The Launch of Viginti et Ignotum 2013

Recently, I was invited to the launch party of Viginiti et Ignotum at the Art Gallery of Calgary. I was invited to this event by the creator and owner of Veti Brand, Genevieve Abaya. I met her during high school many years ago and have always thought she was super adorable and admired her determination in school.

From the website, "Viginti et Ignotum is Latin for Twenty & Unknown;  a call to bringing a difference through society at a point in your life when you've just exited the teens and entered into adulthood."

According to Genevieve, the Veti Brand springboards young adults and rising businesses into the community in personal and professional areas via unique consultation services, fashion and artistic merchandise aimed at the consumer.

It began because she wanted to find a way to give back to the international community through the launch of the 20/20 Tee Concept. For every major city that they are in, the Veti Brand uses local artists and local businesses to create their designs for their t-shirts for that year. For every t-shirt sold, 20% will be given back to a local non-profit organization. 

This year they have teamed up with Dave "Davey Gravey" Lieske creating the Onward 2013 t-shirts. The pictures on his shirt display how Lieske views and experiences Calgary. Currently there are two designs launched on their website: the Collage style and Grid style. They are priced at $20 each. I did not manage to grab pictures of their shirts at the event but here's the pictures taken off their website. I will link underneath the pictures of the t-shirts where you can order them. For their current concept, 20% of each shirt will be donated to the Art Gallery of Calgary for their future projects and funding of young artists. 

Click here for the "Collage" style of the Onward 2013 Tee

Click here for the "Grid" style of the Onward 2013 Tee

The Veti Brand launch party was held on Friday, April 26, 2013. Since it was held in the Art Gallery of Calgary, attendees were able to walk through the three floors that was opened then to view the Vanity Fair Exhibition by Craig Le Blanc. The art exhibit was a great pleasure to view; Lance and I were saying how we would love to come to these exhibits in the future in order to support local artists but also view some great contemporary art

This is possibly the my most favourite piece by Craig Le Blanc because my gamer tag has always been PinkRevolver so when Lance pointed this out to me, I was over the moon! Currently my gamer tag for League of Legends is BananaRevolver because someone else took it. Darn! D=< 

But don't you think BananaRevolver is much more hilarious? Bahahaha. 

Bang bang! I was wearing a FXXI basic long white sleeve top and a red vintage Christian Dior woolen skirt that night. Paired with my yellow loafers bought from a market in Singapore, a wide-tiered golden Aldo necklace and I was carrying the Louis Vuitton Saumur 35.

This was Lance's favourite piece. He's loves turtles especially baby ones. His current background on his computer is a baby turtle swimming in the ocean. Lol.

This one really tears the heart strings because I used to tell Lance this when we got into fights. Fortunately I learned that this was immature and not the way to solve fights 

Hello floating chairs!

They had a couple of Calgary DJs playing that night. Here is one of the DJs on the bottom floor that I quite enjoyed. He was spinning a lot of dance-pop music.

Here is the shopping room which hosted local vendors. Unfortunately I am quite broke so there was no spending there. =(

This is one of the displays of their t-shirts when you first walk into the art gallery. 

I like how they're rolled up like a scroll. 

 Gift bag from the Veti Brand launch with yummy treats and coupons in it. 

Free shirt from the event. I made Lance model this one. 

Silly's shirt is all crumpled, as you can see he's already been wearing it. 

There was a fashion show during the launch party that displayed some beautiful dresses by Mark Abenir. I regret not taking more pictures of the opening dress. The back was super gorgeous with multiple black strings criss-crossing. The third dress was the best in my eyes. I would totally wear this if I was back in high school for the graduation dinner. The details of this dress was exquisite. The black lace, the back and feathers - beautiful. 

Overall I really enjoyed myself at this event. Gen was really able to bring together a wide variety of artistic mediums in fashion, art, music, and good old human interaction to create a atmosphere of inspiration; I guess if you were to look back at it, this would be a great example as to what the Veti brand can provide in the future. It was a night needed out as a break from exams. I am quite surprised with the turnout of people at the event and am quite proud of Gen! Congratulations on the launch of the Veti Brand and I wish you all the best in your success. I can't wait to see this expand and take the world by storm.

Please check out the Veti Brand at http://www.vetibrand.com/. 
You can follow them on twitter @vetibrand.

Wrapping Up My Exam Week

Pardon moi for my disappearance I've been quite busy with term end projects, papers and exams. Nonetheless I will be back to blogging in the next few days so please stay tuned!! 

For now I will leave you with this beauty I saw in Calgary a few days ago.

Ciao!

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Cravings: Pandan Waffles!!

Mmm, craving this little treat at the moment!!! If only they were made available over here in Canada. It would be such a sweet treat! I got this little bad boy from Bugis Street in Singapore when I was there back in November. My sisters and I tried to get it as often as we could when we were there because it is so delicious. During this trip I was pretty shocked in how hard it was to find pandan waffles because when we visited Singapore in 2004, they were everywhere. Nonetheless I enjoyed it, especially with strawberry ice cream. Yum!

Now you're probably wondering what pandan waffle is right? Well it is simply just a waffle made with pandan flavouring and coconut milk. I'm honestly dreaming of the taste right now. It's awesome. Maybe if I can find some pandan extract here I'll attempt to make it, but for now I will keep on searching!

More Burgers? More Burgers It Is!

This past month Lance and I have had the pleasure of visiting three burger places. Two of them happened to be Fatburger and South St. Burger Co.

Fatburger was so disappointing. I was excited to eat here way before it opened but unfortunately the burger patty was very thin and dry. The toppings were so-so. I don't think I would eat here again, but I would totally buy the fries again. Sooooo good! It had the perfect crispiness that you would want in fries as well it was so inside after you bit into it. What?! So yummy.

South St. Burger Co. was alright. Not the greatest. They did have a lot of interesting sauces like garlic mayo, wasabi mayo and mango chutney. Well those were the ones that I could list off the top of my head. Oh I like that they had guacamole. Nom nom.

Banff Day 2

Day 2 started with a McDonald's breakfast that was conveniently down the road. We didn't really know where to grab breakfast until we explored the town and McDonald's usually hits the spot. 

My nails for the trip.

The day was pretty grey and gloomy, but that didn't matter to us. We walked up to the park to snap some pictures of the surrounding. I secretly wished I saw a moose as I had seen one there years ago.  Our walk was pretty peaceful since it was pretty deserted. We were able to chat and catch up with one another. Nonetheless here's some beautiful mountains and a frozen river that you could walk across!

On our walk we found a gazebo which we decided to take more pictures. I'm such a dork because I had the camera on timer but I couldn't tell whether it was on so here's me running to Lance. LOL. It's okay because we ended up with a good picture after. We proceeded to have a little photo shoot on the steps of the gazebo after.

Oh don't mind me, I'm just touching the tip of the mountain. =)

After walking around for a bit, Lance got hungry so we had to go grab some food. Lance had ramen on his mind since he walked past it in the morning when he bought breakfast. I didn't really have a choice so it ramen it was. MMMM. Such a good choice. It's right beside McDonald's on Banff Avenue. It's such a tiny cramped restaurant but the ramen was one of the best I've eaten in a long time. I got the Tan Tan Ramen which had an extremely flavorful base.  It's mildly spicy and peanutty. The portion was just perfect for me and it doesn't cost very much. Lance and I were discussing how this was better than going to a fast food restaurant because you're getting a much healthier meal here and your food comes out here uber fast! It's definitely authentic in my books. 

After eating, we walked around town and visited a few souvenir shops. We even went to a thrift store! LOL, I love thrift stores. They're so fun to look through and see what people actually gave away. Sadly there weren't any vintage beauties to add to my collection that day. I loved exploring the town even though it was so small. It's just so great because of the different tiny stores on the streets, you just want to peek through and look at all the little gems. I was able to stop by David's Tea to pick up some oolong tea as I was a bit sick and wanted to make some at night while we were cozying up in our room.

Of course, since a few hours have past, Lance was getting a bit tired from walking around (poor him) so we had to make another stop for him to eat. This guy just eats and eats. Apparently he hates when he asked me whether I'm hungry and I say no. I imagine this is what he looks like on the inside. D:< We went to the Old Spaghetti Factory to eat and ran into our waitress from Giorgio's Trattoria. Small town! She's so sweet, I kind of wish we got to know her; not in a creepy way... LOL!

After lunch number 2 (what a fatty), we went back to the hotel to grab our swimming things and took a taxi up to the Hot Springs. Ahhh, such a perfect relaxation time. The sun was almost setting and we had such a great view of the mountains from where we were sitting. Well actually, I got the great view. Lance couldn't see anything without his glasses, hahaha. It was perfect because even though the air was so COLD, the water was just perfect. I didn't even want to leave. Except we had to leave eventually and while I was in the change room, I happened to walk past two girls who wouldn't stop glaring at me. When I past them I heard one of them ask the other whether she thought my boobs were real. Really?! Really? Because 21 years old, I have 10g's to drop on a pair of perfect plastic boobs. LOL. This isn't the first time strangers have said this about me. I even had people yell at me from their car asking me "are those real?" Hahaha. I guess I'm honored people think they're "big, fake, perfect" because, baby, I was born with it. WELL not born with it. But they grew naturally. You know what I mean. That would be creepy if babies were born with boobs. EWWW.

Just a lonely moose slowly melting outside the hotspring.

Moving on then... 

We headed back to the hotel to drop our things off and proceeded to dinner. I was kind of scared that we would be late as it was about 8pm when we arrived at The Bison. Luckily there were fellow patrons arriving much later than we were. We were able grab a table there quickly and ordered. We had the bison carpaccio to start and I had the bison ribeye with extra veggies, no potatoes while Lance and the rabbit leg... UGH I can't believe he got the rabbit since we have a bunny together. I don't know what he was thinking but he said he enjoyed his meal. Oh well. It was interesting having bison because I've never had it before. I mean it tasted like beef but aren't they closely related anyways? I was pretty pleased that they were accommodating to me not wanting the potatoes but more vegetables. The interior had a great vibe to it, but it was definitely too dark for my taste. For dessert, we got the beer-a-misu and creme brulee to share. YUM. I kind of ended up eating the whole creme brulee to myself because it had the perfect creamy custardy taste to it and the shortbread cookies that accompanied it melted in your mouth. LOL, I am so selfish. 

Rabbit leg.

Bison rib-eye.

We ended our day with another Dexter session while Lance drank some of his beers. EWWW. Beer bottles have such funny and intriguing labels.