Life is so tough..

Feeling a little lost lately. Like the kind that I need to have a tiny break from the daily on-goings of my life to find myself back.

In a weird way I'm happy but dissatisfied with my life. I'm happy with many, many things, but I get bothered by others..

I've been regretting quite a few things lately and I really dislike the word regret. If there's any word that I dislike the most in the dictionary it would be this. Even knowing that eventually the 'boat will straighten itself out', I still hate regretting because it could have been prevented if I'd made the correct choice in the first place.

Which goes back to the whole point of this post - making the right decisions is so tough. So many things to consider and empathise with I feel like I'm losing my balls on this whole making the right choices thing.

I said the wrong words, did the wrong things, shown the wrong attitudes. Too many mistakes piling up one after another that I'm sinking underneath.

Tell me what to do.

Money issues.

I always think that happiness is really easy to achieve in a relationship. I thought that as long as we treat everyday positively and not bear grudges, we would live everyday happily.

But as time goes by, it's not that simple anymore. Doing those things may keep the relationship strong, but as we move on to the next stage of our lives, it's no longer enough to just stay positive and hope for the best.

Issues like our finances, our plans for the future add on to the equation to happiness, but I've never been good at these things. Month after month I find myself failing to save. Now that we have applied for a flat, the reality of no savings is dawning on me. Or maybe more like crashing upon me. It's a little overdue to start saving now, but I have to do whatever is in my means.

So on the topic of happiness.. I have constantly disappointed Suri and I know that he has gotten sick of this issue. He had pushed me ample times in the past to start saving, but I always ended up not doing so. Even I am sick of myself for not being able to be more careful with my money. Right now, I know that words are no longer enough because even I don't believe my own words haha.

I really gotta start putting my words into actions this time because I don't want financial issues to exist in my life in future. 

Taiwan 2013 DAY 2

HI GUYS.

After a super long hiatus from this space, I am back! To continue with the trip to Taiwan with my boyfriend last year. :)

Suri has gone Exeter; UK, for his degree for about 2 months already, and recently I've been finding myself reminiscing on my trip with him to Taiwan a lot, wishing that it could happen again with better planning on my part. The trip wasn't a packed one, and we missed out on a lot of places, but I loved it all the same.

Second day saw us starting our day with Mcd breakfast because the hotel was small and didn't provide breakfast other than some Mcd coupons. We were staying in Banqiao, and there weren't as many breakfast shops there as in XMD.

 Get up for the day.

It was the winter season in Dec, so there was a lot of rain. The pictures show how Banqiao looks like in the morning!

 We went Taipei Main Station. Our first few days were dedicated to touring all over Taipei. BUT, my planning was pretty bad, so all we did was roaming around the city with no concrete plan in mind and adding on to that, we were without any form of data plan, and that was a bad, bad idea.

After checking out the outside, we went back to check out the shops in the basement of Taipei Main Station. Read that there are many things to buy/look at over there but to our disappointment, it was pretty boring.

 This was yummy!

 Having milk tea is a must for me.

 Bought some gyoza to eat too. They were pretty good!

We then went to shopping centre (I forgot which) and spotted this big and pretty Christmas tree!

 Continuing on to our next destination...

 Have you guessed it? It's Xi Men Ding!

It was all quite wet and dreary in the daytime. I think because it was winter so it's less crowded everywhere. So there wasn't much we could do!

 So we went in search for food! Spotted this Smelly Tofu stall that had lots of people queuing up for so I definitely must try! 

Quite a few of my friend do not like the Taiwanese version of Smelly Tofu with Suan Cai, but I like it a lot! The last time I've had a really good one was in China, and that was so long ago. This was really good!

Next was this, mua chi in peanut powder. NOT NICE. I like Singapore's version where the peanut powder is substituted with crushed peanuts and sugar.

After snacking we went in search of the Toilet Cafe. Ever since I knew about it I've wanted to check this place out. So I couldn't give it a miss when we were already in XMD.

 Hehe.

Verdict (for XMD outlet at that time): Food had nothing to be raved about, service was pretty bad because they were busy and maybe a little short-handed, and we were seated right in front of the real toilet, which made the whole experience really bad because, the we had to eat the food that were placed in toilet-themed bowls and plates and there was a smell coming from the toilet itself.

We were constantly looking out for yummy things to eat (I think more of myself), and shortly after leaving the Toilet Cafe we spotted these! I had to try.

I had the matcha flavour one and it was soooooooooooooooooo good. Especially in the chilly weather. Btw this is actually grilled mochi, drenched with matcha sauce. YUMZ.

Because XMD has nothing else to offer in the day time, we decided to go back for a little rest before we travel out at night to the nearby night market for dinner! I love time in the hotel room because I get to just laze around (when I wasn't washing Suri's underwear) and watch a bit of Taiwan TV. I've been watching Tw's variety shows since young so watching them in Tw itself makes me really happy too for some reason. The cold weather made the nua-ing even better because we could just jump straight onto the bed! (Not sticky)

Oh yes, anyway, had a change of clothes and off we went to the night market!

 Ban Qiao at night. I find the lights really pretty.

We had their local food for dinner. This hot-plate thingy is very popular in Tw, especially in Hualien. We went to Zhi Qiang Ye Shi later on in the trip and had the same one, which tasted A LOT better than this.

It was Dong Zhi that day and I was feeling sad that I couldn't get to have tang yuan. But we spotted a stall selling red bean soup with different types of fen yuan (glutinous balls made of different types of grounded flour) and I bought one! I've also always wanted to try this fen yuan thingy in Tw because I really love glutinous stuff. IT WAS SO GOOD. This piping hot red bean soup was purrrfect in the chilly weather. Plus the soup wasn't sweet at all yet still very yummy. Suri enjoyed it too.

Queuing for MORE FOOD.

And moreeeeeee.

Supper on day 2! Looking at this makes me miss Lu Wei actually. I quite like the different veggies tossed in spicy sauce.

And our second day in Taipei ends here! It was without all the sight-seeing things that we should've done had I done better research, but exploring XMD, shopping mall in Taipei and going to the night market near our hotel with Suri made up for all of it.