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The beginning :)

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Hello there, As you can tell from the title, I like to partake in shenanigans so thought I'd make a blog and document it. I actually thought about doing this for ages. But I wasn't sure how and when do I begin? Or if I should write even? My 'big' plan was to launch this blog in January this year but it got delayed by quite a bit as you can see we are in June and I'm still writing my intro here! I did make an account earlier though, but I never got around to writing because I was busy with training placement and it took so much out of my time, it didn't really leave time for anything else. (For anyone that's not familiar with what being in placement involves- it's basically like full time work but you don't get paid anything. You may be armed with a whole lot of experience but it leaves you exhausted and broke) :( Now getting to the proper intro - I'm a 22 year old student dietitian living in Sydney. I've always wanted to blog but n...
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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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Juggling June

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I spent all of this month writing up my paper. I focused on writing my discussion for the first two weeks. Soon after I started writing, I realised, there were other small things I needed to finalise as well, like how I wanted my tables to look, supplementary information, etc. Getting everything together and trying to tie up loose ends has been harder than I imagined, but having some experience with systematic review write up (from last year) was sort of helpful. I was also trying to juggle a few other things on the side (more about this later).  Overall, it was a super intense month for me, but things are looking better now because I can almost see the finish line! The good news is that I've managed to meet the deadline I had set for myself, so I'm happy (for now). In other news, I was doing 'Junk Free June' this month which is an initiative run by Cancer Council Queensland that encourages people to give up a junk food for the entire month. I picked my to...
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Khaybar Restaurant

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Two of my friends recommended this place, it was my first time trying Afghan cuisine so I was quite excited. I was told they have really nice eggplant and meat dishes. There weren't many people as we went on a weeknight but I have heard that they are really busy and often hard to get a table. We started with their famous eggplant dip. The 'Buranee-Badenjan' came with large naan bread. The dip was rich in flavour but it was just too oily. I did not expect there would be this much floating oil. The bread tasted quite nice with the dip but it was hard to tear and manage. We would've liked if it had been cut in smaller pieces. Buranee-Badenjan as an entree ($6.90) For mains, two of us ordered the 'Qaboli Pallaw' (one chicken and one lamb shank). The chicken was soft and cooked well. The rice was topped with carrots, raisins and pistachios. I enjoyed the combination of sweet and savoury in this dish. Qaboli Pallaw Chicken ($14.95)  Buranee-B...
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Oriented October

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Happy Halloween everyone! I was super late last month , so I wanted to redeem myself by getting my post out on time this month. This month has been a huge learning curve for me. It has been super busy and crazy, as usual. I spent most of it doing statistics, but the good news is I am starting to get the hang of it. I feel more comfortable doing the analyses now, and I have started keeping good notes of what I am doing so I can go back when needed. Besides statistics, I conducted a few focus groups with another friend and attended an UCL behaviour change workshop, both of which have been very helpful. There was also a sad happening this month which left me feeling down for a couple of days, but I am reluctant to write about here at this stage. I am trying not to think about it for now because I know I should be focusing on the positive things. Other than that, it has been a pretty good mix of quantitative and qualitative work. In other news, I went to Parramatta Lanes and made ...
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Bittersweet winter

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Winter is officially over and spring is here! I know most of you are probably super excited but I'm a little sad winter is over.  Yes, I'm one of those weird people that enjoy a good cold weather, contrary to what most people think about winter.  You might be wondering why!  Well, let me give you a few reasons and see if I can win you over :P Firstly, you could pretty much wear anything and get away with it as long as you wear a nice looking coat. You could be wearing the tee you wore last night under your classy coat and still end up looking good. Winter is so forgiving, you don't have to worry about colour coordinating your outfits.  Same goes with shoes, you gotta decide between ballet flats or sandals or whatever else you wear. In winter, it's so much easier because it's too cold to wear anything else :P Just slip on some boots with any random socks you find and you're good to go!   As you can see from this picture- I'...
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El-Phoenician Restaurant

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My homie just got back to Sydney so we caught up for dinner! We haven't had middle eastern food together so we decided to go with Lebanese cuisine. It was pretty light because we went on a weeknight. As usual, we took a very long time to decide what we wanted to eat. The staff kept rushing us asking if we had made up our mind. We did not like this one bit because we always take our time to order, and we felt it was unnecessary to pressure us into ordering because the restaurant was almost empty!   Eggplant dip was the best; it was smooth, soft and creamy. It was my favourite. I could literally eat this every meal; eggplants are one of my favourite vegetables (yes, I have too many favs when it comes to veggies!) Hummus and Lamb was an average dish. It didn't really stand out to me; I didn't hate it, nor did I love it. It turned out to be our least eaten dish from the night, and it's one dish we wish we didn't order. Mixed platter was pretty good, seasoned wel...
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High tea - planning

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Last Sunday, two of my good friends and I held a fundraising high tea party. We started planning for this way back in July. During our first meeting, we had a brief discussion over what organisation we should fundraise for. We were thinking of doing Cancer Council because the proposed date we had for high tea would be around Daffodil day. But in the end, we decided to go for one close to women. We picked National Breast Cancer Foundation because all of us had a personal experience knowing someone who has suffered or died from breast cancer. Food Next thing we had to decide was the menu, we each discussed items that we could contribute. We wrote ourselves a shopping list and a brief plan of when to bake what. We had our high tea on a Sunday afternoon so we planned that we would do shopping on the Monday, start baking from Thursday. We wanted to allow ourselves plenty of time because we were going to try some experimental desserts and we knew that these would take time...
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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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Mamak

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Had my first proper food adventure of 2016 at the famous Mamak! This has been on my 'must visit' list for too long. I think I've avoided it longer than usual because of the crowd. I remember walking past this place in the past and planning that we'd eat here someday. We've tried planning spontaneous meet ups to come here but it's just kind of far, then there's the long wait. We were secretly hoping the line wouldn't be as bad today because it's a weeknight. Even though it's   Thursday   night, you'd hope that more people are going shopping (than coming to eat out). Anyway, the luck was on our side this time. The line was quite short compared to what we've seen/ heard of. We patiently waited to go in. We felt a real sense of excitement thinking about what it might be like inside, it looked super busy. We were finally taken inside and shown our seats. It was a cute little set up with stools and small tables. It's actually quite a ...
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