What I miss most about the States

I've been feeling reminiscent so I thought I'd make a list of what I miss most about the States, people excluded and in no particular order.  

1. driving!

2. TexMex

3. people saying "bless you" after sneezing

4. speaking English

5. personal bubble space

6. living in a house (vs. apartment)

7. actual enclosed showers

8. ovens

9. air conditioner/heater

10. people saying "excuse me" when they bump into you

11. cheese! on everything!

12. sandwiches

13. Target, e.g. one stop shopping

Conversely, this is what I'll miss about Taiwan.

1. MRT

2. cheap food

3. night markets

4. all of the convenience stores

5. speaking Chinese

6. buses

7. walking everywhere

8. the close mountains and ocean

Well this is all that comes to mind right now.  If you'd like to add to the list, let me know!  

Spongebob!

I like Spongebob, it's a really funny show that I think is great to watch when you don't need to work your brain.  That, and it actually does have some pretty witty jokes mixed in with ridiculous kid humor.  So because I bought a Spongebob planner and other... Spongebob-y incidents... I am now known around the office as the person who loves Spongebob.  

On my birthday, my coworkers set up a small surprise lunch party for me.  It was really sweet.  I had delicious chocolate cake and my presents were these cute sponges that were decorated to look like Spongebob.  Sure, I can't really do my dishes with them, but they're a really cute souvenior to take home with me.  

 

After work, a group of my work friends and I went to a Mexican restaurant called Tequila Sunrise, where I had pretty good chicken quesadillas, Mexican style not TexMex (my favorite).  We also ordered a pitcher of strawberry margarita where we had the option of a normal amount of tequila or extra tequila, at no extra cost!  Only in Taiwan...  Then when we asked what freebie I could get for being the birthday girl, I got a shot of tequila.  My first, it was predictably strong and gross in my opinion but not bad with the salt and lime.  Afterwards, we went to one of our friend's apartment to play Wii Mariokart.  It was difficult to get the game set up in the teeny apartment but it was really fun and interesting to see someone else's home in Taiwan, excluding my family.  

So that is the story of my first birthday out of the country!  I guess I can report that birthdays are pretty much celebrated the same way as they are in the US.  Unless there is some crazy Taiwanese birthday celebration method that I am not privy to, I'd say I had a pretty satisfying birthday.  Thank you to everyone who helped me bring in year 23!  

Birthday

So, tomorrow is my birthday. This is actually one birthday that I'm not that excited about. For one, I'm turning 23, which is altogether a very unexciting year. I mean it's not 21 and I'm only getting older right? And for two, this is pretty much my first birthday away from my best friends. I miss them like crazy.

Regardless, my friends here have set up a very nice night for me. After work we're going to a Mexican resturant, I'm really curious to see what Mexican food in Taiwan will taste like. No doubt it'll be different, but we'll see how good it is. Afterwards, we're going back to a friend's place to play Wii. Kind of random, I know, but I'm sure it'll be fun. Oddly enough, I think this night will be sans alcohol, but I'm ok with that.

One year older, I hope that makes me one year smarter too. Well, I'm glad to say that I was brave enough to spend the majority of age 22 living in a foreign country. This experience was definitely worth whatever I sacrificed for it. I feel that I know myself better and I definitely know the world a little better. My time here is nearly over though, I just booked my one way ticket back home yesterday and I could not be more excited. I'm scared to see where my next adventure takes me but I know the experience will be worth having.

So here's to getting older! I hope everyone has a great Friday the 13th!

Seoul and Gwangju

I am back from Korea! It was a long but really great trip. I chose a bottle of soju to represent and commiserate my trip because as far as I can recall, I had soju every night I was there. Soju is a great, traditional Korean alcohol that everyone drinks. It's pretty much mandatory. Anyway, Seoul was great, its a really pretty city with lots of hills everywhere. It reminded me of San Francisco because every building and apartment seemed to sit on a tall hill. There's also a large river that runs through the city that I thought gave the city a nice water-front charm. I did some typical touristy things like visiting the Gyeongbok Palace and the DMZ. My good friend Thomas, who I also went to Japan with, showed me around town and we had good food, good soju, and good company!

I also made a side trip to the city of Gwangju, about four hours outside of Seoul to see my friend Charlie. We had a good time wandering around downtown and finding the best bottle of white wine ever. I also bought a pair of purple low top Converse shoes and learned how to shoot a pellet gun! Charlie won me a little penguin with red ear muffs. Overall, it was a pretty hilarious day.

All in all, it was a great trip and I can't wait to make more of them! Below are some pictures I thought I'd share:

Seoul Tower

The view from Seoul Tower

The only normal picture of Charlie and I, from the bajillion he took with my camera.

Inside Gyeongbok Palace

A wall near the DMZ.

I think in the distance that is a gate at the DMZ.

The only picture Thomas let me take of him, judging from my entire photo album, you wouldn't be able to tell that I was with him for practically the entire trip!

BONUS:

This is still moving octopus, its pretty disgusting but apparently its kind of a delicacy (I assume anyway). It's pretty gross, it crawls off the table when you try and eat it.

Well I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Vonnegut

Today Rudy and I got on the topic of Kurt Vonnegut (may he rest in peace).  We both agreed that he is one amazing writer, in addition to the fact that he makes great social and political observations.  I can't say he's my favorite writer since I've only read Cat's Cradle, but he is on the top of my list of authors for which I'd like to read every single work they've authored.  

Since I've been really busy at work lately and I'm planning on leaving for South Korea on Saturday, I just want to leave you with some of my favorite quotes from Vonnegut.  I will take lots of pictures in Korea and post them when I get back!  Sorry to go M.I.A. for a while but perhaps I will be able to post once more between now and when I leave.  

And here are some of my favorites (most I pulled from Wikiquotes):

"When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps 

from the floor 

of the Grand Canyon,

'It is done.'

People did not like it here."

— A Man Without a Country

"Hello, babies.  Welcome to Earth.  It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  It's round and wet and crowded.  At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here.  There's only one rule that I know of, babies — 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'"

—God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up?  Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?"

—A Man Without a Country

"I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy — because we're experienced with it, you know.  And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go.  And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote.  And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay.  And that's what's going on now."

—Interview on The Daily Show

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least  you can do is go into the arts.  I'm not kidding.  The arts are not a way to make a living.  They are a very human way of making life more bearable.  Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.  Sing in the shower.  Dance to the radio.  Tell stories.  Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.  Do it as well as you possibly can.  You will get an enormous reward.  You will have created something." 

—A Man Without a Country

I hope to create something for the world someday.  Although I don't sing in the shower, I do sing ridiculously loud to the radio in my car.  Too bad I haven't been able to drive since I've been in Taiwan.

Adios lovers, until next time.

Redesign?

I've been told by my lovely sister that I need to redesign my blog, perhaps I need to spruce up my font choices or my colors.  Maybe I could add a few more pictures.  Needless to say, I never knew that blogs would actually take so much work, not to mention so much html know-how.  Not that I am not up to the challenge, although I'm afraid either my work performance or my LSAT studying concentration levels might suffer the consequences.  Regardless, I'll take any suggestions and I'd like to share some pictures from this weekend.  

A group of friends from work and I went to stay in National Taiwan University's "dorm" up in Yangmingshan (a famous mountain here in Taipei).  The dorm is basically a house that you can rent for a little under 100 U.S. dollars for a night and it can sleep up to about 12 people, possibly more.  So we did some hiking and looked at pretty roses, which apparently is the THING to do right now, so it was super packed.  Apparently, in Taiwan, because the political situation can sometimes be so sensitive that the news is constantly filled with pointless things about current popular attractions in Taiwan.  Thus, leading to what was only slightly popular before being broadcast, to being a completely ridiculous circus over something only semi-cool.  

Anyway, here are a bunch of pictures of the dorm and flowers.  After a year of owning my camera,  I finally figured out how to take those artsy, albeit somewhat cliche now, flower pictures.  And by figured out, I mean someone showed me.

A rose that I found named "Oklahoma"!

Happy, dancing, singing man!

I think he's dressed in aboriginal garb.

Bee, hard at work.

When I figured out how to use my camera...

A cool waterfall that has turned the rock behind it completely white due to its sulfur content.

Cherry blossoms, I think.

Yangmingshan.

Our dorm!

The view.

Bees!

As per request, I've made an email address available on my profile for any questions or comments that you'd like me to address one-on-one.  Also, welcome new followers!  I'm glad to see that my blog has been generating a little interest.  Although now I have an uneven number of followers and Charlie is dangling off on his own on the second line (sorry Charlie!), but nevertheless, thank you so much for your support!

So the topic of bees has been on my mind lately, especially after I saw the Bee Movie that Jerry Seinfield obnoxiously advertised for like a month straight when it first came out.  It was recently playing on the HBO channel I get here, pretty much one of my few opportunities to hear some English spoken once in a while.  Anyway, two main things cross my mind when I think about bees, both of which were subjects dealt in the Bee Movie, although a little more unrealistically.     

One, is that bees are often martyrs.  Martyrs for the protection of their hive.  As I think about the "heroic" factor of our current culture, I find that it's dying.  I would not characterize this as a bad thing, because we don't really need a bunch of idiots running around willing to die for any small cause, but I find the whole "knight" culture has largely disappeared.  Sure people, or men specifically, are still willing to defend the honor of their lady but long gone is the neccessity for the sacrifice of life for protection.  When a bee stings someone in order to protect themselves or their hive, they lose their stinger and subsequently die.  I'm sure that many other animals have been equipped with similar "martyr"-like weapons, however bees seem to be the most notable. 

Two, is the dying of bees.  Although Bee Movie did not address the dying of the bees, it did address the consequences of the removal of bees from the process of pollinization.  Before I left for Taiwan, I remember a very poignant commercial done by Haagen-Dazs concerning the declining population of honey bees and what that means to us.  You can watch it here:  

As a person who is very concerned about environmental issues, this seems to be one of the many problems that plague our generation.  Sure we could figure out a way to artificially pollinate plants after the bees are gone but we all know that losing even a small component in our very intricate and dependent ecosystem can lead to unseen and probably worrisome troubles.  Haagen-Dazs has developed a very cute website for the cause where you can learn more about why the loss of honeybees would be detrimental to many of the ingredients that they use in their ice cream (strawberries, almonds, and peaches to name a few) as well as what they are doing to help the cause.  You can visit it here.  Apparently, you can help by planting certain flowers that attract and can maintain bee populations (if you don't mind having bees hang around your home!).  I know that earlier, Burt's Bees had a similar "save the bees" campaign and were giving out free packets of bee-friendly seeds online.  As an avid fan of their chapstick which uses beeswax as a main ingredient, I'm sure Burt's Bees and I would both like to see the survival of honey bees!       

So this is my promised post on bees!  I hope it lived up to the expectations.