Today was Mimi's birthday. She's 18 (by the lumar calendar). We had tirami-flavored cake- the best cake I've had so far in Taiwan since most cakes are the dry flavorless variety :P So this one was quite tasty.

The way the Taiwanese count their age is confusing for everyone. When the kid is born, they are considered a year old. Some ppl say the kid is two after the kids passes their first Chinese new year... uh... so if the kid was born in January, then at 1 month old (since Chinese new year is usually on the end of Jan or beginning of Feb), they are already counted as 2 years old. :D So when you ask someone their age, they themselves are usually not too sure. I think Mimi's really 16.

Today my cousin Joyce and I took Jeff out to walk around in the market area. We saw some guy selling pancakes on the street with flavored cremes and split one 3 ways... not too bad. Kind of funny that they called it Hong Kong style cakes... hm... strange, I didn't see anyone selling pancakes on the streets of Hong Kong :D so funny. Kind of like the Brazilian, right ;) tee hee hee...

Anyway, during dinner, my uncle joked that I should buy a motorscooter for one of the kids since I was "rich"... uh oh... I guess I shouldn't have given NT$1000 (~US$30) to Mimi for her birthday... that plus the fact that I could "afford" a trip to HK for 3 weeks is giving them the wrong impression about me... :) he's also kind of tactless. Yesterday, he said my Chinese sucked right after he thanked me for giving his daughter the $1000NT. *shake head* Taiwanese men. I find it very humorous that any of my relatives thinks there's a remote possibility that I might marry a Taiwanese man. There's no way they could handle me... the first time they told me I couldn't go somewhere, I'd laugh my @ss off... then I'd divorce him.

Anyway, I finally admitted to myself that I have some sort of eating problem. At first, I thought that maybe I'm binging cuz I must have been an "anorexic" all my life... but then I realized that really my problem is I use food as a comforting agent and so I'll eat to comfort myself... but then the food here isn't what I'm used to, so even if I'm full, I'm not satisified, so I'll eat some more to try to "satisfy" myself, but that doesn't work... so then I just keep eating and eating...

... which makes me want to say: Girls, don't listen to what anyone else says. If you want to eat, eat. If you don't want to eat, don't. If you're skinny like me, don't feel guilty when fat ppl call you an anorexic. You're not and yes, they ARE jealous. I'm skinny mostly because of my genetics, but also because I do watch what I eat (when I have control over it :D). In college, I didn't go binge drinking every weekend, didn't eat pizza or fast food every single day, and did moderate exercise. Really, that's all it takes. I like to eat whole foods (not processed) and I when I lived alone, I never bought snack foods. That's all it takes. If someone accuses you of being anorexic, tell 'em to GET. OVER. IT. And remember: you don't need to eat a twinkie in their face to prove it either >:p :D Hm... maybe next time, I'll attack THEM and tell them that maybe if they just exercised a little more...

ok... rant over. btw, Ting is home for the holidays and the computer is in her room, so I don't know when I'll have enough time to upload my pictures of HK online... I'll try to get to it as soon as possible though... :)