Monday 30 March 2020

2020 SO FAR

Hello everyone!

It’s been a long while since I posted something and safe to say I missed blogging. I had so many plans on what to write for the past year but, I’ve been to preoccupied with work and I have been extremely lazy!

The past year has been a peaceful year for me so and as much as I love to recap everything, I’m just going to skip forward to 2020. I am one of the people who had to cancel their holiday plans including my friend’s wedding. As awful as that may seem, I want to look back at what I have done for the past few months before the UK lockdown.

JANUARY 2020

I celebrated New Year with my family at home and we had a work staff party a week after.

I was working during New Year’s Eve til 11PM so I cooked the food in advance and prepared the table. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the food but, we had seafood.

FEBRUARY 2020

I turned 25 and I celebrated it in Grand Central Hotel, Belfast. It was nice and quiet. I celebrated it with my family and my bestfriend Reyn. We had quick photoshoot and then had our dinner in the Seahorse Restaurant.

I can’t exactly remember what we had as I didn’t take a photo of each course but we had complimentary amuse-bouche, a starter portion of pasta with duck, then lobster macaroni and cheese for starters and steak for the main. After dinner, we headed back to our room and I blew my candle, made a wish then cut and ate the cake.

10 days after my birthday, my brother celebrated his 19th Birthday. We didn’t do anything extravagant; we only had dinner in Saphyre Restaurant. Click here for my previous post about my previous visit there. The interior has changed since I last visited the place.

We had a 5 course meal and again, I didn’t take a photo of each dish. The server was very knowledgable when it comes to explaining each dish but I can’t remember any of it!

MARCH 2020

Below are photos of sunrise before I went work.

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Generally, 2020 has been bad to almost everyone due to major global warming effects such wildfire in Australia, earthquakes and floods in different parts of the world. There were also talks about WW3 that was about to happen and then came COVID-19 which, affected the vast majority of the people in the world.

For the past week, I’ve been complaining about how bored I am at home. I’ve been trying to try to find something to do but the inner voice inside my head kept screaming ‘YOU’RE BORED!’ and every time I hear that noise, my flesh wouldn’t want to do anything to solve the issue.

So, I decided to change my way of thinking this week. I told my self to be grateful because I have the luxury to stay and home and be safe while the front liners are working extremely hard to help the patients affected by COVID-19. Instead of complaining, I want to be thankful for the health and safety of my family and friends. I am grateful for having the privilege to stay at home with my family and spend more time with them.

I hope there will be less infections and less fatalities and that we can flatten the curve as soon as possible. Thank you to everyone who are in the frontline, the customer service assistants in the grocery departments and all the essential workers.

STAY HOME and TAKE CARE!

xoxo,

Xyza ❤️

2018 - Here's a Start

Before anything else, I want to greet you HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I’ve never been so excited to start a new year in my entire life. Thank you to everyone who took part in my 2017. It has been tough but hey, I’m here now and I survived so HOORAY! What about you? Did you have it rough last year as well? Is so; I am giving you the Survivor Award! You made it as well! I could tell you stories about my 2017 but I am typing this post quiet late and I want to publish it before the clock strikes midnight so, I’ll leave it for next time.

Right. So it’s New Year, but what else is going to change for you? I know there are others out there who hates the phrase ‘New Year, New Me’ and if you’re reading this and you’re one of them, you shouldn’t. Everyone has their own reasons why they want to change! I could go on an on about this but there’s no point because I made my own phrase which is ‘New Year, Better Me’. It’s still me but better, most especially in my ways of thinking and on my ways on how to handle my emotions. I’ve read a quote from Twitter from an unknown author, which says ‘Do not let your emotions overpower your intelligence’. I am not the most intellectual human being out there but my point is that sometimes I just make stupid actions because I didn’t know how to control my emotions.

So here, if you look at my archive the last time I made New Year’s Resolutions was in 2014. Here I am, making new ones after 4 years.

Here’s some on my list:

· To always seek first the Kingdom of God

· Do not let comparison steal your joy

· Enjoy every moment

· Collect moments, not things

· Stop overthinking

· Trust in God’s timing because many are going nowhere fast

On the other hand, as I was scrolling through my social media when an unexpected phone call showed up on my phone screen- it was Louigie, our soon Nurse to be friend. We talked for almost half hour. Then, she asked me about what I am going to do tonight so I told her that I am going to start writing again. I told her about how I only have one blog post last year and gosh, at least I had one. She recommended that I should write ‘things to do to survive when you’re away from your family’. However, since I’m still a newbie on my journey to independence, I’m afraid I cannot give you the proper advice yet. So here I am writing as a goal digger not clearly having any idea what to write except little snippets of my random thoughts.

Anyway, to keep my blog going, I’ve been planning to do Saturday Pondering. If you’re a blog reader, some blogger actually do Sunday Currently where they write what they are doing every Sunday, including the music they listen to, etc. Well, I am going to try to make my own version. Saturday Pondering will be a day to reflect my previous week and a day to plan the new week that lies ahead. Let’s hope this is going to work out well!

I apologise if this post isn’t very coherent and if I am going on different tangents, I just didn’t plan on what to post today so it looks a total mess. Thanks for reading this anyway! HAVE A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Take care.

xoxo,

Xyza ❤️

Wednesday 7 June 2017

Combined Celebrations

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Monday 27 February 2017

Pink Pancakes - Pancake Tuesday

So today is the last day of the month of February. Can you believe that? For me, February didn't even feel like a month. Anyway, today also happens to be the day for Pancake Tuesday or also know as Shrove Tuesday. With all my "healthy-eating" goals, I was going to make the protein pancake, but I'm not up for that today. However, we can classify this as healthy (wink-wink) because this is ovo-vegetarian and there's no artificial colour required to make it pink. How chic is this? You can certainly make this in every other occasion or just simply for breakfast because it's quick & easy to do.

Heads up, if you don't like beetroots, this pancake is not for you!

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes

Anyway, here are the ingredients that you'll need:

FOR THE PANCAKE:

135g plain flour (I used gluten free flour)
2 tablespoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
130ml almond milk (or any milk you prefer)
2 tablespoon butter (melted)
2 large eggs lightly beaten (I think it will be fluffy if you only use 1 egg)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 medium sized cooked beetroots
Coconut oil for cooking

FOR THE DRIZZLE:

Frozen mixed berries (cranberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, and raspberries)
1/2 cup caster sugar
175ml water

METHODS

FOR THE PANCAKE:

Mix all the dry ingredients.
Mix the liquid ingredients with the dry ingredients.
Stir them well together.
Because I have a small blender here in Uni I minced the beetroots first and blended it in the blender using the batter of the pancakes until everything was smooth.
Transfer into a mixing bowl and stir them again. (For this, I think it's better to cook in in a coconut oil as butter can change the colour into a yellow-ish one.)
In a heated non sticky-pan, add a small very amount of coconut oil and cook it on medium heat. Flip the pancake and then viola! You're done!

FOR THE DRIZZLE:

While you're cooking the pancake, add all the ingredients together in a different pot and allow for it to boil until you get the texture that you desire. Stir.

You can add some fruits for extra taste.

I hope you'll give this a try and enjoy eating it as much as I did.

Take care.

xoxo,

Xyza ❤️

Tuesday 29 November 2016

What I Learned From Not Wearing Makeup For A Month

Winter mornings are always the toughest and I always have a constant battle about whether I should skip lecture or not. I don't know about you but this semester has been tough for me especially because I have three 9:00am lectures/week. Anyway, one day I decided that I should stop wearing make-up so I can have extra time with my bed. Ha! I'm pretty sure some of you can relate. That extra 5 minutes doesn't always go as planned.

If you are a makeup enthusiast like me and you go out without anything on your face, you'd know the real struggle. However, I suddenly got used to not wearing makeup for a week so I told myself to try it for another week. But then I was like "Why not make it a month instead?" So I challenged myself to do it.

Every morning I wake up always exhausted. What can I say?

So here's what happened to me for the past month without makeup:

1) I didn't have to worry about spending my time to fleek my eyebrows

2) Having the assurance that my boyfriend, family, and friends love me for who I am. I mean, they have witnessed my panda looks & sparse eyebrows everyday but they love me still.

3) Well, I lied. I actually used lip stain sometimes. But that was the beauty of it, a pat of stain here and there and I was good to go without looking totally dead.

4) I was able go to sleep without the problem of removing my makeup. Long days in uni are tough and removing makeup was out of the equation of exhaustion.

5) Watching makeup tutorials but not being able to practice it on my face was tough. Desi Perkins was out there blending her eyeshadows and I was on the other side of the screen thinking "slaaay gurl" but I couldn't slay it myself because of my own challenge.