the land of tom yum soup....

Its been ages since i came back from thailand but this dreary, rainy weather - as well as my mother telling to move all my photos so she can use my camera on her recent trip...gotta love her- has brought me back to review the wonderful short trip that was.

Me and my 2nd fave brother, Jimz (HA! take that Colin! :P), who is also in the top 3 foodies i know, went on a short trip to Phuket seeing as i was cheap from Indonesia, where we were for my sister's beautiful wedding.

Here is a short photo diary of my fave pics:

we had such a connection. i miss her. 

on a darn high cliff!!

that bish is one hungry elephant..looks like shes on my boob and she almost was...

doin a bit of anothny bourdain'ing at the local markets

monkey!

i was like "where da fudge am i" for real. 

haha in his element.. #bawss

yes. i ate it all. love the pineapple rice! nom!

these kids can kick ur ass and theyre so skinny too!

maddest fight. blue guy got knocked out cold! really appreciate the beauty of muay thai now!

face says is all.  

some buddha festival and this lil miss was like the beauty queen of the parade.

LOL on a rock! 

stereotypical thai alco bucket.

BEAUTY. phuket

so serene and gorgeous....and salty as *&^% 

someboddyyy like their coconuts! :)

my sexy back by the end of the trip this is actually in sydney. i had to a chinese cup massage best feeling after so many flights back to syd!

So that was my gret 3 day adventure i do love thailand but will not go to phuket again on the basis that theres too many white tourists who are just plain annoying and i'd really love to see authentic thailand. Phuket is good for a quick trip but if u want to travel the road less travelled then it wouldn't be for you..

also haven't had a thai massage sice coming back. LOL the ones there were really good but i had like 2 massages a day just coz so i thin i totally over did it ! my bad!

would love to hear about your thai trip!

x

Nerd'ing it- Challenge accepted!

As the title suggests i'm not really a nerd as nerds don't say things like nerd'ing it as it isn't a real word. But the point i am trying to make is that i did a pretty geeky thing today and found all books that are referenced in one of my all time favourite shows, Gilmore Girls. that's 250 BOOKS yo! can you say mega hot babe nerd alert?! lol

And really which girls doesn't love the quaint and quirky town of Star Hollows; the witty and speed talking- borderline rapping character that is Lorelai Gilmore (snr) and the doe-eyed, worst girlfriend ever but a really good friend who is Rory ( aka Lorelai Gilmore jnr)?

So in an attempt to be improve my speaking skills, vocabulary and totally avoid becoming a Gen Y (i think i'm gen Y ..it gets confusing..) computer robot that can't string a sentence together without saying "like" i have accepted this challenge-that i made myself just now-to read all 250 or something in the hundreds books :). umm.. and another pretty important reason is to know more words so i can actually win at SCRAMBLE with friends (LOL) 
NOTE: i havent yet set a deadline for this challenge to be completed.... i think it will take most of my lifetime. And in my defence yes Rory was 23-24 by the end of series, she had 19 years of reading on me! i deduce she starting reading non-picture books when she was around 4-5 going by what her grandparents and lorelai said. But i could be over analysing this... still guurlfriend has had a massive head start on most of us anyway.


Here is a list of all the books referenced or mentioned within the whole series in alphabetical order and i've crossed out the titles i've already read - also note that i'm not gonna be reading Shakespeare coz i wont understand it without my year 12 English teacher present. But if anyone has clift's notes or is willing to help decipher the language of Shakespeare I'm all ears!)
One more thing,i understand that there a few variations of this list so i'll be adding books as i find them to get a most accurate list together:

So here's it is so far!:

1984 by George Orwell

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Archidamian War by Donald Kagan

The Art of Fiction by Henry James

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Babe by Dick King-Smith

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (TBR)

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney

The Bhagava Gita

The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy

Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel

A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner

Candide by Voltaire

The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Carrie by Stephen King

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman

Christine by Stephen King

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty

A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

Complete Novels by Dawn Powell

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton

Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Cousin Bette by Honor'e de Balzac

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (TBR)

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (TBR)

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Cujo by Stephen King

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Deenie by Judy Blume

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx

The Divine Comedy by Dante

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Don Quijote by Cervantes

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn

Eloise by Kay Thompson

Emily the Strange by Roger Reger

breaking this list up with a pic! oh gotta love her!OK keep going!:

Emma by Jane Austen

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethics by Spinoza

Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

Extravagance by Gary Krist

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore

The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien 

Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

Fletch by Gregory McDonald

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg

Gidget by Fredrick Kohner

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (TBR)

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

The Gospel According to Judy Bloom

The Graduate by Charles Webb

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Group by Mary McCarthy

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry (TBR)

Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare

Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare

Henry V by William Shakespeare

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

(OK by this point in the list i hope to look more like belle lol.... deep breath and there's more):

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris

The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III 

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland

Howl by Allen Gingsburg

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo 

The Iliad by Homer

I'm with the Band by Pamela des Barres 

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 

Inferno by Dante

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy

It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito

The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Lady Chatterleys' Lover by D. H. Lawrence

The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway

The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Love Story by Erich Segal

By the end of this i hope life will look a lil something like this:

yes disney reference in everything in life in unavoidable :)

 Hope you can join me with this challenge! because a pretty face is made prettier by a smart mind!!!  true story..i think.

Happy reading...will be posting reviews too! :)

x Felicia

That's what he said...

“There’s nothing sexier than a girl covered up”-  Marc Jacobs on his 2013 collection at NYC fashion week.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks for me in particular looking at fashion from 2 different schools of thought and ultimately (this season anyway) they're on the same page. Which is modesty is sexy.

It just so happens that during Fashion week NYC, Leah Darrow from cycle three of America's Next Top Model came here to visit us here in Sydney to talk about modesty, fashion and the cruel world that is the modelling industry -so we don't get sucked into false truths brought to us by reality TV.

Just to give you some background, Leah is a catholic evangelist sharing her story and faith about how unnecessary it is to show your tits and ass to be fashionable and/or trendy and girls you know what i mean e.g.:

 This may look hot on this model but seeing on the streets of Sydney I was shocked coz gurrrlfriend no one wanna see  your ass cheek, bra or nips.

On the other hand, if you've watched every show at NYFW (like i clearly have) then you'd also see that designers have been showing less clevage and more coverage over the body here are some of my fave examples:

Helmut Lang 2013

Altuzarra 2013

Marc Jacobs 2013

Marc Jacobs 2013

Ralph Lauren 2013

Ralph Lauren 2013

Yeah amazing designs that cover and celebrate a woman's shape. These are just a few examples that get me pumped up and excited about the direction of fashion. classy non?....

Leah's talk made me really think about how your clothes reflects who you are inside and that should never change no matter what. what i'm getting at is say for example i go to a music festival and we all know the unofficial dress code is: the shorter the shirts and top the better to get high and wasted. but what I'm proposing is: well in my case i'm not a show-my-boday kinda gal so why should i be any different in this case? be consistent with your style not to conform with what other's are wearing. If you're classy on the inside the you should be classy on the outside.Always.

Perhaps, I'm just getting old but kids these days are too selfish to think of other people in society's eyes and we don't wanna see there immodest clothing, not because it "tempts" men and attracts unwanted attention.. but because it shows people who you are and that girl may not be the true you. #betch .


Honestly, I believe that Leah has a point about modesty reflecting self worth and impression. My Catholic faith also plays a part but does not limit my enjoyment of clothes and use it creatively and honestly. 

The beauty of fashion is that it is subjective-forget the trends- and whats more amazing about my faith is that one can be faithful and fashionable at the same time , no need to sacrifice either. The only danger being when you begin to worship designers and prioritise clothes esp. money over everything else and get when vanity becomes you (and we all know those ppl!!) but that's another topic for another time. 

Leah Darrow and i (looking like crap but i had no sleep for a week!) lol

tell me what you think :)

x

Wedding Bells!

I had to share this trailer of Toga and Fay's wedding! what a beautiful day full of love and laughter. These two are truly inspirational- theyve been through more stuff than most couples do in yeeaarrs. to say that i am so proud of our new extended family is an understatement.

The most beautiful thing is we could all feel Daddys presence that beautiful day. <3


Toga & Fay from www.tedysutanto.com.au on Vimeo.