taiwan & 2010

the last time i was in taiwan, i thought i wouldn't go for a while again because school was starting up and i wouldn't have any real breaks anymore... but i found myself there again this last winter break haha =] i suppose it has been longer than usual, since i used to come back at least once a year (and sometimes twice ^^;;) and for longer periods of time. oh well... i'll take what i can get

surprisingly, i didn't do that much shopping for clothes this time; i only got a jacket and a shirt... i realized that a lot of the stuff i bought before from taiwan looks perfectly normal in taiwan, but when i bring it back to the u.s. it's like... wow... this is too weird/embarrassing/fobby to wear out haha.. so i forced myself not to buy anything too fobby this time lol

i saw my cousin katherine's baby, claire, for the first time in person on my trip. man, that is one good baby... she laughs all the time and rarely cries. almost makes me want to have kids... that is, until i was at dinner with my other cousin, paul, and his two kids. suffice it to say, those two are more than a handful. seeing katherine with a kid makes me feel really old :( i remember a long time ago when she lived in the house on the street behind mine and was doing color guard in high school, while i was in elementary school doing whatever retarded things i did at the time... sigh.. time really does fly.

i started missing taiwan the first week i was back here... where else can you get dimsum 24/7, electronics for cheap, 麻辣鍋 hotpot flavored lays, and good 牛肉麵 from a different restaurant each meal?? and i think my friends in taiwan outnumber my friends in the u.s.... *sigh* haha the only downside to being in taiwan is that i feel kinda fat == i have to buy medium shirts, and a normal sized bowl of noodles was definitely not enough for me... oh well.. i'm suffering from good-food withdrawal (and some kind of unknown stomach sickness) right now, so i will be skinny in no time once again bwahaha

you'd think that after three weeks back here in the states i'd be back on my normal schedule of sleeping at like 2-3am and getting up at 7, but apparently i'm still somewhat jetlagged. more often than not, i'm sleeping right after i get home from school (somewhere between 3-9pm depending on the day) and i wake up at like 4am. it's actually kind of nice.. i can get studying done in the morning and i save money by not going to out eat dinner.

i'm actually starting to do work on patients in the clinic now, which is kind of fun~ the 4th year in my team says she's proud of me because i am so calm when i am working on the patient =] she said the first time she was drilling teeth in a real patient she was freaking out, which i guess, is not a good thing to do. but i'm kind of scared of the fact that i'm not hesitant at all to pick up my handpiece and start drilling away... ^^;; what does scare me, however, is all the paperwork and protocol that needs to be followed when treating patients ugh, such a pain. also, in preparation for clinic, i ended up getting a haircut.. and it's pretty short... i can actually spike it now; in fact, if i don't spike it it just looks hideous... sigh.. i don't want another haircut for a long time ==

on another topic, last year i spent $12,106.31 (not including rent, which would be another $13,082 on top of that). naturally, food was the largest expense at 41%, followed by "other" at 17% (gifts for other people, things that aren't food or fun, or just things i don't know where else to put) i don't really know what to make of it though... i have no one really to compare to, since other people don't seem to keep track of their expenses like i do haha... one thing i think i could probably improve on in 2010, however, is my alcohol expenditure.. even though it was a measly 3% of my budget, that means i still spent $375 on it... so basically, i need to either drink less, or get more people to buy drinks for me :D

ok enough for now.. it's getting wayyy past my bedtime, so... until next time!

soccer guitar hero
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjwoVqM_qE
soccer players play guitar hero by kicking soccer balls at panels on a wall in front of them. they're pretty skillful... reminds me of (detective) conan (not conan o'brien) :P

usb stick!
http://www.geekalerts.com/usb-computer-prankster/
i wanna get this and pass it around class telling people it has the newest lecture on it~ you know you want to too =]

ps: sorry no pics this time... and i'll try to update with shorter posts and more often, since i doubt most of you have the attention span to read my whole posts haha