Day Four Part I

Seriously ugly pumpkin after we savaged it...


Pretty yellow flowers...they're real!



At night, Bonnie and her mum invited me to a cooking class -
Today's theme was Cantonese food..
we made those things that u get in Yum Chas..

Sorry - I ate them all before I could take more pics...

Day Three

I love pomegranates - it took me ages to de-seed it though!
Don't you love the Xmas theme? :)


We drove to Yin-Ge at lunch. It's this ceramics streets just oustide of Taipei...


They sell arty fartsy stuff as well as everyday ceramics kitchenware.

I love cheesecakes with a passion, esp the ones here in Taiwan.

I grew up eating this pudding too...


ohh and this... soybean curd?! with taro and red bean soup...

Ooodles of noodles..yumm

Day Two Part I

We attended Thanksgiving service on Sunday morning
It so happened that they have their annual whole-congregation photo session today!
I was sitting at the back taking this photo but eventually they made me and Jen go up.


We rushed off to the hairdressers appointment.
This is me before. I don't really have an after shot though.
It didn't turn out very well an I prefer my previous 'do.


Rushed off again to Chiang-Kai Shek memorial for this theatre/opera show about the 'Black bearded Bible Man'


This missionary guy from Cananda- George Mackay had a huge influence in Taiwan back in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
He worked as a doctor/pastor in Taiwan back when no one had heard of the Gospel and stayed in here until he died.
He founded a university and hospitals here - oh guess where I was born! Yes, in his hospital here in Taipei! :)
This guy's amazing! But the opera didn't live up to my expectations though...

Goodbye Sydney

Sydney Airport in the sky...



We touched down in Taipei at around 9pm local time.
Mum and Dad took us to have supper straight from the airport...


I am still not a fan of oysters...even mini ones...

Ilha Formosa

So here I am again, in the comfort of my parents home in Taipei, far away from the end of year stress and work in Sydney...

Life is so different yet so familiar here for me, afterall, I am in the country where I spent the first 8 years of my life. And now I think about it, I've pretty much spent every single Christmas holidays in Taiwan for the past 15 years... some things just dont change! :)

Anyways, one thing I have to get used to is the length of my holiday this time. No more 3-month long break from those uni days! I am 'lucky' enough to get 1 month off work given I've only started work this January...just gotta make the most of my hols this time and make every day count!

I'll let the photos do the talking for now....

I'm back!

If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side?

-Leo Tolstoy

Temporary moving...

Since I am traveling for the next 6 months...I'll be journaling in this blog:

http://ayearwithviv.blogspot.com/

See you there :D

in 17 hours...

In exactly 17 hours, I will get my life back....

I will say goodbye to this computer lab that I've been calling home for the past few weeks...to the burgers at Maccas across the road that I've been feeding on almost every dinner, to the codes that I've been writing but fails to stay bug-free, to the usual morning fix of caffeine that keeps me awake throughout the day...

So loooong...THESIS....in 17 hours...

update

I havent updated for the looongest time!

Here are some of the things that happened in the past few months.

1. I was so close to being kidnapped or abducted by some strangers at the bus stop. Lessons learnt! Stranger Danger!
2. My laptop died on me in the middle of my thesis. Should mention that I don't keep it a habit to backup my files. Another lesson learnt.
3. Got accepted to teach English at a high school in Paris for 6 months!
4. Met the nicest person on the face of the earth! :p
5. Spent most of my weekends inside the computer lab
6. I can no longer get through the day without the morning caffeine fix :(
7. Got a job at PwC next January as an IT consultant!
8. Got the worst mouth ulcer that is ouuuchhh!
9. Got an invitation to a wedding in France from an online friend I've never met before.
10. Missed a friends wedding as I forgot to mark it on the calendar :(
11. Had a chest x-ray done. Healthy lungs! Yay!
12. Watched the devil wears prada several times