April 27, 2010

Obsession: Leather Jackets

Everyone knows that I am not a summer girl. I don't think of flip flops, shorts and t-shirts as my wardrobe staples. I'll take icy cold winter day anytime over summer. Imagine my excitement when Perth is getting cooler by the day (slowly though). That means one thing: I can finally wear my leather jackets, tights and boots. Yeap, I love winter for so many reasons: the freshness it brings, the hibernating, the comfort food and most of all: the fashion.

I am obsessed with winter fashion, especially leather jackets. They are such an essential! Even though they are less bulky than other winter jackets/coats, but they are warmer than most. Because it's leather, the wind doesn't go through the fabric like they do with other jackets; be it tweed, fabric, cotton or even wools.

This winter season, the collarless leather jackets are introduced. It was love at first sight for me. The cut, the way the collar drapes around your shoulders, the distressed-leather material... it's oh-so very biker chic. 


Well, looking at the designer labels, it is most definitely will hurt my bank account. But, fear not! After a long search, I have found the chain store version of the collarless leather jacket (and it's mine now tee-hee)


It's so versatile you can wear it with anything. Be it dress with tights and boots; or stripe long sleeves, black skinny, flats and loop scarves. Now, all I need to do is wait until the weather is cool enough and I shall wear this everytime I'm out and about :-) Oh, I feel like a rockstar!


XoXo, Kezia Anastasia
Share/Save/Bookmark

April 21, 2010

I Still Call Australia Home





I had a really unpleasant experience on the Transperth bus yesterday afternoon. I was boarding the usual bus home at about 5:10 pm from Perth CBD when an Indigenous lady also went on the bus I am on without paying her fare. If her stop was in CBD, the ride would’ve been free, but her stop is in Victoria Park. The driver let her on the bus and she sat in the disability section on the left side of the bus. I was sitting on the right side, just a row behind her.

Then, I started noticing a smell in the bus. Mind you, the bus is air-conditioned, so the smell travelled faster. It was a smell of glue, and yes, she was glue sniffing. She stuffed the glue inside a transparent plastic bag. A few people (including me) covered their noses with their scarves, tissues and what not. The bus driver didn’t do anything. No one did anything or said anything to this lady.

I had headaches and felt like vomiting on the whole trip (FYI - I still have the headache until now). I was this close of losing my nerves and was in the process of working up a courage to ask this lady (politely, of course) to stop what she’s doing as it had brought a significant amount of disturbance and annoyance to everyone on the bus, when she finally went off the bus. But, as she was standing before she went off, she took a look at everyone who had their noses covered up… and LAUGHED. Real hard.

I’m pretty sure she was doing what she’s doing to push her boundaries. Probably wanting to see whether anyone would do or say anything to stop her. And when she finally figured out no one had the nerve to stop her, she laughed victoriously. She thought she has power to do anything she wants because everyone feared her.

Look, I don’t have anything against the Indigenous race in general. It’s not their skin tone, or physical appearance that annoys me, it’s the attitude. The only time I have seen a well-mannered, well-dressed and educated Aboriginal was in Curtin University. I saw this Aboriginal man who was going to classes and I thought to myself that such person is real (and of course Cathy Freeman and Ernie, but they are public figures. I literally saw this person with my own eyes so it made a bigger impact). I really wonder why there aren’t more of these kind of Indigenous people?

I remembered once I read in the newspaper about this Aboriginal man who complained about his living situation. He literally lives in the kitchen, and it was filthy. Probably the filthies kitchen I’ve ever seen. There are dog feces on the floor. He was looking for sympathy, obviously. I read one of the reader’s comments and it goes kind of like ‘roll up your sleeves and clean it then!’. I have noticed that some of these people lived off Government support and Centrelink. They don’t even work. Why should they expect us to hear their complaints and sympathize if they don’t even do anything about it? And if they had been given help, why didn’t they be grateful instead of thinking ‘I deserve this help’?

I was talking about my experience with a colleague this morning, and she mentioned to me that she was once verbally abused by an Indigenous lady (who was drunk of course). My colleague was just in a news agency wanted to buy some magazines, when suddenly this lady came up to her and called her names like white -c*nt and sl*t. She was so angry but was too scared to do anything. When the Indigenous lady left, the news agency owner came up to her and asked whether she’s okay. She was very shakened up by that experience.

She told me that one of her neighbours one day was also verbally abused by Aboriginals in his own yard. The Aboriginals were playing in his yard and yelled to him to get off of their land. He called the police on them.

They think this is they are the only Australians. Let me just say, I pay my taxes (that goes to subsidising them, I believe) and even if I wasn’t born or raised in Australia, that doesn’t make me less Australian than them. That goes the same to everyone.

Here in Australia, we have a ‘National Sorry Day’ on May 26th. Basically, it was the ‘healing’ day of those Indigenous people who have been removed from their parents/children with force (you can wiki it for more info – I’m not that knowledgeable). So, we say ‘sorry’ to them. Okay fine, that is legit – we made mistake, we said sorry and we try to make it better. But shouldn’t that go both ways? They should also be sorry for harrassing others – verbally, physically, actionally (is there such a word?) – you get what I mean. If they are more educated and civilized, Australia will be a much better place to live, yes?

If you feel uneasy and offended by my post about this issue, then I am sorry. It wasn’t my intention to disrespect anyone, I was just simply expressing my thoughts. FYI – I filed a complaint to Transperth in regards to the incident happened yesterday. I mentioned as well it was part the driver’s fault of letting this woman on the bus without paying her fare. See, I was being fair.


XoXo, Kezia Anastasia
Share/Save/Bookmark

April 19, 2010

Sneak Peeks :-)

As promised, a sneak peek of something I have been working on these past couple of weeks.

This project is a collaboration with a very good friend of mine; the talented photographer - Mr Indra Pratama from Photo4Life. I've known Indra almost about 8 years now and he is married to one of my closest girlfriends, Fang-Fang; a very talented lady in arts and crafts herself.

Indra has that magic touch when it comes to art and design. Just these past two years he began to launch his photography business - Photo4Life which specialised in wedding and pre-wedding photography. I have to say I'm always speechless when it comes to seeing one of the photos he took. It was breathtakingly beautiful, simple, pure and magical. He seems to always able to caught the simplest moments yet overflows with pure love and longing. 

When Indra asked me whether I want to help him with designing the happy couples' wedding albums, I jumped at the chance. Not only I got to explore the world of art and design closer (and getting free lessons on Photoshop and Illustrator from the master himself hehehe), I got to work with my friends. How cool is that! I really want to help Indra and Fang-Fang to expand their wedding photography business further because I really think they deserve it. They are very talented and the world needs to see it :-)

I can't reveal much on the whole design of the albums (I'm still a beginner, so bear with me!) but I can give you sneak peeks as below pictures. These are the two albums I have been working on; one's concept is very different than the other. One of them is actually my two good friends wedding - so I'm very honoured to have been trusted with this. I really do hope I can deliver! Will post photos once final products have been printed and delivered :-)




As for now, if you are one of the happily engaged couples - feel free to browse around Indra Pratama's portfolio in Photo4Life. I assure you, you will be amazed by his talent :-) I, myself, am reserving him for my pre-wedding and wedding photoshoots (now all I have to do is find the groom!)



XoXo, Kezia Anastasia

Share/Save/Bookmark

April 18, 2010

Hello Hello :-)

I don’t know why you said goodbye, I said hello!

Iknow, I know. It’s been almost two months since I last post something on this blog. I don't know why, I just lost the urge all of the sudden. Even if I want to write something, I wouldn't know what to write. If there’s some sort of Blogging University and I have a blog-valuation exam, I think one of the questions would be like this:

What is the main reasons of you not blogging again?

a)     (a) My life isn’t interesting enough to blog about
b)     (b) Doesn’t have the time to blog
c)     (c) Too lazy to blog
d)     (d) Twittering > blogging
e)     (e) All of the above

I’d definitely choose option E.

In my defense, I’ve been quite busy these days (exagerrate much?). We had a couple of big events at Church which I’m helping out with, such as our annual Food Festival and Kids Festival. But the real reasons on why I didn’t blog were these:




I think pictures worth a thousand words :-)

Yep. I am officially a couch potato. There are about four major series that I’m following at the moment – and I never missed any of it. Some I’ve already watched since they first went on air, some I just recently caught up with. The most recent one will be ‘Glee’ :-) Oh yeah, I’m a proud Gleek! You are too if you notice my first line in this post was taken from the song they did on episode 14 *LOL*

Seriously, these days, there’s nothing else I wanted more except for watching series/movies in my pyjamas after a long day at work and with my macbook attached to my 24” LCD monitor which right at the opposite of my bed, things are looking pretty nifty (iMac on a budget :-P)





Oh, that and a wicked leather jacket for winter which I can't wait to wear!!! 

On a more serious note: I am working on a collaboration project with Photo4Life which I am very excited about! Will reveal more soon. Stay tuned!




XoXo, Kezia Anastasia
Share/Save/Bookmark