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Some late spring cleaning! This blog was originally for documenting my new life in Taiwan, if I remember correctly. I guess I'm kind of tired of making new blogs and moving around so much just because my current one is disorganized... so I'm going to reattempt to re-organize what I post here and clean up my archive!

In other words, in the future, personal posts are going here → http://leeshuang.tumblr.com. I've never really considered Tumblr good enough to be a formal blogging system, so I put photos that I don't take myself, plus little text and quote posts, there.

Everything else: photos I take myself, arts, recipes, reviews, movies → will go here! I need to clean up my tags; but I'll get around to it. I changed my URL, too. I won't delete my old posts, but they're stored neatly away in the archive for future reference.

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I'm losing my mind. I'm losing a lot of things all at once. Tonight is one of those nights when I just want to lay down and cry. I don't feel well, and I have so many things to do I don't even know where to start. I have things to do that were supposed to be done weeks ago, but I can't even bring myself to pick them up and do them. Why is my 生活作息 so abnormal, so unhealthy, and so unbalanced?

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Well, I had a terrible week. I had a rough time with two of my good friends, and a lot of hard and unhappy feelings were exchanged. Though both apologized to me in the end, I'm sure there's a lesson for everyone in the argument; no one's ever completely at fault. So, truthfully, I'm sorry, too! 

In addition, it felt like every obligation I currently hold, whether it be the volleyball or badminton teams or the dances I am obligated to learn for the following months or studying or any of my other activities and responsibilities, each took a limb and yanked me in their own direction, as hard as they possibly could, and when my limbs ran out, they took hold of my nose, my mouth, my eyes and pulled even harder. For the first time in my life, I have needed to look at my planner, which used to be a joke to me, to make sure I am free on certain days to do certain things; for the first time I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things I am obligated to even if I work diligently and get enough sleep and manage my time to its maximum efficiency: and literally, that's how it's been for the past few weeks, not enough time, at all.

I didn't get much sleep this week, and didn't go to several of my classes because I felt quite low. I guess you could say I slept through some of them, but they were not happy slumbers; I was sleeping more to defend myself from my terrible mood and try to rest it up so I could still make it out the rest of the day with a smile.

In the end, it's all about my own choices, the way I plan to manage my time, and how I balance myself under stress and pressure. I have better, higher hopes for next week, even though it means the arrival of the second cell biology midterm and a calculus quiz that I am not prepared for.  Twenty-two units is no walk in the park, and I need to try harder. I have a whole weekend to catch up on sleep, on mood, on all the things I need to do that I've been putting off. I'll put it to good use. :)

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I find that I am slowly running out of topics to write about. I've been blogging too much about myself lately, which is not a good sign. So, for a change, I was going to write about the different places to eat around the NTU campus, but I thought again, and realized I haven't tried some of the most highly recommended things to eat on campus yet. Mostly because I'm lazy, but also because I tend to stick with the first thing I try from a certain place if I end up liking it. Change does not come easily with me. But I can't think of anything else... so instead, here's a little twist—pictures, with description, of the things I have eaten around here, and how I find them.

Sour milk (酸奶) from 帕咪爾, 公館丁州路小巷子口 (exact address is not known to me). I was foremost disappointed with how stingy the restaurant was, providing its customers with such a small cup, and with no option of a refill. Anyway, that little detail aside, sour milk is uncannily similar to 養樂多 and has an expired-milk taste that is surprisingly not too bad. It's not too milky, but rather sweet and sour. I was skeptical to try it, and I was surprised that I wasn't completely disgusted by the taste. Still, sour milk tastes good cold, but becomes rather unappetizing if you let it sit for too long and it grows warm to room temperature.

Grapefruit QQ (葡萄柚多多) from 家樂福，木柵分店. I should have asked for 微糖 (30 percent sugar) for this drink; it was much too sweet for my liking, and made the fact that it's not real grapefruit juice, but rather fruit concentrate and lots of sugar water, all the more obvious. Still, the tapioca pearls and lychee jelly made up for it. I have a soft spot for lychee jelly. One of the bad things about having small particulate matter at the bottom of your drink, however, is that you become so concentrated on trying to finish them before the liquid runs out that you end up sucking very hard on the straw, trying to get as much as possible—then getting an entire mouthful of juice/tea with nothing in it. It's a constant problem I have with these types of drinks.

巴斯地瓜 from 金山老街，新北市. We went to the 老街 for lunch/an afternoon snack on the day we went to 金青 to check out the facilities and see if they'd be suitable for our orientation camp this summer. Though the entire time we were trying hard to convince ourselves that it'd be a good place to be, it was clearly not, in the end, despite the beautiful beach and oceanfront view—but we did get some good food in the process! 巴斯地瓜 is a dessert consisting of chunks of yam chopped up, cooked, and coated in 麥芽糖  (maltose sugar, according to our good friend Google, but if you're Asian, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about) and sesame seeds. It crackles when you bite into it, and the sugar breaks off into thin films and pieces. It's delicious.

Last but not least, the classic frozen yogurt has slowly made its way to Taiwan. This particular concoction is from Yogurt Art at 公館, near the KFC on 新生南路. I went on a date with Joanna at the beginning of semester two to buy our cell biology textbooks and had a craving for yogurt. I've never really understood the hype with frozen yogurt; each store and its condiments taste exactly the same to me, so I'm not partial to any particular place. Yogurtland tastes just like Yogurt Art, for all I know. Still, the fruit in Taiwan is slightly fresher than the fruit in America, or so I believe, and that's what made this particular one refreshing for me.

To be continued... perhaps! I should study.

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An empty shell. And that's all I feel.