and amount for a potato dauphinoise for one. A potato dauphinoise, or cheesy potato bake, is simple, cheap and soooo delicious.

Being Gen Y, when it comes to a basic recipe I say google it. Then adapt it however you want.

 

Om. Nom.

I ended up tweaking this little recipe:

10-12 baby new potatoes
50g butter
2 table spoons all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole milk
100g grated cheese (any that take your fancy)
salt and pepper to season

1. Preheat oven to 180. Peel and boil up your baby new potatoes in a pot of water with a pinch of salt for about 5 min, just to get them a tiny bit softer, like an ‘al dente’ potato.

2. Drain the potatoes and chop in to 1/2 cm slices.

3. Place your potato slices in to a small baking dish, preferably those sad-looking ‘pasta bake for one’ dishes you can get at most stores.

4. Next melt your butter in saucepan  on medium heat. Stir in your flour until smooth and paste-like. Gradually add your milk stirring all the while. The goal is to keep it smooth and lump-free.

5. After the milk is in add your cheese and continually stir until melted in to make a gooey cheese sauce.

6. Pour that cheese sauce over your potatoes and place in the oven for 20-25 min. In the last 5 min you can add grated cheese on top and grill for 30 seconds to get a crispy top.

Voila. One amazing potato bake that you could definitely eat in one session, share with a date, or save half for lunch the next day.

The exciting thing about basic recipes and cooking for yourself is that you can experiment. Got blue cheese? Crumble that in. Bacon fiend? Fry that up and add to the deliciousness.

 

 

It’s hard to live in the city

So just lay your head down low,
Don’t let anybody know
That its hard to live, its hard to live in the city

– Albert Hammond Jr.

Source

I’ve currently moved back up to the big smoke, aka Auckland City, in the north island of New Zealand. The abundant job market and better weather lured me back up to the hot and humid streets of Auckland. I’m 22, alone, with a boyfriend-come-ex-boyfriend-come-boyfriend left behind (coming up in a months time).

My days have been spent dodging wide-eyed tourists, navigating the familiar streets of this metropolis that I have a vivid love-hate relationship with. My week has consisted of non-stop interviews for potential jobs, “commission-based opportunities” this, “potential growth” that. A whole language to learn in order to sell myself as the perfect, risk-free, 22 year-old employee.

All the while I wish I was growing a self-sustainable lifestyle, miles away from these energy draining experiences. Creating. Instead I am offered roles to support, to sell, to analyse, become this, embody that.

At night I am still plugged in to the city’s bloodstream. My single-glazed window informs me when it is rush hour, when someone is being mugged, when it’s time to party, time to drink, time to eat. I am the city. And I am tired already.

The Dunedin Sound

I’m currently living in the university town of Dunedin in the south island of New Zealand. Population: 126,000. This population fluctuates dramatically during the year attributing a transient nature to the place. The port-city thrives on tourism from incoming cruise ships and students  injecting much needed cash over the notoriously long, cold winter semester.

It’s surprising in such a transient city that arguably some of the best bands in New Zealand form and thrive in Dunedin.

The Dunedin Sound is a scholarly term ( no really, they offer varsity courses on this thing) for an indie-pop music movement that occurred in Dunedin during the 1980s. The words “lo-fi”, “jingly-jangly” and “college rock” get thrown around in association with Dunedin Sound bands such as The Clean, The Chills and The Verlaines.

Source

Even today, amazing Dunedin musicians can be seen rolling durries outside cafes, in op shops or talking by the Leith – a river that runs through Otago University. The same southern-New Zealand vocals, the familiar jingly-jangly guitar and clever lyrics full of Dunedin inside jokes are notable in such current bands as Brown, Males and Julian Temple Band (who are currently touring the States).

 Keep an eye on the Dunedin Sound bands. They’re not going anywhere.

Cry Baby

Yesterday the pressures of trawling through job sites to no avail, having an argument with my partner, and missing my best friend who has moved to another city got a little to much.

I locked my bedroom door, I drew the curtains, and I cried. Pity party for one, please.

There are moments in life where there is no obvious solution, where there nothing else you can do but have a long, loud, ugly cry. Afterwards you get yourself together, you online shop for a little bit and then you head off in to the world feeling lifted.

Source

Being a firm believer in “having a good cry” therapy I wondered if there was any scientific backing. Apparently, emotional tears draw and remove toxins (as well as half your mascara) that build up in times of stress. Additionally, biochemist William Frey claims that tears expel manganese from the body which have been known to cause anxiety in high quantities.

So have a ‘wah’-fest. Treat yourself to some tears. Bawl from your inner-baby. If you need a good movie to get you going I personally recommend:

 

1. The Fox and the Hound (1981)

Disney’s Fox and the Hound has everything from abandonment issues to cute dying animals.

2. 50/50 (2011)

50/50 depicts a bromance between Kyle, played by Seth Rogan and cancer-victim Adam, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. A surprisingly overlooked film upon its release, this film combines the sad realities of living (and dying) with a horrible disease with tear-jerking moments of love and kindness.

3. The Outsiders (1983)

“Stay gold Ponyboy.” Nuff. Said.

4. Fluke (1995)

Alright this movie will never win any awards -with a budget of $15 million, if raked in just under 4 in the box office.  I believe I first saw this movie during a stint of unemployment on daytime television. However, it is a guaranteed recipe for midday waterworks. A puppy called Fluke grows up to realise he has been reincarnated from a workaholic who dies in a car crash. Unable to reunite with his past family and he accepts his life as a dog  Bonus: Samuel L. Jackson is the voice of his best dog friend. What’s not to love?

5. Bambi (1942)

Another Disney classic. The Bambi-dying-mother scene is possibly the first memory of bawling my eyes out over a movie scene.

“We made it Mother! …Mother?” Damn you Disney.

Deep Politics

I had an argument today with someone over religion.

I would call myself an atheist, yet spiritual, in that I am open to concepts of religion. This person was an Anglican Christian. Suffice to say – our beliefs became a topic of conversation and it went downhill from there. I have always believed that deep politics: religion, political leaning, deep-rooted cultural ideologies, have always been a taboo topic – not only on a first date but in life. What is there to gain by challenging someone’s core beliefs as they challenge your own?

While completing my political science minor at university I changed this view.

Jürgen Habermas, a German sociologist, discusses deep politics in his early 1990s paper on the “public sphere”. In a nutshell, there are three spheres in society: a public sphere, a private sphere and a sphere of the state. Each sphere shares different amounts of information between them and arguably contributes to participatory democracy via public discussion. 

Look, a kitten!

 

Habermas argues that in order to continue as a society we must continue to communicate, regardless of deep-rooted, unchangeable beliefs. Though we may argue, we are at least communicating. Right on Hab!