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This was probably my best month this year because I had my first ever conference/ mini holiday. But it didn't start off that great, I had to learn how to use a software called Stata for statistical analysis. I struggled a lot in the beginning because I had no idea how to set up the data or what code to use. (Stata has a command interface). It took me a really long time to figure out what I needed to do. I went through a long process of trial and error and seeking help when I got stuck. The first part of the analysis didn't take as long but the rest of it took me longer than I expected. I had set myself a deadline to finish it before I leave for the conference (but failed). However, the good news is, it finally worked in the end! I felt super accomplished after getting all my outputs. I think I'm slowly learning to be persistent! I thought I would be ready to write up after this but turns out, I still have to do another quality and tool validity assessme

Black Star Pastry (Strawberry Watermelon Cake)

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

Father's Day 2015

I asked my daddy, "what kind of cake do you want for Father's Day?" He said, "just a plain cake with nothing on it." He's just too easy and kind on me! Happy Father's Day! I've spent so long looking for a perfect card for this Father's Day but they just don't seem to be have what I was looking for. I wanted something with a nice long message but all the ones I saw had dull cover pages. Then I came across this superdad one and I found it to be quite appropriate for us because he has been like a 'superhero' to me. I ended up getting this cute tatty bear one and thought I'd just write my own long message here and force him to read this later :P So here it goes... To my dearest best daddy in the world, Firstly, I hope you like the card and the other presents. I thought I'd get you this superdad tatty bear because you have been like a 'superhero' in my life. You may not know how to fly l

Australia's Healthy Weight Week

This week is all about encouraging people to eat healthy, home cooked meals and making small changes towards a healthy lifestyle. It is also about telling people what we do as dietitians (hence I am writing) The pictures are from the morning tea we hosted (colleagues and myself) for staff on our floor at work. As you can tell from the photos, we tried to include something from all the food groups. We wanted to make it colourful and include healthier options, where possible. Fruits: apples, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, figs, passionfruit, nectarines and peaches Vegetables: carrots, snow peas, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and beetroot dip Dairy: low fat yoghurt and low fat ricotta (fritatata) Lean meat, fish, poultry, nuts and legumes: variety of nuts, hommus Cereals: wholemeal pita bread If you'd like to read more information on the AHWW, head over to http://healthyweightweek.com.au/ :) Zucchini, pea a

International Congress of Behavioural Medicine | Melbourne

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

Oat bars

As a kid, breakfast was never my favourite meal. I think it was because I was never a morning person and I always woke up too late so left home in haste for school. To be honest, there have been many days where I skipped breakfast as a teenager or even younger. Of course, back then I wasn’t into nutrition and just failed to understand the importance of breakfast. But hey, this gives me an excuse to blame some of my not-so-good grades on breakfast haha! :P Safe to say, I got more serious about brekkie as I got older; now I have no days where I go without breakfast! But I am still quite time poor in the morning (because I still continue to maintain my laziness in the morning), I usually prepare my breakfast the night before. If this fails, I grab my Belvita biscuits or reach for a banana! Anyway, I recently tried out oat bars to have for my brekkie. To my surprise, it turned out pretty amazing. It’s actually pretty nutritious because it combines everything you’d normall

Daddy's birthday 2015 | Buttery fruit cake

Happy birthday daddy! This perfectly describes how he continues to inspire me! And he always is! In the past, I always used to purchase cakes because I did not trust my baking skills enough to be able to pull off a fancy cake for a special occasion. But this year, I've been a bit of an experimental baker so I thought I'd give it a go. I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Initially, he said plain cake again (probably because he did not want to trouble me during my final days of thesis writing). After I pressed further, he gave me buttery fruit cake as an answer. I was happy with this because I had never baked one so it'd be fun to do one. I started my recipe hunt. Most traditional recipes use alcohol but because I don't drink, I had to look harder to find one that didn't so I could eat it too :D Eventually I found this. I've followed this recipe pretty closely with some little changes. Normally I would not use

Post-thesis celebration

So I handed in my thesis today!!! After three months of solid hard work, it's finally all done! I'm so excited because I've been waiting for this day for a very long time. I know I shouldn't get that excited because I technically haven't finished my degree yet (got a presentation next week) but it kind of feels like I'm done! The thesis does make the bulk of my marks so that's definitely an important milestone and worth celebrating :P So now let me give you a rundown of what I did today- I started off my day skimming my thesis one last time. Then I nearly killed off a forest printing about 140 pages (poor trees!) Next stop was binding. My stomach had started grumbling from all the waiting around so we hit Ralph's Cafe for a celebratory lunch. We had to wait a while because it was lunch hour. But that was okay because we know their food is worth the wait! The Ralph's burger with chips (~$14) After this came, we just went silent as we

Fabulous February

I did not write properly last month as I had a million things on my mind. There is so much that has happened, and there is so much I want to write. But I can only write so much in this one post. So I will write the main updates here and save the rest for future. As some of you would probably know from Instagram , I got married earlier this month! I would have liked to have made a big announcement but I decided to go into hibernation instead as I was feeling very stressed. I was starting to crumble under a lot of pressure leading up to the wedding as there were many unfinished tasks (both work and wedding related). Having to work right before the day of the wedding was no easy task, but I managed to get through with a lot of support from my parents, family and friends. I am so grateful for the people in my life who went out of their way and travelled long distances to be here for me. I won’t say too much about the actual wedding in this post as I will blog more about this lat

DAA conference | Melbourne

Being a tourist :) Day 1: Reunited with the bestie at the airport. *Incessant chattering* Next stop was food. First sunset photo We chose an Italian restaurant called ‘Vapiano’, based on another friend's recommendation. It was quite busy; we had to wait to get a table. We decided to order both pizza and pasta. Ordering pizza was pretty straightforward. However, the pasta line took forever. It took so long that we received our pizzas but still hadn't been able to order the pasta. We tried garlic and one zucchini and eggplant pizza. I liked the latter but the garlic one was a bit hard, it got a bit cold by the time we started eating. The pasta was quite nice and flavoursome but nothing extraordinary and not worth an hour wait! Vapiano Spotted a cute florist, on our way to dessert For dessert, we wanted to go Om Nom but unfortunately they had no space so ended up going to Pancake Par

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Shenanigans of a dietitian: 24 year old dietitian, casual photographer and PhD candidate. My passion lies in lowering chronic disease prevention through public health interventions.

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