The New Year

Well 2010 is here. I had a great time saying goodbye to 2009. I've heard a lot of people talk about how bad of a year 2009 was. For me, it was pretty good--I was able to learn a lot, experience a lot, and grow a lot. For the world, I think it is pretty safe to say that 2009 was a less than thrilling year.

Anyway, I had a great New Year's Eve. After work I ran to a Taiwanese bbq restaurant. It is very different from American style since here they grill meats that are about the same thickness as lunch meat. The reason behind that is instead of grilling up a bunch of chicken or some steaks, like whenever we through a party at my place, here they have all sorts of food to cook. That means they have veggies, thin meats (all sorts), seafood, etc. If you make the things small and thin then they cook quicker and faster.

Once we got done with the bbq a few of the people went back to my place before heading to downtown Taipei. Every year the 101 story tall Taipei 101 is used as a fireworks launch platform and this year it would be the last year that Taipei 101 would be the tallest building in the world before being passed by the Burj Khalifa. To say the crowds for the show were enormous would be a terrible understatement. We went to one of the better viewing areas to find a sea of black haired humanity.

The problem for latecomers, like us, was that the people who came early all just sat down and waited, which made huge areas completely impassible. The fact that so many people were sitting and refused to move or even make lanes made for a pretty funny confrontation between all 5 feet of my ladyfriend and some dude who was well north of 6 feet who didn't want to move (she managed to publicly shame him).

When the show was over we lingered for a bit to let the crowds thin out before heading to a friend's house who lived in the area and catching the subway home at 2:30am.

2010 will hold a lot for me. Right now the main goal is to take the LSAT and apply to law school. If that gets done I'll enter 2011 happy.