here is hazel

I’ve been meaning to complete this series of posts for a long time, but it’s been difficult. I have zero photos from my last two days in New York and those pages in my little travel journal are blank.

Also, if I was completely honest with myself, I think the other reason for my NYC trip blogging procrastination is due to a separation problem, with the city itself and my time there.
I’ve constantly put off writing this post because I was stuck in that limbo that sometimes happens when you’re a few pages away from finishing a really good book but you don’t want it to end just yet.

Because that’s just it: I don’t want to close this book. I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to leave New York, dammit. Not yet.

For future reference, I will try to squeeze those last two days into a vomit of words. Don’t read this if you don’t want to. It’s mostly for myself, but here it is:

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One of the main reasons I asked for an iTunes giftcard for Christmas was so that I could watch Nowhere Boy. This is a film that I’ve been waiting, literally, years to watch and is a biopic about John Lennon’s childhood, from the time of his uncle’s death, to the formation of his first skiffle band, The Quarrymen, up til his mother’s death and then to his departure into Hamburg which led to the creation of The Beatles.

The director and producers did extensive research prior to filming, aiming to make it as historically accurate as possible. Everything from Lennon’s childhood home, his guitar model, the clothes he was wearing, to some of the music he and his band played is depicted so genuinely in the movie that, after watching, it made the original members of The Quarrymen—John’s childhood friends—cry.

I think just about anyone can spot some of the allusions made, such as the cut of Strawberry Field in the start, which was a garden located around Lennon’s neighborhood, or the harmonica that is so characteristic of the early Beatles songs. As a major fan, this is something I can appreciate.

Visually, it’s a stunning flim. Usually I hate it when movies tint anything, but here it worked so well because it just added to the whole nostalgia of it all.

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(via )

Something I’ve become super obsessed with since buying myself an iPod Touch last summer are podcasts. Really, the best thing about them is that there are so many of them and they’re all FREE!

One that got me hooked in the first place was This American Life. Don’t let the name deceive you—it’s not a podcast meant only for Americans and it doesn’t talk about any one specific thing. In short: every monday, they choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme.

Doesn’t sound all that appealing but think of it like reading an anthology; a series of stories recounting real events and real experiences by several authors regarding one topic.

Some of my favorites include: #414 Right To Remain Silent, #317 Unconditional Love, #259 Promised Land, #374 Somewhere Out There, #406 True Urban Legends, #423 The Invention of Money (hint: money doesn’t exist!), and #359 Life After Death.

I suggest that you keep an open ear and just take a listen! I kept bugging my sister about this podcast until she buckled, and now she constantly asks me to lend her my ipod so she could hear an episode. LOL

Different ways you can listen/subscribe to T.A.L: iTunes (they only publish the most recent episode), Facebook, or their radio archives (which has all the past stories).

EDIT: Go join Leanne’s giveaway! You don’t have to do anything but comment and you can win yourself a pair of Cheap Monday sunnies B)

Sometimes in very stressful situations, I have this habit of entering into a phase of denial where I immerse myself in various forms of distraction (like Tumblr, blogs, fanfiction, movies and books) in an effort to convince myself that, “Everything is fine in the world and my life is great and nothing is wrong!!!”, because when I start dwelling on all my to-do’s, my future, or school in general, I start forgetting to breathe and I get anxiety attacks and my back starts to ache and sleep never comes and—it’s just absolutely dreadful.

In short: I’m beginning to realize how badly I cope under stress. Which is, haha, not very good because isn’t that an essential skill I need in life? And my future?

With university deadlines looming just around the bend, this is really not the time for me to run off into my little hidey hole and ignore my teetering pile of work.

So I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands by installing lots of apps and browser add-ons to limit my time on these sites.

I’ve now rearranged my iPod Touch to look like so:

As you can see here, my iPod looks so much uglier now. But besides that, I’ve pretty much separated all my “productivity” and “distraction” apps into their own folders to force myself to consciously think before I tap an app.

Here I have: Sleep Cycle, Simplenote, TeuxDeux, and Streaks. All are paid apps, except for Simplenote, which is simply (heh) a note-taking app that syncs online so that your notes never disappear!

For Chrome and Firefox, I use StayFocused and Leechblock respectively to stop myself from accessing certain URL’s, such as tumblr.com/dashboard or google.com/reader. The great thing about both is that they let you assign specific dates/times to block these sites.

Both are equally useful and, as you can imagine, very frustrating.

But enough of this. Back to work!

I don’t know why I took this long to redesign the logo for La Garçonne (my menswear inspiration collective, not the online boutique), but voilà! Here it is!

My aim was to design a logo that was: a) easy on the eyes and b) had both masculine and feminine elements, which is really what characterizes a garçonne in the first place. I think I achieved both those things in this logo, using the two fonts, Learning Curve and Lane.

The only problem with this is that it does not work well in smaller scales.

So it is not perfect, but it is definitely an improvement from the previous one!