Once You Bibim, You Can't Go Bap
Picnic Journal Issue #2
Hello and welcome to another episode of Picnic in Your Pocket! I don’t know what to call newsletters, are they episodes, editions, free therapy sessions? Who knows? I don’t have a lot to update you on for this newsletter because as you will see, this week I spent a lot of time watching videos of people making hard candy, rainbow roll cake and a whole lot of Korean egg dishes. It was a very enlightening week (emotionally).
This week of uneventfulness largely came down to the fact that Korea is in its fourth wave of coronavirus and I have a phobia of leaving my house. This is on top of the fact that it is far too hot in Seoul to go outside for more than 5 minutes. This explains all of the food porn I consumed. I hope your last week was slightly more eventful for you, wherever you are in the world. I also hope that you enjoy this tiny pocket of fun on your Sunday evening and consider subscribing to my weekly newsletter!
Here are three things I spent a lot of time thinking about this week:
Can the government just hurry up and microchip me already?
Most aspects of living life abroad are great… until it comes time to do some kind of bureaucratic task in Australia from Korea. I spent multiple hours of my days last week trying to prove to my iPhone that I was who I said I was. I felt like some kind of crypto hacker trying to crack through every step of a company’s security. It was at that moment that I wished I could just scan a chip from my eyeball or wrist and put the days of trying to prove that I’m not a robot, behind me. In theory, it sounds great but I am sure this is not something that would go down well with the vast majority of Australians. I will just continue to assume that I have committed some sort of tax evasion and deal with the consequences later.
Is covid making me more anxious or was I always this anxious? Now that all of my brain thoughts are amplified by the fact that I don’t leave my house or socialise… a real chicken or the egg situation.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I won’t be unpacking this web of anxiety any time soon.
The billionaire space race is essentially a K-Drama… and it writes itself
Bear with me on this one. Last week, one of the billionaires flew to.. space? Or the edge of the atmosphere? I honestly don’t care about the logistics of their flight path. All I know is that a middle-aged wealthy cowboy launched a phallic shuttle into the air and wasn’t completely obliterated by the media and all of his childhood friends?
But back to the analogy… The strong female lead in this K-Drama is played by Earth herself. Earth just wants to make sure that her family is safe and happy so that she can rise through the ranks at her solar energy startup. Her family are super progressive and don’t really care if she gets married or not. She just wants to get promoted at work without the support of her nepotistic childhood billionaire friend. Said friend is the owner of the solar energy startup and also happens to be planning a space mission. But Earth’s new next-door neighbour isn’t having any of that and wants to try and get to space first so she will fall in love with him. He owns a tiny bookstore internet company that exploits its workers for optimized KPIs and world domination. He manages to go to space first, dressed as a cowboy and fails to impress Earth and her close friends. Ultimately (and this one is a spoiler alert), the strong female lead ends up rejecting both of them because she feels she and her family would be better off without their toxic energy and she moves to the Korean countryside to devote her life to growing strawberries. I smell a Netflix hit!
Weekly Doodle
This week’s doodle is a joke I said to my husband and turned into a drawing. We ordered a take away Korean lunch box and he told me I had a choice of putting sauce in my lunch box and turning it into bibimbap or leaving the sauce off altogether. And I made this joke that was even less hilarious at that moment than it is now as a doodle.
This Week’s Video:
Summer Outfits I Never Wear
This week, I decided to film myself in my bedroom styling clothes that I love. It’s one of the secret things that I do that nobody knows about but it brings me a lot of joy. I have been doing this since I was at LEAST 14. This hobby resulted in many questionable outfits. I talk a bit more about why you should just do things you want to do and not worry about whether or not people think you are completely just the worst ever… in this video!
On the Blog
Fortune Telling Dispenser in Ikseong-dong, Seoul
A few weeks ago, my friend Miranda and I ventured to Ikseongdong and Insadong for an afternoon of exploring. These areas of Seoul are full of Korean Hanok homes and traditional art, clothing, and tea houses. You must visit this part of Seoul on your next visit to South Korea.
The fortune was all in Korean and it was nonsense, but it was fun to have a nice day out with a friend in a place I haven’t been to since 2017!
Favourite follow on IG this week:
@marloesdevee
I didn’t spend too much time exploring new Instagram accounts this week, so I wanted to shout out an old favourite of mine. Marloes is a Dutch artist of all trades. Recently she has been making beautiful collages and landscape paintings. Definitely follow along with her work if you love to see happy and bright colours in your feed. Marloes is actually the person who inspired me to start my own newsletter!
What I watched this week
Bling Empire (2021)
I’m not proud of it, but it happened. After ending up in a YouTube hole instead of sleeping at an appropriate time, I found my way to Netflix’s ‘Bling Empire’. The show is a docu-series (reality show) that follows the filthy rich lives of wealthy Asians in Los Angeles. As a concept, this show is terrible. As a show, this show is terrible. I could only watch a few episodes before I gave up. However, I will say that Kevin (pictured right) and Kane (left) had amazing friend-chemistry in the show and should definitely do some kind of spinoff together. All of the others seemed like caricatures of themselves, fighting for screen time. This is me telling you not to watch it. Save yourself.
Billionaires, Explained (2019)
After trying to get through a few episodes of IRL Crazy Rich Asians, I decided to delve further into the idea of billionaires and wealthy people to try and understand them better. Maybe I was missing something when it came to incredible wealth? Maybe they were just misunderstood! Turns out, I wasn’t missing anything but it is nice to know that billionaires are such kind and compassionate people. Both shows I mentioned are available to stream on Netflix. Is streaming even the right verb to use for Netflix or are we just using Netflix as a verb?
The song I can’t stop listening to:
This week I listened to a lot less music than I normally do. However, I managed to find a lot of comfort from watching YouTube videos of people making cakes and Korean street food. Does anyone else like to watch those videos? I find that they help me zone out from my brain overthinking every minute detail of my life and help me focus on things like whipped cream and rainbow cheese instead. Very therapeutic. Here is one of the highlights from this week: Rainbow roll cake!
Goals for This Week
TL;DR Going to the dentist is my nightmare
If you tuned into my newsletter last week, you might have read that I tried to reduce my caffeine and alcohol intake. If you know me personally, you may have guessed that I would fail my goals miserably. You guessed correctly. And I enjoyed every sip.
This week is the last week of my life sabbatical. I will be re-entering the workforce in August, so I have to try and rest a lot and pretend to do a lot of yoga to feel zen. My only goal for this week is to go to the dentist and catch up on my study for an online course that is way too difficult for me. They are my must-dos. Any other dentist fearers out there? Hopefully, this will be a better week for my goals and an okay week for my teeth.
Thank you for reading. Have a great week and don’t forget to offset your carbon footprint by not leaving your bed for a week XX
Why stop here? The fun continues…
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