3 Days in Vienna

Continuing from Budapest, the next place we went to was Vienna.

The first (and very hot) day we went to the Belvedere, which like the other palaces, consists of a palace and a large garden. Unlike other palaces, Belvedere doesn't have the typical apartment tours but instead are art museums. We spent the afternoon walking leisurely in the meseums attempting to learn about the artwork.

Next, we saw the Hundertwasser Haus, which looks like a colourful building from a cartoon but was actually a block of council flats. This building was fun to look around and discover its quirks!

At night, we went to the Musikverein. There, we watched an orchestra perform music by Mozart. I was amazed by how many songs that I know or have heard before are by Mozart. There were also two opera singers who sang with some of the pieces, although I didn't enjoy those performances qutie as much since they didn't sing in English and I have no idea how to appreciate opera singing.

The next day we visited the Schonbrunn Palace. We thought this was the most impressive palace in Vienna, although we were definitely liked the back garden more (below.)

The main attraction of the garden was the Gloriette, which just looked like a very fancy ornament to the garden to us. And yes, we walked all the way up to see the Gloriette up close.

In the afternoon, we visited Stephansdom. After visiting many European churches, many of them have started to look very similar. But I really like and remember this one -the exterior and interior remain very old-looking and authentic. The inside of the church was dark and grey, and you could really appreciate the Gothetic style inside. It's honestly one of the few sightseeing churches that has made an impression on me.

On the last day, we visited the Hofburg Complex. There are a few exhibitions and tours inside, but the one we really liked was the Sisi Museum. After going through all the guided tours in the past few days, I feel like I've really learnt something about the history of Vienna -or at least the history of the Austrian Royal family!

For the rest of the afternoon before going to the airport, we decided to just chill in coffee shops and try the cakes Austria is so famous for: the Sachertorte and apple strudel. To be honest, the Sachertorte wasn't that great -it just tasted like a dry piece of chocolate cake. And while the apple strudel was tasty, we weren't all too impressed by it either, (probably because all the cakes were so hyped up that we had high expectations for them.)

Walking around Vienna, the general feeling I got was the Vienna was much more tourist-friendly and had a very holiday-feeling to it. Everything there felt very artistic, creative and cultured, although I'm sure that's just because we all already know that Vienna is the 'music capital of the world'.

Image Credit: the blog

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HTC Diamond

Despite the upcoming launch of the new 3G iphone, July 11th, last week I decided to make the jump and got myself a HTC Diamond phone instead. Even though the idea of the iphone, combining a 3G phone, storage and an ipod all in one, sounds extremely appealing, in the end I decided that the iphone (even the second 3G generation) was too common and too bulky. The design is just not exactly the sleek and cool or girly and cute style that I like. I considered waiting for the NEXT generation of iphone, which is reputedly smaller than the original, but my disintegrating Nokia 6280, with its expanded battery and barely attached back cover wouldn't allow me to wait.

And so I walked into the store thinking to get a very sophisticated but cute and girly pink Blackberry. Even if I'm too cheap to get the full plan, it would look so adorable! Unfortunately, it appears that the pink Blackberry has not landed in Hong Kong yet (and I don't plan to join Verizon just for it) and they only had it in grey or black- boring. For a moment, I considered getting the grey one. But unfamiliar to the whole Blackberry craze in the US and clueless about phone functions beyond making a call, my mom was disapproving. "Why would you get that? It looks like a phone from 10 years ago."

She thought I should get one that was trendy and hip- like the one they were show casing in the glass case- the HTC Diamond (the store we were at just happened to be promoting it). I was hesitant at first. Since I've owned a phone 10 years ago, I've been a Nokia fan. They are always reliable and durable (to be fair, my Nokia 6280 has suffered through countless drops onto concrete surfaces in the last two years and a case of waterlog before coming to this state of disintegration). I was only willing to consider switching to the iphone or the Blackberry in the first place because they were just as reputable (kind of). And I've never even heard of the HTC before!

I wasn't sure about the durability and reliability of HTC (I eventually found out that it was from Taiwan). But then my mom stepped in, again proving that she is much more open minded and young about modern technology than I was. She said that I was probably only going to use the phone for two years anyway, and so I should just stop over thinking and get the model that I liked regardless of brand and durability.

Admittedly, the design is beautiful. It is small, sleek and shiny, with very cool smooth angles on the back cover giving it that diamond touch. They also very neatly fitten in a pen slot in this sleek design and it stays put magnetically. Very cool. The specs are quite good too. It is basically a touch screen PDA, with wifi and all the little PDA features like calendar, email, music, photos etc all on a very prettily designed interactive windows program that is very easy to use. Seriously. I am technically challenged and even I figured it out. There is 4GB of internal memory, so you can fit everything in. It also has a 3.2 pixel built in camera with auto focus, which is awesome, since even my very first digital camera only had 3.2 pixels. It works in North America, Europe, Australasia and Asia (including Japan and Korea) - just not South America. Supposedly it has GPS too, but I have no idea how it works. I figured since I don’t even have an internet plan for my phone the GPS feature will just go undiscovered. And this is the general gist of the HTC Diamond as I understand it. I’m no expert, so I could be wrong. For more accurate details, check out their website.

From all this, it appears that the HTC Diamond trumps the iphone, Blackberry and even the Samsung Armani (I briefly considered it since it was the same price, but it is a Korean brand phone that doesn’t work in Korea and thus I rejected it. There was also some other things not so good about the specs, though I must say the case it comes with is very nice) phone. In reality though, it doesn’t work quite like a dream. After almost a week of use, here are some things I found wrong with it

• Even though the camera is 3.2 pixels, the pictures taken indoors tend to be yellowish and not very flattering for anyone. Seriously. Very yellowish. Outdoors, it’s not bad. But over all that autofocus thing means it takes a few seconds to actually take a picture. Not exactly snap.
• There are a lot of functions, but it takes a while to get from one place to another. Either the touch screen is not very sensitive or it is very slow (probably a bit of both). It needs more RAM. In this aspect, the iphone is much faster.
• Another thing is that people don’t seem to be hearing me very well these days. I used to talk to people when I’m walking around all the time and they hear me fine. Now I can hear them perfectly fine but they can’t hear me!
• Another major thing and I’m not sure if it is only me, for two days, my phone would suddenly just switch off with no trigger and I can’t turn it on! I had to take the battery out and then turn it on again to get it to work. This is a major concern. But it hasn’t happened for 2 days now and I’m hoping that it was only an aberration. I think I’ve gone over my 7 day trial period, so I can’t exchange for a new one. And besides, I’m already out of the country……… fingers crossed!

Overall, I wouldn’t really recommend anyone buying the HTC Diamond, even though I’m an owner. I mean, besides those things I mentioned, it works fine. I haven’t personally tried out the music playing (because I haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to connect it with my computer yet- busy busy these days…), but I assume it works fine too. Still, as you can tell, they still have a way to go to perfecting this model. Once they do though, the HTC Diamond would be perfect!

*Update*

Thanks Kate. After playing around for a while, I finally figured out how to adjust the brightness/color contrast of the photos, and now the pictures look much better! Now all they need is a flash!

Image Source: Apple, HTC and Blackberry

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2 Days in Budapest

I figured I ought to see more of Europe before graduating so last week, I travelled with another friend to Budapest and Vienna (another post.) The great thing about Budapest was that everything was so affordable there! One doesn't have to think too much before buying something since everything seemed relatively cheap. Here are the sights we visited:

After spending 3 hours at the main train station, waiting to buy train tickets to Vienna, we visited the Buda Castle...

... and Fishermen's Bastion. To be honest, when we saw these two sights up close, we didn't think they looked that impressive, especially since there wasn't any signs to explain the sights. There was an exhibition/ museum inside the Castle, but it didn't sound that attractive so we didn't go in.

But these two spots are on top of a hill so it was a terrific spot to get a great view of Budapest.

The next day, we took a sightseeing hop on hop off bus to get around the sites. If you go to Budapest and want a convenient way to get to the sites, try the service. It's affordable and convenient, making the whole sightseeing experience very relaxing and simple.

From afar, the Castle looked very pretty.

The Parliament is one of the must-see sights, although we didn't actually go in. It's one of the most impressive buildings in Budapest and again, looks great from across the island.

Afterwards, we visited St. Stephan Balisica.

Then we took a guided tour inside the Opera House. The tour was interesting, with the tour guide describing the history of the Opera House with funny stories. It was very gold and shiny inside, together with paintings and statues.

Finally, we visited Heroes' Square, which is suppsedly a must-see sight. To be honest, it just looked like a normal square, ie. empty space with statues to us.

Budapest is definitely a great place to visit for a very short amount of time and low budget. It's a good choice if you want to see Central Europe. Overall, it was fun and interesting to walk around casually in Budapest, but frankly, the sightseeing spots weren't as well 'put-together' (ie. as tourist-friendly) relative to other countries'.

Image Credit: this blog

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Haute Couture F/W08 II

Christian Dior
After a few of you mentioned how much you loved the Dior haute couture collection in your comments from the last post, I checked it out and agreed with you all -the Dior F/W08 haute couture collection is indeed fabulous! For the past few seasons, the collections have all sort of blended together and all I could remember about them are huge, colourful, extravagant dresses.

But this season, the silhouettes and use of different fabrics have really added something extra to the outfits. I LOVE the juxtaposition of the textures: strong, structured and solid on top, and soft, feminine and flowing at the bottom.

These are such a modern and gorgeous twist to the typical dress-suit and lunch suit.

And even more dress suits for the ladies-who-lunch. I don't believe I've like lunch suits this much before!

This is one of the few times I can actually say I like the use of animal prints -it's so elegant and untrashy. And even though I imagine it wouldn't be comfortable wearing a see through skirt, I love this interpretation of the LBD.

Such ladylike dresses. Imagine riding and getting off horse carriages in these dresses -ok, maybe I've just been visiting too many palaces in my recent travelling.

Gorgeous, GORGEOUS party dresses. In my dreams of attending formal parties, I will be wearing these dresses this season.

There were a few really extravagant big white dresses (-presumably wedding gowns for the rich and fabulous) and this one was my favourite. It's like a fusion of the long, slim dress and the big, puffy dress. Loves it!

It's not Dior haute couture by John Galliano without an art piece-looking dress.

Valentino

OK, I was going to write more about Valentino, but the fabulousness of the Dior collection totally distracted me and used up my enthusiasm for this season's haute couture collection. That said, the new eggy and space age shapes used by Alessandra Facchinetti really added a dose of youth to Valentino's feminine, romantic dresses.

Image Credit: http://www.style.com/

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Haute Couture F/W08 I

With the travelling I've been doing in the past two weeks, I've been so out of touch with the real world (ie. the Internet) that I didn't even know it was Haute Couture week until I logged into style.com! I've only looked through three collections but they have already surprised me as they were certainly different from what I've come to expect from those desginers.

Chanel

Karl Lagerfeld usually sends out pretty, mostly black & white and commercial dresses so I was surprised when many of the dresses had such structured and artistic silhouettes! I have mixed reactions with the dresses though, and some of the dresses looked like a continuation of the silver Chanel dress that Anna Wintour wore to the Superheroes party.

The show started with dresses that were very sophisticated, very Chanel.

And ended with very romantic and elegant evening dresses.

In between, there were the more structured dresses. I especially liked these two. The dress on the left reminds me of a flower (with a model in the middle.) And even though I have no idea what the frame around her model's head (on the right) does, it just looks really cool -sort of makes the model look like a haute couture robot.

Although I wouldn't call these dresses ugly, I'm just not too fond of them. The one on the right especially does not look flattering. To be fair, all these dresses must look so much more impressive in real life.

Givenchy

Before looking at the collection, I was expecting lots of rock chic, black and white again, but this collection was definitely more colourful than the previous ones. The clothes also seemed less structured.

These looks remind me of high fashion soldiers marching to somewhere cold.

And these make me think of glamorous Parisian parties. I like this neutral palette of colours so much more than that khaki green.

Christian Lacroix

Lacroix's collection is always one of the most fun to look at because it always takes you into a colourful, overly luxurious world of chiffon and laces -and this collection did just that.

Just wow! I love the high fashion gothic look, and this was all done with mini skirts or dresses, making the looks very youthful and put together.

The girly looks -although noticeably not as sweet-looking than his previous collections. This ones feels much darker. Notice all the ornaments and laces and details each look has!

How did everyone like these three collections?

Image Credit: www.style.com

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The Pink Miu Miu Bag

Imagine this lovely white patchwork Miu Miu tote below (left) in the pink of plastic ring bag, and you get what I've been carrying (almost everyday) for almost three weeks now.
It is absolutely the perfect bag for the SS08. It's summery, feminine and fun, with the pink being just light enough that it does not clash with any color I wear. I was getting bored of the standard black and classic prints in my collection. The style is also very casual and big enough for absolutely everything I need- though it gets difficult sometimes to find stuff in this black hole. It also fits on the shoulder just fine! And if you want, they also have a longer side strap. Oh and did I mention that the leather is absolutely DIVINE? Because it is. Like a baby.

The ONLY downside though is the durability. Now I know that this is a trend bag and it will probably not last beyond a season or two anyway (and thus, me using it everyday since I got it to get the most mileage out of it while I can), so durability isn't a top priority. But the durability of this bag is seriously low. After 3 weeks of use, I fear that my bag is turning color. And not even to a color one would expect, like dirty pink or black, but blue. Yes. BLUE. The edges of the patchwork, especially towards the bottom and the bottom of the shoulder straps, are showing serious signs of blueness. I'd show you a picture, but I lost the adapter to my memory card, stupid Sony memory cards........Anyway, I suspect it might be my denim (even though I usually wear black jeans......) and thus it is all my fault. But denim is like my standard daily uniform. What would I wear without my denim? I guess I should try to desperate the two from now on........ though where would I put my bag when I'm sitting down if not on my lap or behind my back? On the floor? And besides, on the first day of wear, it drizzled a bit and I got some rain on the super soft leather and afterwards, there were blue stains on my bag! I was worried I'd gotten some chemicals on my bag while I was walking around (I mean, shouldn't simple water stains just be a shade darker than the pale pink leather?), but then, when it dried and the stain disappeared, so I didn't think much of it. Thinking back now though, MAYBE it is not entirely my denim's fault but also the leather's........... Anyone else having this problem?

Regardless, if you have something similar or plan to get something similar and want to maximize it's lifespan, remember to use it with care. Keep it away from denim, water and humidity. Because it is a MUCH too pretty bag to become weird and blue.

Image Source: Saks

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Are Big Bows Too Cutesy?

Lately I've been seeing bows, big and small on clothes everywhere. (All the shirts below are from Top Shop simple because I'm too lazy to look through another website.) Sometimes a bow really adds some much needed adornment and girliness to a shirt or dress. But sometimes I feel like it's just too much. As with nautical-inspired clothes, the design could become overly cutesy and costume-looking.

For instance, I first saw this shirt online I thought the bow was way too big. It totally reminded me of the sailor or school uniforms that we see in Japanese anime. But then I saw my friend wear it and it looked simple and cute, but not overly cute on her. Maybe the key is to keep everything else around the shirt (ie. your jeans and hair) simple?

Moving onto more bows... I am not a fan of a bow graphic tee, or any prints that have little bows all over them. I thought the point of a bow was to add something extra, sort of like another layer or texture to the shirt.

I can't decide what to think of this bow. On one hand the top would look simpler but plainer without the bow. On the other hand, it makes a potentially versatile top into something more frilly and girly.

The silhouette (kind of Miu Miu S/S08-esque) caught my eye. The fake buttons are a nice touch, but what do you think of the bows? They seem to suit the shirt.

This is my favourite out of the shirts here. For some odd reason, I really like the huge bow in the middle -maybe it's because the bow doesn't look completely like a big puffy bow. It's very flat and the colours of the shirt (nude and white) make the top seem more sophisticated than cutesy. It looks like a nice top for work (provided you work in a casual business office.)

Anyway, I think I will stop here. I have used the word 'cutesy' way too many times within the past fifteen minutes for my own comfort!

Image Credit: http://www.topshop.com/

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