1. Breaking the ice

In my three decades of being on this earth, I have gotten really good at icebreakers.

There’s the kind when you’re sitting down in a group setting - perhaps at a work meeting with new colleagues or at a church conference. My favourite icebreaker to use for these events is the one where you say your name and also add an alliterative adjective before it. So as I’m Janice, I’ll add the adjective, ‘jurassic’ because I tend to walk like a dinosaur, with my head bent forward a bit and a bit of a bounce with my steps. Jurassic Janice you can call me. (What a pretty picture this paints, eh?)

There’s the kind when you’re at a party and you want to strike up a conversation with a stranger - perhaps a pretty girl that you just know will become your new best friend or a good-looking guy that you’re hoping will buy you a drink. My go-to for these occasions will be to comment on something they’re wearing.

“Love your braids,” I’d maybe say to the girl-who-will-soon-be-my-new-best-friend.

“Hey, cool shirt you got there,” I might say to my soon-to-be future husband.

The only time this icebreaker hadn’t worked? When I used it on my actual future husband. He was wearing a ‘Cal’ t-shirt. A born and bred California girl who went to UCLA, I knew where that shirt came from. UC Berkeley. So I used that as my opening line. “Hey, did you go to Berkeley?” I had uttered to the lanky, half-Asian boy awkwardly walking up the steps to our church retreat.

He stared at me, hazel-green eyes that hold a thousand secrets and respond with a very curt, very British-accented…

“No.”

Then he turned away and walked up the stairs into the building.

That ice took three years to break but hey, three years of marriage and a baby boy, here we are.

And there’s the internet icebreaker.

Like, what do you do or say or write for your first newsletter post on Substack where you may have your mom, your sister, your neighbour and your best friend reading but you may also have some dude from Argentina looking up hot crossed bun recipes or some stressed out newborn mom struggling for a good read during her night feed?

I suppose I could tell you I’m super glad you’re here.

I could tell you that I’ve been creating some form of content ever since I could remember - whether that was doodling fashion designs in my grandparents’ sunny condo on Saturday afternoons when I was 8 or crafting a food magazine for an English project when I was 14 or having a blog called Media Maid at 20 or talking my way into an assistant editor job at 22 for a small, niche Asian American magazine or even working my way through creating 4 scrapbooks capturing photos from the last 10 years over lockdown.

I could tell you it was my supportive husband who told me I should start something again. That apparently this newsletter thing is the latest and greatest.

I could tell you that the name of this newsletter came to me in a dream. I just woke up at 3am (as 8-month pregnant women are prone to do from time to time) and said - quite a bit too loudly for my deep in his sleep husband - “Hot crossed buns” and that was it.

I know that it’s actually “hot cross buns” but because in my dream, it’s "crossed”, I decided I needed to stay true.

I really like the name, to tell you the truth. It’s kind of random but kind of not. This is a bun traditionally served around the time of Easter in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. That’s food and faith crossed off on what I want to write about (“Ruminations on food, family, faith and femininity” in case you forgot). It’s a fave in my family. And… I’m a girl so gonna be writing things from a feminine point of view. (Like I said, random but let’s go with it?) You’re going to be finding my posts reflecting on life in London, new motherhood, food (definitely and always) and other randoms. Sometimes the accompanying photos might be beautiful and have taken me hours to stage and sometimes they might be kind of gnarly and unfiltered because I just didn’t have time or couldn’t remember to take nice photos because I am dealing with a tiny human. But I like to think those photos will be beautiful in their own way as well.

Anyway, these are all things I could tell you for my first icebreaker post but instead I’ll share with you this.

“Hi, I’m Janice. You can call me Jurassic Janice because my head and my legs bop a bit while I walk. And… I like your shirt.”