cindypepper!

Oh Hey, Taipei!

It's been ages since my last update, so I'll give you a superquick runthrough of what I've been up to. In the past month, I:

crammed for my final projects and exams.
got featured on Smashing Magazine's May wallpaper showcase.
finished my junior year of university.
got an apartment in NY with two friends for the summer.
flew back home to Shanghai.
went to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
went to Taiwan last weekend.

The last few weeks of school are always horrendous, because there's one thing piling on top of another, and if you're absolute pants at time management like I am, you end up pulling all-nighters and putting off tasks such as ... um, updating this blog. But no matter! I mean, I rant about academia enough in real life to the point of annoyance, so let's talk about something fun. Like the my Taiwan trip last weekend! My mom and I were in Taipei for three days, where we visited a couple museums and temples, like the Chiang Kai-Shek and the Sun Yat-sen memorials. In a way, it was like revisiting my China Civ history class again. I mean, come on -- in the gift shop, they were selling plastic dolls of a baby Chiang Kai-Shek in a diaper.

An American in Paris, Part IV

Eesh, it's been a while since I last updated. The last two weeks have been filled with problem sets, projects and this one business venture that I've been working on with a couple amazing people at school. We're trying to get a student-run food truck on Columbia's campus, because our neighborhood has a tendency to charge ridiculous prices for mediocre food. We made it to the final round of the Columbia Venture Competition and we're hoping to secure some seed money from this! We'll know by the end of this week if we win -- fingers crossed! Anyway, I'll probably make a post about NOM3 (the business venture) later this week. But for now -- Paris pictures! This (March 17th) was my last full day of the trip, and the inner art history geek in me had yet to check out the Louvre and the Musée de l'Orangerie.

The Louvre is massive and chock-full of famous works of art that you've probably seen in your history books. Like the Winged Victory of Samothrace in all its ... uh, winged glory. And this one painting that I randomly found at the Louvre:

An American in Paris, Part III

First off, thank you so so much for the response on the layout! :) I really appreciate the feedback, so lots of hugs for you lot! Secondly, my immune system decided to go AWOL on me, because suddenly, I'm phlegmy and headache-y like none other. It started out as hay fever from last week and gradually evolved (or devolved?) into me coughing like there's no tomorrow. Blarg. But no matter! I bring forth the third (out of four) installments of my Parisian adventures! I started off the day with a trip to the Musée d'Orsay. It's one of my favourite museums: a former train station filled with works of my favorite artists (Gauguin! Courbet! Renoir!) but sadly, they don't allow photos. But if you love Impressionist art (or art history in gen) and happen to be in Paris, it's every bit worth the visit! Next up, I went to Musée Rodin which had this neat sculpture garden along with the actual museum. The weather was nice enough for me to sit outside and appreciate the famed sculpture below:

New Layout: Subaquatic

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to announce that cindypepper! has a new layout. I'm usually not one to change layouts often. I'm quite stubborn about it. I usually spend a lot of time working on a layout that it just doesn't feel right for me to suddenly switch layouts after a few weeks. But a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that I had had the previous layout for well over a year. I did like the layout, but in all honesty, I felt it was time for a change!

An American in Paris (and Brussels), Part II

I woke up at a rather early-ish hour on Monday (March 15th) because I had the following train tickets at hand: Outward journey: Paris Nord to Brussels Midi Inbound journey: Brussels Midi to Paris Nord Basically, I ended up taking advantage of the Eurostar and bought tickets for a day trip to Brussels! An hour and a half later, I was no longer in France. Purse in tow and camera in hand, I made my way out of Gare Midi and walked my way up Anspachlaan, the main road in downtown Brussels. Along the way, I came across Bourse/Beurs which is basically the stock exchange.

A lot prettier than the NYSE, if I do say so myself. And that was just the side view.

An American in Paris, Part I

Bonjour, mes amis! It's spring break, and I'm currently in the city of love and lights -- Paris! I had been to the city before, but that was a four-day trip about ten years ago. It's always an interesting experience to go back to a place that you hadn't been to in ages! I'm here until Thursday, and the next entries will probably be me blabbing about my trip, coupled with a gazillion photos of food so-delicious-it-should-be-illegal. Exciting! But before I get started with the photos, let me just say that getting to Paris was an absolute hellish, frustrating nightmare. The original plan was that I had a flight from New York to Paris with a brief layover in Zurich. I would leave at 6pm, arrive at Charles DeGaulle at 1pm. I ended up in Paris at 7:30pm. Here's what went terribly wrong:

Olympic LOVE: Part 2

SIMON AMMANN, why are you so awesome. :') He's definitely my favorite athlete of the Games. Why? Because this mf sweeped both ski jumping events with the gold, and now he has the record number of medals for any ski jumper. He did the same exact thing in Salt Lake, and I'm so glad that he's in top form for these Olympic Games. In the Large Hill event (which was today), he got the best jumps in both rounds and he was over 14 points ahead of Adam Malysz, the silver medalist. If that isn't a testament to how great he is, then I don't know what is! What an amazing, amazing comeback.*

Olympic LOVE: Part 1

It's little surprise that I love the Olympics. I still have the fondest memories of being in Beijing during 2008 and watching the Summer Games live. When I visited Sydney, I had to visit the Olympic Park. The games are just so inspiring; it's great to see all these stories of comebacks and underdogs and unbelievably passionate athletes unfold. And every Olympics, I love to see the different mascots, stadiums, and opening/closing ceremonies. I could wax on about the merits of putting together such an amazing event, but that would take forever. So without further ado...

... the Opening Ceremony! My favourite parts were k.d. lang singing "Hallelujah" and the fiddlers. A pretty good way to kick off the Games, if I do say so myself.

A Case of the Nomnoms

I must say, my absolute favorite thing about Singapore has to be the food; there's a ton of variety (Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, American for starters) to be had and the prices are totally worth it. Case in point: the duck rice (and soup, gratis!) below.

Grand total? $3 SGD, which translates to $2.16 USD. Back in NY, $2.16 could probably buy me the soup, but definitely not the duck nor the rice. Anyway, I think we could all use a bit more food porn in our lives, so without further ado...

Food Comatose!

Sometimes happiness is going on a Ferris wheel ride, walking along the quay side, eating my way to a food coma, window-shopping, and taking photos of all of the above. And so describes my first 12 hours in Singapore. Warm weather (compared to the usual slosh in NY) and so much good food to pick? I'm pretty much set for the next two days!

Because I'm one of those weird people that prefers to eat dessert first, this photo goes before all other food photos, hah! This was apple gelato with a hand-painted white chocolate coating made to look like an apple. The best part was definitely the chocolate "core" in the middle, hands down.