I’m Stronger than this!

Have you ever feel like you hate your life, or like the world owe you something, or like you get stuck in this dark place with no way out, or just feel plain miserable? I have and I’m sure some of you out there have as well. 

When I was in my mid to late-twenties, I was once in really unhappy place. I was constantly stressed and very unhappy,  easily triggered by the smallest thing, and have bellyful of complaints about everything. I had a hard time dealing with people, had zero patience, had bouts of panic attacks at random times and a really bad insomnia as well. 

This unhappy me was hanging around for about 3-4 years until I finally got help from the people around me. 

So what changed? How did I manage to crawl out from my little dark hole? At that point, I reached the breaking point and decided to take an ACTION. That is to leave the source of unhappiness. I was actually really lucky because just at this point in time, one of ex-colleague offered a “ticket” to get out of my ‘hell”. And I grabbed that opportunity with no hesitation. 

Just by taking that action, my life completely changed, to the better. 

You see, when we are down, when we feel we are in a dark place, when we feel we have no one to help us out, when things are just not working well even though we have tried our best. There will always be a moment where you start to see light on the other side. Be it somebody suddenly reached out to you, or the universe heard your call and gave you a new lease of life (you may think I’m joking about I’m not). It happened to me and I am forever grateful. 

Why am I telling this story? I want to share my own story for others to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But we also need to realise something. We also need to reach inside and really look at why we are in this dreadful state of mind. Look deeper, and see whether it is because of a toxic relationship, a stressful job, peer pressure, high expectations from family members, financial situation, study overload, negative comments/criticism (esp from the online world), or whatever it is that you cannot cope with. See if you can do something about it. Back when I was in my unhappy place, I hid it from my parents as they live apart from me and they are really old. I also felt like at my age I should really handle things myself and not adding more worries for them so often times I cried, I pulled my hair out all by myself at home and no one knew. I am sure some of you also may have experienced similar things. 

In this regard, again I am very lucky and super grateful to have very supporting group of friends and family. They believe in me when I lost faith in myself. They gave me an advice, company, and continuous support. I probably annoyed them to death during that dark period, but they stood by me until now and I am forever grateful for their presence in my life.

Maybe you can reach out to somebody, be it a friend, another family member, or even stranger from a dedicated organisation like Beyond Blue. Start writing your thoughts out. Pick up a new hobby. Adopt an adorable pet like an otter (I swear they are THE MOST adorable creatures, if only it's legal here to adopt one).

The point is to do something about it. Take action. Walk away from toxic environment. Cut off everything that no longer serve you, that holds you back from healing and moving on. If you don’t take action, none of this will matter and nothing will help you. No amount of complaining will help aside from

dragging you even deeper to that dark hole you are in. At the end, only YOU can change YOU, no one else. Everything starts from ourselves.

I decided to write this to see if I can help in anyway. Please don’t suffer in silence. Don’t put everything on your shoulders. Share, share it with adorable otters. In this big bad world, they are people who care about you. You just have to reach out and ask for help. Once you see the light on the other side, you will walk out STRONGER and hopefully be a BETTER version of you! 

If you know someone who is going through a hard time, please offer help. ❤️. 

 

The FIVE words that describe you

HAPPY FRIYAY, peeps!

I am the most excited when it's weekend coz I get to stop thinking about work and do whatever I like.. such as hibernate inside my blanket, eat, sleep, repeat... Don't judge me ^^..

 

This time I want to do something fun instead of talking about food. Let's do some positivity exercise so to speak. I want you to ask few of your friends this question:

"HOW WILL YOU DESCRIBE ME IN 5 WORDS?"

I have done this few times before with my colleagues at work and just recently while doing a marketing coaching session. Do you think this is a scary question? Do you fear of how your friends or colleagues think of you? Or do you feel excited to hear what they say about you? For me, it's all of the above. 

It's even better to actually ask this question in person and to get them spit out the answers without thinking to see how honest they are (scaryyy feeling). Most people go for the positive sides of you when they answer this question, at least from my experience.

Here is the few answers from my closest friends: 

Firstly, I want to say Thank You to my friends for thinking such amazing words to describe me, and No I did not bribe them on the side for this exercise, lol... ^^

Secondly, how uplifting is this exercise? I get it, people are fickle in nature and it seriously hard to make REAL and TRUE friends. Somedays you feel like you want to smash your head to the wall after dealing with them and any other day you miss them like crazy. I love this exercise because we can see how the people around us perceive us and how amazing we are in their eyes. It's empowering. It's motivating. It's just sending GOOD VIBES all around. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are not alone, we have amazing friends who care and think highly of us, we all are just perfect in our imperfections. Everyone is allowed to have bad hair days, mental breakdowns, and just down right crappy moments. But let's think back to these answers, and pick ourselves up. Simply because WE ARE AMAZING. YOU are A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!! I'm now off to my intensive webminar sash...

Brunching at Bare Witness

Finally it is brunch time with friends after the ease of Covid restriction and boy, the cafes were so packed over the long weekend. The 4 of us decided to have brunch at Bare Witness, Rhodes this time around for a change of scenery.

I am super lazy myself and tend to stick to CBD area or close-by area as I relies on the train ( don't we all hate track work on weekends) so I only go to other suburbs when meeting up with friends. It’s a mini travel in itself to go to other suburbs. Mind you, even grocery shopping feels like a treasured holiday trip these days  ^^.

It was such a pleasant surprise to find Rhodes as such a nice place to chill aside from having IKEA in the mall, that is. I love Ikea and can spend hours inside. 

I love Bare Witness as soon as I stepped into its premises as it was very spacious with high ceiling and its proximity to the water. As spacious as it was, the place was jam-packed with people dining in and had long queues for takeaways. 

We had to wait for our table and so we decided to get some takeaway coffee first. I love their branding and the coffee cup design. Their little bakery section also looked amazing with scrumptious pastries like cookies, croissants, and bread On display. I was so tempted to buy some just from looking at them. So sinful 😆.

We hung around while drinking our coffee for approx. 45 mins before finally got a table by the window facing the water, really nice view I must say. Luckily the service was very prompt and our waiter was super nice and good-looking too (A big + in my book hahaha). Our food also didn't take that long before they got delivered to our table. We would be a hangry bunch of people otherwise ^_^. 

The four of us ordered different dishes and they all amazing, just a shame that I didn't get to take pictures. Mind you, we all were hungry so we just smashed it as soon as we got served.

I ordered an iced latte and Katsu roll with chips shown in this picture. Let's be honest, my dish didn't look picture-perfect, in fact it looked pretty average really, but the katsu was cooked to perfection. It was juicy, well-seasoned, and crispy. The bun was soft and the coleslaw was crispy and creamy. The picky eater in me heartily approved ^^ . I am actually thinking if only they could make it spicy, it would be even more amazing (hahaha for me that is). As for the coffee, it was pretty standard. I personally drink my coffee strong so I would prefer to have more coffee shots in such a big glass. 

All in all, we all really enjoy the food and service here despite the long wait. We could have bought takeaways and do a little picnic by the water but the weather was not conducive, too cold. I would love to go back and try the other dish on the menu. 

Iced Latte 

Katsu Roll

 

I Like it HOT!! Do you?

How spicy is spicy? How much chilli is too much? 

I personally love my food to be spicy...In fact I probably eat the spiciest food amongst my friends. The feeling of your mouth getting burn, the rolling sweats and fallen tears are the BEST, at least for me.

This spicy fried chicken noodle soup is from The Dainty Sichuan Noodle Express. To be honest, I walked past this restaurant so many times, contemplated to walk in and try it that many times but I never did. So, how did I end up in here? Me and my friend actually were planning to eat Korean BBQ but the queue was taking too long so we decided to eat elsewhere. On the way, we saw this restaurant and felt that it’s a time to have a change as we don’t really eat Chinese food normally. We luckily got a table straightaway. 

We each had a noodle soup, a deep-fried rice cake with brown sugar syrup, and deep-fried chicken. 

It was delicious, affordable, and filling. Definitely worth trying I say if you are wanting some spicy Chinese food. It may look super spicy but it actually was not, ehmmm at least in my opinion. I didn't cry or sweat, lol, that’s kind of my benchmark for spiciness. The soup was flavoursome and not greasy despite how oily it was. The noodle was chewy. The fried chicken was still crispy and well-seasoned. To be completely honest, I would like it to be even spicier ^^.

I guess this is one of the examples of things don't always go as planned and we may actually get a nice surprise deviating from our original plan. 

In saying that, I would also encourage people to support the local business as much as possible to keep these businesses afloat during this pandemic. 

Oh, and in case you are wondering, I don't get paid or sponsored by any company in my food reviews. I am only offering my opinion on things I have experienced and tried. 

Kind reminder that everyone has personal taste, do not bash others if you disagree with what they say. 

Location: Dainty Sichuan Noodle House

TRADING HOURS

Monday - Sunday  11.30am - 8pm 

The little human behind this post

Warm welcome, guys!

My name is Novi Ng, a Chinese Indonesian chick who is based in Sydney. I'm here to share my story as a DIY maker and an advocate on sustainable and low toxic living. Mixed in with some good food, travel posts, and motivational quotes sprinkled in here and there because life is boring as hell without them. Gotta keep it real and fun.

So first, why DIYs? Why sustainable living? Why low toxic living? It is simply because these few reasons:

1. DIYs gives you control. I love making DIYs gifts for my closed friends. It's made with love, very personalised, and not boring. 

2. Toxic environment. Our beloved earth is loaded with toxic chemicals and micro-plastics and it is just not right. Because of this and the inspiration from Greta Thunberg, I started a sustainable journey from last year to make my own positive impact and to reduce my own carbon footprints.

3. Better health. For me, the magical world of essential oils was the key for this. The benefits are so amazing and there are so many ways we can use them in our lives to improve our overall physical and mental health. I fell in love with Doterra essential oils because of the amazing quality and what they stand for. I simply can't wait to share with you all the oily goodness. 

If you want to know more, hit FOLLOW button or go to https://linktr.ee/Kkumcreation

4. Save money, Seriously, by just making swaps and knowing the tips and tricks in creating a sustainable and lox tox home for yourself (Yes, I'm single and doing it for myself) and your loved ones. 

5. Super easy. No brain cells get fried when making these changes. Just a sound judgement and lots of fun experiments. I know when we are taking the first step in anything, it can be daunting and complicated but with the right information, it can be as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Ups, this starting to look like an essay and you may fall asleep reading this. Time to change to my other fave topics to lighten up the mood. FOOD and TRAVEL. I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia until I was 17. Then I traveled all the way to Australia for my study and ended up living in Sydney for more than 17 years. I will share with you my fave cafes, recipes, and travel spots. Can't wait until we all can go travelling again. 

Until then, Be Happy, Be Content, and Be Your True Self!