mei-drops

These are all photos from earlier in October/first half of November, but just wanted to capture the memories here :) We woke up one day to frost on the ground! MK thought it was snow at first ahaha. More frost (or should I say... hoar frost 👀 hah..) A pretty Japanese maple in the front yard. Since we're usually indoors working all day, we didn't realize these little trees had turned red until recently! During the fall, the trees in the driveway turn gold ♥ This is the view from the car (one of us has to open/close the gate each time we go out). Neighbour's field! This was during a walk to the mailbox (which is ~0.5 miles away)—the angle of the road w.r.t. the field/horizon always makes for a good shot! :) One time when I was walking past said neighbour's field to get to the mailbox, I looked beside me and saw THIS GUY LOL. One of our latest "discoveries" (more like, JL's parents reminding us lol) is that the chickens here lay eggs!!!!! SO COOL AHHHHH!!! W...

The hills are alive! Last October 2nd, my roommate and I both took the day off to visit Mt. Rainier National Park. I already had an America the Beautiful (National Parks) pass from when LF and I visited the Grand Canyon area last year, so we decided to put it to good use before it expired at the end of this month. And boy, was it ever worth it!! Since the drive from Olympia takes 2 hours, we had intended to leave by 8 am to beat the rush (because yes, people still go out despite the pandemic). However, we both had trouble waking up lol so we ended up leaving at 9. This ended up being a good thing: on the way at around 9:30-10 am, the air was still foggy as heck and we could barely even see a mile in front of us. By the time we arrived at the park at 11, though, the sun had come out and the weather was perfect. We headed straight to the visitor center at the foot of the Skyline Trail, which was at a place called Paradise (btw we passed a church called "Faith Church" on the way...

Hello from Olympia, WA!!! I told myself (and some friends) that I would blog about our temporary move, so here it is. Long story short, Google told us around July that they were extending voluntary WFH until the end of June 2021. Since our lease was ending in August, my roommates and I decided to just move out and crash my roommate's parents' guest house in WA until the end of WFH! It's been a little over a month now since we packed our belongings (mostly in storage), gave/sold our extra stuff, and made the drive up to Olympia, WA. We did the drive over a 2-day period: driving 6-7 hours up to Ashland, OR first (home of the local Shakespeare festival, or so I hear), and staying in an AirBnb there before driving the rest of the way up. The move itself was pretty tiring and intense (lol another story for another day), so we were all relieved when we finally got to our new location. Let me tell you more about The New Location, because it is kinda amazing haha. It's a quaint...

Last year, I compiled a list of things to bake and cook in an attempt to get them out of my system encourage myself to make them within the year. I was able to make 17 out of 21 items, which I thought was a pretty good rate considering some of the items had been on my to-do list for like... 12 years or something hahaha. Here's a quick review: Made yakionigiri tiramisu ochazuke Japanese cheesecake Liège waffles macarons (multiple recipes) omurice okonomiyaki poke buko pie budaejjigae (well OK my housemate made it and I helped a bit :P) egg tarts (蛋撻) Nanaimo bars HK-style fried fish with corn sauce (粟米斑塊) leche flan challah cheese straws Did not make (lol they all happen to start with a C) croissants chicken fried steak char siu char siu bao Cuisine breakdown Japanese: 5/17 (29.41%) European: 3/17 (17.65%)  Filipino: 2/17 (11.76%) Chinese: 2/17 (11.76%) Other: 6/17 (35.29%) Skills I learned cooking with/cleaning a cast iron pan (y...

2017 was characterized by travels. I don't think I ever traveled so much in one year: January: Waterloo (Google volunteer event) February: Salt Lake City (ski trip w/ some Ohana friends) March: Guatemala (visiting VC w/ Vancouver community house friends) May: Banff (celebrating Canada 150 with LF) June: LA (fun trip w/ coworkers), Seattle , Vancouver (family trip) August: Vancouver (NP's wedding) September: Ireland , Scotland (visiting Russell w/ fam) October: Waterloo (intern recruiting! blog post coming up), Irvine (Disneyland w/ work team) November: LA , San Diego (Thanksgiving trip w/ fellow CCF expats) December: India (coworkers' weddings), Toronto (home) Of the 365 days last year, 77 days (~21%) were spent outside the Bay Area visiting around 6 countries (4 of which were new) and countless new cities. That means that for 1 out of every 5 days last year, I was not in town. While I definitely learned so much and saw so much beauty during my...

Yesterday: Went to the Exploratorium in SF with some Ohana frands! Since two of us were Googlers and Googlers and their +1s get in for free, all four of us got in for free :DDD It was quite fun: for one of us it was a first-time visit, and the rest of us just really enjoy science centres in general haha. We explored a bit of Chinatown afterwards and got some Italian food for dinner :) Then we went back to ML's place and watched some Terrace House LOL. Since the whole thing was planned so last-minute and I had been really tired the night before, I'm super-glad I was able to go in the end! :) (I think the further away from college age I am, the more I realize how much energy it takes to go up to the city haha) Today: Some CCF alums (all younger than me ahaha) came over for dinner! :D We were originally gonna get Bonchon (SW has never had it before) but at the last minute we found out that Bonchon was closed on Tuesdays.. so we got Chick-Fil-A instead xD Good catch-...