What's cooking

When I was a student (I’m talking a couple of decades ago), one of my flatmates worked at a Korean restaurant. We’d often go there for a cheap meal with their employee’s discount. We’d get what we called Yumyum chicken. That was honestly what I thought it was called.

Years later, while making KimChi with a Korean friend, she called the spice mix you make for KimChi: Yangnyeom. She explained that it roughly translates to seasoning. I asked: “Wait, is there a chicken dish called this?” She said “Yes! We also call it KFC: Korean Fried Chicken!”

Now that I knew what it was called, I could google it. My Korean friend recommended Maangchi as a Korean food blogger to trust. I use maple syrup instead of rice syrup because I don’t normally have rice syrup in my pantry.

​Sweet, sour & spicy Korean fried chicken (Yangnyeom-tongdak 양념통닭)​

If you're interested in making your own Kimchi, I wrote about this on another blog of mine, Laila at Home. I don’t maintain this blog anymore, but I go to it often as a place where I store my tried and true recipes.

What's feeding my mind

Last Thursday was the last live session for Write of Passage (WOP). In the last session, David Perell (top right) described this Cohort 7 as the WOP Armada. I like the imagery of us sailing in the wild waters of the Internet. Together. On different ships, as we have personal monopolies in different areas. In the screenshot above you can also see Rebecca Olason and Will Mannon, two other key figures in the smooth running of WOP. The crew of mentors and community stewards also made WOP more than just a writing course.

Over five weeks I have spent more than 50 hours on Zoom calls. In those hours, I found my tribe. As an introverted person, I thought I could lurk in live sessions and absorb the writing wisdom by osmosis.

But... Nope! It was straight into breakout rooms even in the first live session with around 250 people. It was unnerving to be joining a breakout room, not knowing who the other people would be. It was soon apparent that being in a breakout room was like talking over a cup of coffee with long lost friends.

Most of my tribe members live in North America. It soon became a joke that I am from their future because New Zealand is on the other side of the date line. Somebody once asked "How is the future looking?" I'd reply, "Well I can confirm that there will be a future for you. It may not have the same climate, but the world hasn't seemed to have ended yet!"

I imagined that if I had a pre and post brain scan, the post brain scan would show areas of connectedness, creativity and curiosity lit up like a Christmas tree.

What's on my plate

• Building this Digital Postcard is my current project. You will be seeing this develop over time.
• Now that I have finished with Write of Passage, I will start working on planning videos for my YouTube channel again. I had left it at five videos. I have another one that I have shot the footage for, but still need to edit.

See you next week :)

If you enjoyed this newsletter, share it with your friends. They can subscribe to the newsletter too!