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Letters Through The Verse
In mid-2021, a writer I am friends with on Twitch and Discord – MelodyRelody – brought up a writing project of sorts that she wanted to try, and hadn’t had the chance to yet as there was not a group of people who were as interested in it or had the means for it. As it was brought up in HayleyHCreates‘ writing server, naturally, there were a number of us intrigued by it. Interest? Check. Means? For the most part, check. Numbers? Check. And so, “letters through the verse” began. We divided ourselves into two groups – those of us capable of sending physical letters, and those of us who…
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Feel Good; The Hallmark Way
And I thought I had been doing so well too. I suppose that tells me not to pat myself on the back too quickly, huh? My impromptu two week break started because of what will go down as one of the worst weeks of my life. Testing positive for Covid, only for my youngest to fall sick while I was in isolation? Horrible feeling, unable to care for her, unable to go with her to the hospital. On top of that, the same day she was hospitalised, my grandfather passed. Yeah, horrible week, really. But things are looking up. My grandfather was not well for a long time, and he’s…
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3 Ways To Spice Up Your Instant Noodles
There’s this trend these days on TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts on how to ‘hack’ your instant noodles. Ways to dress up the straight-forward and make something new out of the same old. As someone who was tired of the instant noodles she was having – someone who stopped eating instant noodles almost completely – this interested me. What sort of suggestions were there? What could I adapt for myself? And then I saw these videos and – I mean, I’m sure they’re great. I’m sure they’re tasty. But a lot of these hacks involve a lot of prep work, and when I want to eat instant noodles,…
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Books I Was Looking Forward To In 2021
I started a very ambitious blog post in 2020. I mean, at the time, it didn’t seem ambitious. It felt doable. Manageable, and with the amount I had read in 2020, it felt within my reach. And then 2021 happened, and slowly, I realised, no, I can’t do any of this, though I refused to admit defeat for at least half the year. RIP 2021 me, you had high hopes. Defeat wound up being admitted, this blog went on hiatus, and by the end of the year, I had all of one review up on the blog and had forgotten everything else I had read. I did read and write…
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What’s New In 2022
Has it been a ride to get to 2022 or what? It’s certainly felt like it! There were so many things I had wanted to accomplish in 2021, and while some of them I am working on, many things felt like they had fallen on the wayside. But it is a new year, and a fresh start. As I write this post, I sit in home quarantine at my parents’ place, meeting them after almost two years. My kids – the younger of whom is meeting them for the first time – are asleep, and I can make some headway on one of the things I want to accomplish this…
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blogging break 2021
It is September 2021. You look around you and you realise more than half the year has passed by and you’ve posted one review, completed one book, and been struggling to keep your head afloat while the world struggles around you as well. You started this post in July. I think the first I realised that this was okay was when I read Kate’s blog post How To Overcome Blogging Fatigue. Having a name for what I was feeling made me take a step back and realise, hey, it’s okay to feel burned out despite not having actually done much. The situation we are facing now is mentally and emotionally…
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jul – sept 2020; it’s a wrap
Surprisingly, this wrap-up isn’t late! The new organisational system I’m slowly trying to incorporate into my life is really helping. This past quarter has been equal parts a blur and so slow, I just want it to be 2021 already. But then, my second trimester during my first pregnancy was much the same. It’s just that the situation the world over isn’t really helping. The bright side is that we’re going out a little more – to places that are not too full of people and always wearing a mask – so we get a change of pace and of scenery. We actually just went to a beach again, had…
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#goodreadance2020; how did i do?
September has come to an end, and with it, the official #GoodReadance2020 as hosted by Shealea @ Shut Up, Shealea comes to a close as well. If you’ve seen my BookTube video, you would know that this was an initiative that really excited me, because I’ve been wanting to reorganise my Goodreads, and even the shelf I use for my BookTube filming. However, around mid-September, I wondered if I would even be able to cross off more than one thing on my short goal list. Let’s see how I did with each individual goal! Go through my TBR.I didn’t go through the ‘Want To Read’ shelf at first, instead going…
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apr – jun 2020; it’s a wrap
Another very late wrap-up, but well. This year has been really long, hasn’t it? I was so hopeful in the first quarter that things could not get worse. I was wrong. I guess hindsight really is 20/20, eh? Eh? But seriously though, while the lockdown here in Malaysia is not as strict as the first few months, we’re still taking care. I am immuno-compromised so i’m trying not to take too many risks, but I do have doctor’s appointments pretty much every month that I have to go for, and so we’ve been eating out those few days. My reading has been all over the place – May and June…
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sarc2020 starter kit; where you could begin
A while back, I realised I was not reading as many South Asian stories as I would have liked. Maybe because growing up I couldn’t get my hands on many. The shelves of bookstores and libraries near me were filled with internationally published books – and almost all of them were white. So it was a nice change when more South Asian stories started to be published in the ‘mainstream’. The first time I read a story that mentioned a myth I grew up hearing – the book was Roshani Chokshi’s The Star-Touched Queen and the myth was the story of Harnakash and his son Prahlad – I had to…