What I Wore – 21st March 09

I have finally gotten the guts to start posting my outfits.  I am so, so not a “fashionista” and I wear some pretty daggy stuff to work (damn uniforms)  so outfit posts won’t be that frequent. My first one is from my friends wedding last weekend which my mum pretty much made for me. We had a few mishaps with it on the morning of the wedding, but it ended up coming together very nicely.

• Skirt, an awesome find at an op-shop, re sized to fit by mum

• Ballerina top, raided from my friends wardrobe before she moved to LA

• Big bow belt, made from scratch by mum

• Kitten heels, from Target

• Branch and birdie pearly necklace, made by mum (with matching bracelet)

Tattoos: the good, the bad, the ugly

One thing mum had always said to me was how a tattoo ruins a girls body. I never got that, I was of the opinion that tattoos made a girl look amazing, colourful and very individual. It’s taken until quite recently for me to work out what she meant and how true it was. I’ve been noticing girls lately who have one small tattoo on their arm, ankle, wrist, chest or lower-back and just thought to myself “Wow, that’s going to look shit when you get married in your beautiful wedding dress”. Not because she has a tattoo at all, but because she chose some irrelevant design off the wall and got it without much thought about how it really does ruin the rest of her tattoo-free body. I don’t mean to just target girls of course, I’ve seen similar mishaps on guys, but it really does look worse on girls to have the one badly done tattoo of a dolphin on their chest that is always just poking out from anything short of a skivvy top. Yuck.

As a very tattooed girl, I implore any girl who is considering a tattoo to think a few things through:

1. Does it really mean that much to you? OK so it’s the Japanese word for happiness, and you are a very happy person. But are you Japanese? And can you be defined simply by that one word? Have you even gotten confirmation that is correct and not really the Chinese word for “slapper”? This applies to tattoos of words in any language too – unless that word holds a special significance I suggest rethinking getting it permanently applied to your skin. The same can be said for most star-sign tattoos. I’ve seen them done well, but more often than not they’re incorporated into a bigger design or changed to be more relevant to the wearer. If your star sign means so much to you, don’t go and pick its symbol and leave it at thatr. Make it personal, make it scream YOU, instead of getting the same tattoo as every other Gemini out there.

2. Do you need your child/boyfriends name/face tattooed to you for life? Yes your child is very important, and will be forever. But why do you need their face on your arm forever and ever? Their name can do in a pinch, but still, it’s hardly meaningful or interesting. The name of a partner should never ever cross your mind as a potential tattoo – you are jinxing your relationship, that’s all there is to it! If you really want to get a tattoo to commemorate a loved one, be it your child, a sibling, a parent or even your partner, why not get something a bit different. Tribute tattoos, containing things that represent that person, are both interesting, personal and most importantly, original. Definitely the better option than having “JOSH” tattooed to your wrist for everyone to see.

3. You like stars? Really? I’m yet to meet anyone who can justify their love of stars enough to get them tattooed all over their body. Dude, get an original idea and stop following hideous trends. Think of it this way, 15 years ago the same thing happened with barbed-wire arm bands. Do you really want something like that tattooed to you, a constant reminder that instead of getting something original you went or the most over-done tattoo design of the 90s?

4. You’ve picked a nice little tattoo you love, but hang on, what does it mean? Does it really have to have a meaning so amazing and overwhelming that will bring people to their knees when you tell him? Of course all tattoos have some sort of meaning, intended or not, but there’s no need to attach sentiment to a design that you picked because it looks nice. Why can’t you get a picture of something you like, maybe a favourite animal or an interesting symbol and leave it at that? If you love it, then it’s meaningful enough. You should never have to justify your tattoo to someone else. If you like it, then that shoudl be good enough to everyone else.

Every person is different, so naturally we all want very different things when we get tattooed. I’m one of those people who gets tattoos with things that make me happy in bright colours I love to flaunt, which to some people is superficial and the wrong sort of thing to get tattooed. Meanwhile my boyfriend won’t get a tattoo that he hasn’t designed himself, researched thoroughly, discovered its every meaning and thought about very hard – totally the opposite to me. The result are two very different tattoos, but both with lots of meaning to each of us, bringing us the same amount of pleasure, just in different ways.

Think about what you want and why and whether or not it’s something that will keep its appeal in a few years time. Make sure it’s something you really want, not something picked off the wall because you randomly decided to get a tattoo one day. If you’re new to tattoos, always consider the placement of your first tattoo! Getting it on your arm could mean you have to deal with it being highly visible, a permanent reminder of how you never think too far ahead. And if you end up getting more tattoos down the track, that one little one you got as a taster could end up ruining your future sleeve!

Tattoos: My Story

It’s no secret that I am into tattoos. I love them on myself and on other people. I love everything about them: coming up with the idea, working on a design, booking an appointment, the nervous anticipation before starting, the discomfort/pain of the needles and the healing process. You could probably say it’s a passion of mine. It’s kind of hard to count how many I have really. I have a sleeve and some matching tattoos that could be counted as either one single or one double tattoo. But roughly speaking I currently have 14 tattoos from the back of my neck down to the tops of my feet. I love them all, even the not-so-great ones, and each one has a story of its own.

The story of my love of tattoos isn’t one of rebellion, in fact far from it. My mum always tried to convince me girls couldn’t get tattoos, that it made them look rough and unattractive. I guess I always had an interest in tattoos because she told me this from a fairly young age, and it almost worked. When I was 18 I considered getting a tattoo, but it had to be somewhere easily hidden, something pretty and I had to get the courage to ask my mum first. I eyed off a sleeping dragon that I wanted on my lower back for ages, but I put it off so long I lost the piece of flash, and eventually chickened out of it entirely, thankfully. When I was 20 the thought of getting a tattoo was the strongest it’d ever been and became a bit of an obsession, so shortly after turning 21 I got the logo of my favourite band (Die Ärzte) tattooed on my back. The hardest part wasn’t the pain or the permanency – it was asking my mum permission. I honestly thought she was going to disown me. She wasn’t overly impressed but said it was my choice and told me she’d never, ever disown me over something like a tattoo. And that was that, my first tattoo over and done with with many more follow over the next five years.

People often ask me if I’m going to keep getting tattooed til I’m completely covered. The answer is no. I love tattoos but don’t feel the need to cover myself in them. Maybe when I’m older I might find myself completely tattooed like the World’s most tattooed senior woman (well, maybe not) but as such I’m in no hurry to completely cover my body in tattoos. I’m also careful about getting tattooed for the pure sake of it, which is a trap I know is easy to fall into. Although I’m not one of those people hung up on saturating my tattoos with lots of meaning and significance, I like to make sure I’m getting the right design for the right reasons (since I’ve gotten some fairly random tattoos in the past, which have ended up taking up valuable real estate).

Coming soon: My guide to getting tattoos.

My weightloss dramas

As much as I hate to admit it, I am the kind of girl who is constantly on a diet and trying to lose weight. Everyone knows a girl like me, or else IS a girl like me, constantly striving to be slim through diets and exercise. It’s never a case of wanting to be healthy, it’s always “I want to be slim” and it always involves some new fad diet, a new gym membership or finding a way to work that involves exercising. I am the worst culprit of the people I know, it’s constantly playing on my mind that I have gained an extra kilo, that I skipped gym one day, that I ate a piece of cake, that I’m not losing weight depsite exercising everyday and eating nothing but celery and soup.

I hate it, to be perfectly honest. It’s not at all a healthy mentality and I know it better than anyone. I should be eating healthy and exercising to make myself fit, happy and healthy but instead it’s all about losing the fat arse and going down a dress size. It’s not all hopeless of course, I went on a diet and started an exercise regime that helped me lose over 8kg last year. I looked and felt AMAZING! I’d noticeably lost a great deal of weight and while I hadn’t dropped a full dress size as such, I had some of my clothes dropping off me and was just about ready to clean out the wardrobe. But then I started to slack off a little bit and so the weight loss eased up and the weight gain started to come back again. Then I went to Europe for a month and completely reversed all of my hard work.

So here I am, at a rut where I am desperate to get back to where I was, losing weight and feeling incredible with myself. Instead I am at a loss as to how I managed to get motivated enough to start another diet (though I’ve impressed myself by exercising still), feeling fat as a house and generally pretty yucky. I can’t work out how I got all that motivation back then and why I can’t get it back now. I had a bit of an epiphany last night, and so am making myself get back on track, instead of making excuses and cursing myself everytime I slip up. It’s not going to be easy, certainly not like it was last year (though it was probably a lot harder than I recall, as I assume I’m only remebering the good days where I did well and lost weight, as opposed to bad days where I messed up and didn’t lose or gained).

It’s not fun being obsessed with weight loss and dieting, but I am and I have to deal with it the best way I can. All I can do is be positive, eat healthy and do good exercise so that I can achieve my goal while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And hopefully I will conquer the next dress size down this time! Wish me luck!

Binge drinking FTL

I love going out on weekends. I love dancing, being with friends and of course I like to drink alcohol. Being out in the Valley on a Saturday night would be very unpleasant if you weren’t drinking. The problem is I, like so many people, never seem to know when to stop. I went to a friends Hen’s Night which I knew was going to be pretty big, but a combination of not having dinner due to being stuck on the oncall phone for work and still being sad about Belle (see previous post) I guess I just got carried away and drank way too much.

I’m the firm believer in drinking in moderation, but am really pretty bad at following my own advice. Sometimes I can be really good, know my limits and have a good night out without wiping myself out. But other times I go berserk and wind up overdoing it to the point where I become a poster girl for why binge drinking is bad. Saturday night was a very good example of how NOT to spend an evening. And the next day was even worse. I had to go to a work function with my sister and I don’t think I have ever felt so bad in a very long time. I had to miss out on the work activity as I was still double the legal limit (they breath-tested us when we got there) so I attempted to sleep in the sun while my sister enjoyed the activity.  I get migraines anyway, but this was shocking and never-ending. In fact it only got worse as the day became night, and I ended up catching a cab to the emergency room to get some relief.

I do not understand why I do this to myself, nor why anyone does this to themselves, especially weekend after weekend. I get sever hangovers at the best of times, so I don’t know what I was thinking of going overboard when I knew I didn’t have anything to take when I got home. I don’t even know why I stayed out as late as I did, knowing I had a work thing on the next morning. All I know is this is a lesson I really need to learn, and soon. I’ve never been the type to black out while out and forget my actions for any period of time, but it could happen one day and that would scare me to death. I think when it gets to the point where you find yourself vomiting on your walk home, you need to wonder why you keep doing this over and over and when the hell you’ll learn.

I don’t have a point to all of this, except I hope I will remember to take it easy next time I go out on the town. If I don’t, you have my permission to remind me constantly until I finally do learn.

RIP Belle

You will be dearly missed. I hope you found Pepe and are romping around in doggy heaven with him right now.

Ask before tagging!

I know a few people who refuse to have their photos posted on the internet without their express permission. I never really got it, until very recently. My life-partner-in-crime was in a predicament where an ex-workmate posted a bunch of photos from a work event and tagged him wherever he appeared. He’s always untagging himself from Facebook photos, much to my dismay, and in this case he asked the poster not to post photos of him any more. The poster took this really badly and it all blew out of proportion, telling him to get off Facebook if he’s too good to have his pictures posted on the internet.

Now I’m the kind of person who has never really cared if a bad photo of me is posted on the internet. I admit I have cringed when a really nasty one is posted and then tagged on Facebook, but I’ve not given it much more thought than “Oh god, I wish that photo had never been taken”. So this incident (which got very serious indeed, but that’s another story) got me thinking about the way people upload the photos they take onto social networking pages like Facebook and MySpace and then tagged so that everyone can see them and know that you got really drunk and had shitty photos taken of you when you could barely stand up.

And you know what? No one should have to put up with that. Just because you got drunk and let your friend take crazy photos of you while you were completely inebriated does NOT mean you give up all right to whether or not those photos see the light of day. A good friend would ask you if you wanted that photo on the internet before posting it anywhere, and wouldn’t just post it, tag it and let people see how messy you get after eight beers and four tequila shots. Unfortunately people do NOT consider the fact you might not want a photo of you throwing up in the gutter or making out with a random posted on the internet for all to see.  Hence why I have over 350 tagged photos of myself, many of which are pretty fucking awful.

If your mate posts a picture of you looking like rubbish and you don’t want it tagged, tell them. In  fact, if you don’t want it on the internet at all, you have every right so say so and request they take it down immediately. I don’t need my mum or people from my past (particularly exes) seeing me at my workplace, at a club, blinking or generally looking horrible, just because someone I know was there with a camera and didn’t have the decency to ask me before uploading the picture.

The internet is a big place where most people remain unnoticed but if the wrong person was to get hold a nasty-ass photo of you, god only knows what the result might be:

Future Music Festival 2009

I love music festivals. I’m what you might call a bit of a “festival whore” as I go to just about all of them around Brisbane/Gold Coast. I trend to go to all the dance music festivals than rock/alternative festivals as I find they usually have a better vibe. But if I can afford it, don’t have other plans and know at least a couple of the acts playing I will probably be there!

Future Music festival on Saturday was a good one. A lovely day so no mud thankfully. I met up with a group of the girls and danced a lot. I managed to lose them when I headed to the front of the main stage but bumped into a work friend anyway. I saw CSS, Grandmaster Flash, N.E.R.D and Basement Jaxx. N.E.R.D weren’t all that great since the sound was terrible unless you were right in front of the stage and I couldn’t see Chad Hugo, my favourite member, anywhere! Basement Jaxx blew my mind, they were incredible!

The best part was the fact I was sensible and didn’t drink too much and so was able to drive everyone home afterwards. I also found myself virtually hangover free on Sunday morning! Oh and I had a lot of cash left over, which is a rare thing for me on a regular weekend, let alone a festival weekend! Very good times indeed.

Angie, my favoutite festival buddy, and I in matching pink, as always.

Bad news about the Zombie Walk

We’ve had a major setback with the Brisbane Zombie Walk, and its future is not definite at this stage. When arranging the date of the walk with police I found out the walk can no longer be classed as a “peaceful procession” and is not classed as a “special event” which means we must pay for the cost of the police presence we are required to have. Unfortunately this is probably going to mean a few thousand dollars, not including the public liability insurance we will also need. Needless to say we cannot afford that. BUT we are also not quitters and are looking into ways to raise money so that the walk can continue this year and for many years after. It will mean we have to push the date of the next walk back a fair bit, and are thinking of having it in October to coincide with World Zombie Day which would give us plenty of time to cover all the costs for the walk.

So now we need to arrange a kind of “board of directors”, people who are willing to help with the organisation of the walk and any events or activities we’ll be putting on for fundraising in the coming weeks and months. We’d also appreciate any suggestions or feedback from people as well.

If you do have any thoughts or would like to be a part of the team, flick me an email: zombie@brisbanezombiewalk.com

Bike riding adventures!

I have recently started riding a bike to and from work. This goes against just about all I believe in. I think bike riders tend to be douchebags (mainly the people who wear all that spandex and those awful, small shoes and hog up entire lanes while I am driving) and exercise in the mornings is about the most horrific thing I can think of. But one day when I wanted to go to gym with a work friend, I realised I had 30 mins to get from work to gym in order to make the class and for me to catch the train home then walk to gym it’d take a good 45 minutes. She suggested I take her bike since she finished work earlier and she would walk, I would ride and we’d both make the class on time. Oh. My. God. How scary! I decided to give it a ago, as I didn’t want to look like a wuss and I really did want to make the class.

Well the bike ride changed my life, in a very good way. Sure it was scary and I almost fell off it a couple of times, but it was so exhilirating to zoom down hills on a bike, going faster than all the cars stuck in peak hour traffic and knowing I don’t have to put up with that bastard train for once. I made it gym in excellent time, despite going an obscure way and going pretty slowly for the most part. I decided then and there I needed to do this more often and that I needed a bike ASAP. Of course I wanted a slick Townie bike (like from http://www.ewfarmbikes.com.au) but as it happened a work mate had one at work that he never used and after some begging he gave it to me to test out. Sadly this bike was in poor shap as the brakes had about had it so I couldn’t use it right away. BUT he did give me a helmet and so I arranged to get the brakes fixed ASAP. I sort of slacked off though, til another work mate offered me his bike which was a nicer colour (sapphire blue) and had working brakes!

Unfortunately in this time I sort of chickened out of riding to and from work again. Mostly because it’d mean I’d need a backpack and I don’t do backpacks. Then I got an amazing new handbag which came with a shoulder strap. No more excuses! So I rode the blue bike home the other afternoon and once again fell in love with riding bikes. I also found a bike path that starts near work and takes me a block from home so I miss all traffic and get to ride through a park, which made it an even nicer trip.

But was I going to be able to ride TO work? Like I said, morning exercise is pretty much unbearable to me, so it was a huge hurdle to overcome. But I did it this morning! I got up a bit earlier and forced myself to ride my bike to work! It wasn’t nearly as fun as riding home from work but it wasn’t bad at all. I also worked out another shortcut to make life a little bit easier too. It’s done wonders to my day, I’ve been in a good mood all day and didn’t need an energy drink at all today, I was full of natualy enegry for once. Oh and not catching those dreaded trains in the morning is just too good to be true.

I’m getting an awesome little bike from the work mate who gave me his blue bike, which is going to cost me virtually nothing! I don’t know if it can be riden to and from work but when I do ride it, I will look cool as.