Brewing coffee, watching a crime docu, dancing on the tube
By the time you get this in your inbox, it will have been at least one hour past my Friday schedule, but I’ll not take this lateness as a failure. I will, instead, take pride in completing my second week of publishing 3x a week. I’m struggling a little bit, because this week has been unexpectedly busy, but here’s to showing up nonetheless!
This week I have just three things to gush about. I think, moving forward, this will be the bare minimum for my Friday newsletter. Three items minimum, five items max sounds nice and doable, amen.
I hope you have a nice weekend!
Moka pot coffee
Ah, there’s nothing like an “aesthetic” version of an old, pretty ubiquitous object to stop you on your tracks and give it proper attention. In my case, it took this cow print Bialetti moka pot for me to finally consider making this brewing technique a part of my daily coffee routine and I’m so happy I did! I didn’t end up buying the cow print version — it’s still in my Tokopedia cart but my no0b qualifications simply does not justify the price. Earlier this year, when a friend offered a classic metal Bialetti he had gotten for free at an event, I jumped at it. I’ve been obsessed. So obsessed, in fact, that just two weeks into using it, I had to admit myself to the ER from the worst case of gastric acid in my life. I was putting the moka pot to use 3x a day to try to get the hang of it, which I should have known was too much coffee than my stomach could handle. We love to learn things the hard way over here.
After a five-month break from it (and a far stricter coffee intake), I’m finally back! Limited to one moka pot serving per day, but I’m back.
While some say the moka pot isn’t exactly the perfect espresso, it really is great to have a simple tool that can produce something close enough to it. Homemade coffee I can add cream/milk to that tastes great and packs a punch. But what I enjoy the most about the moka pot is the process; every cup of coffee is a lab experiment and I get to play scientist. The idea that it brews directly over fire (or heat), the idea that your coffee is brewing upwards? UGHH SO FUN. Watching coffee gush out of the pipe and into the upper chamber of the pot is the highlight of my day. I pour the coffee into my cup while looking forward to the next time I get to do it all over again.
It takes everything in me to not make moka pot coffee three times a day. I’m really trying to be a better person. :-S
A Netflix docu to watch! with! friends!
Speaking of coffee… The Netflix documentary on the Olivier Vietnamese coffee death is about to come out this month and I’ve just been reminded of just how mind-boggling and honestly terrifying the whole case was. This period of domestic news cycle feels so far away now (and not to mention so visually foreign!!! — which is a whole other train of thought I’ll probably explore in a future write-up), but I happened to watch a preview of it and for 1.5 hour I was sucked right back to 2016, which feels like the last time TV had something truly compelling to offer.
I thought the docu would be worth mentioning here not just because it feels bound to be widely discussed and is worth mentally bookmarking, but also because I find my viewing experience perhaps worth recommending, which is to watch it with friends! Being a spectator among a divided crowd is exactly what it was like to follow the case at the time, so watching it as a group feels like an immersive way of revisiting the story. So much has happened ~in the world~ that I’ve simply forgotten all memory of the case. Not even the names of the girls rang a bell when a friend first mentioned the docu. But watching it with others, feeling the vibe shift when new facts were presented, seeing everyone — myself included — wobble their way to a firm opinion put me right back there.
If you’re looking to fit a movie night with friends two weeks-ish from now, here’s a title worth considering. I promise I’m not just saying this because I’m a wimp. :’)
The tube girl
There’s this game I play with myself where I listen to Beyonce’s “Partition” on my MRT trips and try to stay cool. The most I let myself get away with is a hard head bop to the beat, and even then I’d feel like the whole car was staring.
These past two weeks I’ve been obsessed with the “Tube Girl”, as TikTok has named her, who films herself dancing in a London tube car on her commute. Watching her feels cathartic. Like entertaining that tiny part of my brain that says I could probably get away with dropping it low to “Partition” in the MRT if I wanted to. Like the only thing getting in the way was my obsession with other people’s perception of me. That and actual dance skills.
What’s that thing people say? That nobody cares as much as you think, because everyone’s just thinking of themselves? I’ve always suspected that is true, and Tube Girl is that whole concept personified. (Of course it helps that she’s beautiful, young, and thin, and there’s nothing the world loves to see than a conventionally beautiful woman take up space in unconventional ways… but that’s not fun to think about).