last days in taiwan...

these are way overdue... at first i just never got around to it w/ the busy-ness of going to Hong Kong and then coming back to California... then i actually just forgot. and then my dear Taiwan friend Beverly left a video on my facebook wall =) and got me thinking of and missing Taiwan all over again.
anyways, i thought i'd share some photos from my last few days in Taiwan aka how to tour Taipei in 48 hours or less (sorry some of these are blurry)


Taipei 101 at night -tallest building in the world (although soon to be beat by Dubai) -in Chinese it basically says go taiwan! lol, so much national pride




lunch at the original Ding Tai Fung, basically the best little buns in the world


imitating Monsters Inc at the Pixar exhibit at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum


C.K.S. Memorial Hall




the Valentine's Bridge in Danshui

MRT subway bridge over Jiantan

going going, back to back to

...CALI CALI



haha, not that you guys really want to see a photo of my ocd-semi-packed suitcase, but there it is. note some trinkets from the kenting weekend =) anyways, i am all packed and almost off to americaaaa. thank goodness for free wifi at the taoyuan airport, best idea ever.

as much as i hate to leave, there really is not much of a point staying here longer (although i definitely considered it). pretty much all my friends have returned home to start school, and it really is time for be to go home and finally buckle down on GRE-ing and grad school apps. =/
it was a fabulous summer though. i'll admit i was a bit skeptical before arriving -even during the first couple weeks. Taiwan was never one of those places i lusted over and dreamed of traveling to (aka paris, rome, greece). it was always sort of the routine trip every few years, with tons of family and food. now i can say with confidence that i'm sure i'll be back regularly -a part of my life is rooted in Taiwan and it always will be, even if i try to deny it and the rest of my Chinese heritage. (WOW this sounds so cheesy) it does make me a little sad though, knowing that even when i do come back it won't ever be the same. this group of friends that i've made here through TTT will probably never be completely reunited in the same manner.



well now, that's depressing, hah. i'm gonna go now and watch a video of the making of gucci's f/w 09 campaign.
oh yea, and the amount of duty free i've browsed through in the past couple days mocks me =(

food porn

a visual feast to tempt your eyes and satisfy my stomach. (no worries, this was not all over one meal, hehe) just a quick post before i jump on a plane to hong kong in a few hours!

on another note, saying goodbye sucks, every time. i've had an amazing time this summer with TTT in taiwan and i'm going to miss this place more than i ever thought i would...

you spin me right round

went to the huge ferris wheel at the miramar park in taipei a few nights ago. it's huge and pretty glitzy at night with all the flashing LEDs. we waited extra long to sit in a completely transparent (glass?) box to later freak out on top, haha.






weird pic, it looks like we're in a submarine or something. btw, thanks clemence for the pics! =)



a quick what-i-wore even though the outfit is nothing special. oops, excuse the annoyed expression and sweaty face

jean: old, don't remember, top: rando from some dpt. store, necklace: f21, jacket: BCBG, headband: H&M

i unfortunately haven't been able to spend that much time recently in the grand ole blog-o-sphere. been much too busy with all those things that start piling up when you're about to leave. last minute hanging out, we had to give our presentations all day yesterday, and a closing banquet tonight, all those "last week in taiwan, we MUST hang out" nights.


oh also! i am going to Hong Kong in 4 days!!!!! totally stoked, and if anybody has any good restaurant/sightseeing/shopping suggestions, holler back =)

Longshan and no snakes

I guess this is sort of a tourist spot in Taipei because of all the culture and religion. The architecture of the temple was stunning though, with the flowers, incense, and (later) rain, it was completely gorgeous. I totally felt like I was intruding the whole time though as I watched people go through their routines, praying and making offerings. I don't know if I could worship in a temple... I feel like it is such a private thing.

This is my last week of the internship, with Friday being a long tedious day of academic presentations, ugh. Anyways, I had one last "sick" day to take advantage of, and today was the best day to skip this week =) What I did instead of sitting at a library desk/ listening to Taiwanese that I don't understand:

• woke up early and went for a jog
• clocked in some serious 2 hours of GRE study time
• read some more of the library books I checked out over the weekend. Right now, Fat Land by Greg Critser (because I can never read too many of these -America is fat, why? let me elaborate on the kajillion reasons why- books)
• got my butt up to go see Longshan Temple, in addition to the nearby Herbal Medicine St. and Huaxi Night Market (aka Snake Alley). by the way, I was totally ready to try eating snake, but, well for one thing it was still late afternoon, so not much was open. But those snakes are HUUUUUGEEE, and they even have to display all the rats they feed it too! ...I chickened out.
• almost ALMOST bought these two gorgeous necklaces. decided against it, partly because my haggling skills suck and I didn't want to make a fool out of myself. but now I really want them again... maybe I'll go back? haha, oh indecision...
• finished that pain in the butt powerpoint presentation for TTT
• uploaded photos on facebook (haha, no but seriously, that's an accomplishment)

In conclusion, I had a waayyy more productive day skipping work than I've ever had at work. Lesson: always skip work when you can. =)

wind in my face (pt2)

some more photos from a great weekend down south in Kenting... most of the ones i posted last time were taken with the crappy point-and-shoot. fancier, expensiver cameras + wind and sand and salt and speeding mopeds just don't logically go together... but i tried to include some better quality shots in this post. enjoy! =)

7-11 squatters bums loyal customers


you can't really tell here... but it's raining hard and the wind kept kicking up pebbles in our faces... what we woke up at 7am on sunday for


din din?




leave your mark


check out our ballin' gang sign

oh yea, and i finally just saw Up. (it didn't release here in Taiwan until July 31st... and between packing and NOLA I never got a chance to see it in the States before I left) it was great! very cute and touching, but definitely not as crazy as all the surrounding hype suggested.

sand between my toes (pt1)

back from Kenting and it was sooo much fun!!
a solid 3 day beach weekend complete with cheap meals at 711, shady companies that will rent out mopeds to 12 kids without licenses or experience, rain and wind during our surf, matching henna tatoos, and a couple cases of Taiwan beer as we watch the sunset.










on another (sort of?) related note... i never realized how essential a floppy wide brimmed hat or a straw fedora is for the beach and summer in general. let's be honest, the "beach hair" in magazines never actually happens at the beach. there's too much sand and windy and salt --- hair, at least mine, just ends up being a huge tangled knot. soooo beach hat to the rescue! =) the ones we 'acquired' this weekend were totally cheap and lost their shape in 5 minutes... just as well though, we rode around on our mopeds so often that we just kept stuffing them back into that tiny seat compartment and would have ruined any quality hat anyways.



more pics in a later post! there are so many good ones =)

i'm on your line like vonage

been kind of in a funk all today... probably has to do with the lack of sleep last night, the absolutely nothing i did at work today while everyone was stressing about the hospital inspection, some more bug bites that popped up over night (and on my face too! grrr, it's really sexy), and some other stuff...

anyways, once i got home this evening, after a dramatic cab ride, i decided i really needed to snap out of it.

coffee? no, not really conducive to me catching up on sleep tonight.
ice cream? hm... well for one thing, it's expensive(ish) here and ice cream is never really a good pick-me-up (the idea of ice cream is, but actually eating a bunch of it is usually more of a drag-me-down). so maybe i'll just googleimage search ice cream. haha! (p.s. that's what my friend used to do when we'd lock ourselves in main stacks during midterm season and she was hungry... googleimage food cuz she was too lazy to leave and get some)

so i settled on endorphines and forced myself to go out of a jog... (i am so not this disciplined or healthy usually). snapped some photos while out...

i love this groups of old ladies boogying and old men tai chi-ing in the parks late at night/early in the morning. they're so cute. and i really love that even though i am kind of living in the suburbs of Taipei, there are always so many people out on walks and jogs, with their children, grandparents and mini puppies. it's not like california where everyone you see jogging on the street are all incredibly fit and decked out in lululemon. here they weave it into the routine of the family.

i am heading off with my friends tomorrow and spending the weekend in Kenting (this beach town in the southern tip of Taiwan). we're all calling in sick/ taking the day off work tomorrow and bussing down. should be fun! i am looking forward to it -- gotta kick some energy into me by tomorrow noon. =)

oh and also, i'll be bringing the nikon along so hopefully i'll take some legitttt photos to post up here instead of the usual ones from my crappy point and shoot cam.

p.s. sorry this sounds way more like a diary entry than a blog post. wasn't really my intention when i started this blog. but you know... whatever, just roll with it

p.p.s. random title. it's an e-40 lyric that came on my ipod when i was jogging. i do this thing sometimes... where i title stuff after some random song from whatever i'm listening to at the moment (true story. just check out my facebook albums)

2F White // Three Drives Cosmic Gate

it was amazing. we danced till 4. i was soooo happy LOL

what i wore: F21 tank, purple AA foil skirt. I toyed with the idea of wearing my pink studded H&M heels... but the idea of dancing for 6 hours in heels didn't really appeal to me.