What I've been ❤️ing #1

Some things I've enjoyed lately

After my last post, and how hard it was for me to write it, I want to introduce some light alongside the heavy topics I try to wrestle onto the page. As life is not either about good or bad stuff but both, I want Whatever🐆 to embrace both heaviness and lightness. This is the first instalment of ‘What I’ve been ❤️ing’, a new series of posts about random things I enjoyed. I love when others (authors, friends or random acquaintances on the internet) share what they enjoy and are enthusiastic about. And that’s exactly what I want to do here. I get anxious about posts or articles where authors list 10-15 things they recommend though so I won’t replicate that kind of to-do list vibe. Instead, I plan to write about 1-2 things that lit some fire in me, be it a book, a podcast episode, a random picture, an artist date I did, whatever I fancy to share. Let’s get into it.

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The Arctic Curry Club by Dani Redd

I’ve read this book in my book club. I love being part of a book club because I’ll read a book I otherwise never would have found. It’s especially true about this book because it’s not that widely known. And I’m so glad I read this one. 

The Arctic Curry Club takes place in Svalbard, the northernmost place on earth and it tells a story of a British-Indian woman in her twenties who moved to Longyearbyen because her boyfriend wanted to and she wanted to follow him. They moved there in the middle of winter, when there is no sunlight until March. In this coldest, darkest place, Maya starts to discover her Indian heritage through cooking Indian dishes and her long-lost memories of childhood start to resurface.

I fell in love with Svalbard through this book and I can’t seem to stop watching videos from Cecilia Blomdahl who lives there. I like the quiet, the calm and simpleness I get from this place. It was interesting to discover that the sun is a precious thing, that there are places in certain periods of the year where it’s a scarcity. I loved how Dani Redd smuggled in references about the sun throughout the book like when Maya was video chatting with her dad in Bangalore, India, she envied the scorching sun shining behind her father which her father wanted to escape from. I loved the pace of the book, how the conflicts were spread-out. How Svalbard was woven into the story, the opposites of cold, darkness and the hot, hearty Indian cuisine at the same time. I loved the descriptions of the Indian foods Maya prepared, I could imagine how they were made and I could almost taste them. I got inspired to cook Indian dishes and I cherished the fragrant scent of the spices they regularly use, like cinnamon, turmeric, cumin, cardamom. And I loved how Maya had grown throughout the book, how she faced the issues life (and the author) dealt her. It was an inspiring and uplifting read for me. I like how a book can change me a bit (or make me discover something in me) and this one definitely did.

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Random manicure

I did this manicure as an artist date. An artist date is part of the Artist’s Way which I’m doing for the second time now and it is basically a date with yourself. It should be done once a week, and ideally, they should be planned ahead of time, put into your calendar like you do for other people and events. I still fail to do it this way, I have to get into why later, but last week, I spontaneously did this manicure for myself and I called it my artist date for the week. I loved how the weather started to get warmer and warmer, how the flowers and trees started to blossom and it slowly started to feel fully spring. I first practised how I could make a flower with the basic brush the nail polish comes with, how much nail polish I need for a tiny dot, how much pressure should I put onto my nail to come out as a well-rounded dot and what colours go nicely together. After one trial and error set of nails, I wiped them off, and redid it with the skills I acquired in the first round and I loved how it turned out. My left hand is pictured here though which I did with my more skilled right hand. My right hand didn’t turn out like this so don’t believe everything you see 😉 It was so much fun to experiment and I enjoyed the process.

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