Rambling Onwards

It's the Year of the Monkey!

Two nights ago, I paid the Lunar Markets at Pyrmont Bay Park a visit with my Yellow Shirts double squad, Lochlantis. It's a bit far from the city, since you have to walk through Darling Harbour and further along to Pyrmont, but the trek was worth it. To be fair, we were driven to Darling Harbour, but hey you could still say it was still a trek from uni.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the Yellow Shirts program structure, we have squads of about 9 with a leader, and then two squads becomes a double squads. Each squad has a name and each double squad's name is a combination of the two. My squad happens to be Atlantis, and the other squad is Lochness Monsters... which becomes Lochlantis. It still astounds me how quickly people can become friends in programs like Yellow Shirts and Revue... But that's for another time.

It was really hard to choose something to eat - it was hard to work out what I wanted to eat. After checking out all the stalls, I settled on Ramen Battered Chicken Burger with Miso flavoured popcorn ($14) from Everybody Loves Ramen.

Ramen Battered Chicken Burger with Miso flavoured popcorn (underneath the burger) from Everybody Loves Ramen.

It looks pretty funky with the pink glaze, but it tasted AMAZING. Despite having sweet, seaweed, fried chicken and curry, it somehow all worked and tasted really good. At first I was hesitant, since I didn't want to use my hands to eat something (and I got worried that it would get messy), but I have absolutely no regrets with that one.

The other thing that caught my eye were the Hong Kong Fish Balls, Iceberg Lettuce and Curry Gravy ($6) from The Star's Fat Noodle. This was much worth the price and it was delicious in every way (as expected). The only thing that disappointed me was that I didn't take a photo. Fat Noodle also had really long lines - and I was extremely lucky that one of my friends just happened to be at the front so I got him to order for me.

Someone ordered a Yakisoba Bun ($6.50 I think!) from Kiyamachi Tei and it was a decently sized meal for what they paid. I was very close to ordering Yakisoba before I thought that I should try the Ramen Battered Chicken Burger because it looked really cool.

Yakisoba Bun from Kiyamachi Tei. It tasted good.

For dessert, we were going to go to Black Star Pastry x N2 Extreme Gelato but generally it's expensive and there's not much to it. The Sago Pudding from Mini Pancakes caught my eye, but they looked like they had caramelised fruit in it and I wasn't too keen on it. But then we spotted Mango Sago Pudding ($4) from The Century at The Star... and let's say everyone there was converted to Mango Sago Pudding lovers.
There were a few other things that interested me like Waffles on a stick (there's a huge Lochlantis in joke about waffles), Chips on a stick and Hoy Pinoy's skewers - the last two are amazing, but I already tried them at the Night Noodle Markets last year so I didn't see the point.

We also got to try the Mini Pancakes because they were handing out samples, and they were nice. I can't remember how much they were exactly, but the price would've been worth it if I wasn't so full already.

A super cute display!

There was such a lovely vibe and I had good company, and since we went on a Tuesday night the lines weren't too long either. We also happened to go at the same time as Lily May Mac so some of us got super excited.

I love the rainbow coloured lights! It made everything so much nicer.

Five members of Lochlantis + Alex our squad leader.

Total Bill: $24
= $14 (Burger) + $6 (Fish Balls) + $4 (Mango Sago Pudding)

Food: 3/5
Price: $$
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 3/5

Details and Links:
During 4th to 14th February 2016.
Website: www.sydney.lunarmarkets.com.au
Location: Pyrmont Bay Park, Pyrmont


Happy Lunar New Year friends - gong hei fat choy! May you get lots of red pockets.

With love, Sarah x

January has come and gone, and the New Year and the time for new year resolutions has also come and gone. Most people will be doing their best to keep to their New Year's Resolutions, but personally I think it's best to have goals that you can start achieving at any time of the year because, let's be real, how many of us actually stick to all of our resolutions if they're made on a whim?

I was asked in late November/December at my internship what my New Years resolution was and all I could come up with was 'Be more active'. But it wasn't something that wasn't important to me before hand, nor is it something that I've managed to fully stick to (this heat is pretty demotivating). But since then I've worked out more or less what I want to do this year - and the person I want to become.

Originally I took this for my internship with RAW, but hey who says I can't use it here and give credits?

It's an interesting feeling going through your Facebook timeline from 2009 (Year 7, actual 12vie days) and realising how immature you were. That might sound obvious, but all I seemed to complain about was getting homework, being unable to do something called 'euler' for school and struggling to finish my assignments.

I've gone through and removed a lot from my timeline and it's just made me realised how much I've grown up and changed over the last seven years. It's funny to me to go through all those posts and status, but not so great when other people find them, especially since my Yellow Shirts Double Squad is so good at bumping posts and roasting people. It's also interesting since the way I used to use status updates is like Twitter today. Today it feels odd to be writing statuses about your life - Facebook is kept for sharing photos and sharing the big moments in your life. It makes sense that platforms like Snapchat and Twitter have popped up to fill that void.

But back to the point.

As one of my squad members for Yellow Shirts said:


And that's when I realised I'm driven by the same thing.

No not literally. | Photo by James Benning.

It's why I give so much time and energy to programs like Revue and Ruse Musical and hopefully Yellow Shirts and why I love being able to help younger students, even if it's just giving advice. Or friends too. And last year was the year that I needed to find my feet again, and although I'm disappointed that I don't get to be a Peer Mentor this year, I now know I wasn't ready when I did my interview. Same with Law Revue Producer. But at least I'll get help some first years out at BSOC Camp as a leader, and I can crash plenty of peer mentoring sessions. And most of the time you're actually quite unaware of how much you're helping someone.

But for now, I hope to become a little less serious all the time (it's working I think), a little more self-aware and better at listening. Hopefully I'll get better at bantering too, and I'll do things that I'm proud to look back on and realise how much they shaped me as a person. And although this sounds narcissistic, I hope I become a good role model too.

This was taken at the Meriton Apartments on Kent St when I stayed there a few weeks ago. It was a good night, and a really good experience with great people.

I'm so lucky to have had so many opportunities to grow as a person, to experience new things and to meet all these wonderful and diverse people, and I want to thank them all so much. But I know it's not possible. All I can do is pay it forward, and I hope you do too.

Feel free to drop me a question/comment if you need help with anything friends!

With love, Sarah x

PS: Andrew here's your shout out. ^_^