Choosing Happiness

Ah, blogging from the wonderful comfort of my bed at home. Actually, I've been kicked out of my old room by Kaykay who is inheriting it, so instead I've been placed in the small bedroom (which coincidentally has a nicer mattress LOL.) 

Anyway, after leaving Chicago, I spent 3 wonderful weeks back in Boston which flew by incredibly quickly.  There was a lot happening, and I felt pretty energized most days of the week.  Worked during the day, caught up with a few friends I hadn't seen in a while, cooked dinner with Khanh at night (as you will see from below haha), made time to do art, went to some workshops (went to a UPro workshop and have mostly made up my mind to audition for them in the fall!), and got pretty consistent quality sleep. (Note to self - plzplzplz get sleep during the school year plz @__@. It just makes everything better) I love being back in Cambridge, but mentally preparing myself for the school year is bringing with it some underlying anxiety in terms of so many different things. Mixed feelings everywhere - excitement, apprehension, fear, anticipation. But the good news is that I feel increasingly more comfortable in my own skin...and I think I'm dealing with all the weird stress pretty well. The secret weapon is sleep. I've also been reading some articles recently that've really got me thinking about my outlook on life. Yes, it's a little cringe and cheesy, but I've really been taking the whole "happiness is a choice" thing more and more seriously. Sure we've all heard it, maybe nodded in absentminded agreement, and then abruptly dismissed it from our thoughts. But I think it's really worth revisiting.

Came back to Boston for some quality team bonding (hello delicious food and 3 hours of karaoke) and some info sessions at nearby apartment complexes. Initiating conversation is so awkward. Good thing we had Milano cookies to draw people in... until a bunch of kids came and literally took 25+ cookies. 

Promo materials! That's right, we saved over $400 bucks on printing costs by doing it ourselves and cutting all 1000+ copies. Ayyy....

KHANH with our pretty food. And a close up of this really good shrimp gumbo curry stuff she made since I didn't have 6 pictures to fill up this collage :'(

Randi comes home! She's also started cooking for us too~ They grow up so fast :')
More pics of friends and food ^^ Maybe I should start a separate blog just to house all my friends+food pics. Could be an interesting motif....

Ummpphhff delicious green tea mochi stuffed with red bean milk pop pieces. We folded them into triangles, kyoto style!

Casual brunch. Don't ask me why I felt the need to have this be a stand-alone image. Y'all probably have figured out that I have an intense weakness for arial-shots of cute food.

Went to Blicks with Khanh and made it rain cash T_T bye-bye money. But look at how
beautiful our new canvases are! I've started painting my first painting in...3 years, and
it's definitely a struggle, but I'm slowly starting to get the hang on it! Expect pics in future blogs.

Ah yes, more arial-cute-food-pics. This time with special guest Lychee Juice. 

Here's a close-up of the egg that starred in the previous pic incase you couldn't get enough.

Chicken katsu at Go-go Curry with Randi/Taibo/Will. Berry Line at Harvard Square with Ktian on a 3-4 mile trek to go home after eating ramen. Definitely an interesting froyo joint - I got honey lavender...probably will get the original next time haha but it was pretty novel. Made some lava eggs - lol idk why I am so obsessed with taking pictures of eggs. They are just so goddamn photogenic. Also meat. I wish I were that photogenic. Haha but jokes aside (jokes it's not a  joke) the meat is from a pretty good Shabu place I went to with Eric this last weekend to celebrate his return to Boston!

Chill tea steeper. I love looking at random cute shit like that. Me looking like a fucking samurai while waiting for my hair to bleach. Rodd climbing random things like always. Apparently he used to do parkour! Two random dudes in the infinite giving away free floppy disks - weirdest encounter I had all day cuz they wouldn't tell me why they were giving them away and they even had an email sign-up list...but they told me they hadn't decided what the email list was for yet.

Had the urge to get my hair dyed purple for the past couple of weeks so I decided to just go and do it. Crying from my loss of $200 (didn't realize it'd be nearly that expensive until it was time to pay...) but hopefully it's worth. Currently still bleeding purple all over my tub whenever I shower, but we'll see how the final result looks in about a week! Weeee

Lol this picture is actually not that beautiful in terms of color or composition or anything....but yay Eric is back in Boston!