Golden hour

These pictures are from last Thursday, so they're a week late. YY, Jenny and I had another one of those "let's traverse the city looking for things to eat" days. We actually started off on top of Westfield Sydney, but I didn't take any pictures. Our ultimate aim was this pub, Hart's, which according to YY, had chips we just had to try.


Dropped into Max Brenner on our way there. Everything is super-duper expensive, and the hot chocolate I got was nice but not $5 nice.


I'm not really sure why they name their cups/how they come up with these names.

Because it was still a bit early, we decided to chill out in the Botanical Gardens and on the Opera House for a while. The late-afternoon light was really nice (hence the title of the post), so I snapped loads of photos, which is why this post is so picture-heavy (at the risk of having visitors exit in frustration due to the long loading time).


YY and Jenny. It was a tad windy.


Picture of me, courtesy of Jenny. Even backlit photos look good during golden hour.



YY's creepers.


YY's sunnies x2.



I've probably mentioned this before, but no matter how bored I am of Sydney, I still think our Harbour is beautiful.


At this point we walked back to the Rocks. I don't have any pictures, because, well, I felt awkward pulling out my camera. I actually still feel all-around awkward in pubs, to be honest. Obviously, I don't go to many. The Rugby World Cup was on the television (USA vs. Russia) and none of us being rugby fans, we played "spot the player who looks like he belongs in Game of Thrones".

Afterwards, as you mightn't be surprised to learn, we felt like Pancakes on the Rocks, so we trotted (or tripped, rather. It was dark, okay!) down several sets of stairs (I love the way The Rocks is set out) to get there.


Devil's Delight... not really for the faint-hearted - I couldn't finish the second chocolate pancake.


Wedges, because the chips from before weren't enough.



Then we sat by Circular Quay for a while and had a good old high-schoolish gossip. It was pretty empty, being a Thursday night.

And thus concludes this giant post!

Accent meme

Something different today! I've been meaning to do this for a while but I only got some time in the past week. It's the accent meme/tag that's been floating around for a while now - basically, you say a list of words and answer some questions to show differerences in the ways people speak English. I have this huge thing for listening to/analysing people's accents, so I've watched loads and I figured it was time to make one myself (and hopefully get you guys to do one). It's a bit weird posting a video of myself when I hardly ever post pictures, though. I'm not fond of my voice/mannerisms so I'll probably never watch this again, haha.

I have an Australian accent, and contrary to what the rest of the world might think, there are some variations of it. I'm a Sydneysider, but I've picked up my speaking from the inner west, south and north, so I don't think there are particular regional influences. This sounds a little awkwardly rehearsed in a few parts, because it was the second time I filmed it. As for the list of words, if I were using them in a sentence I'd probably slur them a bit more - I wouldn't enunciate so much.

If anyone's interested, here are the words and questions:
The Words: Aunt, Roof, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught, Naturally, Aluminium, Envelope The Questions: 1. What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house? 2. What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball? 3. What is the bubbly carbonated drink called? 4. What do you call gym shoes? 5. What do you say to address a group of people? 6. What do you call the kind of spider (or spider-like creature) that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs? 7. What do you call your grandparents? 8. What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket? 9. What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining? 10. What is the thing you change the TV channel with? If you do get around to it drop me a link to it here - I'll definitely watch it.

Spectacles

Because that sounds more interesting than "glasses". I finally ended up getting those glasses I need that I mentioned a few posts ago. I ended up going with Rachael's idea to get them online, from Bonlook, after trying on a billion pairs in store that were either ugly on me or too expensive. I remember Bonlook promoting around the blogosphere a few months back, but I never really took notice until Rachael's comment, since I hadn't needed glasses. Anyway, theses were the most suitable pair I could find for my huge round face, and the price was pretty reasonable.

I got the "Urban Dandy" ones. I couldn't decide between black or tortoiseshell, but I figured I'd go with the latter... just for kicks.

I'm not photogenic, so I really had to work those angles. This is why I am not a fashion blogger.

Throwing in a picture of what I wore the other day. Winter's been lingering for a while, but soon enough I'll have to ditch the coat, which makes me sad, because I really like coats. This red one was from Forever21, and for all their reputation of mass-manufacturing cheap clothes, it held up surprisingly well despite the fact that I wore it around all winter. Definitely going to try and score another nice one in the nothern-hemisphere end of season sales for our next winter!

FNO: Sydney!

When YY asked if I wanted to go with her to Vogue's Fashion's Night Out, the first thing I said was something along the lines of: "Well, sounds good, but what exactly is it?". Now that I've realised that it's kind of a Big Deal, this sounds a bit silly. But, basically, it's kind of a promo night for most of the big stores, and it's happening in lots of cities around the world. I'm glad I went, because it was a pretty fun night!

First stop: filling up the tank, so to speak. Snag Stand, the fancy hot dog place in Westfield's food court; I've been there a couple of times now and I'm quite partial to the American Classic one (I like my basics). YY got this mushroom vegetarian one, shown in the picture. The chips there are quite nice, they have a different sort of flavour.

Pitt St. was pretty busy! The atmosphere was nice - I liked it, even though crowds can freak me out sometimes.

We picked up some fairy floss at Sportsgirl.

Slighty break in the pictures here, I was basically running around Sydney Westfield with YY and Vivian, collecting loads of free stuff (mainly food) along the way. We went to Burberry, where George Craig was DJ-ing (I had no idea who he is at the time, this post is really demonstrating how clueless I can be), and Vivian + YY got a picture with him (he has a posh accent).

A lot of stores had photobooth things/people taking polaroids, here are some of them.

Tiffany... popcorn?

Sample of the new Burberry perfume, which YY likened to air freshener.

Haul of stuff at the end of the night!

You guys may have noticed that I've changed the layout - I'm still doing some tweaking, because it still doesn't look completely "right" and it feels a little cluttered.

Parcels and other nice things

As a result of my incessant online shopping, I feel like I'm always waiting for packages to come in the mail. In the last week, two more have come: a dress from ASOS and a book from the Book Depository.

The dress is really nice, and perfect for our upcoming summer, with a catch: it's impossibly tight across my chest. As in, there is no way I can make it work. I'm not quite sure what to do with it now - I feel like it'd work as a halterneck, but I have no idea how to sew. The shipping cost of returning it to ASOS would be more than half the value of the actual dress. I think I'll chuck it up on ebay when I have the time, although I've never sold anything from there before.

As for the book, I bought The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein. I only recently heard of it due to the fact that a movie version is being made with Sarah Bolger and Lily Cole. As soon as I realised it was a vampire-story set in a girl's boarding school, I had to read it - that's basically all the themes I love, in one book! It didn't disappoint. It's basically the diary of a 16-year-old girl who suspects that the new girl at school is a vampire, and follows her thoughts as she develops (what we're meant to think is) a mental illness. I loved all the references to Dracula and Carmilla, two of my favourite classic vampire stories - I think the author worked them in really well. I also liked the tone of the story - it was realistic and I found that I could relate to the main character. It gets a bit disjointed and hard to read towards the end, though, which is the point, I suppose. Anyway, I'm seriously looking forward to seeing the film adaptation.

Other things I have been up to this week include:

Putting together a birthday present for a friend, with a bunch of shows/movies I think she'd like.

Catching the moment when the sun hit my "sun catcher" and made baby rainbows on my wall.

Well, that's it for me this week. I have an exam coming up this Thursday, and obviously I've left a lot of studying to the last minute (I never seem to learn) and I've really got to knuckle down if I want to be an improvement on last time's. Hope your weekends are going well.