Monday 3 August 2015

Life lately via instagram: May, June and July 2015 edition


this, i think, is the best way to spend the weekend - a cup of coffee with someone you love. after a run, of course, but the run can be optional. i thought about what life was like before i started running regularly. i can't imagine life without running now, i am so glad that i decided to run that one fine day in October a couple of years back. i spent an extended period of time getting in and out of the same recurring injury, which was no fun at all, so i hope that i have gotten better in managing this. so many things in life are actually things we have to manage, not necessarily eliminate. i wish someone told me this when i was younger, i would've been more at peace with life with this perspective.  



baby cousin is soon off to her new adventures, and i am glad that she was in town for a bit. the nice thing about having baby cousin around is of course taking endless photos with her, and eating too much ice cream (in winter!). these green tea soft serves are my personal favourite and in my opinion taste that much better when eaten with someone else. for some reason, i can never say no to these green sugar-bombs. and oh, posing in front of a lane way like the above is an opportunity to simply be so Asian. we were somewhere near Chinatown, after all.

now on to that leather jacket. everyone loves this jacket. so much so that i keep hearing this 'request' of "i am having it if you are ever getting rid of it". ok guys. first come first serve. i'll let you know if and when that happens.

i bought the jacket a few years back. it was one of those things that i liked at first sight and it was like, yep, let's buy this and when it first arrived, it was perfect fit. then i started running and it became a looser fit (story of my wardrobe). at first it was frustrating, later on, i just layered it so that it looked less loose on me. this is one of those things that i would recommend as a wardrobe staple. i got mine in dark chocolate, because it was the only colour available in this style, and it worked fine with my wardrobe. but get any colour you want! even a contrasting colour would work fine, i reckon.


took baby cousin to a picnic in the park. this is one of those things that we probably should do in summer, but, but but. it would have been too hot to do so in summer. besides, if we were not wearing jackets/coats, then it could have passed as a summer's day. ha! it was a beautiful warm winter day, the sun was shining and it was not too cold. 

she was wearing the shoes that i got her. the story goes like this. she wanted a pair of boots. black ones. i had a pair of black boots that were absolutely ratty, so i decided to just buy her a pair. i obviously didn't manage to find a pair of black boots, but found these camel coloured ones that ended up working very well with her wardrobe! 


we decided to play tourist via brunching at one of my fave spots. the weather gods must have liked us because we got another sunny day! we ate a lot of bacon that day, but the only pic that i had is the one below, and there was no bacon in frame. it looked like i made a relatively healthy choice, but truth was that i ate bacon. a lot of it.

and you can't really tell from this pic, but i was actually really ill that day. i have been ill most of June and July, and no one can really tell just from looking at me. ha! it's not magic, it's just one of those things. now i know what it feels like to be one of those people who feel really ill but look and function fine.

don't let the absence of bacon in the pic fooled you. 

guess who has been cooking! the cooking bug has returned you guys! most of the time we are just too hungry to take a pic before we eat, and in the rare occasion that i have a phone near by, these are what i manage to capture. 


these sweet potato balls were so labour intensive. and so were the satays in the background. the story goes like this. we were at a grocery store and spotted some purple sweet potatoes. i must be one of the biggest noobs in this planet because i naively thought that these were actually purple on the inside, because of the name. imagine my disappointment upon finding out that they were white on the inside. colour shock aside, they were of a different texture to the orange sweet potatoes, and so i decided to improvise by making them into balls instead of pancakes.


satays again! despite being labour intensive, i reckon these are worth every bit of hard work put into them. there is something seriously addictive about meat on skewers. these are my take on the Indonesian style, although any South East Asian country would have its own version of satay, each one tastes slightly differently from the next. as you can tell from the photo, i did not have the patience to make small version that time, so maybe next time - and trust me, there would be plenty of next times to perfect this dish. 

i must say that i am growing to enjoy cooking a lot more these days. i would not call myself a capable cook, just a less reluctant one. i don't think my kitchen experiments are always successful, and you know what, i am okay with that. if i fail so miserably, we would just have to resort to eating instant noodles. or the Thai take out around the corner. always have a plan B, and you'll be right. 


ok, last picture! this is one of my fave spots for Vivid Sydney this year - the lights were projected onto a tunnel and this was what we saw when we looked up. i am never a fan of peacocks or the colour green, yet this projection moved me - for reasons that i can't quite articulate. perhaps it was because it was late at night and it wasn't as cold as last year, and my baby cousin had her camera out, while i was just enjoying a rather isolated moment with my phone camera. i still struggle taking photos at night, probably should've gotten my camera out, and probably should've gotten a better lens, but hey - one nice pic is enough for me.