I still have a boatload of Amsterdam photos to post, but I thought I’d take a little detour and instead introduce you guys to my (new-ish) residence, San Francisco. I’ve lived here for 9 months now, which is scary crazy, especially when I realize that I haven’t been back to New York in nearly a year, a fact that freaks me out to the point where I feel compelled to go back in May, because dear lord, have I missed that city something fierce.

Anyway, this past month has been super in that I’ve had quite a few college friends visit me, which means I get to play Tour Guide and shamelessly do touristy things in a very non-ironic fashion. And as much as I do love jetting off to new locales, it’s nice to have a good staycation every now and then! This particular one happened about three weeks ago in early April (see, I’m getting better at this posting-things-on-time business!):

George and I woke up bright and early to brave the hour-long line outside of Mama’s on Washington Square, a cute little brunch place that gets as much notoriety for the long line as it does for the amazing food. We got there around 9am on a Saturday (an extraordinary feat, if you think about it), and we still had to stand outside for a good hour before we were seated.

Spoiler alert: the food is actually REALLY, REALLY GOOD. And yes, worth the wait.

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After a gentle reminder that I indeed haven’t blogged in a while, I figured I ought to provide an explanation for my unannounced hiatus. Said explanation also requires me to reveal Major Life News. Since my graduation, I’ve been travelling for the past month and a half (Hangzhou, Seoul, Hong Kong, Italy/Greece), with a few pitstops back home in Shanghai. I have enough photos to fill up all of my memory cards, but my travels aren’t exactly the Life News I intend to reveal, nor are they a legitimate excuse as to why I haven’t been blogging. In fact, you’d think more photos would equate to more blog posts. Which is indeed quite true, in Cindy!logic. But I digress.

Guess what, kids! I’m moving to San Francisco (!!!!!!). I know I mentioned a few months ago that I’d be moving to Austin, but a little over a week ago, the company transferred me to their main headquarters in Mountain View, CA, so it looks like I’m going to be an official California resident! So, basically, same company, different office. The whole move both excites and stresses me out, seeing as I’m leaving for Sanfran in less than 24 hours to pick out apartments and more importantly, get my shit together. Yeah. The past few days have been spent scouring Craigslist ads and broker sites, both with varied results.

In an ideal world, I’d have a place secured by my start date, which got pushed back to July 25th. But of course, that might be asking for a lot. We’ll see. Am I excited? Of freaking course, even if my excitement often gets eclipsed by OH SHIT WHAT DO I DO WITH MY SELF.

P.S. I’m a bit of a Bay Area noob, so if any of you Californians have suggestions, tips, recommendations (food, shopping, etc), whathaveyou — I’m all ears.

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So. It’s been roughly two weeks after the fact, but I’m officially a Columbia alumna, and I have the diploma to prove it. It’s odd to imagine that I’m indefinitely done with school, but I’ll take whatever freedom I can eke for now. In the past two weeks, I’ve bought my new digs in Austin, visited the relatives in San Diego, and settled down for a month back home in Shanghai.

As much I love Shanghai, I’m also majorly jetlagged¹ and deprived of most of my Internet mainstays². No Facebook? Well, shucks. No LiveJournal? Yikes. No Twitter? Cruel. No GMail for an hour? Okay, now you’re just screwing with me. On the upside, Tumblr isn’t banned anymore, so now I get accosted with graphics that like to constipate my Internet connection. Welcome to my life.

So what does this mean? I’ll probably have more free time to blog and post photos that I should have posted yonks ago. I’ll probably use this chunk of time to go on short excursions within China (hi, I just got back from Hangzhou yesterday!). I’ll probably tell you more about my trip to Spain/Portugal that I took almost three months ago. And if I have time, I might even throw in a redesign. Oh yeah, and I’ll be trolling the Internet at weird hours and complaining that every social networking site worth updating is now banned. Yup.

¹: If you see me online at the odd witching hour or complaining about lightheadedness at 5PM, don’t worry. That’s just typical me being typical. And you know what else? I hate timezones. Timezones are responsible for things like jetlag, clock adjustment, TV spoilers and people flooding up my Tumblr dashboard bitching about said spoilers.

²: Actually, if there’s a bigger life-ruiner than a time zone difference, it’s the Great Firewall of China. No trip back home is ever complete until I start scowling at the fact that China likes to ban every site I frequent.

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