This is a short trip before going to Vietnam to see my high school friends. As I become older, I started to feel I need to have a lot of friends. What I need to have some friends who I keep close contact with. When I was in college, I always felt anxious and excluded since I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t always go out, study, and dine out with those group of people. Most of the time I was alone, or I was always with different groups of people. I didn’t belong to any group. As a college student, I didn’t like this feeling, and I always tried so hard to blend into a certain group of people, tried to spend time with them, but in the end I was still not so close with them. After I graduated, many of them went to the US, and continued their friendship within the group. I was probably the only one who kept changing learning subject and finally became a factory manager working in Vietnam. The world of being an engineer became very far from me. Am I sad? Well, in the beginning, yes I was a little bit felt lost. I was not en engineer anymore, I don’t know why I entered NTUEE. But now? Oh no, I felt nothing. Choosing to study in NTUEE is a path to learn new things and the correct attitude to work. Even if I don’t work in that area, I still exploit the skill of learning I acquired when I was in NTUEE.

So, back to FRIENDS, I didn’t contact with my college friends a lot, but I do have a few groups that I am close with. CLOSE, doesn’t mean we spend every second together, it means we have a LINE group to keep in good touch with everyone. Thanks to the technology, we can still be friends. Those friends are people who you can start talking with each others for hours when you have chances to meet, even if for most of the time in a year you are separate. I cherish those friends, even if they are only a few to name.

Before meeting my high school friends, I checked into today’s hotel. The location is way too good, PALAIS de CHINE HOTEL, which is right in the next building of Taipei main station. This is a four-star hotel, as they announced. But the service was actually not so good. The check-in procedure took very long, I lost my patient. This hotel owns many Michelin restaurants, but according to Abby, none of them worth the star. It is just famous, but not as good as expected.

The room was quite normal, nothing special, traditional fancy palace style, just as the hotel name. The room rate is not so expensive though, and this hotel is not as famous as other 4-star hotels. But I still like the convenience of its location, which allows me to go shopping in the main station mall and come back to the room right away.

三井日本料理 Mitsui Japanese Restaurant

Today’s dinner I chose my favorite Japanese restaurant in Taipei, Mitsui Japanese restaurant. They have many branches, and I can just walk in and tell them what ingredients I like, they will customize the menu for me. I always ask them to give me unagi~ I sat at the counter area and dine in alone. I was quite used to being alone, and I am not afraid of it. The food was so good, a lot of protein and I can taste the ingredients are very fresh. I never get disappointed every time I visit the restaurant. Having customized set menu encourages me to come here more often, since I can taste many kinds of food. I highly recommended this restaurant, but for the environment, I still prefer the one I always went with my father. It was a place at the basement, and more like an art gallery. The location I visited this time was in a busy business area. I still prefer to dine in in a more quiet place.

It started to rain the next morning. After I finished my morning exercise, I went to visit the AK.IF coffee stand. This is a temporary coffee stand launched by a famous coffee shop-FIKA. They offered special flavor coffee, such as a combination of papaya milk with coffee or avocado milk with coffee. They also sell my favorite cinnamon rolls, in a special way. I liked the combination, but I don’t like how they make it. They didn’t use fresh avocado milk or papaya milk, due to the limitation of that small stand. I can understand it, but I felt the way I make it is better when I tried to make it at home. I didn’t add sugar because the papaya has its own sweetness. The coffee stand gives me different ideas of drinking coffee, I like that, although in Vietnam, there is avocado latte already.

AK.IF 快閃概念店

Piccola Botega in 華山文化園區 (now as Black Pepper from Feb 2022)

After the coffee and cinnamon rolls, I biked to meet my high school friends, as well as their babies. Although I don’t really like children, I like to play with my friends’ kids.But honestly, this Italian bistro is not really a good place for children, because the flavor of food only suits adults. I don’t think children would like this kind of taste. But the moms require to find a NOISY place that allow children to yell, so this is the place. I think the food will taste better if there are no children around and we girls can focus on enjoying food though haha. But it was really a fun day, and so amazing, because we got to be together again! Hope we can keep this friendship forever!!

Missing complete! I got to taste good Japanese food, I got to meet my close friends, although we didn’t have much our own time. And a very important thing was I got to show off my highlighted hair!! I like the color! See you soon my dear friends!