Read other From A Foodie installments: From A Foodie: Tasting Japan & Its Shokunin Spirit 🍙 From A Foodie: California Dreamin’ 🌴 I ushered in 2019 in Taipei with my parents — the three of us were there on family vacation for nine joyful, tummy-filled days. Taipei is a place where the best foods are found in … Continue reading From A Foodie: Tasting Taipei — worn, but lovely
Tag: Asia
Sky Lanterns & New Year Resolutions
Get off the old train, step onto the platform, merging into the stream of bobbing heads flowing along at the speed of a sweating snail. Squeeze past the human gantry, craning my neck for a look at the sky behind the canopy roof. See the miniature sky in the phone screens held up by the … Continue reading Sky Lanterns & New Year Resolutions
From A Foodie: Tasting Japan & Its Shokunin Spirit
Read other From A Foodie installments: From A Foodie: Tasting Taipei — worn, but lovely 🍹 From A Foodie: California Dreamin’ 🌴 Although my two months in Japan were ostensibly for Summer School (note the emphasis on my liberal arts education), with the overarching agenda of weight loss (refer to my birthday post: From 20-year-old Me, With … Continue reading From A Foodie: Tasting Japan & Its Shokunin Spirit
[Story] 7-Eleven: A Summertime Romance?
When she trudges home that night, it’s forty minutes later, after two transits and twelve stations. She is about to turn left, head down the bridge, cross the crossing under a flickering street lamp and follow that path she has walked for twenty-one days when she notices the 7-Eleven store. Undimmed, the fluorescent white from … Continue reading [Story] 7-Eleven: A Summertime Romance?
When In Kyoto ≧◡≦
Kyoto is one-hour strolls along train tracks, washed-out pink carpets hanging on strings, bottles of sake behind second-storey windows, two scrawny girls trying to catch a pale yellow butterfly with a net, watery rice paddies beside a parking lot full of Toyotas & Hondas. Kyoto is that moment my hair almost rustles as my bones quiver … Continue reading When In Kyoto ≧◡≦
From 20-year-old Me, With Love
Today I turn 20! I wonder how past birthdays feel like because this one feels very homely despite the fact that I'm in a country I've never been before. Last night, I was sitting cross-legged in a hotel room on the 46th floor of Japan's tallest building, wearing a dripping sheet mask, clad in Mickey … Continue reading From 20-year-old Me, With Love
My Vipassana Meditation Retreat: 10 days of absolute silence, veggies & no technology
The word Vipassana means seeing things as they really are. It is the process of self-purification by self-observation. One begins by observing the natural breath to concentrate the mind. With a sharpened awareness one proceeds to observe the changing nature of body and mind and experiences the universal truths of impermanence, suffering and egolessness. The Code … Continue reading My Vipassana Meditation Retreat: 10 days of absolute silence, veggies & no technology
Bali: opening to you, the heart of life
This...unsettles you, from your ordinary, rooted world. I was in the land of photogenic temples -- places of worship perching atop seaside cliffs, nestled in misty mountains, carved within caves, and residing around every bend in rural villages. There was more to Bali than temples, of course -- soaked green carpets of rice terraces, beer-bottle thronging beaches, and museums … Continue reading Bali: opening to you, the heart of life
[Story] Macau: Casino Lights Dancing
It felt like the universe had conspired in magnanimity to lay out before me all the stars it had in its pouch. There's a boy seated next to me at the roulette. It's a round-table congregation of tense, weeping or energetic men (some slightly crazy-eyed); this boy who seems unperturbed by it all; and then there's me, … Continue reading [Story] Macau: Casino Lights Dancing
Selina Xu 