I remember that when I was drafting my favourite posts of 2016 last year, there were blog posts that came to mind immediately. But this year, I had to do a little more hunting to find my favourite posts. Although I’m generally happy with most (if not all) of the blog posts I publish, there wasn’t any one that I was especially proud of or that meant something especially deeply to me, except for one. I think I’ll need to do something about that this upcoming year.
December
New month of the new year falling on a new week! Too many blog posts to draft and I haven’t been keeping up, what with just coming back from Okinawa and jumping right into my internship. There’ll be a full blog post on Okinawa next week, fingers crossed. As for my internship, it’s been going well. I have friends at work, with whom I always get lunch with. My supervisors are kind and cool, and have given me two tasks so far, one of which has a concrete deliverable that I finished the day after it was assigned to me, though I had a week for it, and the second of which doesn’t really have a concrete deliverable, so it’s harder to say what my progress is. I hope I get more work because I was feeling a bit bored by Friday (but don’t get me wrong, it was fulfilling doing my work when I had it). Despite having a chill time at work, I can’t use company time/resources (computers) to do my own work (blogging), so I was really marinating in boredom. I need to come up with things to do when I have downtime at work and brainstorm ways to show more initiative.
Art, Design, & Digital Culture: Portfolio
This past semester, I took my first graphic design class ever! (Also my first UPenn class!) It was my favourite class of the semester, simply due to the fact that it gave me a break from computer science and linguistics, but also, I really, genuinely enjoyed the class, from the projects to my professor to my classmates. Shoutout to Louise and Steph (pictured above on the left and right, photo credz to our prof, which he took during our end-of-term art salon, featuring work from all five sections of Art, Design, and Digital Culture) for the lovely memories, the late nights, and the celebratory dinners. Anywho, I wanted to put all my work from this class together so that I could look back on it, and also to serve as a resource for friends who have asked me about this course. It’s not laid out in a pretty portfolio format, but it’s the general idea of a portfolio haha.
Baking kiflis with the family +recipe!
This family baking party actually happened over the summer, but I never got around to sharing it on the blog because there were too many other things to share! I thought now would be a good time to finally publish this post because what says the holidays like baking and family time? And also I’m flying home to Beijing today and seeing my family (winter break, here I came!), so here’s a little ode to them.
Spotify & cooking parties // weekly update
I’m flying home to Beijing on Wednesday for winter break! (And then flying to Okinawa the following day and staying for a few before going back to Beijing to spend the rest of my winter break??) Just got my last thesis presentation to do tomorrow and I’m done. Is it crazy that I’m looking forward to a break from socialising rather than from academics? Everyone has been feeling the end of the semester closing in and wanting to hang out all the time. We just need to chill out.
Peddler Coffee
When I headed out into the city for a coffee shop to work at for the afternoon, I was actually looking for Square One Coffee, but upon arrival, I discovered that it was closed on weekends. Probably shoulda double-checked before I left the house… But oh well, not a big deal. I pulled out my phone to Yelp (honestly, sponsor me!) a nearby coffee shop and found Peddler Coffee, which I quickly fell in love with. At the door was a little chalkboard promoting their special flavours, of which I chose the lavender london fog, but was also tempted by their apple cider and clove cardamom latte.
As if I wasn’t already sold by those fancy flavours, their interior decor… man… Obsessed! That’s all I have to say! I love it! They had cute lil pumpkins everywhere, copper gooseneck kettles filled with plants, exposed brick, huge window-walls, and cool shaped wood tables (I can’t think of a way to describe it other than “raw” lol). And they played great music! Totally my vibe. I loved the rustic, autumnal feel of the interior. I wonder how they decorate for other seasons. Definitely pop by for a visit before autumn ends though! *I say this as I publish this post weeks late and the weather is gradually transitioning to winter*