Sass & Bide Sale

For those who are well into their brand, the name of Sass and Bide would be of no surprise to you. They make great pairs of jeans! I kid you not. I'm sure many other girls would testify on the difficulty of finding the perfect one, and therefore a girl can't have too many jeans. Never. Especially if you're one like moi, who lives and breathes in jeans. Needless to say, a few days ago was the Warehouse Sale of Sass& Bide. From past experiences, warehouse sale never got me anything good so I wasn't too interested... but when my housemate asked me to accompany her, I gladly tag along.

Never before had I seen so many girls of different age, size, race, gathered in the one place. At one point, the queue to enter the warehouse sale was as long as the next block. It was insane! And if I thought that was insane, try being inside. It was an easy 500 girls if not more. There ware queues everywhere; to the changing room, to pay at the cashier. It was sheer madness.

I got home thinking about what is it about Sass & Bide, or great pair of jeans or a warehouse sale that drives everyone to be there. We have developed an image culture so strong that created the hype of what looks good and what does not look good. Finding the perfect pair of jeans is never an easy task, but the perfect pair of jeans does not have to be a certain international brand. It doesn't have to be $500 worth. It may not be Sass & Bide. But when all one reads in a magazine is how great these things are, maybe we secretly want to believe that if we have one of those, we'd look equally beautiful and irresistable. That we'd belong to the cult of cool fashionistas.

Girls, girls, girls,... Just get on a pair that will make your arse look good and I think irressistability is yours!

Many Nights Out

I arrived in Melbourne under the impression that everyone will be very busy with work and their daily activities that I'm going to have lots of free time on my own. Amazingly enough, it didn't turn out the way I planned. It's been nearly a week and I have been out every single night. Crazy. Fun. I thank my lovely friends for that.

On Saturday night I caught up with some friends from RMIT's student theatre company Performit. We met at the Prince of Wales in St.Kilda and then had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called Soul Mama. Sould Mama is buzzing with people. It's a happening place with bistro type of service. You are charged by the size of your plate, medium allows you rice with 4 choice of dishes, large gives you rice with 5 choice of dishes. Not only that, you are given the option of eating it from the tin tray or the porcelain plate. Ultra cool. It was a night of good conversation and stories and relishing old friendships. 5 years have gone passed but the bond between us remains, and we just slide back to how things were. After dinner, some went away and the rest of us continued on to have drinks at the Espy.

Close to midnight, Kayin, Lily and I made my way to Abode - Melbourne's infamous club for an experience. Stories about my amazing night will be published in the first edition of MAXIM Indonesia. I promise not to ruin it for you, or for the magazine for that matter...

What follows on the nights after that, were simply many nights out with friends. It is strange to feel as if I'm living here again. Or that somehow, there are many of us who are in the same cross roads after much traveling and working in the last 5 years. We have matured. But remained the good friends as we were.

Home Sweet Home

In the midst of all the excitement of going to Melbourne and finally meeting people I have not seen in years, something strange happened. As the plane descended over the clear Melbourne morning, I felt nothing. I thought there would be something like joy, or excitement, or anxiety, or longing. But I felt nothing. I couldn't figure it out until lunch time that very day.

As the car that brought me to my old apartment passed through familiar streets, I was amazed of how much things stayed the same. I recognised the same cafes I used to hang out with. On how the bar that I had my going away party expanded to take over the shop next to it. On how nothing in the apartment really changed other than the additional stuff filling up the place. It is very nice to see that instead of things changing, it was more of things adding up, expanding, creating new spaces and new experiences without losing the old one.

It is exactly why I felt nothing. It feels like coming home. And home is never a big thing. It is something you hold dear in your heart and no matter how long you've been away from it, you'll slide back in to it as if you never left.

Home Sweet Home.

Dreadful future

It is officially 10 days into my unemployment and there had been a few phone calls about prospective job offers and the future. As I am leaving for Australia in a few days, I had the luxury of polite refusal at this point to allow myself time to think about the future. To tell you the truth, it scares the hell outta me. It's nice that I'm at that cross roads and I can kinda freeze time and nor choose any particular road but yeah, as you get older, you get more cautious, and more analytical about stuff. You are more afraid to make mistakes, of not making ends meet.

A friend told me today that life is always full of opportunities and I must not be scared of making a mistake. Life is too short to let fear rules over it and hey,... we all learn from our mistakes. Eventually to be a better person. It is with this new thinking that I'm embracing the unknown future and taking a step into one road. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

What the hell in a few days I'll be in a different country. Can you tell that I'm excited?

RED SQUARE

Lots of vodka and good company is a recipe for a good time. Last night was an unofficial going away party that Joe threw in for me. There are no words to describe how grateful I am for all the good times I had with Square Box. There are not enough words to describe the mixed emotions.

I have to move on.