chocolate

 "Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive." 

Joanne Harris, Chocolat

For happiness eat chocolate and lots of it. Bitter or sweet, harsh or smooth. Just make sure it's wrapped in gold foil and printed paper so pretty you won't want to throw it away. This particular one is Marou 74%, dark and honest and just a little bit bitter. The way chocolate should be.

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teakha

one // two-three

You know instantly when a place is the one. It mostly just feels like relief. Relief from a long day of walking and talking and looking. Relief and instant comfort. This is a place where you can sit and relax with a pot of tea (or ice tea in this heat) and no-one will bother you, or if they do, it's only to bring fig and ginger scones with home made jams and a little pot of butter and what's the harm in that? It's tiny but you prefer the word intimate. It's has a small menu but you prefer the term perfectly formed. Why bother with all the bells and whistles when the idea is right and true in the first place? 

Maybe I'm getting silly in my old age. But this kind of place is somewhere we don't have enough of in Sydney. Places that serve tea and cake and not much else, that invite you to stay forever, that are filled with flowers and wide smiles and calico aprons tied twice with a bow. Eating in Sydney has become a bit of a free for all. We constantly, tirelessly search out the next-big-thing so we can instagram it and hashtag it and be proud that we made it there first before anyone else. Sure, you instagram in a quiet little place like this (I mean, look at those flowers!), but that's not the point. A place like this is a step away from the machinations of our food obsession, it's a step to the side and down a little somewhere a little more off-the-beaten track. It's trendy, of course it's trendy. But again that's not the point. It's just right. It's exactly what you need. It's a place to drink in the world, and a slow-brewed chai drunk with ginger and spices. It's a place you know instantly is the one but, like all good, true things, you might spend your whole life looking for. At least now you've found it you know where to keep coming back to.

Teakha, Shop B, 18 Tai Ping Shan Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

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a morning in causeway bay

see more in the series: a morning in wan chai // a morning in paris // a morning with abby // a morning in brooklyn

Rainy mornings at The Mini Hotel in Causeway Bay are made of this - spending half the day reading a good book, goofing around in new glasses (Ray Ban Clubmasters from Vision Direct, Kate Sylvester beauties and the old faithful Bespecd opticals), taking long, hot showers, listening to the melody of rain coursing against the window and hiding from the day under crisp white sheets.

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slip

garance dore

A week in this Hong Kong heat and I've shed all the scales of a red-cheeked winter and embraced the bare-armed beauty of a wet, humid summer instead. I bought a dress (the first once since my 21st, but who's counting?) and I've been wearing it non-stop with nothing to accompany it but the whisper of a gold bracelet and wet hair and a pair of wingtipped sunglasses and I've been going about my work here without a care in the world because there's nothing better than bare legs and a bit of a breeze when everyone else is dreading the heat. 

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Ray Ban Wayfarer Giveaway

Jak and Jil

All the cool kids wear Ray Ban wayfarers. This is a known, scientifically proven fact. Remember your adolescence and think of the boys and girls in white tee shirts and blue jeans - the ones you loved but could never make love you, no matter how hard you tried - and I guarantee you they had a pair of wayfarers perched across their sunkissed nose, hanging from the thick-band neckline of their cheap cotton tees, pushed up through their sea-salt flecked hair. Which is why I could not be more excited to announce that I am giving away a pair of classic, black, cooler-than-thou Ray Ban Wayfarers thanks to the generous people at Vision Direct. The conditions are simple: you can do one, a few or all of the following for each entry:

 like Vision Direct on Facebook
share the Vision Direct Facebook page 
follow Vision Direct on Twitter
subscribe to the Vision Direct newsletter 
 comment here with a link to your favourite pair of sunglasses from the Vision Direct website (you can find all of their brands here, including Celine mmm)

You don't have to do all of these things but for maximum entries you can! It's totally up to you. My advice - definitely do the last one, since you have to comment here anyway so I know that you've entered and to give me your email address so I can contact you if you win! I'll be checking all the entries. The winner will be drawn in one week! And the best news? This competition is open to all readers, Australian and International.

Good luck, and stay cool.

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GIVEAWAY CLOSED. WINNER ANNOUNCED SHORTLY!

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our country

Vanessa Jackman

I'll get up soon, and leave my bed unmade. 

I'll go outside and split off kindling wood, 

From the yellow-box log that lies beside the gate, 

And the sun will be high, for I get up late now. 

I'll drive my axe in the log and come back in 

With my armful of wood, and pause to look across 

The Christmas paddocks aching in the heat, 

The windless trees, the nettles in the yard... 

And then I'll go in, boil water and make tea. 

This afternoon, I'll stand out on the hill 

And watch my house away below, and how 

The roof reflects the sun and makes my eyes 

Water and close on bright webbed visions smeared 

On the dark of my thoughts to dance and fade away, 

Then the sun will move on, and I will simply watch, 

Or work, or sleep. And evening will draw in. 

 

Coming on dark, I'll go home, light the lamp 

And eat my corned-beef supper, sitting there 

At the head of the table. Then I'll go to bed. 

 Last night I thought I dreamt - but when I woke 

The screaming was only a possum skiing down 

The iron roof on little moonlit claws.

Les Murray, 'Widower in The Country' 

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the apartment

We spent our first night in Hong Kong in the delicious surrounds of the Apartment O. It's primarily a long-term stay apartment, but we got the keys for one night and one night only, just enough to enjoy the kookiness of red wallpaper, oversized Chinese pop-art and a bathroom with a mirrored feature wall. There was a balcony with french doors that opened from the living room and you could look down on the canyons of Causeway Bay. These are the pleasures of staying in an apartment instead of a hotel. That lived-in feel, that personal touch, that sense of reality - however heightened and perfected and stylised - that makes you feel instantly comfortable. Find the right one and it might even make you feel like something of a local, picking out cakes from Zoe's across the road, the classic breakfast set from Cafe Matchbox one street down. That's the kind of travel experience I love. Thank you for having us Apartment O!

 

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moi je joue

Life

I may be the only person in the whole world to hold this opinion but if you gave me a Brigitte / Jane ultimatum it would be Brigitte every time. I love Jane, I do, I love those long legs and those crochet dresses and those little baskets and that messy hair but there's something about Brigitte that just makes your heart melt. After all, this was the woman that je t'aime moi non plus was written about. And if that song doesn't make you melt then nothing will. Our zeitgeist seems to be leaning more and more to the simple, understated beauty, and while I am all for that, every now and then I like a little indulgence. After all, we wouldn't be able to truly understand the understated elegance of Jane if we didn't have the sheer power of a bombshell like Brigitte, would we?

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big jet plane

I've handed in my papers and I'm free at last (what a blast!) I keep forgetting the fact that I'm not actually free, that I'm now just over the first hurdle and onto the last straight, that I'm working on my thesis for the remainder of the year. But I figure that one day of dreaming won't hurt me. I'm off to Hong Kong to do more research and see my family for a week, more frequent updates from my instagram (@hannahroserose), though you know me, I'm never able to fully separate from here. I hope everyone's end of exams/semester/term/financial year went fantastically. I think we've all earned a bit of a break. 

If anyone has any Hong Kong tips I'm always open to them! Comment here or email me hryee1@hotmail.com - I'm particularly after breakfast spots, the one thing I think Hong Kong is lacking...

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soups

Nikki To for Broadsheet

If, like me, you're stuck in a gruelling countdown to the end of semester and your toes are almost frozen off with chill and all you want is a bowl of something steaming hot filled with some noodles or meat or potatoes or vegetables or pulses or all of the above or nothing then look no further than the list of sydney's best soups I compiled for Broadsheet. This was a fun article to write.

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cinematic style - overalls on film

Abbie Cornish in Candy // Samantha Mathis in the extraordinarily underrated Jack and Sarah // Demi Moore in Striptease // Mena Suvari in the truly awful (but doesn't she look cute?) American Virgin // Jennifer Aniston in The Object of My Affection

overalls are everything.

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the blues

one // two // three

Late nights and early mornings got me with a serious case of the denim blues.

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the local harvest collective

Luisa Brimble for Broadsheet

A piece I did for Broadsheet on a new business in Potts Point that packages up locally-sourced fresh organic produce and other goodies for you (like toasted muesli, hand-churned butter and a bunch of fresh flowers, how clever!), taking the stress and inconvenience out of shopping. It's called The Local Harvest Collective and it's kind of dreamy. See the full article here.

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repose

Kate Moss by Bruce Weber

Vogue Italia October 1996

I feel like I have spent the last few weeks (including most of my Melbourne research trip!) stuck in libraries. I've always loved libraries, I've loved their stillness and quiet severity, that hushed solitude of endless shelves of books, the slow rumble of photocopy machines. But today I think I'm going a little stir crazy. I know it will be over (for now, anyway, don't even get me started on when I have to write my thesis) next week, and I'll be able to drop all my books back in the after-hours chute and celebrate by cancelling all my inter-library loans (crazy times) but right now, right now, I just want to get out. I want to sit in a movie cinema and watch something awful and eat popcorn. Help.

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melbourne

amour a la lumiere - the tumblr of my favourite instagram @mrpaddingtonbear

Melbourne, you're wonderful. I don't ever want to leave.

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New York's backyard

Leonard McCombe // Central Park in the summer of '61 // Life

Still writing that paper on Central Park, still feeling the love.

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I Love Mr Mittens

We joked around fashion week that it was the dream team but it's starting to really feel that way. Who doesn't love working with their friends? Talisa, Rachel and I did this illustrated campaign for I Love Mr Mittens celebrating crisp, sugar-snap mornings, mugs of tea gripped with two hands and layer upon layer upon countless layers.

Photography | Rachel Kara       Design & Illustration | Talisa Sutton       Words | Hannah-Rose Yee

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that girl

source // screencaps from the superga x garance video

And just like that, I want long hair again.

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city girl

the selby

When I think of New York I think of her. The friend who becomes family, the family who becomes friends. I think of being young and cold and really young. Of doing the stupid things you do when you're a teenager. Of sitting together on her fire-escape and dreaming big, wholesome, happy dreams while snow fell around us. Of eating Van Leeuwen ice cream by the barrel-load. Of catching the F train everywhere. Of no worries. Of tuna melts and pizza slices. Of getting lost, and she a local! Of laughing in drugstore aisles and wholefoods and her hallway and the corner of court and pacific. Of sweating the small stuff. Of apricot jam and camembert. Of reading lying on the floor, propped up on elbows. Of being so very, very young. Of feeling like it was all our playground, like it belonged to us, no, of knowing that it did. I wonder if we achieve our plan of living together in New York after university/college is over whether it will feel the same. I wonder whether you can really truly love a city like you do when you see it for the first time through the eyes of your best friend.

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