Day 4- 9th January 

Headed to Yehliu early in the morning. Or maybe not so early. Took a bus from Taipei Main Station terminal B (I think). It's kind of easy to get around in Taipei with all the buses that goes past places that tourists love to go like Yehliu and Yangmingshan etc. Wow.

Anyway Yehliu was freaking super cold. :( It was raining and the wind was so huge that I had to use both of my hands to hold onto my umbrella. Hahaha too fat to fly away though.







Looking through my Taiwan photo album. Really looked damn horrible in Taiwan photos tsk. Look like bazhang throughout Day 4 cause I was wearing what t-shirt, knit wear, jacket. Anyway really like all the nature nature places (I am not only a shopaholic lor). Someday shall go back and hike 1.6km to see the waterfall at Taipei :D Sadly Singapore doesn't have any of such sceneries OH WELL.

Went back Taipei main station area for lunch/tea.

Guotie in the weirdest shape ever.

Sour&Spicy soup (which I can't tell why it's spicy)

Tauhuay which people queue up for. So must be famous?

Okay the meal at a restaurant was considered really quite cheap compared to Singapore. A set meal of fried rice with some small plate of vegetable and a bowl of soup cost like NT$168 (around $7) and the serving size of the rice and soup was quite big. HAHA though I only like the rice and the soup.

Then headed to Ximending. Bought shades WOO HOO. I think I look horrible in shades though. Face too round HAHAHA. Finally found Ah Zhong Mee Sua OMG BEST MEAL IN TAIPEI. Okay my opinion only. My brother's favourite is still XXL chicken chop.

Ah Zhong, I finally found you HAHA.

BEST MEE SUA EVER.

Chicken so cute!

Sushi for NT100 ($4 OMG)

Okay did you drool at the last photo? Wow sometimes I am surprised at how good my photography is. Okay I kid. But this sushi OMG OMG. YAY SUSHI FOR SUPPER.

Taipei's 7 eleven never fails to amaze me. Or maybe it's just Singapore 7 eleven is too disappointing haha. Love the variety of milk and food. Some of their convenience stores even have toilets LIKE WOW. And places for people to sit down and eat and read papers. Oh well.

Someday I will go back there :)

I really hate it when I don't do things that I am passionate about. Okay I act like a bimbo without any passion except for eating and shopping but I actually I do have.

I can't teach for nuts and have no idea why I am holding onto this tuition job. Probably just for the money. Why do we all do things for the money only? To be honest I don't even know whether I enter nbs for the money aspect or I really thought I like it or cause I thought it's a safe choice.

But then again I don't think I hate the kids. I just hate how rude some of them are. How spoilt they are. I guess I always hate feeling unappreciated. I am trying in my own way but I guess I am not a kids person oh well.

Oh passion. It sucks so much to not have passion for things you are doing cause you have to force yourself to do it anw. For money for gpa for whatever thing except happiness.

I guess I should really start doing things I like instead of what I think I will do well in.

Maybe someday I will find some part time job at some food place so I will never have to teach tuition.

Oh I should probably accumulate some good karma. Sometimes I look at my friends and I wonder why people befriend me. I feel so bitchy and whiny recently. And so noisy. And bimbo. Should probably change myself. New new year resolution.

Need to stop judging people.

Been playing Lovesick Fool on repeat now. I can't understand why I am suddenly obsessed with this song haha.

Day 3- 8th January

Hi Taipei 101. We meet again.

Taking a photo cause everyone is taking one.

 Sidenote, I look really short. :(

Awesome instant noodles :D

Day 2- 7th Jan

Day 1- 6th January 

It was my second time to Taiwan :) Really had a good impression of Taiwan the first time I went there. The weather there in November was good (Y) Flew via Transasia Airways there. Well the counter staff at Changi wasn't that efficient but the cabin crew was pretty good. Cute (but sadly not very young) air steward ;) Oh their safety video was so cute. The food on the flight was quite good also.

Oh when the plane was about to land in Taiwan, I felt a little emotional. Feeling as if I am going home. HAHAHA what a joke.

Anw Taoyuan airport was super freaking crazily cold and I have no idea why.

Headed to our hotel, Fortune Hiya at Taipei Main Station (not very near leh) and then went to Yuanshan :)

MRT at Yuanshan Station

Imagine my happiness when I see rows of sunflowers. MY LOVE.

More flowers

Flowers and pretty sky

Colourful rows of flowers with Dad :)

 Okay after looking a lot a lot of flowers, we went to Taipei Story House. The house looks pretty hehe.

Taipei Storyhouse

 But the exhibition inside was so-so only. The display currently was all about sweets (for wedding/b'day celebration). Oh and sadly no photos are allowed :(

Headed to Danshui and went 7 eleven. Seriously all the convenience stores overseas are like 10x cooler than those in Singapore :(

Awesome malt milk. S'pore y u no have?

Queue for food hmm.

Thought this made sense. As usual, I am reading thought catalog. Okay scheduled post while I am overseas ^^

Love is not what the movies and hit songs tell us it is.

Love doesn’t hurt. If it hurts it’s something else. Fear. Attachment. Idolatry. Addiction. Possessiveness.

Nobody’s heart aches out of love. In pop culture, love gets conflated with desire all the time. From childhood we learn you can like something, or you can love it, as if it’s only different degrees of the same thing.

Love is all selflessness. It’s the opposite of need and attachment. To an individual it’s a sensation of allowing, rather than seeking. Letting go, rather than grasping.

Love is subtle and silent and delicate, and in its beginnings it can be drowned out easily by attachment, lust and fear. Love must have space, and force is what crowds it out. Love is powerful but it isn’t forceful.

Desire is simple and often reckless. We need to manage it carefully to avoid causing harm. Desire is the intention to change something, to reject what it is in favor of what it could be — something better, more secure, more pleasing. Love is the intention to let that thing be for its own sake.

A lot of us grow up thinking that to love is simply to want very badly. It’s hard to be sensitive to love when you’re overrun by desire. Love isn’t something that can be done badly, if it’s love at all. Desire can happen at the same time as love, but it’s not the same thing.

Jealousy isn’t love, nor is it evidence of love. Jealousy is fear. Love doesn’t drive people mad, it drives them sane. Desire, in its different forms, can drive people to do anything. Love never drives people to kill or steal or cheat or worry.

Love reveals itself when you release your need to have the object of your affection, and see that there’s no reason to make it yours. That it exists at all is enough. To love something is to disappear in its favor — to die to your own interests so that it can be what it is.

In evolutionary time, love is new, and we’re still learning to used to it. It’s a much more sophisticated human capability than desire.

Desire’s been around forever. It’s a high-horsepower engine. It’s loud. It handles poorly. It only goes the way it’s pointing. It needs a sober driver, but it makes you drunk.

Desires are personal. They’re attached to you and they end where you end. They can be no bigger than you.

Love is bigger than you. To love someone is for their happiness to be the same as your own.

And so love is the dissolution of the borders between you and me and them. Those lines are conceptual and imaginary anyway, and love gives you vision clear enough to see the world without them.

Your love can’t be reserved for one person. If you only love one person you probably don’t love anyone. Love isn’t something you can aim. The truer your love is — in other words, the less you have it confused with something else — the more generalized it becomes. To love fully is to love all.
It takes practice to give up “good for me” in the name of “good.” In the grand scale of evolutionary time, human beings are only at the beginning of experimenting with this — working with something bigger and more important than personal desire.

But love is already everywhere, at least in the background. It’s too conspicuous to be marginalized, even among a population largely driven insane by mismanaged desire. We need to learn to navigate our desires better in order to love fully. We’re working on it.

It’s an interesting time to be alive. We’re graduating from a culture of desire-driven lives to one of love-driven lives. The solution to the world’s problems will look more and more obvious as more people begin to understand that and make that transformation. The first step is knowing the difference.

Defining it is impossible. You can throw words at it but never pin it down. Nothing is misidentified more often than love. But for now, we can know what it’s not. If it hurts, it’s not love.

Adapted from: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/what-love-is-not/

Weather is suddenly warm today. Was supposed to head for a picnic but I am stuck at home with a not fully recovered stomach. Still feel queasy. Was it the whipped cream?