January Food Post

{In which I post pictures of what I eat because I love my sister}

Confession: I am not a foodie.

Obviously I prefer my food to taste delicious rather than awful, but most of the time I consider eating a rather inconvenient chore that should be as quick, easy, and cheap as possible. (The only exception is eating socially — I'm more than happy to spend quality time/effort/money on a special meal with good friends, but not if it's just me.) In fact, I found eating so burdensome my freshman year of college that I took to sleeping to conserve my energy rather than walking less than a block to the dining hall and swipe in with my pre-paid meal points (wow, that sounds kind of crazy even to me).

Diane is sorely disappointed in this flaw of mine, as she and her friends love fancy food. She requested pictures of the food I eat in Taiwan, and being an obliging older sister, I took my camera to work with me every day and photographed all my meals, although I am not all that interested in food photography myself (I realized that I am rarely interested in the pictures afterwards).

But for Diane and for those of you who genuinely like food, I'm going to share a few of the best food pictures I took this month. Hopefully I'll continue doing it in future months as well, if you like this one.

Goodbye, WordPress!

{In which I explain why I switched to Blogger}

Don't worry, I'm not giving up on blogging already — it hasn't even been a month yet. I'm just moving my blog to Blogger. (I'll explain why at the end of the post for those of you who are curious.)

Without further ado, the most important part of this entire post (aka SHINY NEW URL):

http://aglimpseofwistfulness.blogspot.com

Yeah, exactly the same except for "blogspot" instead of "wordpress." All comments and posts have been transferred to Blogger via the Wordpress2Blogger conversion utility. Comments are closed on the Wordpress blog - go to my Blogger site if you'd like to comment. (Note: some of your comments got lost in the transfer and I had to put them in manually — thus some wonky timestamps.)


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So this is the end of the official announcement. All the rest of this post is about why I decided that Blogger suits me better than WordPress, so if that sounds really boring to you, just skip it. Oh, and I have a dedicated food post coming up next week, so be sure to tune in then!

How I Got My Job (Part II)

{In which I give a virtual tour of my workplace}

This is Part II of the post. To read Part I, see How I Got My Job (Part I).

I woke up the morning after the interview feeling much better, and applied to a few more jobs, vowing to take any future interviews more seriously.  Then my phone rang again. It was the HR manager calling to ask when I could start working at the earliest, because she was processing my offer letter! I was in a cloud of disbelief. That was when I realized that I maybe should have taken better notes during the interview.

How I Got My Job (Part I)

{In which I describe my job-searching process in Taipei, Taiwan}

I finished teaching English as a TA at NTHU (a university in Hsinchu, Taiwan) in mid-August, and I spent the next two weeks enjoying myself and hanging out with people all over Taiwan. It was great, but my parents were worried about my plans for the future (well, more like the lack thereof). All I had was a vague idea that I wanted to try living in Taiwan for a bit (I'm sure many of you are wondering "WHY????" but that's not the point of this post. Maybe I'll write a "Why I Want to Live in Taiwan" post later or something.)  It was a step up from having absolutely no desire to do anything at all, so maybe that's why my parents didn't forbid it. Still, they weren't — and still aren't — fond of having their oldest daughter bumming around in Taiwan when, theoretically, she could be going to medical school.

I knew if I got a job in Taiwan I'd have a more legitimate reason to stay. My parents also insisted that I do something about finding employment. So one night near the beginning of September I created an account at 104.com.tw (a Taiwan job search site) on a whim and pasted in some information from my resume. I then applied to four openings, which made me feel productive enough to turn to other activities.

Fun with Microcentrifuge Tubes

This is what I do at work in between labeling rows and rows of tubes, pipetting various amounts of clear, colorless liquids into them, and then waiting as said liquids react mysteriously over a period of time:



Yes, I take pictures of stuff. Thankfully there is (some) variety to my work and I don't work with tons of tubes every day. And it's nice to have rainbow-colored tubes because that breaks up the monotony:

妹妹 (Mei Mei)

Doesn't she look so effortlessly cool in this photo? I'm lucky I have such a pretty sister as a model. I generally prefer portraits to pictures of scenery, so I'm glad Diane's (mostly) willing to pose for me and let me take a ton of pictures of her. Even though she can be kinda picky about those pictures. But I let her delete the ones she hates (because I'm just a great sister like that). I really like this one though. Too bad she's so far away. Who am I going to take pictures of now??

Swan Lake

{In which there are swans in a lake and a clip from a movie based on Swan Lake (no, not the one with Natalie Portman)}



Ah, the black swan. My mom's favorite bird. The photograph doesn't do it justice, but unfortunately I think it's the best of the bunch I have. Ah, well.

How to Get Grandma to Buy You a Car

{In which my grandma reveals she has our best interests at heart}

Many of you may have heard this story before. But since I've been reading lots of fun blogs by doctors/nurses/med students lately that made me laugh as well as think omg I don't want to be a doctor!!, this story came to mind again. So I felt compelled to share it. (And yes, I may have copied it from my final paper for one of my English classes senior year of college. But I promise I changed a few words here and there. Ok fine, I actually changed it quite a lot. That paper kind of sucked.)

Enjoy!

Seaport Sunset

Photo taken with cell phone, December 2009 at Seaport Village, San Diego. Currently my cell phone wallpaper (unfortunately that phone doesn't work in Taiwan, but I still use it as a notepad/watch/alarm clock/mp3 player/emergency camera).

Supermarkets are Super

{In which I remember how awesome supermarkets are}