This is the third or fourth reiteration of my blog on my own website (and couple more other servers), and there is a pretty big change this time around. I like to write and to maintain my current crappy level of English language, it’s best for me to write these blogs. The past couple of blogs had been either my “diary” or screwed heavily towards making it about my “professional” life. Most of them failed miserably except for the last one, but all my posts were deleted when I was transferring the blog between servers due to a pretty dumb move. Instead of salvaging whatever I was left with, I decided to take a break and decide what to do with this website.
After much surfing on awesome blogs on the internet, I finally decided it is about time I get back on my blog. A difference this time is that I have some focus for this blog – the three things I am into actually (besides work. I love my research if my boss is reading this), and these are the area of awesome food, great places to experience and fun stuff I think I do. I will sort them into these three main categories, so if you are interested in only one area, it’s going to be much easier to go through them. This way, my blog is actually more about me than facts about me.
I had been known to love to eat, but it is only very recently that I got into this foodie phenomenal. One possible explanation is that I moved from the plains of the Midwest to the buzzing huge metropolis cities of the United States East Coast, and there is always better food to try. (Btw, Midwest = Big 10 schools when there were 10 schools. North Dakota is not Midwest). It is also because of me sick and tired of trusting some online stranger’s bad taste decided that I’m my tongue’s ultimate judge. Finally, this blog becomes my easy reference in case out of towners are asking for some suggestions to eat. By no means are any of my “reviews” facts – they are my mere opinions and your taste buds might disagree with my awesomer taste buds.
Even though I have a rather interesting background/personal history and that I have always been intrigued with our vast and ever changing world, travelling (and photography) only became my thing recently. I had been to several countries and plan to visit even more places in the coming years. I do not favor one kind of travelling compare to another – I had taken “luxurious” cruise ships in the Caribbean, taken long road trips in the United States (& Canada) and solo backpacked around Europe for weeks. It all bogs down to the resources (money and time) I can spend at these destinations. I had been taken some notes and pictures at places I had been, and instead of forgetting and storing them on a hard drive waiting for hard drive failure to occur, I rather share my experiences with any future travelers who are going to the same places. It can be hard to find some information regarding the destinations even with Google searches.
And we shall conclude with the stuff I do for “fun”. (It sounded like the other two things I do (eat and travel) are not fun. They are fun, just different.) I have been running for a couple of years now and each races bring back crazy memories that other runners would enjoy reading. I just decided to share them to entertain others as well as for me to keep track what happened where. Since cross-training is something a marathoner should do, I bought a mountain bike to enjoy during my non training days. (Yes, I call myself a marathoner even though I have done only a handful and sucked at all of them.) These activities, plus maybe some others I deemed fit to be called “fun”, will all go to the “fun” section.
I seemed to like to stay in small towns, and there are rarely any great guides for these towns. I hope my blog can serve as a pseudo-unofficial guide to these places for other people who stay here or pass by to learn about the city. It’s my own silver lining for living in “boring” places.
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Dec 1, 2024: It has been 10 years since I last updated this page. I’m still mostly the same mundane person, looking for food, finding cool trails to hike, and taking as many pictures as I can. Since that last update, I’ve taken around 120k pictures, which seems like a huge collection, but I’m sure many of us have similar amounts of shots on our phones.
What else changed..? Hmm, AI is now a thing, and I’ve started using it to clean up grammar and typos, though I made the executive decision to keep some of the errors – I’m the author after all. After graduating from graduate school, I took almost a year off in 2019, to see more of this beautiful world (while unemployed), but I managed to move to the Pacific Northwest and “settle down” before the pandemic hit. There were more trips here and there, partly due to my ability to pay for things, but mostly my curiosity to explore this part of the world. I’ve decided that checking national parks off a list, completing a marathon in each state, or eating at all the best restaurants in the world, is not as attractive as it was. I still do them – just not for the sake of getting checked marks.
I’ve weaved in and out of writing over the years. I have taken more notes since the pandemic, but they just do not get translated onto this website. However, recent events and reading a few long blogs have inspired me to start working on this webpage again. It’s still mostly for myself, but I’m sure someday someone might find this ramble interesting. Do not worry, there is no way to monetize this, and your children (or anyone else) will never have to do this as mandatory reading.
I wonder how I’ll think the next time I update this!