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.

• I received and accepted a job offer from an amazing company. What does this mean? Well, this means A Lot of Things. Such as the fact that I’ll officially have some sort of modicum of a life plan once I graduate this May. Or the fact that I’ll be moving to Austin, Texas, this summer. Or the fact that my senioritis has kicked in high gear and my already declining interest in school has officially surpassed the point of no1curr into IDGAF territory.

Admittedly, it’s going to be a weird transition to go from New York to Austin, but I’m really excited about it. I mean, first of all, there’s the job and the company. I’ve heard only good things about Austin from friends, and the fact that the cost of living is nearly half that of NY? Score. Also, the fact that there is rain and snow here in April, for crying out loud — I can’t even. Anyway, I’ve started the apartment hunt already. I’m slowly planning my summer, and this is what it looks like so far:

May 18th: Graduation!
May 18th – July 11th: ??????
July 11th – 29th: Work training in Mountain View, California
onwards: AUSTIN.

This totally begs the question, though. What do I do from May to July? My family might be going on vacation for two weeks in late June, but that leaves about four weeks of a blank schedule. Am I going to chill out at home in Shanghai? Stay in NY and cling to the sidewalks until I actually have to move? Take a vacation on my own (something I’ve been wanting to do since forever)? Spend the rest of that time moving in Austin? Egads, the possibilities!

• I went on a 10-day trip to Spain (Madrid, Barcelona) and Portugal (Lisbon) in mid-March for spring break. Once I sift through 2038594 photos and upload them, expect lots of blatherings about pretty castles, art, football, and FOOD from yours truly. I mean, really, if the capslock and bolded letters didn’t jump out at you enough, I ate a bunch of good food. Patatas bravas, WHERE ART THOU IN AMERICA. But yes. I have photos. And writeups. Both of which I will gladly share, because letting them rot and die in my hard drive would be a rather sad way to go about things.

Anyway. This here is a drawing of the Infanta Margarita as portrayed by Diego Velázquez in my favorite painting EVER, Las Meninas, which I got to see in person when I was in Madrid. Seeing your favorite painting right in front of you is something akin to a religious experience. Chalk it up to the all the art I’ve seen in the past few weeks (Goya, Miró, and Gaudí, oh my!), but I’ve been feeling oddly inspired since Spain. Anyway, wallpaper’s up here in Smashing Magazine, if you want to download.

So there you have it. I’m still alive, but even better, I’m positively excited about my future life plans. It’s a good feeling.

Anyway. I’ve got 357 more days to appreciate whatever the year has to throw my way, so no matter. Instead, I’ll talk about 2010, which was actually a pretty good year. Like most years, I did an absolutely shit job at remembering — let alone keeping — my resolutions, and there are still areas in dire need of self-improvement. However, 2010 wasn’t like 2009, which got off to a fantastic start only to fizzle out come September. Nor was it like 2007, which swung to pendulum-esque extremes of highs and lows. Nor was it like 2006, which uh — plain sucked, end of story. The fact that I made it through 2010 alive and enjoyed myself along the duration of the ride is probably a Very Good Thing, because usually during intropsective times like these, I tend to launch into hyper-critical mode where I’m like THIS YEAR COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF I (verb) AND IF I HAD BEEN MORE (adjective). Yeah, my super-deep entries about Life and Other Facets of the Universe are, in fact, glorified Mad Libs games. What about it.

Since pictures do a better job of speaking a thousand words or whatever, and I’m feeling inarticulate at the moment, I’m going to pilfer through my Flickr and present to you my year in pictures. So, let’s do the Time Warp (…AGAIN!) and relive my 2010. It’s picture-heavy and it errs on this side of rambly, so don’t say that I didn’t warn you!

(click on the photo to zoom)

JANUARY:

Still reeling from the hot mess that was the latter half of 2009, I rang in the New Year at Phuket in Thailand. I distinctly remember I had a delicious Pad Thai, pineapple rice, and Thai iced tea that dinner, and I watched the fireworks from the window.

WHY HELLO, Singapore. I went with my mom on a business trip to the Lion City, and just about gorged myself on every delicious thing known to mankind: naan, grass jelly, mee rebus — no seriously. Check out the Flickr set if you think I’m merely listing deliciously good food solely for shits and giggles. Needless to say, all the abundance of good food more than made up for the swelteringly hot weather.

…and I turned 21 aka the legal drinking age in the US.

I also got a New York driver’s license that month and kicked off the spring semester of my junior year.

FEBRUARY:

(source)

Let’s see — February? I basically stanned the hell out of the Winter Olympics (2). There are few other forms of entertainment as gratifying as fangirling your favourite athletes and screaming at the TV, so thank goodness for those glorious two weeks.

MARCH:

PARIS, je t’aime! During Spring Break, I visited a good friend of mine who was studying abroad in the City of Lights (and Love!). I chilled out at her apartment, and while she was in class, I’d venture out in the city and stuff myself silly with macarons.

Which brings me to my new favourite European city: Brussels! During my week in Paris, I took a day trip to the EU capital and fell in love with the city. I can’t really put my finger on why the city appeals to me so much, but there’s something to be said about things like lambic beer, moules-frites, Le Pain Quotidien, art nouveau, and the Magritte museum.

Not too long after I got back from Europe, I gave this site a much-needed brand-spankin’-new facelift. And a couple friends and I worked on NOM^3, a student-run business venture to bring a food truck to our campus.

APRIL:

April was a relatively quiet month, as I had just wrapped up my midterms. I took two different weekend trips that month: one to D.C. and another to Princeton. I didn’t really take many photos during that time, so um, have a gratuitous photo of a meerkat that I took in the zoo at D.C.?

MAY:
I finished junior year, and let’s just say I was ever-so-glad to put that year to rest.

After exams, I headed home to Shanghai with a few friends in tow. We visited the Shanghai Expo, which consisted of super cool pavilions (like the UK one) that made my inner architecture geek swoon and super long lines that would put any major theme park to shame. I remember waiting around 3 hours for the Switzerland one. In my defense, it had a SKI LIFT ON THE ROOF, OKAY.

While I was on the other side of the hemisphere, my mom had a business trip in Taipei, and I tagged along. It was there I uncovered my love for night markets and rediscovered my love for grass jelly and steamed pork buns.

And then near the end of May, I had a weird fever/flu bug, which meant that I was basically confined to the house for the last few days of Shanghai. Boo. But on a plus side, I got featured in this wallpaper showcase for Smashing Magazine!

JUNE/JULY:

I’ve got two words for you: WORLD CUP. I don’t understand what is with me and organized sporting events that reduces me to a ridiculous level of excitement and fangirlishness, but we can discuss my sanity later and talk about the World Cup. Talking about the World Cup gives me pangs of nostalgia because I suddenly get “Wavin’ Flag” by K’naan stuck in my head and I fondly remember going pub-hopping for all the games and bonding with so many people over the beautiful game. (And for all the games that aired on weekdays, we’d watch them all on a projector screen in the office, so there was no way I was missing a game.) There’s no possible way for me to elaborate more without me blathering about how proud I am of Die Nationalmannschaft. Germany/Argentina — look that game up and watch it in its 90 minutes of amazing entirety if you don’t believe me! (And I’ll um, forget that 07/07 ever happened. Selective memory LA LA LA.)

In non-football related events, I got an apartment for the summer with two friends of mine, I started a new internship, and my brother came to visit me for about a week.

AUGUST:

If I had to make a list of the top 5 places that I’ve visited, Kenya would rank among them. It’s one of those places that renders words like “breathtaking” or “stunning” so prosaic and inadequate. I went with my family on a safari to Masai Mara, Nakuru, Aberdare, and Hell’s Gate, and I’ve been itching to go back.

Later that month, my friend and I finally fulfilled our dream of going to South America, and we went on a weeklong backpacking trip in Peru, where we trekked around the country through Huaraz, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and Lima. The high altitude got wind of me, but no matter! If you want an otherworldly travel destination with natural splendor and good food to boot, GO TO PERU and never be disappointed.

SEPTEMBER:
I started senior year and immediately kicked into let’s-freak-out-about-the-LSATs mode. When I didn’t have my nose buried into an LSAT prep book, I went to Fashion’s Night Out (where I saw Marc Jacobs! In the flesh!), I met Anthony Bourdain at the 92Y (he signed my copy of Medium Raw!), and I stalked Joseph Gordon-Levitt who was filming his new film on our campus. But I mostly freaked out about LSATs. So much so that I have no photos to capture my alarming stress levels.

OCTOBER:
I finally took those darned LSATs. And I had midterms following that week, because academia is a cruel mistress.

For fall break, my friend and I went to Las Vegas, where we hit up the Strip and took a day-long jaunt to Death Valley. We didn’t gamble much because I’m of the risk-averse sort, but um, we ate a bunch of good food if that’s worth anything. And we went to a Halloween party at a club. In Vegas.

NOVEMBER:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows got released, and I went to the midnight premiere and remembered why I love the series so much. Not that I actually needed a reminder, but you know.

On a suckier note, I got a nasty bout of food poisoning during Thanksgiving break, and subsequently spent the remainder of the break getting acquainted with the bathroom floor. And then I got a nasty cold right after. Now that I think about it, my immune system was a bucketload of FAIL this entire year.

DECEMBER:
I finally finished my exams! First half of senior year — complete! Cue the unnerving epiphany that I’ll be graduating in four months hitting me like a ton of bricks.

Later that month, my family and I went to Vietnam (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City) and Cambodia (Siem Reap) for our winter break vacation. I ate enough pho to feed an entire family and went to many of the locations filmed in Lara Croft (Angkor Wat, anybody?), albeit not with the intent of going through the Cradle of Life.

PHEW. Typing this entry was like a whirlwind in itself because there’s something to be said about trying to recount what you did in X month of Y year especially when you have only the dregs of your immune system to combat this devil of a flu. Also, I realize that I never blogged about most of these events. FOR SHAME. There goes one of my failed resolutions from 2010.

Sickness aside, I’m curious to see what 2011 has in store. For one, I graduate, which is a daunting milestone event with possible side effects that include job-finding stress, existential crises, and a weird sense of nostalgia for the last four years. I don’t know where I’m going to be a year from now, let alone eight months. This is a fact that is both exciting yet extremely capable of raising my blood pressure levels. It’s crazy to think that four years ago, I was in the exact same position, not knowing where I’d end up for uni, and welp. Here we are again.

What do you have planned for 2011? Any resolutions or goals that you’d like to accomplish?

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:

…The Thinker. I’m so used to seeing this on campus that seeing it in Paris didn’t really resonate with me. But once I stepped inside the actual museum, there were several sculptures that caught my eye:

Come lunchtime, I was starving and went to L’As du Falafel, where I ate one of the best falafel pitas that my taste buds have ever encountered.

A pita chock-full of eggplant, lettuce, cucumbers, and falafel? Um, yes please. After that, I did lots of window-shopping and not a whole lot of actual shopping. And I ended up at the Arc du Triomphe, because … well, just because it’s the Arc du Triomphe. Here, have some painfully tourist-y photos!

I wasn’t too keen on paying the ticket to stand right under the arc, so I passed and resorted to taking photos from the street across. I then went to Place de la Madeleine, where they had Maille. Maille has the best mustard ever. I mean, come on, their boutique has mustard on tap. And their mustard ranges from plain to fig & cilantro to berry to vanilla. If that isn’t brilliant, then I don’t know what is.

clockwise from left: red berry, apricot & curry, pesto & rocket (arugula), fig & cilantro, parmesan & basil, and dried tomato & pepper

Anyway, the next and final installment of the Paris posts will be coming soon! There will be macarons.

• New layout: I wanted something illustrative but not so cluttered that it would detract from the photos in my blog posts, present and future.
• New location: Most people probably arrived here from the old URL blog.cindypepper.com, only to find a redirect to the actual domain! Why the change? Well, it didn’t really make sense for me to isolate the blog to a different subdomain, since it’s just as integral to my domain as all the other content. Plus, it was pretty easy to transfer everything, so why not take the inevitable move now? RIP old blog URL¹ — you were great while you lasted.
• New portfolio: I cleaned up and added new works to my portfolio, including a new webdesign section! Here’s hoping that there will be more portfolio content this year (!).
• Updated pages: I suppose that goes without saying, but I figured that with a new layout, I might as well spruce up whatever content I have. And as always, feedback is appreciated, especially since I plan on adding more.

Anyway, I am doing swimmingly myself. Busy, too. However, for the past two days, my nose has been grossly congested. (And I mean grossly.) This week was a bit light in terms of workload, but unfortunately, I can’t say the same about last and next week. I have many a paper, midterm, and problem set due next week that thinking about it puts me in a state of worry. I keep remembering that my spring break London vacation is in less than two weeks, but then reality hits me with another impending deadline.

Also, I can’t believe it is March already. Furthermore, New York got hit with heavy snowfall on the eve of March. The weather had been semi-decent for February; did the groundhog emerge from the burrow, only to see its shadow a few weeks late? The sudden cold weather is worsening my congestion, alas.

Well, seeing as my immune system isn’t so robust right now, I’m going to go to sleep and hope that I’ll be a little less congested in the morning.

—–
footnotes:
¹: Despite the redirect, I definitely recommend updating any blog.cindypepper.com links to this site at cindypepper.com, especially since I’m not planning to use that subdomain anytime soon.

What do you guys like to do for your birthdays?

—
¹: Well, for me, it might be. I like numbers divisible by 5.

Since the firewalls here aren’t too fond of my website³, I’m going to delay the Australia and Shanghai photos and maybe give an update or two on my life. I have one more week of break left before I head back to NY. There are many things I’m looking forward to, such as watching the inauguration on TV and my 20th birthday among other things. But as far as break-after-Australia goes, not much has happened.

Except for a car accident that happened the other day. In China, the Asian-driver stereotype is quite true to a frightening degree⁴, yet the amazing thing is that I have never seen a car accident occur there. Ever. Anyway, that day I wanted to go get KFC, which is 10 minutes away by car, whereas my dad insisted that I get some exercise and walk to the nearby grocery store for food. Since I hadn’t had Chinese KFC in ages, there was no way I was going to pass it up. So as we’re driving out of the neighborhood, we have to take a U-turn at the end of the divided street. As we’re taking the U-turn, another car also attempting a U-turn rear-ends us. Nothing serious though, considering that nobody was hurt and both cars got scratched and nothing more. But before that, I had never been in a car collision of any sort nor had I ever seen one in China. There’s a first⁵ for everything, I suppose.

Oh yeah, and when my dad heard about what happened, he spared me the if-you-had-walked-this-wouldn’t-have-happened talk. I can’t exactly say that the KFC was worth all the trouble though.

—
¹: Is it spring yet? Because that’s usually the season for pastels and I could really use warmer weather these days.
²: And first.
³: Unless you have dialup or an equally bad firewall, you have no idea how slowly my site loads here. I’ve had this “Add New Post” page opened up for a good 15 minutes, and the page is still loading. Thank goodness for XXAMP otherwise I would never get around to uploading the layout. When I first posted my last entry, the site lagged for so long that half my entry got cut off!
⁴: Passengers yield to cars, not the other way around.
⁵: And last.