I had plenty of face time with Jik this month. Early this month, we visited Sydney for Mardi Gras, and she is spending her Easter weekend here in Melbourne. This means loads of girl time discussing anything and everything under the sun.
Meanwhile, the Sydney trip was great. I stayed at her apartment, met up with friends, had breakfast at Devon and lunch at Shalom, went thrice to Kinokuniya, and ate plenty of watermelon cheesecake. Jik also introduced me to a few new places, which I will elaborate on in the half-written Weekend in Sydney post.
Fafa and I picked Cape Schanck, the southern part of the Mornington Peninsula, as the destination for this month’s road trip and drove there last weekend. We stopped by a pebble beach and stayed by the waterside for some time, sharing light conversations and big dreams. It was one of my favourite memories of us in Australia so far.
I also visited Melbourne Uni; caught up with Newman on a steak night; attended the Moon class; read The Woman In The Window by A J Finn for the book club discussion; had spicy noodle at Tina’s Noodle Kitchen (I am going back there again!) and drank honey wine, both for the first time; ate at doode paidang too many times, and fell in love with a pup called Archer.
Liz celebrated her birthday dinner at Xiao Long Kan Hot Pot in Boxhill. Happy Birthday, Liz! It was the best hot pot I had had in my entire life. I have been dreaming about it ever since, so much so that I invited my work teammates for a hot pot session to welcome the colder months. We are going sometime next month.
I also celebrated my half-birthday with a vanilla cupcake and a bottle of Moscato. So it was fittingly half grand.
This month marked my two years in Melbourne. I celebrated by UberEats-ing poke-bowl for the first time. It made me realize two things: I don’t like this highly hyped bowl, but I freaking love my life in this happiest city in the world. Another new thing that I tried and didn’t like was the cheese bubble tea. Meanwhile, we discovered a Malaysian restaurant that prepared Singapore hawkers’ type of food in the neighbourhood. So I now know where to go to console my longings for Singapore which still pops up now and then.
The most loved Kulture Kween IG of the month was the onsen I sneakily took a picture of with my phone during our last trip to Japan. Still, about IG, I have been deleting and blocking spam followers of my account; it’s pretty time-consuming, but I prefer to have a smaller number of engaging IG communities instead of another travel.addict123987.
Kulture Kween, the blog, has a new design. It wasn’t planned. Over the long weekend, I changed its design with plenty of time to avoid the things I needed to do. As you can see, it’s still a work in progress, but do let me know what you like or don’t like about it.
Kitchen update: even though I haven’t been cooking most of the time this month, I made meatball rogan josh which blends well with the Indonesian chilli paste from Sydney. I also kept making and failing to perfect a chia pudding recipe, which means we have had chia pudding for dessert every night for the past two weeks.
I have streamlined my blog and news reading from Bloglovin and Flipboard to Feedly. I can’t say I love Feedly just yet as I haven’t set it correctly, but it’s much better than having two different, not-so-great reading apps.
Inspired by Charlotte’s post about using cruelty-free products and aligning with my goals when I moved to Melbourne, I started to be mindful of the products I applied to my skin. After a brief research, I decided to switch to natural deodorant: No Pong. So far? No complaint! So, switching to deodorant or soap would be an easy start if you are considering gradually changing to a more ethical and honest lifestyle.
This month I bought a slow cooker and half-prized Nike running shoes. I have wanted both for a while. Unfortunately, I haven’t done any slow cooking or exercising this month. Can I blame it on Mercury Retrograde?
Another purchase this month was the IRIS Oracle deck. I am not really into oracle decks, but this one caught my attention for a while. So when I had enough coffee money to get a tarot deck, I decided to get this one instead. I have been using it exclusively to get the answers to the questions, and the messages have been light-hearted, fun, and spot-on. I highly recommend this deck if you are into woo-woo stuff.
Speaking of woo-woo stuff, I recently read an article about more ways to use crystals and have been trying to utilize mine as much as possible instead of just collecting it.
The following book club meeting prompt is going to be about Biography. Since I am not a fan of Biography in general, I picked up a diary styled Get A Life by Vivienne Westwood and hoped it would pass as a Biography. Other than that, I have been pretty bad at reading this month. But that didn’t stop me from establishing the Glitter Geek Book Club with Jik. This is a BFFs-only book club with a monthly themed meeting over Skype. I will share more about it next month.
You guys must watch Queer Eye! It’s SO GOOD! I love how positive and kind all of them are. They are now officially my one-sided best friends! I also love the newest season of UnReal and Billions. Have you watched The Returned? I currently use it as the background show while I do my chores and blogging.
This month, I wrote about my Melbourne goals and last meal, my first day, and the time I cried at work. Travel-wise, I also wrote about Hobbiton, Borobudur, Disneyland, and Thousand Linggas river.
Favourite how-tos from different corners of the internet: how to make money travel blogging, how to know whether your photo is good or not, how to stop being a distracted reader, how to travel journal, how to live fully, how to get the best out of your frequent flyers points, how to use the Epsom salt you got from the hipster shop, and lastly, from yours truly: tea leaf reading.
Many exciting things are happening in April, starting with Fafa’s birthday, a long weekend with Amma and friends in Singapore, and hopefully ending with another weekend in Bali. I haven’t been to Bali for almost three years now and am looking forward to it.
Another thing I have been looking forward to in April is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. But so far, I haven’t found a show that I want to attend, so maybe we will do a comedy pub crawl instead.
Frida is back! And we will be attending monthly meditation with Sandra and a mass meditation for women in mid-month. Namaste!
Time Machine
Read more about last year’s happenings.
Follow me on Instagram @KultureKween for more recent updates.
