Word of the week: Kâi-wàt - Cold

In my life: Delayed weekly notes for the last two weeks mainly because other writing took over my life after my last post. Also the last two weeks feel like a blur honestly. Someone once told me that the older you get the faster time seems to go by and that seems so true. I can’t believe we are in June already.

We’re also clearly well and truly in winter now. Even though the weather is slightly less chilly than last year, it’s been a mix of grey, rainy, foggy, windy days with an odd sunny day in between. The puffer jackets are out and the heating on at nights.

On the work front, my contract finally got renewed, which is good but it’s becoming busier again as we get to our end of financial year freeze period.

On the fitness & health front, I went to gym three times last week as my trainer is travelling home in June. I’ll have some extra sessions this week and in the weeks after she comes back as well.

I have been fairly consistent on walks except on Sunday. I woke up thinking I wanted to go for a long walk at lunch time but was just feeling not great by then - had a stuffy nose and just felt meh overall so asked Sathya if we could skip it.

I also got my yearly blood tests in. It will be interesting to see what effect all the medication, lifestyle and diet changes have had on those numbers. The doctor also suggested getting a bone density test as a baseline - Asian women have a harder time with their bone health - so got that done on Friday.

On the guitar front, I love that we’re learning how to read sheet music and that it’s finally clicking in for me. There are a lot of guitar tabs out there but learning sheet music means someday I can transfer those skills to the piano as well. Improv continues to be rough.

Other than that it’s been fairly quiet with the exception of a visit from Sathya’s old classmate and his wife. They stayed over last Saturday and we spent some time catching up with them, talking about their trips, music, food, and work.

I’ve also kept up messaging my sister consistently these two weeks and that felt really good. We just talk about what we cooked or ate or small things we did or I send her a lot of coffee shots which she hearts. No pressure on both sides, just a general, hey I’m here for you kind of thing.

On my screens:

  1. The Next Prince (Thai, Queer, Ongoing): Lot of changes from the book but all for the better I think. This continues to be good and I can’t wait to see more
  2. My Golden Blood (Thai, Queer, Supernatural, Completed): This was a good show. Gavin was brilliant as always and the plot and all the vampire references kept me hooked.

I also watched one of those random Chinese “I died after being mistreated and reincarnated in the past” dramas. It popped up on my feed as an ad for one of those vertical drama apps and I somehow couldn’t stop watching. It ended very abruptly though.

On my bookshelf: I am continuing to read Foundation when I get time and my spy fanfic as it updates.

I also read one of those random short chapter novels on one of the short form content apps. Clearly the Instagram ads are working on me. Good for Sathya I guess. 😅

On my pages: I got my story outlined and wrote two more chapters. I can’t believe I wrote another ~5k words. It’s been such a long time since I’ve actually finished writing stuff and posted what I’ve written instead of endlessly editing the same outline or the first chapter and it feels really good. I’m trying to write a chapter a week here.

On my playlist: This popped up on my playlist randomly while I was out on a walk and it made me literally stop in my tracks as I heard the lyrics. It seemed like it was written by someone who had a very hard life. Saved it for later and looked it up at home and realised that it’s a collab between two South Korean artists, Tablo from Epik High and RM from BTS.

Can't run away from the pain
I feel like I'm goin insane
Bad thoughts fillin up my brain
Demons swimmin' inside my veins
Two seconds
From fallin' into nothing
Can't run away from the pain
I'm tryna stop the rain

On my plate: We had some good food these past weeks - tried out a Japanese BBQ place in Crows Nest and a popular bakery/cafe in Cammeray. I also made some Indian food, pizza, a sugar free cake and made some lamb following a RecipeTinEats recipe. I found some lactose free cottage cheese so have been using that as topping/dressing on my salads to get some extra protein in. I also took the chance to try out some new cafés when I went out for walks.

On my camera: I haven’t really done much outside of photographing things on my walk. I have been meaning to go on a photo walk as it’s Vivid time but haven’t done that due to weather and work, maybe I can try to go sometime this week.

Out of all the photos I took this week though, this one at a small coffee shop is my favourite. It’s not the best technically I know, there’s vehicles in the frame that I wish weren’t there. But something about looking out the window on that rainy day felt very peaceful and a little nostalgic.

Thanks for tagging along!