I went to SXSW

The Thursday before last I left for SXSW in Austin, Texas. If you haven't heard of it, it's a huge music, interactive, film and fashion festival that occurs each year. For some reason the organiser asked me to speak on a panel about the future of fashion and technology, I thought why on earth not?

So I packed my bags and left a few days later. To cut a very long story short, I had a great time and met some awesome people. It was my first time travelling by myself overseas and I was a little bit taken aback by my spontaneity. I'm glad I went, although I will never ever ever fly United ever again. My bags were lost on 5 out of 6 of my flights with them and they smashed open my lock.

Then when I tried to get home, I missed my flight from SF to Sydney due to the tornadoes in Austin. It was so surreal flying around the storms, in a small jet nonetheless! It was actually really fun and I met a couple of really lovely musicians who were also stranded. Silly me hadn't heard of their band before and when I arrived home I realised that they're actually really well-known. I'm such a dweeb sometimes.

I had to fly via Auckland and was then told that they hadn't booked my flight back to Australia, oh and they lost my bags again. I swear my cheeky bag must have grew legs and ran around the plane.

Now for the food....this is what I ate on Sunday at the W Hotel. It was so yummy and definitely goes by the philosophy of everything being bigger in Texas!

Yummy mexican vanilla cupcake from Delish! I also purchased an oreo cupcake, which I devoured before I could take a photo of.

The crepe cafe! This was a charming little cafe run by a French couple. The queue was so long, but well worth it. I had the Chloe crepes, with sugar, nutella and strawberries. This was my breakfast pre-panel. To say I was nervous was an understatement, although I was so incredibly jet-lagged.

Poor bike-cab guy had to take me from 3rd to 11th street, up hill. I gave him a huge tip, because I felt so bad. It was slightly terrifying riding on that through Texan traffic though.

note: if you've read my last post, you'd know that my engagement ring was damaged. We've since found out that the damage is irreparable. So now we're going to lodge a claim and hopefully be compensated. Funnily enough I found another ring that I love just as much in Austin...