Ryan and I moved to Seattle mid-January to co-found a health-tech startup here, and ever since, I’ve been obsessed with decorating our new home… in our wedding colors. The subtle mint/teal accent wall in the living room was just asking for it! After spending many months living out of suitcases and moving boxes back and forth (from San Francisco to Walnut Creek to Fremont…) I just wanted to feel at home again. This is the first time I’ve ever lived outside the Bay Area (and more than a BART-ride away from family), and much to my own surprise, the transition was painless and “settling in” took no time at all! Seattle is very much like San Francisco — dullishly foggy yet colorfully eclectic at the same time. On the contrary, people here are unpretentious about their coffee, more diverse in industry, and slightly more fashionable than The North Face plus jeans (men wear peacoats!). The greatest shocker? We pay inner East Bay prices to live on the twenty-second floor of one of the nicest high rises, two blocks north of downtown (think Union Square), two blocks south of South Lake Union (think SOMA but Amazon’d out), a ten-minute walk away from Capitol Hill (think Mission/Castro)…and a fifteen-minute walk to/from work. I DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH ANYTHING LIKE THE MUNI!
As I’m pretty much three months behind on the blogging (with thousands of photos waiting to be edited), I finally decided to widen up my blog to feature more photography and less distraction. I hope to be more deliberate with my shots and a little more selective with what I post from now on. To kick off, here are a few sneak peeks of our new living room! view more →
Day 50: Wednesday, November 28, 2012
The first thing we do in the morning is head over to Kimchi World to learn their much anticipated secret recipe…or so we thought. The kimchi “making” class turned out to be a “rub our proprietary blend of kimchi onto this giant cabbage” and tada! kind of deal. We also made bugolgi chapchae in a similarly
no-skilled-required fashion — but it was still a lot of fun and I’m glad we went!
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Day 49: Tuesday, November 27, 2012
One of the greatest enigmas of all time is, how do Korean women stay so skinny despite their protein-heavy, sodium loaded diets?! Regardless, we pretty much ate our way through Seoul, starting at a real charcoal grill kalbi place.
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Day 48: Monday, November 26, 2012
Our good friend, Christine, took us to Suraon (The King’s Palace) for a fancy multi-course lunch, complete with traditional performances in the background! On the walk there, a flock of pigeons flew up and away, just as I reached for my camera…
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Family time in Taiwan is usually down time to recover from traveler’s fatigue, but each day spent with the relatives has its highlights, too!
Day 42: Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Highlight: Going to a nightmarket in Kaohsiung and throwing angry birds, popping balloons with darts, and winning a bunch of little presents for the cousins! view more →
Traveling becomes a little slow when you’re gone for over a month, especially when you visit a city you’ve been to dozens of times, so I’ll just cover the next few days in terms of what Taipei is best known for — the food! It rained pretty much the entire time we were in town, thus all the mall eats.
Day 38: Friday, November 16, 2012
After walking around the up and coming neighborhoods of Beijing and Shanghai, we really just wanted to see the cleaner, newer side of Taipei: “Dong qu”. Gotta love the shiny, new buildings and clusters of malls! First, we hit up Eslite (otherwise known as The Best Bookstore ever), for some TenRen boba and popcorn chicken. view more →
Day 36: Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Thanks to a friend’s suggestion, we decided to check out the Urban Planning Exhibition Center in People’s Park, just down the street from our hotel. Did you know that the park used to be a race course for the British?!
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Day 35: Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Most of the day was spent in transit, but we finally checked into our hotel at Shanghai’s Le Meridian, right along Nanjing Dong Lu (Nanjing East Road) where all the shopping and dining action happens. I was so upset for not bringing my camera out since I thought we were just venturing outside briefly for food — until the lights, people, action sucked us in and we walked all the way to The Bund. Please excuse the cell-phone quality photos!
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Day 34: Monday, November 12, 2012
I think yesterday was a little too much adventure out in the cold, so we wanted to check out some place with a little more shelter and warmth. After a buffet lunch at Feast in the Sheraton, we took the subway to get to a nice shopping center called The Village. I don’t know what I was expecting (something a little more village-like, perhaps?) but lo and behold, shiny faceted buildings and even an Apple Store!
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Day 33: Sunday, November 11, 2012
Wow, what an amazing, eye-opening, and humbling day. We started off at Tiananmen Square, where we could see the world’s longest road, largest museum, biggest this, greatest that — no joke — then walked through the Forbidden City, which felt like an optical illusion where you’ve walked so far yet find yourself walking through another palace court mimicking the last. The funniest part was when our tour guide said, “And all the tourists visiting China these days…are Chinese.” Fun fact: Mao’s painting on the Tiananmen Gate is repainted every year, thus his fresh face.
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