"Lived and learned from fools and from sages"

I am suffering from author's block, if you will. An annoying, troublesome creative slump. The part of my brain that loved the click of the camera and the tac-tac-tac of a keyboard has fled the coop and is probably drunk in a rundown bar while I'm using my keyboard as dust gatherer. I sometimes feel as if I can hear my brain sloshing around and slowly dripping out through the boredom cracks in my skull.

Does anyone have a cure for the creative equivalent of being down in the dumps? If yes, please write down on post-it and send by carrier pigeon. They'll know where to find me.


On this background, I've been trying to distract myself/entice my neurons with different activities:

♥ my birthday in May (feeling too old in my own skin but still too young at the same time, how is that possible?) . Brought good times and great gifts, so I can't complain too much about getting old.
♥ experiments in the kitchen which did not end in fires, surprisingly, and the realization I can make delicious stuffed peppers and chocolate muffins.
♥ painted Easter eggs with mother and ate abnormal amounts of chocolate that holiday and every other holiday from New Year's until now.
♥ Bike-walked. Not as much as I want, but still. It was fun!
♥ Saw Cluj for the first time and Sinaia for the one billionth time. Remembered why I love road trips and late nights spent in the company of lovely people.
♥ been losing sleep. Dreaming about Zombie Apocalypses and making plans of action for when that time comes (rules include: cardio and shotguns. Thanks Zombieland!)
♥ Watched all of Supernatural. All of 30 Rock (I thought I hated it. It was a shock to realize I actually don't. I call this the power of Tina Fey). And started M.A.S.H. and Doctor Who. Hmmm, I am slowly understanding why I've been losing sleep ...
♥ Tried the wind-swept style. And the Cousin It of Adams Family fame style. Changed hair color with every coloring and ended up slightly amber. I am now sporting what I call "Fake Red Head Who Has No Time to Dye Her Hair and Whose Hairdresser Is On Holiday" style. It works for me!
♥ Girls' night out, of course.
♥ Started taking the whole vegetarian thing very seriously. And the coffee addict thing too.
♥ Also started taking football (yes, football, not soccer, thank you very much!) very seriously
♥ Saw Aerosmith live just 2 days ago. Spent time afterward dreaming of sequined blazers and dancing to Dude Looks Like a Lady as these two things seem to work together. Steven Tyler is one ball of rock-and-roll, crazy energy.

♥ ... O yeah, started exams. Thinking I won't finish them alive, if my pathology book has anything to say about it.


All in all, it has not been a boring time! Fingers crossed for my inspiration and if you need me I'll be off re-enacting the Glee dance scenes and dreaming of future times when school books will be locked in dark places and days will be nothing more than vodka-orange glasses and lazy reading on picnic blankets.

:)

*

Song of the Moment: Kansas - Carry On My Wayward Son
(Supernatural reference FTW!)

Sex and the City is here. You ready?

(I apologize for every non-romanin speaking reader, I promise something soon for you too!)

Uite cum ma reintorc eu la blogul meu. Si nu singura, ci cu un concurs absolut delicios!

Eu si cu IntreFete.ro ne-am aliat fortele in cadrul campaniei lor si oferim o invitatie pentru doua persoane pentru vizionarea speciala de pe 10 iunie la Multiplex. Tot ce trebuie sa faci este sa lasi un comentariu mic la acest post si poti castiga. Extragerea castigatoarei va avea loc joi dimineata, 10 iunie.

O vizionare impreuna cu un grup de fete stilate, frumoase si rafinate unite prin dragostea lor de Manolos si Cosmopolitans, nimic mai placut nu-i asa? Then what are you waiting for? Lasa un comentariu si ne vedem joia viitoare.

Bafta :)

"Hello, Oompa Loompas of science!"

One good thing about not having an sort of internet (Twitter on my phone does not count, okay?) is that I've been reading quite a lot lately, a pleasure that had been lost between checking e-mails a billion times of day and saving any sort of Sherlock Holmes graphics and Star Trek gifs I can find on Tumblr. Ewan McEwan, I love how you make me drool over your words and Chuck Palahniuk, your brain is a scary yet wonderful place!

Power of concentration, I'm doing it wrong.

I've also managed to run through all the Oscar movies of the year (minus A Single Man because the gods don't want me to bask in the awesomeness that is a Tom Ford/Colin - I love you Mister Darcy - Firth masterpiece) and all the seasons of The Big Bang Theory (Sheldon Cooper, you are insane but I love you).

Surprisingly, my sleeping hours have been slightly chaotic. It's not my fault books get interesting right before bedtime. And it's not my fault they're running Star Trek: The Original Series only at night on tv, I do not have the will to say no to Spock.

*

Spare time makes the mind go geekier and geekier apparently and makes me also want to screencap every movie I own. And this post is brought to you just by that!

I watched Nine some time ago and liked it. I didn't love it because it disappointed in certain departments (it lacked cohesiveness and focus, the songs weren't as strong as I was expecting, the characters weren't very into character), because maybe I loved Fellini's 8 1/2 Weeks too much and this "adaptation" just grazed the surface.

But. I am sucker for beautiful images and, like a magpie loves shiny things for their shiny and not their total worth, I fell in love with the visuals of this film. Give me anything resembling Broadway and I melt like a chocolate ice cream in the sun.


Enjoy the beautiful photos and hopefully next time I'll be posting here from my own (my preciousssss....) internet connection and stop stealing it from where I can. Fingers crossed!

*

Overture Delle Donne



"Kiss your fevered little brow, Pinch your cheeks till you say ow"
A Call from the Vatican (Penelope Cruz)



"So you little Italian devils, You want to know about love? Saraghina will tell you.
If you want to make a woman happy, you lie on what you’re born with"
Be Italian (Fergie)



"I love the dark handsome guys with their skinny little ties dressing mod looking out of sight
I love to watch them as they cruise with their pointy leather shoes wearing shades in the middle of the nights"
Cinema Italiano (Kate Hudson)



"Now take it right between your thighs, you grabbed for everything, my friend,
but don't you see that in the end there will be nothing left of me?"
Take It All (Marion Cotillard)




Finale

screencaps by me

*

Song of the Day:
Florence and the Machine & Dizzy Rascal - You've Got the Love

"But in the years that passed since I saw you last you haven't moved an inch "

No I am not dead. Just internetless for about 3 weeks now, which feels a bit like dead but not quite. It's painful and slightly nerve wrecking but, fingers and toes and whatever-can-be-crossed crossed, this place will be up and running soon (if not by next week, I'm sure I can find some sacrificial goats somewhere around here).

(Also, whoever said letting go - albeit forcefully - of any sort of addiction gets easier as time passes is a big fat liar who needs to be hit over the head with a pillow stuffed with bricks!)

(Did get a lot of reading done. That is a little sort of soothing victory.)

(Still need internet like air though.)

"I've got that lefty curse, where everything is flipped and awkwardly reversed"

In my tiny little world, exam sessions mean: drinking the very first of many coffee cups when the sun is not up yet, considering chocolate and pizza to be highly nutritional options for breakfast and/or lunch and/or diner, improvised dance-a-thons in my sweatpants in front of the mirror to crappy pop music caused by excessive caffeine intake, a drab of despair and a spoonful sleep-deprivation topped up with a semi-marathon of Grey's Anatomy episodes and did I mention the way-too-high-to-be-healthy-but-hey-you-do-as-your-doctor-tells-you-and-not-what-(s)he-does number of coffee cups a day?

So of course it is always a pleasant surprise when there's something out of the ( completely unordinarily) ordinary. That surprise came in the form of an e-mail from the lovely Shira at WOMWorld/Nokia asking me if I wanted to play around with the Nokia N97 for a couple of weeks. As I am a tech geek wrapped up in the layers of fashion fiend, I could not say no!

I love trying out and playing with new gadgets and when I got this little creature (which I have named JouJou Bon) in my possession the first thing I loved about it was the fact that not only does it promise to be perfectly capable to do everything one needs tech-wise, it also cute to boot! Call me superficial but I love when style meets function, it's like having a chocolate center bom-bom all in a pretty wrapper - eye-candy and perfect palate pleaser in one :)

I admit it took me a little time to get used to the menu after coming from my iPhone and the touchscreen responds to pressure and not just a little tap (scrolling through the menu was one of the things that I personally found a bit hard to do without accidentally opening an application) but as soon as I got the hang of it, it felt quite okay. I've always had a soft spot for QWERTY keyboards and I thought it was much easier to use than a normal touchscreen one the grammar mistakes in my text messages seemed to decrease slightly.

It fed my need to stay online 24/7, fast internet browsing and twitter (once I installed my twitter client of choice) at my fingertips. I was also extremely pleased to have PDF reader installed! Magazines were a bit hard to browse (too many photos slowed it down, I think) but I enjoyed quite a couple of good books during study breaks.

And, lest we forget what it was actually suppose to be in the first place, it is a really great, easy to use phone!

Its size compared to my iPhone. It's small but not too small that you can't type. Although I have to admit that most of the guys I showed it too where a bit annoyed at the little buttons. I just think the problem was their big thumbs and not the tiny buttons :))

Photos via phone. Stupid expressions via me.

All in all, I love the N97 mini. It's stylish and lived up to my expectations, even if it did stumble around in certain areas. I'm not sure I'd give up my current phone for it but if in the future I was offered one, I would certainly not pass that opportunity.

Thanks Shira for the opportunity to play around with this little creature. Check out the other reviews from District of Chic, C'est Girl so Chic and the incredibly adorable La Couturier.

*

January 21st:
The day I realized that pathology would be, quite ironically, the death of me. Also, the day after I died my hair, making my head proudly representative of the entire spectrum of reds and oranges.

*

January 22nd:
The celebration of the very first exam this season took place outside the university, between mountains of snow. I was viciously attacked two to one and could not get away! I blame the hair that makes it impossible for me to hide in this goddamn white scenery. Thankfully, I will always be found if ever caught in an avalanche.


Redheaded orange-head?




Andy looked like a frozen polar bear so she was spared the snowing. Maria and Irina snowball fighting before realizing they'd rather team up and attack me.



Like I said, those two girls are evil, utterly evil I tell you ;)

dress: Kotton, sweater: Mango, tights: Accessorize, belt: Zara, boots: Nine West, coat: Mango.

*

Song of the Day: Nelly Furtado & Chris Martin - All Good Things