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Kensington Street, Chippendale (Lower Mekong + Koi Dessert Bar)

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We explored a very special secret place this weekend. I say 'secret' because it is relatively new and it's not easy to find unless you know about it as it's tucked away right next to Central Park. I recently heard about this place from a friend and coincidentally, one of my other friend's planned our group dinner there. It is the cutest lane ever, full of modern Asian vibes. We dined at a Vietnamese restaurant called Lower Mekong. Their food is seriously amazing. All of their dishes sounded so good on the menu, we had trouble deciding what to eat. Vietnamese Noodle salad ($14) Vietnamese pancakes (bottom) I ordered the Vietnamese noodle salad and I absolutely loved it! There aren't many restaurants where you get a good veggie serve in a meal and this is where dish was an exception. It was wholesome and satisfying. It is the kind of light meal you'd eat at home. I also tried the spring rolls for entree and enjoyed it. My friend's
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Last day of uni (Black Star Pastry + Grill'd)

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Last Friday was our last day back at uni, it was kinda sad but more exciting at the same time! We had made plans to celebrate afterwards at Newtown.  I've seen so many people raving about the Strawberry Watermelon cake at Black Star Pastry so that's we decided to settle for dessert. We finished uni at 4, got a little speech from our lovely coordinator, took a year group photo and set off on the walk to Newtown. It was kind of early for dinner so we decided to have dessert first. We got to Black Star Pastry at 5:01 and were devastated to see it had already closed! We were late by a minute (they close at 5). Despite our efforts of knocking on the door, the staff inside did not open up to apologize. But while looking at the door we realised there was another pop-up store at Town Hall. We had to decide whether we would chase it or leave it, and we chose to do the former, for obvious reasons! We desperately wanted that cake! We went to Town Hall and took a while to f
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(Un) Organised October

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This month has gone by way too quick! (Okay, I know I said that last month too but this month went even quicker) It started off with me madly writing my results, then doing discussion. Discussion took me about a week :/ I was rushing to finish my draft because I had to send it to my supervisor and leave enough time for feedback. I allowed myself two weeks time (which I thought was too much, at the time!) But I was so glad I did this later because it can take a couple of days to get feedback as supervisors are too busy to read it in one go. Anyway, now let me move onto the other fun things I did. Starting off with the most important highlight of the month: I WENT TO CENTRAL PERK!!!! I was so bogged down with writing, I almost didn't realise it was finishing and made it in the last weekday after handing in my draft. I had to wait for about an hour but I would say the wait was worth it because I'm such a 'friends' obsessed freak. Getting my butt on that cou
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Black Star Pastry (Strawberry Watermelon Cake)

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Some of you might know about the desperate attempt I made last year for the Strawberry Watermelon Cake (see previous post at  Black Star Pastry ).  Yesterday I had the privilege of tasting this cake at a party. I got super excited as I’ve been wanting to try this for almost a year now. I was so tempted to just skip the mains but I patiently waited for dessert time and made sure I left space for the cake :P In the meantime, I went to take a close look at the cake (could not resist, for obvious reasons) and I was amazed at how magical it looked. It was constructed beautifully starting with a layer of almond  dacquoise followed by cream, then a slice of watermelon with cream,   almond  dacquoise and cream again. Finally, it was topped with strawberries, pistachios and dried rose petals. It was a quite a delicious cake but unfortunately, it did not meet the expectations I had. I liked certain elements, such as the lightness of the cream layers, fresh watermelon and the
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Lal Qila

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This was my first time trying Pakistani cuisine. I've heard strong recommendations about this restaurant from a friend so we decided to give it a try. I was told their kebabs were one of the most popular items. In addition to this, we ordered an appetiser and a side. The appetiser arrived fairly quick. I was amazed at just how delicious it tasted! It was a combination of spinach, lentils, potato, puffed rice, nuts, raisins and finally, topped with yoghurt, tamarind and mint. The combination of sweet, sour and chilli was absolutely beautiful. There was so much flavour and crunch in this dish. I could've left this restaurant happily without trying anything else! Lahori Chatkhare ($11.9) Bihari kebab ($16.9) The Bihari kebab came next, I've heard of many places that don't make it the right way (either use minced meat as a shortcut or don't marinate it enough). This however, was done really well. The meat was so soft that it almost brok
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Loss and grief- the sister I never met

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As you can tell from the title, this is not my usual cooking or dining shenanigans story. This is actually quite sensitive so only read if you're okay with a mushy topic like this. Today, I had the privilege to attend a talk at my work where a lady spoke about the loss of her newborn baby. She was absolutely amazing, I'm not one that usually gets emotional hearing other people talk about their losses but I did get teary in this one towards the end. It only took me a few seconds to work out why, it was because it triggered something else. But first, I want to share the lady's story before I tell you mine. The lady spoke about her baby who died two days after he was born because of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. This basically means, for some reason her baby had stopped receiving oxygen a week prior to her labour. He was in NICU after he was born but he had never opened his eyes, he had no brain function. She spoke about all these memories she made with her baby w
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International Congress of Behavioural Medicine | Melbourne

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My flight faced major delays due to severe thunderstorms in Sydney. We had to wait for over two hours, most of which were on the plane so it was incredibly exhausting. Thankfully, the weather in Melbourne was much better. It was pretty cold and windy, it felt nice to get out of the scorching heat :) Leaving behind a stormy Sydney After reuniting with the bestie, we went out for dinner to a local Malaysian restaurant close to our home. Sweet and sour prawns with rice  Nasi Lemak Pineapple fried rice and seafood stir-fry I had one whole day to myself before the conference began on Wednesday, and we wanted to make the most out of this.  Oh, hello there, new friend! We had breakfast at Myuna Farm which was a few mins from our house. I loved their veggie focacia.  Brekkie at Myuna Farm  Veggie focacia ($9) Sweet treats at Myuna Farm Next stop was archery, my bestie has been an archer for sometime now, and we have been wanting t
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Manageable March

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I started this month feeling overwhelmed and out of control, both emotionally and physically (playing the catch-up game with my workload). As I have said, I have had a lot going in my life in the past couple of months. While the majority of it has left a very positive influence in my life, there are some areas of it where negativity continues to tingle. I have told myself I will focus on the sunny side of it, work around this to normalise it as much as possible. The good news is that I have succeeded; I have managed to focus my shift back to work, and it has been working so far. However, there are occasions when my mind starts drifting away into the other land. But happy to say, I have been pretty productive this month, managed to get through ethics applications, two paper revisions (almost) and a few other things. In other news, I have finally started working on our wedding day blog. It took me a while to start because I wanted to wait until my ‘mental load’ reduced a little. We h
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Fast February

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Gosh, this month has gone so quick (even with the extra day that this leap year has given us!) I started my PhD at the beginning of this month and can't believe it has been a month already. I've been trying to adjust myself to the full-time (9 to 5) work routine. Right now, I am working on my paper from last year and starting a new SLR. To be honest, it has been a hard juggle but I'm slowly learning (safe to say!) I think the key is that you have to accept the fact that there will be ups and downs and you're not going to be super productive everyday.  For the majority of the time, I have stuck to very simple/ quick options (as you can tell from the pictures below) except for the Brazilian Passionfruit cake which was for a very special occasion (see recipe here ). Other than that, I started using my bamboo steamer during the Chinese New Year time. I have always wanted to use one of these, hopefully I can do some experiment cooking with it soon :) I
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Active April

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Gosh, I honestly don’t know where the month has gone! Yes, I know you’re going to say that I say that literally every month. But I suppose time does fly quicker as you are getting older. Speaking of which, I turned 24 this month. My dad insisted on celebrating, but I think I am just getting to the age where I prefer to keep my birthday a quiet business and hide away. I got spoilt with some great presents and cake, of course! I had a lot of cake this month. I have had a few moments of hibernation this month, it does help with my internal struggle sometimes which is still ongoing, but I’m trying to deal with it in a different way (some of you would probably know about this from my previous monthly blogs ). In terms of work, I have been juggling endless things this month. The student projects have been quite time-consuming, particularly because I needed to obtain ethics approval for one of them which needed a lot of work. The good news is that we were recently approved and currently r
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