Frida

source: stockholm street style

Very old snap I know, but she is just too amazing all the time and this is exactly my style at the moment.

Macarons

Viv and I tried every single macaron that we stumbled across in Melbourne. They were all amazing.

Quinn

source: self made screencaps

Man, Quinn is ridiculously hot in the latest episodes of Glee.

On that note, it's my favourite time of the year! That is the of month of returning television shows! I'm running a little bit behind on all the new season openers, and haven't even attempted to watch anything new. But so far, Gossip Girl is looking interesting and I'm quite surprised that they managed to keep it together for five seasons (I must admit though, there was a point where I almost stopped watching at the beginning of season four). Glee is average but the whole Quinn subplot is keeping me interested. And yup, actually that's all I've had time to keep up with. I still have to catch-up on Greys, The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Community, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family and Law & Order:SVU. Gah, it's possible that I may watch an excessive amount of television. It's okay, I can justify it by being a Communications student ^____^

Gathering of sorts

Had some friends around last night and my friend let me test out his lens. It has an amazing depth of field! However the negatives are it has a fixed zoom and is incredibly heavy to carry around.

Ooops I've been so busy recovering, watching glee and cleaning that I almost forgot to submit my communications assignment due in about twenty minutes! Oh dear!

Midnight in Paris

source; self made screencap

Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present. The name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.

Woody Allen's new flick that I watched on the plane- liked however didn't love.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I finished my three hundred and seven page novel in one sitting yesterday, and it was truly one of the most outstanding pieces of literature I think I have ever read (no exaggeration here). It was Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I have intended to read for quite some time now, however I always shied away from it. This was probably a result of the many reviews which highly commended Kundera's work, which, despite being flattering, made me believe that the novel was going to be a complex read. You see, I very rarely find myself in philosophical reading moods when I'm in the middle of university due to the fact that I generally always have several volumes of intense reading to do already. However I found Kundera's writing far from convoluted. Despite being highly philosophical (the book essentially challenges Nietzche's concept of eternal recurrence), his writing was poised, succint and thorough throughout the whole book. Kundera begs the reader to consider the essential dichotomy of life, which reflected in the title of the novel, is the paradox between light and weight. Furthermore, he links this with the very essence of men (light) and women (weight). They exist as separate entities, but both are a necessary element for existence and they are both forever complimenting each other.

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Kundera establishes an intricate set of events through the eyes of four starkly different, however intertwined characters that both question the fundamental nature of the human condition however also a historical perspective of the Russian invasion into Kundera's home country the Czech Republic. I saw a lot of myself in both the two female leads, which represent both weight and light respectively. Tereza, who is the prime example of weight, has several insecurities that are almost identical to my own. She is idealistic, and thinks concisely in black and white. She holds an obsession with being different and not fading into the distance, if only it was a simple act of holding a book under her arm. She finds weight in her work and in being an intellectual. She holds a fear of simply just being another body, which is amplified by Tomas' continuous infidelities.

She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceable. But he, too, had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them all alike, made no, absolutely no distinction between Tereza’s body and the other bodies. He had sent her back into the world she tried to escape, sent her to march naked with the other naked women

On the other hand, Sabina is the prime female example of light through her obsession with rebellion and disobedience. She is light as a result of her profound satisfaction in the act of betrayal.

Betrayal. From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offense imaginable. But what is betrayal? Betrayal means breaking ranks. Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown

Tomas is clearly the hero of the quartet, despite being a womanizer. He is the archetypal example of light as he separates love and sex into two unrelated entities- something that Tereza cannot do- whilst loving Tereza, has sex with several other woman at the same time. He is by no means a romantic idealist, and doesn't really change too much within the novel. I was incredibly attracted to Tomas' lightness throughout the novel and his cynicism towards the perfect ideals of politics and romantic love.

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

And the last of the characters is Franz. I disliked his character the most, he was obsessed with weight and incapable of lightness. In all honesty, I found him a rather conservative and pathetic character. All the characters compliment each other on their need for their opposites. Tomas needs Tereza's weight, and conversely Tereza needs the lightness of Tomas. Sabina and Tomas are drawn together by their lightness, however their relationship is nothing more than a physical meaningless one. All in all, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a wonderfully elegant read about irreconcilable love and difference within the nature of being.

This is probably the longest review that I've written in quite some time, and probably haven't perfected it as much as my writings back in the day (you see, I would very much like to go back into the pool right about now because it is the middle of the afternoon and the sun is heating up). I'm going home tomorrow evening and will be back in Perth early Tuesday morning. I've heard it's cold and rainy there.

Phuket

Phuket is amazing and I haven't changed out of my bathers for the past three days straight (possible exaggeration for effect here)! I've done nothing but go for epic runs (yesterday I managed 12km in just under an hour, which I'm pretty sure is my personal best) and subsequently spent the rest of the afternoon swimming off the sweat and lying by the poolside reading with watermelon juice by my side. I've been bathing in 50s and 60s music through and through, from The Beatles to Otis Redding to The Coasters with a little bit of Viv-inspired k-pop chucked in for lolz. I've eaten just as much yummy Thai food as I've been excersising so hopefully it has all evened out!

I've been working with predominately film photography this trip, I find that it is much more suitable to landscape photography whatnot, and on the other hand digital is more productive for social gatherings and whatnot. So I won't have many images til I return back to Perth but here's some digital ones for the time being!