Ignorance is bliss they say. Is it really though?

I chanced upon a welsh YouTuber’s videos recently, where she’s living on £1 a day for meals. Not because she couldn’t afford more, she’s a YouTubers with almost 1 million subscribers, surely, she can afford more than £1 a day. She says she’s been doing this challenge to be more appreciative of what she has and to see first-hand how life is for many ppl who are less privileged. 

Now, I get why she’s doing this, and I’ve not got anything against her for that. But what threw me off guard was how she managed it. 

Let’s do the math here first. £1 a day for 7 days. What would do if you only had £1 a day for the whole week to feed yourself? Option 1: You buy a combination of groceries for £7 and cook several meals for the week. Option 2: Go to the grocery store every day and look for reduced item food or cheap canned food and survive with it. 

My common sense says buy food for £7 and cook several meals for the week. Saves time so you don’t have to think of what to eat every morning, saves petrol from unnecessary traveling to different grocery stores every day, reduces stress cos you know that you already have enough food, most importantly, you would still be eating somewhat healthy. 

This YouTuber chose the latter. Day 1 till day 3 she did this. She uploaded day 1’s video at the end of day 3. So when she started for video for day 4, she announced that she’s read the comments that indicated that she was cooking spaghetti wrong, gave tips that McDonald’s gives free ketchup, she can get free food by looking for coupons online, and that she can microwave her stale hard bread to make it soft. 

Who cares whether you break the spaghetti in half before boiling it, I do that too for convenience sake? Who’s to say what is right and wrong anymore now. What works for one wouldn’t necessarily work for another. Didn’t anyone suggest that she could have gone for option 1? Didn’t anyone think of it that way? Or didn’t she read all the comments? This bothered me for a bit, so I took it upon myself and read the comments. Nope. No one suggested this. Ok, let’s set that aside for now. 

She’s a YouTuber with almost 1 million followers. She’s been doing this for almost 7 years now if I’m not mistaken. She basically lives in the internet, hasn’t she heard of Google??? For the number of times that she complained about the hard bread, a simple 1 minute google search would have solved her misery. She was stating that she had to hunt for cheap food every day and cook every day, and that was tiring her out. Hasn’t she ever heard of meal preps? How can she have spent that much time on the internet and not heard about such things?

Is she being ignorant, or am I the one who’s ignorant? I had a similar thought when I came across another YouTuber some time ago who didn’t make much sense about something rather common, and I thought, how can he be so ignorant. I mean, I myself rely on Google and YouTube for almost everyday living. Don’t people who make a living out of these platforms learn things from it too? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to be more aware of their surroundings rather than just say whatever they want to say and allow themselves to be subjected to ridicules? 

Lately, there has been many open discussions about mental health, anxiety and depression that comes with putting yourself out there on the internet and opening your life for others to see, comment and condemn is a scary thing. If you are willing to do that, wouldn’t you want to be prepared and have your defences ready? It is one thing to be knowledgeable and share that with others and another to think that you are the know-it-all just because you’ve got a large number of followings. 

I’ve been thinking about this for some time now and still do not have an answer. Why would someone who works with the internet not use it to their benefit? 

New hobbies

Out of the blues, I decided I needed to pick up a new hobby. A small voice within me said my juggling clubs would come crashing down if I added one more to the current mix. However, my mind said, “You need to pick up something new”. 

When I was younger, the standard hobbies were reading, swimming, photography, travelling etc.  Been there, done that. In fact, reading, swimming and travelling is now a necessity, while photography has become a profession. 

Since I had been unsuccessful in figuring out an interesting new hobby for the last 2 weeks without consulting google, I randomly brought this topic up to my colleagues. They eagerly gave me some of their ideas; extreme sports, knitting, crocheting, painting, cooking, baking, blogging, you could cook/bake and blog about it. 

I had my reservations for each one of it. I’m not into extreme sports, and I’m not fond of knitting. Crocheting is very similar. Painting is a thought, but the potential mess doesn’t excite me very much. I dislike spending too much time in the kitchen, and I can’t handle any recipes with more than 5 ingredients, so cooking and baking doesn’t rank very highly with me. I already blog now, even if it’s once in a blue moon, it still counts doesn’t it. Hey, I’m not picky, I just want to make sure I pick something that I will actually follow through and not abandon ship. 

That evening, I started rethinking the options that were laid out before me. To be honest, despite having an opinion that spending too much time in the kitchen is not productive, I have indeed been doing just that for the last few years. I have slowly but surely embraced the need for me to do so. It hasn’t been very graceful, but it has happened. I now only spend about 2-3 hours on Sundays to cook for the whole week, and that’s me done with the kitchen for the rest of the week. I couldn’t have been happier with my new found plan. But what I failed to see till today is that I’ve been spending the better half of my Saturdays making a new dish for the last 3-4 months. 

How did I figure this out this weekend? I was making protein balls on Friday night after work because I was bored. This provoked my own curiosity. A quick look into my phone’s photo album proved my suspicion. Every Saturday that I have been at home where I didn’t have any guests or plans to go out, I’ve been spending hours trying to make a new dish. 

First, let me dish out a disclaimer; food is a food and cooking is cooking regardless of whether you use the hob or not, or whether your dish is sweet or spicy. Having said that, the ratio between desserts and main meals that I have tried is probably 8 out of the 10. I, for one, can eat desserts instead of meals, so according to my rules, desserts or not, food is food and cooking is cooking. I can’t help it when I have a major sweet tooth, and I naturally gravitate towards dessert recipes. 

As mentioned earlier, I cannot deal with anything that has more than 5 practical ingredients. Practical, according to my dictionary means available in the grocery store that I frequent. I’m not going to take the extra effort to go to another store to find it. Most of my experiments in the kitchen were rather straight forward, but not all of them were successfully identical to the images that were plastered all over the websites or YouTube videos at the end of the recipes.  

On one such auspicious day, I decided I was going to make mango mousse, what I got at the end of it was a mango lassi instead. Here’s what happened. The recipe called for only 3 ingredients; mangos, whipping cream, and condensed milk. As simple as that. I got all my ingredients in my local grocery store; frozen mangos (I’ve got this thing about seeing the seed of a mango fruit when you cut it – there’s a long childhood history behind this), single cream and light evaporated milk. In my defence, there wasn’t any whipping cream, and google told me double cream was a good alternative. I took it a notch further and decided to go with single cream to make it healthier and cut down the fat. There was also no condensed milk in this shop, so the same applied here, I got the light evaporated milk thinking of healthier options. To top the mismatched ingredients, I winged my measurements. What? It was only 3 simple ingredients, surely measurements were not that important. 

And that’s the story of how the mango mousse recipe became mango lassi instead.  This is just one tiny bit of my kitchen chronicles. 

Maybe I should start a series called Chumi’s Kitchen Chronicles soon. I feel like that’s a new hobby right there now. 

Half way through, and barely making it?

I’m feeling very fidgety and spend-y.   

This would be a good time to check in with some updates on my no buy year. It’s now 6 months into my no buy year, I can’t really decide if it is going well or not. I’ll tell you why and you can decide. Also, I’ve now realized that there are people checking on me and I am accountable to them.  

Let me just put this out there first; my main reason for not buying anything this year is not finance, it’s my mental state of mind that I wanted/needed to conquer. Last year I spent quite a number of times binge shopping, just because I wanted to divert my mind, because I felt like it and mainly because I felt I didn’t have enough clothes. I just got fed up of always wanting more when I already had enough clothes, but didn’t want to repeat clothes on holidays, for occasions etc. I’ve got a huge wardrobe in my house, which is full to the brim and another huge wardrobe in my mother’s house, that I usually clear out 3-4 times a year and yet is still full. This is not even a humble brag. It’s mostly old clothes that I’ve been hanging on to hoping I would fit into again at some point. Yet, to be honest, it’s not even the biggest wardrobe I have seen. I know of people who have so much more than I do. But I don’t care about that, it’s my own attitude towards shopping that I wanted to change. I don’t have a problem with spending, I have a problem with appreciating what I have, and this is what I needed to change. 

In January this year, went cold turkey and decided I was going to stop shopping and started a capsule wardrobe out of my existing clothes. I wanted to get as much wear out of all my existing clothes as possible. I feel the urge to add a bit of a disclaimer here. What I created is anything but a capsule wardrobe. To get rid of clothes that I’ve been holding on to (just because I want to see a full wardrobe all the time) was an achievement on its own. I got rid of clothes that I saved for thinner days and ill-fitting clothes that were gifted that I held on to for donkeys’ years. I also managed to separate my winter and summer clothes. If you know me, you will know that I’m forever freezing and will gladly wear jumpers and winter coats in the middle of summer in UK. In my defense, UK summers are deceiving and a disgrace, except for this year.  

Having said that, in terms of not buying any new clothes, I have truly been doing quite well so far. Especially when I’ve been back home to Malaysia and India and had a holiday in Spain in the last 6 months. I thought India especially was going to be tough since I was going for a wedding, and said weddings are no easy feat. I had to make a schedule on what to wear 3 times a day for 4 days! My mother bought me a saree for the main wedding day, I ended up ‘borrowing’ my mother’s saree for another day and got a Punjabi suit as a gift from one of my aunts. Initially I was going to allow myself to do some shopping in Malaysia and India. I justified that it’s not often that I would get to go back, everything is much cheaper and better there, especially the Indian wear, it’s a one-off thing etc. However, I avoided the shopping malls in Malaysia and India like a plague. *A well-deserved pat on the back for myself for achieving that.  

Every time my husband complains about the only pair of black jeans I now own/fit, I keep reminding him that I can’t do any shopping this year. It’s fine, it’s not torn, I can still wear it despite it not being fashionable. Still proud of myself for holding on to my principles. 

What I’m not really proud of at this point is that I’m desperately counting down to the end of the year. I’ve planned out a budget for my year end shopping, started preparing on how much to buy next year (read; planning on a whole new wardrobe), and where to go shopping. I am very aware that this is deemed as cheating. I am lying to my own self by saying that it’s ok to plan for end of the year shopping, as long as I don’t buy anything this year. The challenge was only to reduce/stop shopping this year, next year doesn’t count!

This evening when I was extremely upset that I couldn’t buy anything, I told my husband I was feeling very spend-y and needed some motivation to keep me grounded. He says, “Let’s go shopping together!” How does that even help?! 

NO! I am not going to lose to myself! I refuse to lose to myself! Only 5 more months to go!   

I have taken an oath with myself that I will not do any shopping for myself until 26th Dec 2019.

This is not a new year’s resolution, but it has come at a time where my recent hysterical shopping behaviour has led me to put myself in a non-existing naughty corner; no shopping for this whole year. Period.

I tried to do this about 6 months ago, only because I went crazy shopping during my holiday trips in the middle of the year.  I went cold turkey back then, and it didn’t help at all. In fact, it back fired on me and made me shop even more in the next few months. I got into the habit of seeking some retail therapy when I needed to release some stress or displayed an unhealthy amount of sympathy for myself. I called it treating myself; that is never a good reason to do it. The realisation struck, and i devised another plan. I decided that I was going to shop all I wanted up till boxing day, and that will be my last for a year. If I’m well stocked up, I wouldn’t need to buy anything. #It’sCalledPrePlanning

I had a list of things that I needed to be wanted. It was a lovingly compiled list that I spent hours looking online and in shops and wanted to wait for the sales in December. Come December and the long-awaited shopping day, low and behold, I did not get any of it!! Not one thing from my list! I just got a few bits and pieces here and there, and I wasn’t even happy with it. To make matters worse, my husband ordered a pair of black converse online, and it was delivered on 31/12. I tried it on, and it was so good!!! It was what I needed and didn’t have the common sense to think of before! Why doesn’t he have a size 4 feet like me! I contemplated ordering it online with the budget that I had left from my ‘Final shopping in 2018’. If I used that money, it’s not cheating then it is. But I didn’t do it. It’s hardly a need is it? Now that black leather hi-top converse is number 1 on my list for 2019 Boxing Day shopping. 355 days to go. #JustSaying

Every day after this I kept obsessing with the ads that was flooding my inbox. Everyone seems to be selling everything that I needed wanted now. The only way around it was to unsubscribe from all of it. I loved looking at all the sales and new items. All the ideas I got from everywhere. I just love online shopping and browsing. I look at everything and store it in my head for some unknown,unforeseen future reference. I wanted to be up to date with the latest fashion and promotions. #NotLikeIAmAFashionDiva. My nieces are probably better dressed than me sometimes. 

I also felt important that I had so many emails in my inbox, but the painful reality was that 9/10 emails every day were either ads and bills payment confirmations this week. Sigh. Welcome to adult life, where bills take over fun shopping. I spent one whole painful afternoon unsubscribing from all the emails that came through to meand spent the next day being upset that I wasn’t receiving any emails. I am not as important as I thought I am. 

While one side of my brain is telling me to stop shopping, the other side of the brain noticed one of my colleague's work wear style and got fascinated. I said to myself that I need to try that style rather than prints and florals ALL.THE.TIME! On a side note, I finally packed my summer clothes this week and noticed that ALL my skirts were florals; ALL my summer tops had busy prints! I don't know how i matched those together. probably why i hardly wore my skirts. What a shame that such realisation only comes when I keep telling myself that I cannot buy. 

At the rate advertising and consumerism is heading these days, unsubscribing from emails just won’t cut it. I would need to delete my Instagram account, Facebook account, YouTube, stop reading blogs, and sit under a rock! Literally. There’s influence from every corner!

This rule doesn’t apply to holidays and experiences though. It’s not like I go on holidays every month, and holidays are not the same as shopping. What is going to be challenging is shopping while I’m on holiday. Back when we were really broke and did budget holidays, I only bought fridge magnets for myself as remembrance while I bought gifts and souvenirs for the family. I was still satisfied with it. As times changed, fridge magnets weren’t good enough for me anymore. I increased my shopping with each holiday after that. I enjoyed buying things that I could use and has a story to tell. 

Like a crystal water jug that I got from my trip to Athens, that I’m so precious about it only comes out for dinner parties, where I proudly tell anyone who bothers to ask ‘Oh, that’s from my holiday to Athens’, ‘And my coasters are from Paris’, ‘I got that pot from Dubai, as you would’. ‘Nice earring? They’re from Germany’... and so on. Maybe I’ll allow myself to buy one thing when on holiday, in addition to a fridge magnet, and a little something for the house perhaps. I definitely have to stop buying more new bed sheets this year at the very least. The new-bed-sheet-addiction is really I tell you, so real. 

By the end of this saga, I hope to have come to the realisation that I’m not sacrificing anything at all. Shopping isn’t all there is to life. Being on top of the fashion game is not everything. I am after all someone who wore the same clothes to work 5 days in a row. Albeit not being happy for my own personal reasons, I survived it. This time, I hope to survive with much more grace than feeling sorry for myself.

I’ve decided, and there’s no more turning back now. I really want to see how I can cope with it, and how it feels. So the rule is; no shopping for a year, however, if something I already have is broken/finished, I will get a replacement. I’m just not going to get new clothes or shoes. I can, however, accept (hope to receive) gifts throughout the year in addition to anniversary, my birthday, and Christmas. CC: Please take note, my family and friends, if you are reading this, especially Laxman Sivanathan! I’m a size 8 for clothes and a size 4 for shoes. ;)