spear

Two easy & pretty good things I made recently:

Daikon & carrot stir fry via The Woks of Life: legit the first dish involving the two vegetables that Jeff liked. I also super like it and will be making it regularly!

Cheat matcha chocolate via Cooking Tree. 3 ingredients mixed together and voila soft truffle style chocolate! The resulting sweetness is perfectly balanced too. This turned out much better than a even simpler recipe, also by Cooking Tree, with just condensed milk and cocoa powder that I previously made. I chose the soft version, which is 1:3, and it was much too soft to handle. I had to eat it spoonful by spoonful.

tint

Part 2 of online shopping.

I previously mentioned that Korea Post has suspended delivery to Canada without continuing the thought that I ordered an eyeshadow palette (Holika Holika terrazzo shadow palette in dusty) that is now not making it's way over to me. It's quite upsetting but at least Jolse compensated with a $10 coupon even though it's not their fault. But the point of mentioning this now is that I've temporary solved the problem of what eyeshadow(s) to get. The colours in the palette can also be used for contouring, so I can put off that purchase for now...though it's likely that Sephora will have it's sale before this palette gets to me.

Actually let me back up. (the longer background is here)
I'm trying to rebuild a small colour make-up collection after throwing away most of my colour products since they were long expired. So the next category I'm trying to figure out is blush.

So far I found some well reviewed products in each "texture" type, but haven't decided on which colours to pick where, and how many is sufficient for someone that does not (but maybe will) wear blush on a daily basis.

• Liquid(y): Glossier cloud paint or Apieu juicy pang water blusher
• Dough(y): Mac glow play blush or Clinique cheek pop or Apieu juicy pang jelly blusher
• Powder: Burberry light glow blush or Hourglass ambient lighting blush or Innisfree my palette blusher
• Cream: I already own a Canmake cream blush in a lovely transparent red color 

As for colours, I'm thinking of:

• Brownish pink, matte
• Cool pink, matte
• Warmer pink, shimmer
• Lavender 
• Peach or coral...maybe?

Too many options "orz 

zip

Actually, a quick story of what happened to my trip to China that was suppose to happen in April:

So obviously I cancelled it.
First because the situation in China was bad, but now it's more like the situation in Canada is bad.

Lots of time was spent waiting for the automated phone system to call me back after leaving my number. For Chase it wasn't so bad, got an estimate of 2 hours, got called back a little sooner. Took a while for the agent to process my request, but ultimately refunded my points without much other trouble. For Delta it was more strenuous, and that's entirely because their automated system was buggy. It would call me back, but once it got to the point that I'm about to be transferred to an agent, the call would drop. Then I gotta call again and be placed in line. At one point the estimated wait time was 31 hours, which I presume is a bug 😅. So I actually had to stay on the line...for about 6 hours. But again there wasn't a problem once I reached the agent, and did get my full refund.

I was hoping for some good deals when rebooking my trip for October, thinking that airlines would drop prices since their business pretty much dried up. But that didn't turn out to be case, and I got lazy / didn't want to wait for deals to pop up, so I ended up just using the Chase portal again and using about 78k points for a round trip premium economy with China Southern. Not a great use of points but at least I still have all my Delta points to redeem in the future. I'm also really curious just how mediocre the food is with China Southern, given all the reviews are from non-asian people that didn't order the chinese option. Here's hoping it can't be as bad as Air Canada 😅😅

little

I totally understand my little cousin's post to her moment of "my daily joy is checking the tracking page of my packages" when she was in quarantine (she got a cold right when covid19 was getting serious in China).

All I want is my packages to arriveeeee ;o;
But alas Korea Post has suspended shipments to Canada ;o;
On the bright side, I finally bought, and received, a yoga mat. I'll at least occupy myself with some exercises while the building's gym is closed.

Regardless, this and the next post will be about things I want to buy. I anticipate two credit card changes before the pandemic is under control, so some planning is needed on how to achieve those initial spending bonuses.

Today is on jewelry:

Independent People

This is my third book review to Rui&Ben.

I *finally* finished reading this. It was very unpleasant "orz

The book is well written, I'll also agree that it's a good book. But I had the most unpleasant time reading it. Maybe because its overall pretty bleak? Maybe because I found every character very unlikable? All I know is that I forced myself to finish reading this because the person who wrote the forward liked it more then he liked The Brothers Karamazov and I needed to know why.

Perhaps I'm admitting this is a good book because it left a strong, albeit negative, impression on me. It's also ruined all my previous positive feelings towards sheep. I'll be thinking of this book whenever I come across the idea of sheep now. As stated in the forward, this book is very devoted to describing the activities that happen around sheeps. So perhaps I'm also admitting this is a good book because it is authentic to the lifestyle of its characters.

Let's end with a photo from Fred Tougs that perfectly matches the book:

closet overview #3

Since covid19 will likely prevent me from going out until spring is properly here, I've rounded up my  winter clothing stats:

A few things not captured in the overview above:

• I wore my winter coats and boots pretty evenly, yay!
• I made a conscious effort to wear my C&J boots more, buts it's still at $17/wear ;o; 
• Also made a conscious effort to wear my Jallade pants more, primarily because I bought it a tad too small and was thinking of reselling it. The trick was planning outfits for it that involved thinner tops. It worked really well when I spent some time brainstorming a list of 5 outfits and picking one per week to wear.
• Despite not wearing jeans for work, it still ended up being the item with the most wear counts. It's cost per wear is $0.33 now, very happy.
• A light purge is in order perhaps after summer. There's several everyday items that I wear less than 5 times a season. Can trim down my sweaters and skirts.

I also haven't bought any new clothing yet, whoo! But in terms of what I'm planning to buy so far:

1. Uncle Studio cotton bloomer pants
2. Babaton pleated blouse (this is def my fav brand out of Aritzia's sub-brands)
3. Loafers: probably the bow one from Meguire unless I go on a business trip to New York, in that case a pair from Meermin. Loafers are def my default S/S shoe, so it'll be good to have a second pair.
4. A white summer dress, probably one of these

Hopefully by the end of summer, I'll be using a spiffy little web app that Jeff makes. 

fissure

I discovered a new breakfast option (because even I am tired of the same oatmeal flavour...): multigrain porridge!

I learned the trick of soaking and freezing the whole grains beforehand to shorten cooking time from The Woks of Life. The best part of this technique is I can cook just a portion of the frozen grains each time.

My porridge includes:

• Spelt
• Farro
• Pot barley
• Wheat berries
• Whole toasted buckwheat
• Brown rice
• White rice
• Millet
• Chinese dried dates
• Gogi berries

...

Unrelated but I'm so happy San Cosme Tortas opened an airport location! Too bad I have no travel in the near future to take advantage of that. Good thing I recently went to their original location: