The Soup Queen

When I've been working too hard and sitting through too many Zoom meetings and having too many online webinars, my brain gets tired and my body feels heated up! I find that screen radiation affects me a lot so I try to limit my screen time and most times, to no avail! (It doesn't help that I am in the digital space and that I need to work on stuff on my Mac all the time - from my podcast to my live streams and to my main business ).  I felt really exhausted this week as I was also rushing to complete some important content for a client. She was in the running for a major award and needed help to brush up on her submission profile. The thing with submission profiles is that there's always a pressing deadline! And limited words is another. Most people think it's easy to write 250 words than 1000 words but trust me, it is much harder to be concise than to be long-winded.  So work being work, and life being life, a lot of things can stress up the body.  When I sit too lon...

I was in Manila last December with my dad and sisters when I stumbled upon a herbal tea called Ashitaba. The pretty cabins in Baguio highlands with its pine trees  We were visiting my uncle who lived in Manila with his Filipina wife. He is already retired from corporate life (he used to work for the World Bank and had had work stints all over the world). He decided to retire in Manila instead of Penang as he wanted to be near his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter but I also think he likes the easy accessibility of being able to fly east or west as he likes from The Philippines. The Baguio pine tree forest just outside our balcony - cool mornings with fresh air!  This uncle of ours had always asked us to visit him in Manila and finally after much coercion (and not that my dad or his brother are going to get any younger), my sister booked us all on a trip to visit this uncle. As part of the itinerary, Uncle Mike wanted to get us out of the humid city that...

Here's a new remedy for hair loss. (I am like a dog with a bone. I am not letting up on the hair loss remedies or hair loss cures haha though I am happy that my hair is looking much healthier now. I wonder if it's the natural shampoo I'm using or the daily dang gui capsule that I'm taking? Or the fact that I am keeping my scalp cool and oil-free by washing my hair each time I feel my scalp heating up!) This humble root called burdock has been made into burdock oil to prevent hair loss and encourage hair growth. I stumbled upon this root when I was reading a post about the famous Five Element Soup . I've seen burdock in Jusco and Tesco (funnily, never saw it in my Lip Sin wet market though!). It's a long root, about 2 feet, and usually marketed as gobo (in Japanese). In Chinese, it's called Niu Pang. If you go to a Chinese herbalist or Chinese medical hall, its seeds are sold as Niu Pang Zi (Zi referring to the seeds). I bought one gobo/burdock ...