Hot Hot Heat

The slightest movement is impossible without breaking a sweat.

Mostly, I've been living in my trusty denim shorts which have now gone on to super faded status. I envy those with a wide selection of summer attire since I have only one other pair of linen shorts to alternate with my denim ones. I also personally decided to forego the floral trend, but I do have that one floral skirt from summer 2009.

I'm more excited about the looks from Fall 2010. The ultra feminine looks that crept into the runways in S/S '10 are now full on. I especially love the '50s look inspired by the girls of Mad Men, think Betty Draper, Peggy Olsen and Joan Harris in 2010. The voluminous calf-length ball skirts and sexy secretary pencil skirts are just glamorous.

I recall the height of the skirt trend in the mid '00s, a younger, less serious take on voluminous skirts. This was about the time I started my skirt collection, which inspired the name of this blog. (I eventually got rid of most of those skirts.) I think this spread from Vogue January 2005 Bring It On Home featuring Andre 3000 and Liya Kebede pretty much captures the skirt craze during that time.

Another Anniversary

It's been a year now since I turned vegetarian for Earth Day last year. Looking back, I think I survived mostly on these:

Mushroom and truffle cream home-made pasta and vegetarian pizza both from Pagliacci

While vegetarian, not to mention delicious, a carbo-loaded diet is not really healthy. I'm thinking of more ways to sustain a vegetarian lifestyle that is not especially dependent on Italian food. I've also been considering a vegan diet, but eliminating eggs and dairy requires a whole new level of commitment. Plus, I believe a vegan lifestyle will render me completely devoid of any social life should I do it--think no pizza or desserts at all.

So in pursuit of a more diversified vegetarian meal, I cooked myself vegetarian fried rice inspired by the Shanghainese vegetable rice. Except my version contains capers and sesame seed paste. I think it looks quite appetizing since the capers are not visible from this photo.

I haven't cooked in months since I don't do the grocery shopping anymore. I used to love doing this in HK. The sight of all the fresh fruits and vegetables in Citysuper made me giddy with excitement. I tried grocery shopping once here and found the selection very limited, plus I ended up with really awful apples. So now I stick to shopping for cereals and chips since these, we have a lot of. Below, the abundant selection of fresh fruits and vegetables in a local grocery in Tumon, Guam.

The Making of a Print Ad

This is a shout-out to my friend/not-really-friend-just-colleague F.A. (her story, not mine) who thinks that the above outfit is very Kamiseta. Add to that a bike with a basket filled with freshly picked flowers in a meadow to turn it into a print ad for the brand. (Or is the meadow too much?)

H&M dress (not Kamiseta), bike photo from Huset Shop

Bling It On

I spotted my bling-bling flats while browsing through the April 2010 issue of Mega. Hoho

As the temperature continued to rise, these jeweled gladiators slowly replaced my favorite ballet flats. And the more I wear them the more comfortable they become.

As much as I love summer, the increasingly hot weather is making it impossible to survive in anything other than cotton shirts and shorts. When I wore this Victorian-inspired, lacy top (with garter sleeves!) from H&M, I thought I would faint and the sight of all the people in the malls (including me) hoping to escape the unbearable heat didn't help.

The only way to really "beat the heat" is to be one with it--drive to the nearest beach where it is perfectly acceptable to wear the bare minimum and lounge around with a gallon of water. Unfortunately, everyone seems to be thinking the same thing so people who leave planning to the last minute (me) have to either stay in the city or go where nobody else wants to (the most expensive or most dodgy resort around). It's not hard to guess what happened to me. Oh, bitter bitter

So, I am signing off with this happy resort shot until I can have a new one.

Product Review: Beauty

Current favorites, clockwise from top:

YSL Hydra Feel Oil Free Fluid Moisturizer SPF 15 - This spreads easily, doesn't feel heavy on the skin or leave white streaks like other sunscreen products. Plus, it smells fantastic. It's still quite oily, though, like all other moisturizers with sunscreen I've used in the past.

Chanel Nail Color in Particuliere - This looks more gray than brown on nails, but one thing's for sure it's neither black nor red.

YSL Matt Touch Compact Foundation SPF 20 - This blends well with my skin, and the gold case is just luxurious.

Shu Uemura Red:Juvenus Vitalizing Line Reducing Eye Essence - I feel a cool, tingly sensation whenever I use this. I like to think that that means it's working. Eye makeup doesn't smudge even when I use this in the morning, and I noticed reduced puffiness and darkness and haven't been using undereye concealer as much now.

Side note: I gave in to my fashion magazine obsession when I saw this Vogue April 2010 issue at P359 in Fully Booked. Yahoo. (It's P599 elsewhere.)

One Year

Tomorrow is the first year anniversary of my blog, so I changed the appearance a bit to give it a fresher look. When I started this blog, I wanted to talk about coffee, which at that time I felt I knew a lot about. Eventually, I realized there isn't much to say about it except that it gives me a terrible feeling in my stomach. I also realized there are many other things, varied topics, that I want to post here so I did that too. The turnout is therefore a mishmash of things that I am interested in such as coffee, of course, food, fashion, books, magazines, beauty, etc. But one thing I found stands out, I am most confident when discussing food. Throughout my first year of writing in this blog, I re-discovered that food is in fact my first love. So it goes, I've pretty much converted this into a food blog. More specifically, a vegetarian food blog since I turned vegetarian a few weeks after I started blogging.

However, this doesn't mean that I will be sticking to just food posts from now on. To celebrate, I dug into my collection of digital photos and came up with a few of my favorite things/topics. Some already appear here time and again. The others I don't get to discuss as much perhaps because similar events didn't occur during the one year since I started blogging.

(arranged in no particular order)

1. Vegetarian food shots (Dan Dan Mien, noodles in spicy peanut sauce, from Kung Tak Lam, my favorite Shanghainese vegetarian restaurant in HK)

2. Window shopping in foreign places (LV in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Sept '08)

3. Night photography (taken with my old Sony T7)

4. Travelling (Ta Prohm in Siem Reap, Cambodia)

5. Taking pictures of the horizon

6. Hello Kitty

7. My dog, Heart, in her messy state

8. Hong Kong, never gets old

9. Amusement parks (in HK Disneyland, July '07)

10. Laid-back tunics and my Olympus Pen camera (Yes, I can officially call it mine.)

11. Coffee shops

12. Tea-time and sheer lip gloss

13. Loose shirts, jeans, and chain necklaces

14. Gardens

15. Speedy 30 in commemorative Stephen Sprouse graffiti, birthday gift for myself in Feb '09