Life advice to my 16 years old self

I turned 20 a few days ago and I wasn't very happy about it. Only because 20, it is a new decade for me and I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

I started this blog in 2009 and it has become a sort of diary for me. Reading back I can see actually how much I have changed to become the person I am today. Some of those principles I still live by and some passion may have taken another route. It is interesting for me and I think it's time to give my 16 years old self some advice.

Here is a few things I wish I knew when I was 16:


1. Don't listen to what everybody says

People will gossip, will have an opinion about you, will critique you but you don't have to listen to everything. There will always be someone who speaks the worst of you, bully you and makes you feel like you are worth nothing. You are a lot more than that, so CHOOSE what you want to hear!

As you grow older, you will care less about what people think of you so speak your mind.

2. Love yourself: being different is AWESOME!

At 16, you are still struggling to find out your place in the world. Don't be afraid to be different and don't let other people push you down. It is okay not to meet those "expectations". You will care less what people think of you because really, it adds nothing to your life.

You can't be happy until you are happy with yourself, your body and be comfortable as you!

By the way, being confident at being you is super sexy! ;)

3. Less is more!

This apply to everything: appreciate the small but meaningful relationships you have, liberate yourself by own what you need. Having to pack and unpack all the time, you will realise that actually you can survive on very little but those little things will be so meaningful!

Buy less stuff, own less things and live as minimalist as you can. Think of it this way: how many hours of hard work does it takes for you to buy that thing? Is it really worth it? Also having a few but good items of clothing - you will always know exactly what looks good on you :) Take the hassle out of making decisions!

4. Have a laugh!

Life is short. You will learn that your life could end at any moment, today, tomorrow or the right the next hour. You don't know what can happen. So no, you don't have to be perfect.

Do what you love, make that damn mistake and not regret it, laugh at yourself and just cherish the simplicity of living.

Go out there and try some new!

5. Have principles and live by it.

Some people may try to change you and you may feel bad that you're not perfect enough. Don't do it unless it is important to you. Never try to change for anyone. Live by your principles: that girl that hate plastic waste, that girl that loves the ocean, that girl that is a bit obsessed with geography.

6. Be driven and dream big!

Never give up on your passion and be determined to get it. You have to think you can do it to be able to do it!

7. You will probably fall quickly with the first person that shows you intimacy
It is okay that you never have a crush over somebody until like uni because when you meet them, they will truly be special. They will drive you nuts, you will probably overthink everything but don't worry, just let it play out! Also, you will make stupid mistakes but you will get over it.

Enjoy the simplicity of holding hands, staring into each other eyes and may be wait for the special moment your lips meet?

8. Life is tough or easy - take it with a pinch of salt!

There are going to be moment when you think the world is coming down on you, that your life is falling apart and you question your ability to do anything at all. If life was easy, what is the point?
Those darkest moment will pass, they will make you strong and they will become a part of you.

That problem that you have: please don't let it rule you life. Please don't forget how awesome you are and please try to forgive that person that hated for so long. They ain't worth the pain you put yourself through. Just let it go!

Day 4:

It is day 4 on #belowtheline now.

I am finding myself cooking a lot more and playing around with the few ingredients I have. I am hungrier too. Last night, I went to bed early because I was a little hungry. In the end, I woke up 3 hours later and had a small bowl of oats to warm my stomach.

It takes me will power not to binge on all the food I have for the week but it is a situation for those who are actually in poverty that they just have to endure with. Our human instinct tell us that when we're hungry, we eat.

I cooked all my meals and portion them in the morning at the moment so I know what I have something to look forward to and not feel like I needed more food.

Day 4: 22p lunch- fish sauce flavoured rice veg and 2 eggs

Now I vowed to try and make a new meal everyday so I don't get bored. Also I wanted to prove to myself that I could really survive on less than a pound a day and make it healthy too.

Really, even with £10 a week on food normally, I do get to eat when I want and may be perhaps, a little too much. I could buy a treat when I want too...

How much does your lunch cost?

Socialising at Uni on a Shoestring #belowtheline

Last night was a typical saturday night for my flatmates: LCR A list!

The only difference was I stayed sober and had lemon water for the whole night. At predrinks, I was watching everyone having their usual: a pint of beer, a bottle of wine, vodka and schmitt. Normally I would have enjoyed a glass of whiskey or a ginger beer or a vodka with mixer. But being on £5 obviously meant I could not afford such items. No one knew except for my bestie that I was not drinking.

I realised that uni social life is surrounded by food and alcohol. If I couldn't afford food then my there is no way I could afford to have a social life. This really hightlight why poverty is a perpetual cycle because people missed out on opportunities. I am not talking about drinking here but about being able to participate in public events. I remember in one of my social anthropology class, the lecturer was talking about how a man unable to buy new clean clothes prevented him from participating in the community life.

Whilst I don't think drinking completely a bad thing, it actually questions my true social skills. I thought this doesn't mean I can't go out, does it?

Strangely enough, I had a great night of just solely dancing and having fun with my two bestfriends: George and Ben. My friends are very supportive of the fact that I am doing the challenge and of course, not drinking! People offer to buy me drinks which is very nice but it is the principle, I can't just "live-off" someone's else. I am so happy I have surrounded by so much support and so many great friends!

In the end, we were rocking it out with Katie there too! It was a good night :)

Last night was a typical saturday night for my flatmates: LCR A list!

The only difference was I stayed sober and had lemon water for the whole night. At predrinks, I was watching everyone having their usual: a pint of beer, a bottle of wine, vodka and schmitt. Normally I would have enjoyed a glass of whiskey or a ginger beer or a vodka with mixer. But being on £5 obviously meant I could not afford such items. No one knew except for my bestie that I was not drinking.
I realised that uni social life is surrounded by food and alcohol. If I couldn't afford food then my there is no way I could afford to have a social life. This really hightlight why poverty is a perpetual cycle because people missed out on opportunities. I am not talking about drinking here but about being able to participate in public events.
Whilst I don't think drinking completely a bad thing, it actually questions my true social skills. I thought this doesn't mean I can't go out, does it?
Strangely enough, I had a great night of just solely dancing and having fun with my two bestfriends: George and Ben. My friends are very supportive of the fact that I am doing the challenge and of course, not drinking! People offer to buy me drinks which is very nice but it is the principle, I can't just "live-off" someone's else. I am so happy I have surrounded by so much support and so many great friends!

In the end, we were rocking it out with Katie there too! It was a good night :)
- See more at: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/blogs/28165#sthash.1uqvSuH1.dpuf

Day 1 #belowtheline

Day 1

Breakfast - Peanut butter oatmeal (18p)
100g Oatmeal = 8p
1tbs peanut butter = 3p
1 cup of coffee = 7p

Post-ride late lunch protein (8p)

Poached egg and left over oat = 8p

Dinner - Egg fried rice and vegetable (21p)

100g rice = 4p
100g vegetable = 9p
1 egg = 8p

Total today: 47p

Hmm, well since I binged yesterday before #belowtheline challenge begin (as well as much needed training for BUCS sprint next weekend) I decided to go on a long ride today, covering 76.5km. I wanted to go with the Cycling Club but the boys are so much faster and I didn't want to hold anyone back. I'm going to train until I get superfast and then I will join them :D

Day1: 18p breakfast- oatmeal with peanut butter and a pinch of salt 100g oatmeal 8p, 1tbs peanut butter 3p, value coffee 7p #belowtheline #budgetmeal #cheapfood

A photo posted by Ada Linh Nguyen (@tulinh17) on Apr 25, 2015 at 12:01am PDT

To fuel my ride, I have to have breakfast - a good old bowl of oatmeal but perhaps 100g in one go is a bit much! I couldn't finish it and ended up leaving some later.

It was a long and windy ride. I have some sugar with me incase I needed a quick energy boost. The gels are there but only in extreme cases because a person in poverty would not have the luxury of having such items...

I finally got home, feeling rather pekish but the adrenaline was still running. I had the left over oat and an egg with plenty of water.

Post-ride protein: Leftover oat and an egg (8p) #belowtheline #trilife #ride #cycling

A photo posted by Ada Linh Nguyen (@tulinh17) on Apr 25, 2015 at 4:52am PDT

An hour later, after a good hot shower, I crashed! I mean I fell asleep doing my job... So I have to catch up now. :( I would have reach for another cup of coffee normally but I can't.

Around 4 pm, I thought it might be time to have an early dinner. The egg fried rice was good. i divided it into two because I didn't want to go hungry later.

Day 1 is going well. Only because I had a huge dinner last night and I guess the tiredness hasn't kicked in yet.

Live Below the Line 2015

Once again this year, I am taking the Live Below the Line challenge, living on just £1 a day for 5 days from the 27th April to 1st of May.

However, seeing that this is 4th year running I am taking the challenge, I thought I would mix things up a little bit.

I've just been reading up on what all my friends are up to and I have to say I have so many amazing friends who are just unbelievable:

Cindy is racing the London Marathon this sunday. (some others I know too!)
Ally has just gotten a well-deserving promotion because honestly, she is the most successful 20 years old I know and if only you can see how hard she works both at her job and her part time degree!
My Linh who is an incredible architect-to-be.
Eunice Yin who now plays in a band, producing awesome tune and just looks incredible.

I have decided a few days earlier that I will be taking the Live Below the Line challenge for 7 days.

Despite having a job and being able to save money for my future adventure, I am still a student living on a budget. £10 for food a week is usually my limit with the occasional snacks that would add up to £2 more. (and of course there is the alcohol for socialising)

Going down £5 is going to be tough but I am taking the challenge to help raise money and raise awareness towards the issue of food security and poverty that still exist around the world. It is time to remind myself how lucky I am to be able to eat and never go hungry.

Here is the food list:

Shopping list:
1kg Oat - 75p
1kg rice - 40p
340g peanut butter- 62p
15 eggs - 1.20
240g kidney beans - 23p
1kg mixed vegetables - 89p
1 jar coffee - 50p

100ml fish sauce - 21p
100g salt - 1p
10g pepper - 6p

Total £5

#belowtheline food hunt: £4.49 so far for the next 7 days

A photo posted by Ada Linh Nguyen (@tulinh17) on Apr 23, 2015 at 6:43am PDT

Semester 2 - OH UEA

Easter is here again!

I am taking my first day off despite the fact that I have not been doing any of my essay. There is a book to read through and 3 essays due in a week and a bit later. It is probably time to reflect on the semester so far.

Academic: Really haven't been doing enough work but I am starting to enjoy the course a bit more. I also realised I like the physical geography side a bit more and considered a change but this was not possible at this point. I did extra work to study ArcGIS on my own.

Social: All tri socials are now held at my flat due to the obvious convenient and we always head off to the LCR after. So far there was the Pancake social which was great fun because everyone came :) ; Athletic mixed social ; Derby day ; I am actually so happy that I joined UEATri because I am making lots of friends and supportive athletes. There is so much banter going on and of course mostly is about our training, our gears or the race.

George, Ben and I are the 3 gangsta! I love them both so much because we have so much fun doing all sort of shit. We are absolutely mental!

Sport: Tri training is tough and it is great to have so many people who understand and that I can aspire to. I am at the bottom of the fitness bracket in the club but I am making progress and that is fantastic. My running has gotten a little faster and I am running longer distances. My swimming still need work and I should do more sessions on my own. My cycling has only started a few weeks ago since I got the 2ndhand road bike off ebay. I have started to go on Sunday ride with the club and attended the extra CCturbo sessions. I am not training roughly 8 to 9 hours per week. I will try and increase them slowly.

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A few weeks ago, Ben at UEATri dropped out of the Broadland Half Marathon. I originally wanted to sign up for it in January but it was too late hence I didn't increase my long distance training. But when the opportunity arise, I just took it out of the blue.

That Sunday, we drove up to the starting point and there I was facing the reality of having to actually run a 13.1 miles. I was nervous but kept laughing at the fact that the longest I've ran is 13 km. The gun shot and everyone sprint off. I didn't.

I have mentally worked it all out. The goal was to finish and I will run at my threshold which was 5''50/km or roughly 9min/mile. Ideally I should finish roughly 10 minutes over 2 hours. Every 30 minutes I should have some food and try to save the gel for the last few miles. Hence, despite being surrounded by people running off fast, I kept telling myself to just go steady. There is no need to go fast and then having to walk.

Now, having ran my first half at Hasting last year, at least this time I was more mentally prepared for what lies ahead. I can only compare this to fight club - between the mind and the rest of my body.

It was a rather hot day.
4 miles in - I am doing okay. I constantly reminded myself, just keep running to the water station. OMG she is pushing a baby cart and is going faster than me!
6 miles - gosh look at Jem and Rob go! They are super fast! Nevermind, just pull your body up and a bit more cadence on the leg. Water on the face now!!
8 miles - I have to make this flapjack last, only one bite to lie to my mind. Speed up a bit, you're falling down to 6 min/km. This nice woman is telling to have a competition with the old man up there. Good idea!
11 miles - why is this a hill? arrgh, okay only 2 more. Just 2 more, eat that last bit of flapjack now.
12 miles - where did everyone go? okay stop freaking out!! I am still running and I will keep running.
13 miles - okay, time to speed things along, keep going. WHY is my legs giving up!?!!

"GO TU LINH! SPRINT TO THE FINISH!!!" my UEATri mates yelled out

I gave it all and sprint through the finish line with our coach reading out my name as passed the finish line.

OH GOSH ! I AM DEAD ! WATERRRRR!!!

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A week later, UEA hosted Derby day which literally is a big sport day in competition with University of Essex. I entered with the other 4 gals in the 10 miles Cycling Time Trial at Horsford.

Saturday 1pm, we all set off as a big group of cyclists to Horsford. Honestly, I didn't really enjoy it that much because my legs were so dead tired and it was incredibly hard to push through. But everyone has a bad race once in a while right?

We ended up having such a fun night at the social with so many other triathletes who didn't compete but came to the social. Absolutely awesome! and LCR after of course.

post readung week

I spent the whole week just lazing around like an absolute pig!

then rush my coursework today..

I am sure I am meant to be reading stuff, doing extra work, catch up on missing lecture notes but I ended up just having a whole week off.

However, I did take up extra hours to work. It was ridiculous though, 4 hours everday for 7 days straight... What a pain... I mean I love my job and I hate it too! Anyway, I need the money to travel and pay off for triathlon stuff. My new bike is working out well! I love it!

Finally signed up for a half marathon in April, 2 days following an Aquathlon on my birthday. Hoping I will do ok! I've been trying to increase my training load. I have not been doing enough. Running is still my fear and I need to increase my mileage otherwise this is not good! My endurance, base level is still not good enough.

Reading week!

Reading week is starting today. Finally!


I got a new bike. I spent all day and all night last night trying to fix it. The valve on the front wheel is a little lose so everytime I tried to pump, it goes flat...

I am planning to spend the whole week next week, training hard, study hard and do extra shifts.

Making progress and making changes

I have not written a blog post in ages. University life just kind of took over.

christmas dinner at lan's

Since my last post, I had an amazing night in London with Carla and Nicole in London. Got my results from essays and coursework back. I think I am proud of my ethnography essay since it was on Ebola, a topic that is very relevant at the moment and not many studies have been done on the issue.

Apart from being super busy, I am enjoying university very much (may be more the social aspect of it!) I had a slight change of heart with my course. We are going more specific than the introductory first term and that’s pretty great but I felt like I wanted to learn more about the physical side.

I went through the whole process of discussing a switch to EGID (BSc Environmental Geography and International Development) the BA is not bad. I just felt may be I would benefit more taking modules more on the environment side, seeing that I care a whole lot more about the environment but still want the human aspect in it. Anyway, switching didn’t went so well because I’m already half way through the year and missed some year long module so the precondition for me to switch at the end of the year is : getting good grades in the BA.

In the mean time, I’ve decided to master ArcGIS and acquired some math skills. This involves taking two giant books out of the library and many self-taught/computer lab sessions.

Joining the UEA Triathlon club is probably one of the best choices I have made. It was tough at first. My first few weeks with tri were just full of pain and mental breakdown. After a 2 hours swim training, I literally broke down and cried in front of our coach because I was so tired and disappointed of how slow I was. Since then, I’ve learnt to go at my own pace and really doing the sport out of my own enjoyment. Positive attitudes do help! I kept turning up to track, turbo, swim, circuit and the occasional Park Run. Considering how much I hate running, I have improved quite a lot.

Definitely think is down to the support of having other people suffering with me! Emily has started joining me for a swim and some training session which motivated me a lot more to turn up to things even on days I felt like urrrgh, a slob!?

This term, we started off with a full 8 days of turbo. I did 7 of them and Mary went for 8. The best bit, of course, was no way the constant pedaling indoor in humid sweat. We celebrated with a Sufferfest social on Tuesday night the week after. It was hosted at #NTD03 and I had a blast. There were around eight of us tri people and my flat mates. We ended up playing all sorts of “Tri” drinking game, which involved a degree of flexibility to pick up a carton box with your teeth. (I won :D , not alone haha) Then it was just the case of freaking my flat mates out - 1,2,3, 10 pushups, 6,14 … In return, my tri friends freaked out about how nuts my flat mates are! LCR was next and it was a fantastic night!

Emily is really my motivator at the moment. Doing more swimming and turning up to training. Track sessions are often difficult but they do help make me start running for the rest of the week. Yesterday was probably the hardest track session I’ve done (felt like it anyway =.=’’) We had to do 400m sprint, 200 jog and another 200 sprint. Now, normally, I would say I gave it ago, as fast as I could… I cut down 2 seconds on my first 400m. Fought hard to keep going! By the third repeat I was getting out of breath … The fourth was agonizing… but apparently, somehow I was literally sprinting for 200m or so during my 400m, before crashing halfway. I mean I felt like it was so slow and I had to stop but I came back and then people were telling me how fast I was. Like what!?! I couldn’t breathe. Another 500m were on the plate and gosh I had to keep running. With lots of encouragement I pushed myself hard. My legs felt like it was going to fall off. The last lap was absolute agony but I sufficed and pushed myself like mad on my last 200m. Receiving some encouragements of how much I have improved from the coach and everyone was definitely a bonus point! I think the improvement since my first few tracks is finally showing. I’m quite pleased!

I went for a swim around 1.8k before coming to track and then we had a film turbo, which lasted around 90 minutes. I am quite done for the day now!

In a way, I am quite proud of myself for trying to learn all this, on top of my main studies, training and having a job. Hence, I am super busy at the moment. Some days I would feel great and some days I would feel like the world is coming down on me. I think I am learning the importance of rest, enjoyment of the things I do and having a balance fun time!

What I mean by this is limiting to just 2 days a week that I will go out to Tuesday @LCR and Saturday. As usual, I will only drink so much that I can dance and sober up in the LCR before heading off to bed for a good night sleep. Weekends are spent doing readings and lecture notes. Any extra hours during the week should be doing the same thing. 5 hours at least should be spent sitting down and working through ArcGIS. To make it less boring, the shifts hour for my job would be scattered through out the day, between my studies just so I don’t get so bored. Most importantly I need to remember to get enough sleep!

Reading week is fast approaching. I need to really utilise this week to do some catch up on reading, start my essays and courseworks. Perhaps do more ArcGIS too.