April 2021

So, I quit my job, and April 30th was my last day which means…I am now unemployed?! Well, yes, but I will be starting a new job very soon!! Excited to be entering a new chapter of my life in China but at the same time a bit nervous because I will be doing something that I’ve never done before – I will keep you updated on the status of the new job in future posts, once I get into it. Here’s a recap of April 2021.

Surprise roses from Mr. Husband just because 😉 All those hinting finally worked 😛

Spring evening in Wuhan, between rainy seasons, having passed the cold pre-spring phase and not yet having welcomed the pre-summer heat. Perfect weather that’d only last a few days…

Three lone green leaves amidst a sea of dark red, after the rain.

Happy birthday – not to me! We celebrated the birthday of three friends in April with cake, snacks, and good company at our place.

In April I continued exploring more coffee/drinks shops. Often I’d grab my laptop, a book, and a notebook, order a drink, and either write, read, or daydream for a couple of hours on a weekend afternoon. Top left: classic latte; top right: iced lemon jasmine tea; bottom left: matcha-flavoured yogurt drink; bottom right: “dirty” coffee.

Another recent food-related obsession is curry and I’ve been trying various restaurants that serve curry rice. Here’s one of my favourites – crispy tonkatsu with curry on rice. The curry was rich and flavourful, and the tonkatsu was juicy and tender. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Cats welcoming guests to a coffee shop by sitting in a very…interesting position XD

Meet-up with a friend who came back to Wuhan for a brief visit. Good food and a nice long chat to catch up.

Event of the month: surprise proposal!! I was fortunate to be involved in the planning and execution of the proposal, which was a lot of fun and full of joy and laughter. Congratulations to the newly engaged couple!!

Here we are in May and temperatures have gone up to 30+ degrees Celsius already on some days. Bring it on, summer…bring it on!!

September 2020

September has historically been my favourite month of the year as it marks the beginning of autumn as well as my birthday 😛 This year, September was extra-anticipated because I took my five-day annual leave at the end of the month, giving me two weeks off work when combined with the eight-day National Week holiday at the beginning of October. Still, let’s see what Annie had been up to this past month.

I’m constantly discovering new places in Wuhan and this time it was a walking path near the Huanglongshan (literally “Yellow Dragon Hill”) area. Who would have thought that there’d be this “I ❤ U" sign in the middle of nowhere! So Jian and I had some fun with it, heh 😛

And at the same time, there is a “I LOVE HUST” sign in front of the HUST (Jian’s university) library. Can’t say I myself love HUST that much but J is a loyal faculty member indeed 😀

Weekly fellowship combined with a birthday party this time, at my place.

Birthday girl making a wish upon a star…or upon a cake?!

Sleep vs. grumpy cat, with that “what are YOU lookin’ at O_O” look. It’s OK, I still like you.

Cat #2 here, looking photogenic as passersby stop to admire the gorgeous beauty.

Dramatic sky one afternoon, with the clouds trying to mask the radiating sun. But Mr. Sun’s like, “Nah bro you ain’t taking the highlight away from me” as it attempts to burst out of the sombre clouds…

The baking experiments continue, this time with…classic banana bread! First bite was like OMG this is delicious but it ended up being too sweet…AGAIN, even with reduced sugar content. I guess I didn’t take into account how sweet ripe banana themselves already are…need to work on my sugar control!!!

Tidbits of street food in Chaozhou in Guangdong province, a small trip taken at the end of September before going to my hometown Guangzhou. Top left: beef and tripe soup noodles; top right: glutinous rice stuffed in pig intestines; bottom left: a variety of street snacks in Chaozhou; bottom right: matcha shaved ice milk. Food heaven! ❤

There are two and a half months left in the peculiar year of 2020 but we’ll see if it could get any more bizarre…see you in November with the next monthly update!

August 2020

The coming of September means that there are only four months left in 2020 – what! Heck, what a year 2020 has been not only for me but for everyone in this pandemic-stricken world. Hopefully we are still keeping a positive outlook as we step into the final trimester of the year. August was also REALLY hot and I’m glad I survived another Wuhan summer…!

Leisurely cycling after dinner one evening after a short period of rain, a rainbow appeared above us. Nearly everyone stopped to take a photo and so did we – I think it was my first encounter with a rainbow after moving back to China!

We continued cycling and when we reached Yujia Lake, we saw fiery clouds in the distance that illuminated the dusk over the horizon, like an oil painting coming to life. Nature is too beautiful!

Photo taken at the exact same spot as the last photo, with the golden globe getting ready to sink into the horizon beyond Yujia Lake. Yep, we are frequent visitors to Yujia Lake, alright.

View from the bus from Hankou station as we crossed a bridge over the Han River (not the more well-known Yangtze, which also traverses Wuhan) on our way home.

Amazing cloud patterns seen outside my workplace as I was getting ready to go home.

Group photo after weekly gathering at my place – it’s great to finally be able to see friends face-to-face again!

Fooooooooooooood! Summertime (plus COVID) means that J gets a break from teaching and so we cooked a lot more at home in August than we’re used to. Apparently taking a photo of every home-cooked meal has become a habit and a ritual. I’m so thankful to have such an excellent cook as my husband! ❤

Despite cooking more, we still ate out from time to time, especially during our weekly date on Friday nights. Top left: pizza and curry chicken rice with friends; top right: sizzling-grilled steak with pasta and egg; bottom left: best beef noodles ever in Xiangyang; bottom right: Thai sticky rice with mango and coconut milk. Yum yum!

I usually end these monthly posts with a selfie of Mr. J and me and here we are – my husband is really the most adorable human being ever ❤ ❤ ❤

Other than my job (which I hate and can’t quit yet for not-so-obvious reasons), I dare say that I’m enjoying my currently lifestyle more and more – beautiful sceneries, amazing books (only thing not mentioned in this post), delicious food, and the best companion in life. Two milestones – ten-year anniversary of this blog and one-year wedding anniversary – are coming up and I plan to write corresponding posts reflecting upon these in the upcoming month – if I don’t become lazy or distracted!

Memories of Santorini, Greece

I haven’t written a proper travel-related post in a while and that’s because I don’t travel as much as I did when I was living in Europe anymore (COVID aside). The other reason is I don’t have as much free time as I did when I was a grad student. However, there are hundreds of GBs of photos in my hard-drive that remind me of how much I enjoyed travelling without the burdens of having to pay a mortgage, heh.

There was one destination that I really wanted to write about and that was Greece. Even though I don’t go as in-depth about each destination as I did during my early blogging days, I still want to write about Greece, especially Santorini. In September 2017, I attended the European Society of Biomaterials conference in Athens, but dropped by Santorini for two days prior to the conference. It was one of those trips that from time to time would just pop up in my mind, not because of how amazing the scenery was – and it was amazing. The main reason I enjoyed this trip so much was because of my companion, TK, who I feel like is a younger version of me with very similar personalities. We understood each other very well and our styles of travel were so complementary that it just felt super comfortable being around her. We could both be super touristy and take a million photos in front of landmarks, or we could both just sit and write for an hour without talking to each other and be totally fine with it. I was so glad to have found the perfect travel buddy, and I miss her loads!

TK and I stayed in Fira on the island of Santorini during our stay and took the bus that brought us around to different villages and points of interest on the island. The main destination was of course Oia, which was famous for its sunset. This is Oia viewed from a distance, with its iconic white architecture dotted with pastel-coloured buildings.

A closer look at Oia, this being one of those postcard points of view. The church with the three blue domes is a landmark that most tourists visit in Oia and can be seen right in front of us. Heading there next…

…and here it is. Well, one of the three blue domes, with the deep blue Aegean Sea as the backdrop.

As we had almost the entire afternoon in Oia, TK and I took our time wandering around the narrow streets and alleys, getting lost more than just once or twice. But every corner you turn offers you a new view, whether it’s of the sea or the local residential area or a new landmark of some sort. We tried to get “off the beaten path” but every path on Oia seemed to be the beaten path…!

Lunch! Actually we had lunch in Fira before we headed to Oia that day, at a restaurant called “Salt and Pepper” that TK found before we arrived. The lady that runs the restaurant was so friendly and talkative! She told us about Santorini from the point of view of a local and introduced us to the food at her restaurant. I ordered the shrimp saganaki while TK got the octopus dish. Delicious, but TK’s portion was a bit small. Thankfully mine came with six gigantic shrimp that we were able to share between us!

Dessert was on the house and the lady even wrote down its name to teach us how to pronounce it in Greek. Home-made “ekmek kataifi”, a sweet three-layered pudding. Lovely end to our lunch!

In Oia, we definitely had to go join the hype and see the sunset. There were a few viewpoints where the sunset could be best seen, and we went about an hour and a half earlier than the estimated time of the sunset in order to secure a place to sit – and that was very necessary (and probably the most touristy thing we did during the trip 😛 )! Counting down now…

People kept arriving and soon the small area was filled with sunset-watchers. The sun has almost completely disappeared by 5:50 pm, and to be completely honest I wasn’t THAT impressed with this particular sunset experience and definitely thought that it was overhyped. The one that I saw in Athens several days later, on top of Mount Lycabettus, was much more memorable.

People getting ready to leave after the sunset, and I’m sure there was a dinner rush right here. Again, luckily we came early to get the best view!

Post-sunset photo of TK and me! I definitely did not know where to look in the camera… @_@

We stayed in Oia for a bit longer after the sunset because we wanted to see it lit up in the evening, and it looked gorgeous! I think Santorini would have been a great place for a honeymoon, but if I were to choose, I would stay in one of the less touristy villages on the island in a villa with a pool hanging on a cliff – now that’d be the utmost luxury! Still hope I can do that one day with J in the future 😉

Pre-departure lunch on the next day, kebab!! Ahh this was so yummy and perhaps one of the best kebabs I’ve ever had! But after this it was time to fly to Athens for the conference. Bye bye Santorini!

December 2019

(Written on December 31, 2019)

Good-bye 2019.

Time is continuous, so it is curious that humans artificially divide it into years, months, days, hours, seconds… Though, perhaps that is the only way we could live – in never-ending cycles of years rather than in a straight line. So then, a new year is a much a new “year” as it is a new “month” or a new “day”, an ephemeral moment in eternity. Only by establishing these time “points”, these “rites”, can we say that anything is “new”, see our lives in a relative point of view, and realize over and over again that all endings are also beginnings (we just don’t realize it at the time).

(The last part of the last line is a quote from “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom.)

Perhaps the final sunset for a while as we stepped into winter – and winter came fast. Though, compared to last year, winter has been quite mild so far, with temperatures hovering around 5-10 degrees Celsius and no snow (yet?) in Wuhan. Looks like we may be headed for a completely snowless winter… 😦

Perhaps because of the relatively mild weather, the Chinese roses outside my workplace haven’t wilted by December. Some of them were as large as my palm and were looking as lovely as ever!

No maple leafs around here with gradually changing colours, but this area around the HUST campus put me in a good mood because the red-orange trees were looking gorgeous. Bright colours are certainly welcome especially in constantly gray, misty, and smoogy skies X_X

One more nature photo – this one taken at a random park in Chengdu, which was a lot warmer than Wuhan when we visited in late December.

So the reason why J and I went to Chengdu in the first place was to attend his groomsman’s wedding! Congratulations to James and Hannah for tying the knot and giving us the perfect opportunity to revisit Chengdu. We also got to reunite with some old friends (Tingting and LS) and meet new ones, a lovely occasion indeed!

The day after the wedding, the bridal party treated some of the guests to an authentic Sichuanese skewers hot pot meal. This was my second time having it and I will honestly say that I prefer the classic hot pot without the skewers. The food was way too heavily marinated and I was not a fan so…this would probably be my last time. Still I had a good time with good company 😉

In Chengdu, I met with a former Glaswegian buddy and we had a brief but pleasant night of night-market-hopping – though I didn’t eat much as I was super full from lunch. We did grab these grilled cold noodles though (with spam and sausage fillings). I realized about 10 minutes after we parted ways that we didn’t take a photo together…SMH. So my memory of her from this her will be represented by grilled cold noodles – delicious, by the way!

After Chengdu, J and I dropped by Chongqing for a few days. Chongqing was a city that I had wanted to visit for a long time and I finally found the chance to go with J. It is known for its mountainous terrain that resulted in a lot of hills and steps. There was some interesting street art as well, like this one along the “Mountain City Alley”. Meow, I see you there.

Finally, we found a nice little cafe in a very secluded area in Chongqing to have a break in the afternoon. I ordered a regular latte while J got the matcha-flavoured one, and we sat there for a good two hours writing and resting. Ten years ago, when I travelled to a new city, I would hit all the tourist spots and take a million photos. Now, I would rather take some time to relax and reflect in the midst of travelling and just enjoy the moment. And all I need is a pen and a notebook. And a good cup of latte 😉

We’re well into 2020 already and the world has seen some sad and scary things, especially in China. Especially in Wuhan, where I live. More on the coronavirus situation in the next post…soon.