August 8th

{In which I celebrate a special day}

Lots of things going on these few days! August 6th was the Asian equivalent of Valentine's Day (July 7th on the lunar calendar). And today is Father's Day in Taiwan since 8/8 sounds like "dad" in Mandarin. My coworkers were surprised to hear that Father's Day happens in June in the States!

But neither of those is the reason for today's post. My dad already got his Father's Day post for the year, and as for Valentine's Day... well, if I ever get a boyfriend, that's when I'd feature photos of him as a kid or something. Because what are special occasion posts for, if not sharing old photos?

Look at this one and see if you can guess what's so special about today:

Yup! Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad! Here are more photos of my gorgeous Mom and handsome Dad looking young and in love:

Christine

{In which I make you all insanely jealous because my friend is THAT gorgeous}

So, way back in May (yes I know how behind I am with photos), Christine came to Taiwan for a family friend's wedding. And I was SOOOO EXCITED to get to see her! :D We bought a ton of Taiwanese snacks at 7-11 and had a fabulous sleepover filled with lots and lots of girl talk. And then the next day we spent the morning primping and then had photo shoots around Taipei. :P This is one of my favorites:

I love having Christine around — not only is she fun and free-spirited and adorable and kind, she's also a wonderful friend and lovely model (her eyes are beautiful).

June Food Post

{In which I am horribly late with the food post}

Yikes. I seem to take longer and longer with these food posts each month! How can July be almost over already?? Sigh.

Anyway, here are photos I like of stuff I ate last month:

This is a mini 粽子 (zongzi). At least that's what I thought it was, until my coworkers told me it's a fake one, because what's inside isn't glutinous rice.

Why I Won't Tell You to "Be Yourself"

{In which I give advice on, well, advice}

Be yourself. I see this all the time, and I'm rather tired of it; I find it much too vague to be of use to anyone. If I were ranking pieces of advice, I would place it somewhere below "do three jumping-jacks every day" (which is concrete and specific) and above "eat mushrooms" (because mushrooms taste gross).

What does "be yourself" even mean? How can you tell when you're being yourself and when you're not? Am I more myself when I'm having a bad day and let everyone know it, rather than trying to hide it with a smile? Am I less myself when I strive to adopt a virtue or trait I've observed in someone else, rather than embracing my flaws?

Sure, the phrase may sound good, but it is so general and abstract on its own that I wish people would stop saying it without explaining what they mean or suggesting how to go about it. And if they mean to say something else entirely, such as "stop ripping off my stuff" or "I don't approve of plastic surgery" or "I'm positive you can  be successful by doing only the things you feel like doing" or whatever, well, I wish they'd say that instead.

I'm guessing that some people use the phrase as a shorthand for encouraging individuality, which is nice, but still not that helpful unless the concepts are more fleshed out. I don't claim to know all the answers, but if I were to offer an alternative to the "be yourself" cliche, it might look something like this:

Mid-July Update

Yay, I finally have all of June's food photos selected and processed! They'll be posted soon. Gah, I'm getting later and later with the food posts. And here I'd thought they were the one thing I did consistently on this blog. Maybe I should try posting a photo every weekday again? Diane seemed to like that, and one photo wouldn't be too hard, I think. Maybe. We'll see.

And I totally meant to do something special for the six-month anniversary of my blog (and one year in Taiwan!) in the beginning of July. Oh well, it can be late. But I'm not sure what to do. Q&A? Giveaway? I'm hoping for something that involves participation from YOU. :)

Oh and while I'm here, some updates:

• I went to see the Picasso exhibit with Brandon and Phoebe! I'm not a fan of the art but had a blast hanging out with them and catching up (we got shushed three times in the first five minutes, haha). And we totally made fun of the paintings when we weren't chatting about other stuff. And then Phoebe's uncle took us to the Youth Park and I took tons of photos of the two of them with my new lens! Definitely a happy weekend.
• I went to 師大夜市 (Shida Night Market) and bought so many new clothes. Being in Taiwan is making me like shopping a lot more, because things are actually affordable! Except there aren't many vendors that let you try on clothes before you buy, so there's a bit of a risk involved. But still, I'm excited about my haul as a whole, and I would totally be tempted to post my outfits or start a style blog or something if I thought I knew anything about fashion. (Which I clearly don't, as evidenced by that time I asked this salesgirl at Sogo about an item she informed me was so last season.)
• More hangouts planned for the weekend! People I met at last year's Ecamp are back in Taiwan so I'm excited about seeing them, as well as mentors from the camp. But I'm a bit wary about the weather since I heard a typhoon will hit this weekend. =\ (And I totally got caught in the rain without an umbrella today. AGAIN.) Still, the rain isn't so bad. Preferable to the heat, in my opinion.

That's it for now. I just felt like posting something, since I haven't posted much lately. (Need to fix that!) 

Here, a random photo for you:

More posts to come!

with love,

linda

Flying Fish

How can it be a week into July already?! Craziness! I've been terrible with blogging lately. Still in the process of collecting all the food photos from June for the monthly food post; hopefully I'll get that done over the weekend (but then I say that about every weekend). It's starting to get hotter and hotter here, but a lot of friends from the states are visiting, so I've been meeting up with people and planning get-togethers and basically enjoying summer despite not having an official summer vacation for the first time in my life. Plus I didn't even get July 4th off!

And of course I take tons of photos at each hangout, and since I haven't done much photo-processing lately, that means I'm super behind. But then what else is new?

Anyway, here are a couple shots from when I visited Keelung with relatives way back in April.

Hope you had a good Fourth of July!


with love,
linda

SYS Memorial with Victoria

{In which we have way too much fun with an umbrella}

So after brunch at Omelet to Go, Victoria bought an umbrella and we strolled through the grounds of Sun Yat-Sen Memorial to talk and take pictures.

Spring Snowman

{In which we discover how useful orange microcentrifuge tubes can be}

In case you didn't know, I work in a lab. We keep stuff like proteins and DNA and buffers cool by placing them on ice, which we get by putting ice cubes through a shaved ice machine. It's not a huge leap to imagine the hill of icy goodness with all sorts of delicious toppings — mochi, ripe mango chunks, condensed milk — but since the ice is made of tap water, I'm never tempted to dig in even though it's been getting hotter and hotter (besides, all the toppings would be imaginary anyway).

During spring cleaning we got a lot more ice, thanks to the -20C refrigerator; basically moisture freezes out of the air inside the refrigerator and attaches itself to whatever surface is available. That ends up being a lot of ice.

The ice got dumped into the sink by the bucketfuls so it could slowly melt away over the weekend. But it was Friday afternoon before a long weekend, and all that ice proved to be too tempting. So one of my brilliant coworkers (I forget who) decided there was only one thing to do. 

Windshield Wipers

Saw this in a parking lot near the office and asked my coworker why all the windshield wipers were up. "So they won't melt onto the windshield," he told me. 

Yup, Taiwan summers are sweltering. I'm starting to love rain; I used to hate how inconvenient it made everything, but now I'd be grateful for a respite from the heat.

Hope that, unlike me, you're enjoying summer weather!

with love,

linda

Omelet to Go

{In which you get to see my Chinese handwriting, which looks worse than that of Taiwanese kindergartners)

Way back in April, my high school friend Victoria and I went to Omelet to Go for brunch (except we didn't get it to go, haha). It was a really cute place near my uncle's apartment and the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.