So it’s been a year since my last update and I’m sorry for anyone who still reads that I never wrote another update. It kinda got more and more overwhelming as time went on and then it grew into this massive update that I never wrote and it became so daunting that I knew if I didn’t write an update at one year I might never get out of that loop. I still remembered that I wrote my last post about my parents visiting for Labor Day, so this year for Labor Day I’m going to hammer out all the big life updates in the last year (wow!). At least, that’s what I told myself and I didn’t but at least I’m still trying. Who knows when this will actually get published! The problem is the longer I put it off, the longer the update naturally becomes.

Here is a summary:

• I finished my extended travel contract in Annapolis, MD, and kindly declined a second extension.
• I got COVID.
• I took delivery on the car I ordered in April 2022, 7 months later.
• I went to Taiwan to visit family with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law.
• I landed my dream job and have been loving it.
• I moved back to Durham.
• I started dating someone.
• I went to Hawaii to celebrate my (Hawaii-local) friend getting married.
• I became an aunt.
• I went to Las Vegas with friends to attend the 2023 Fan Festival for the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV Online (now with an expanded free trial including the entirety of A Realm Reborn AND the award-winning expansions Heavensward AND Stormblood up to level 70 with no restrictions on playtime!), and suffered 113°F/45°C weather.
• I went to Asheville with my parents
• I hosted Miriam for a few days and we went to the NEEDTOBREATHE concert.
• I went on a staycation to Hillsborough in a cute cabin in the woods with Austin for his birthday.
• I met Austin’s parents right before New Year’s.
• I went to Atlanta to celebrate my friends’ vow renewal.
• I donated my hair.
• I took a blacksmithing class.
• I went to Atlanta for the NieR Concert.
• I started playing D&D.
• I went to Boston to celebrate my niece’s birthday, and my brother’s house caught on fire during present-opening time (everything is fine).
• I conducted the 2024 Pocky Survey
• … And more that I probably forgot (it’s been a long time, okay T_T)

I finished up in Annapolis

Back in September of last year, I decided to extend my contract an additional 3 months, which meant I was staying in Annapolis until December. It’s been so long I had to go back to my camera roll to jog my memory of what I did! I’m literally writing this a year later so unfortunately my recollection won’t be nearly as vivid as if I wrote it when I actually should have.

I cat sat Luna

I cat sat Luna, my friend Akash’s cat for a little bit. She is super sweet (and soft!!) and she managed to find the tiniest hiding spot in the apartment I was staying at.

Tobi and Luna are both kind of shy so they didn’t really become best friends, they mostly just respectfully avoided each other for the most part.

I went swimming! (Once.)

Or maybe twice? In any case I took a photo as proof because I had all these dreams to be active (what’s new) and then of course life tends to get in the way and I do a rather poor job of prioritizing my physical activity. So here it is! The aquatic center in Annapolis is pretty nice. Kind of reminds me of the ones at home, except this one had a whole water park/playground inside instead of a second pool like many other places do.

I hung out with friends

I may or may not have already posted these but here’s a gallery of various hangouts! Most in Maryland but actually one of them is from NC.

I got COVID :(

This was really unfortunate, but I got COVID in October. I got hit pretty hard by it despite getting Paxlovid, and I was out of work for at least two weeks while trying to recover. It was pretty hard, I’ll admit. I was living alone out-of-state without support nearby. I was lucky enough to have an evening shift coworker who had recently had it and drove over to my apartment at 10pm at night to give me yogurt, applesauce, and various medications to help me weather the worst of the symptoms and another who told me about how to get the antiviral since I was in a high-risk group. Despite all this I still had it so bad! I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like had I not had the help I did. I ordered take-out galbi tang from the Korean place and survived on that massive soup and steamed egg and sleep for weeks. I felt like my throat was on fire no matter how much water I drank (and drank a lot of water I did). What’s worse is that I contracted COVID only a few days before I was slated to drive back to North Carolina for a panel interview for that dream job I applied for (more on that later).

I got a new job

Okay, later is now. Anyways, despite the long, drawn-out process we had for it, I got the dream job! Apparently they were just as excited to have me as I was to get the job, since they were willing to wait for me for essentially 3 months to finish my contract… and also delay my panel interview by like a whole month after I got COVID… and also pay for me to fly back home instead of worry about making the drive.

So what is it that I do, exactly? I work for a French biotech company (if you know, you know) that makes instrumentation for the microbiology lab. When people in the lab purchase our machines, they usually get an entitlement to attend classes that will teach their key operators how to use and troubleshoot the analyzer. I get to teach those classes! I love teaching and I think I’m pretty good at it. The harder part of the job tends to be having to be “on” in front of customers and entertaining them after a long day of being on my feet, talking and teaching the whole day. Not to mention my introvert self shrivels up every time… The first time I taught class was absolutely exhausting, but I am slowly getting more used to it.

I do love the job. It’s been really great, but I still sometimes have to work on getting my brain out of the “have to be working all the time” mindset. Not feeling guilty when I don’t have as much to do, because when I am working, I work very hard.

I got a new car

So back in February of 2022, I totaled my car when I rear-ended a Tesla on the highway when traffic suddenly stopped on my way to work and I didn’t have enough stopping distance. The damage didn’t feel like it was that bad, but there were dents spanning four body pieces so the car was good as gone. It was time for my to buy and insure my own car so after some research I decided to purchase… a Tesla! Wow.

I had been wanting to go electric for my next vehicle and it’s also been great to see how the EV market has really taken off in the recent years! I really like the car, it’s nice to drive. Tesla’s customer service though… that’s something else. I can go on about it, but I won’t do that here. But considering it took them seven months to deliver the most basic model of the car… well, you know.

The car looks great with the new black trim though! I originally was sad the blue car was extra but with the black trim I think the dark gray looks even sleeker.

I’ve even taken the car on a long road trip and it did great (Triangle to Atlanta). The drive is normally about 6 hours, but the charging added an hour (but we also did stuff like eat lunch during the charging time). But ever since I got my EV, I’ve had other things I pay attention to—like I never know what the price of gas is anymore because I never have to fill up! But also because I don’t go to the gas station, I never take the regular time to clean my windshield and it gets dirty faster. I bought a squeegee so I could every so often but I’d have to go out of my way to go do that.

I went to Taiwan

After I finished up in Annapolis and moved back to North Carolina. All of the “siblings” (me, my brother, and my sister-in-law), were in between jobs near the end of the year. I finished in Annapolis and wouldn’t need to really be in the office until January, my SIL had also finished a travel contract before the holidays (she’s a NICU RN), and my brother had also recently been recruited to another company. It was the perfect line up timing wise because when working in healthcare, you don’t really have a whole lot of flexibility with PTO, especially around “desirable” seasons like the holidays. So we went to Taiwan! It was only a couple months after Taiwan essentially opened its borders to non-citizen/resident travel, and Justin and Lucy had not yet had a chance to visit Taiwan since they got married.

I continued to fuel my ramen addiction

Our first day, we went to Ichiran Ramen, a booth style ramen shop! You mark a sheet to indicate what kind of ramen components you want on an order sheet and then they serve it through a bamboo curtain. It was so fast and so delicious. They also had a really tart and yummy yuzu sorbet I got at the end and it was so good. They also have a wall of framed order sheets from well known people and their preferences for ramen, which I think it super cool!

It was really good ramen. Which was nice since I had left my favorite ramen place back in Annapolis. :(

I had a delicious and nostalgic Taiwanese breakfast

The next morning we went to our favorite breakfast place in Taipei, a hole-in-the-wall place that serves sesame flatbreads (shao bing) and Chinese “donuts” (you tiao). I got the fried dough and an egg

Taiwanese breakfast is one of my favorite. It’s really savory and it always feels like a great way to start the day. It’s so simple, yet so good!

I saw a cat in the window of optical shop

No other explanation is needed.

Hi cutieeee :)

I went to the tallest building in Taiwan!

Which was Taipei 101. It used to be the tallest building in the world until the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was built. It stands at 508m from base to tip, and is a LEED Platinum certified green building! It has a big shopping center and food court in the bottom levels, an observatory at the top, and offices in floors between. As the name suggests, it’s 101 floors.

The basement floors have a food court and shopping mall, so we went there to eat.

Taipei 101 has one of my favorite restaurants, Din Tai Fung! That’s a separate time though. We didn’t end up eating there that visit, I don’t think.

We did go to the observatory on the top floor, which was pretty cool. They’ve put up a lot of decorations for photo opportunities which is pretty cute. I took a lot of pictures of the surrounding city. The elevator that takes you up to the observatory is super fast, boosting you up into the sky at 37.7 mph (60.6 km/h). It’s so fast it makes your ears pop! The top of the tower also has a tuned mass damper, a huge weighted ball on a swing that helps stabilize the tower during high winds and earthquakes. There’s some crazy videos that play in the damper’s “room” that show it in action. It’s really cool!

We also passed the New Year in Taiwan, and Taipei does a countdown and fireworks thing at 101. We were pretty far from the acutal show (and it was cloudy), so this isn’t a photo of the fireworks, but it’s a cool photo of Taipei 101 at night. Pretty cool, right? The little beacon at the top changes color based on what day of the week it is. It’s purple, so this photo was taken on a Sunday.

We also did some touristy stuff like visit the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and watched the changing of the guards.

We also visited Taichung to see my grandma and other relatives who lived there, and also took my grandma to go visit my grandpa’s grave which is in Taipei. He was in the Air Force, so he is put to rest at one of the air force cemetaries. It was raining when we visited, so the pictures outside are pretty dark. There was a lot of stairs leading up to the top. Luckily they were working on the elevator and fixed it so my grandma could go up to the building as well.

We ate good while visiting family, though. It was really nice to see everyone, and my uncle was super caring for Lucy because she was pregnant. He would bring her bottled water and cut fruit every time we met up for a meal because there was one time she asked for water instead of tea!

In Taichung, we also visited this artsy building. I think it’s the national theater? The whole shape of it reminds me of gyroid 3D printed infill, hahaha. But there’s a lot of cute independent shops and artists and a really huge light/lantern display on the roof with cute bunnies crawling into the building structure.

We also got to do a lot of the typical Taiwan things, like going to the night market and eating all the good food there.

Anyways, here is a massive food picture dump. WordPress couldn’t handle all the photos I wanted to upload at once, so you get to see the ones that made it through the upload process. Which is still a pretty good amount.

I moved back home to start my dream job

I think in the last update I had just extended my contract and started interviewing for a new job that I was going to take after my contract. Well I’m happy to say I got the job, and I’ve since moved back to the Triangle area! I am a training specialist for a biotech company that manufactures microbiology laboratory equipment. So when people in the lab buy our equipment, they can take classes with us that teach them how to use, maintain, and troubleshoot the analyzers. I really love it–it’s basically my dream job. I love teaching, I love the lab, and I love making stuff. I’ve recently been breaking into the educational videos side of things and have made a few already. My longterm goal of having a place to work that pays for my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription has finally been realized. I’ve learned so much and have gotten a lot better at socializing with people. It does take a lot out of me when I do teach, though. It’s hard to be “on” for the whole day in front of customers, so the first few times I did it I nearly cried of exhaustion after I got home. But it’s a bit like exercising a muscle, so as time went on, it got easier and easier. I also ended up having to go to voice therapy because I was straining my voice a ton.

I started dating someone

Yes, you read that right. Crazy, right? His name is Austin, and we’ve actually known each other for quite a while (7 years?), but didn’t really get to know each other super well during that whole time. I met him (and many other Atlanta peeps) through my old roommate Eileen. They all went to high school together and would hang out and visit and play videogames together. We got to know each other when we played games together here and there, and for a while Austin was going through a lot of personal stuff, so it was mostly surface level interactions. He had this mega crush on me a while back, but I didn’t really have any feelings for him then (and also he was not in a place to be in a relationship). There would be long stretches where we didn’t speak or interact, but our small group would often pray for him as he was going through a tough time. He eventually moved from Atlanta to Wisconsin for work, but then the pandemic hit and he got to live his best introvert life during lockdown.

Fast forward to right before I went on my Annapolis travel contract like five years later and he suddenly and randomly moved to NC. I was suspicious. It was a little awkward at first because I didn’t really know where he was with his life and his feelings, but we kept it amicable with some emotional boundaries on my part just in case. We would get dinner here and there to catch up and it was fine. Then as soon as he moved here I left NC for six months for my travel contract, hahahaha. He claims that he moved to NC for completely separate reasons, nothing to do with the fact that I conveniently lived like 20 mins away from his apartment. Later he would tell me that he moved because as the pandemic restrictions lifted he was getting asked to come back into the office in Wisconsin (which he never went in because pandemic hit right after he moved), and so to continue his 100% remote work schedule he moved across the country LOL. And he chose NC because he liked it when he visited us previously.

After I finished my contract and moved back waiting to start the new job, I asked him to watch Tobi for when our family went to Taiwan (above), since he had two cats of his own. Allegedly, when I went to go pick up Tobi, our conversation during that was when he “felt the spark” again because of how easily the conversation flowed or something (I have no recollection of this conversation, but this is what he says when we tell people how we met). Shortly after I moved to Durham for work.

Austin then invited me to dinner after a couple months and casually told me he thought about moving to Durham so now I was like extra suspicious??? Apparently it was just a passing comment and at the time he didn’t have solid plans to move. When I asked him later about this he was like “I WASN’T THINKING OF HOW IT LOOKED LIKE I WAS JUST TRYNA MOVING CLOSER TO YOU” which knowing him better now, I believe him, hahahaha. Then after dinner he asked if I would be willing to go on a date with him. He talked about how he felt like our conversation were really comfortable and natural and how he had spent a lot of time working through his personal struggles and battles and improving himself. He talked about how he knew my faith was important to me and he respected if I felt like it would be too big a barrier to overcome. There’s definitely something about the way he approached the conversation that really put me at ease — his thoughtfulness and consideration for how I might think or feel about it, and his complete respect for my decision, whatever it was. So I agreed (apparently very much to his surprise) and we planned a date.

After that, things went really well! Things were really comfortable and less awkward, so I decided to make it official after a couple dates. We’ve been dating over a year already, hahaha. It’s been really good! We’ve learned a lot about each other and ourselves and navigating the relationship landscape which was fairly new to us. We’ve also start talking seriously about marriage, so… there’s that exciting news on the horizon!

Here’s some pictures. We’re both really into food, so that’s pretty much 99% of our photos together, hahahaha.

We already “got married” in Final Fantasy XIV, which has an official wedding system and everything! It’s called “The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding.” You and your to-be partner have to undertake a quest where you make rings and travel around the world and pray to the Twelve gods in the game to bless your marriage. Then you can set a date and time and there’s an in-game chapel and everything. You get wedding attire and even party invitations you can give to your friends to celebrate with you. Then you can even customize parts of the ceremony like the lighting in the chapel or colors of flowers and music and how you want to enter and exit and al that. It’s pretty impressive. We invited all our Final Fantasy friends to celebrate with us, and we had a big fun party! It was a lot of fun. Afterwards for the “reception,” we had everyone go into a big 24-player raid called The Orbonne Monastery and set up some fun rules like you can only slow-walk and setting it to a harder difficulty (“Everybody dies, love wins!”). We wiped a few times (wipe = all players died and we had to restart), but it was a good time and a lot of fun. We even had random people join our party because we didn’t have enough people to join us to fill all the slots, so that made it even better.

I went to Hawaii

When telling people I was going to Hawaii for a wedding, I felt like I had to explain that my friend Enze who was getting married was from Hawaii and it wasn’t a destination wedding, hahahaha. I had never visited Hawaii before, but after going, I understand why people love it so much! There’s a certain warmth about the culture there and man, the food there is SO GOOD!! I had poke so much there. The weather and the sea were also so beautiful. The wedding was in Kanaohe on O’ahu which was on the north side of the island. We stayed in Honolulu did just about everything! We went to the beach, we kayaked, we snorkeled, we hiked, we biked… The weather was gorgeous the whole time.

I’d definitely want to go back sometime, maybe visit a different island. I still need to check “look into a smoking volcano” and surfing off the Hawaii list.

I became an aunt

My brother Justin and his wife Lucy had their first baby, Daphne and I became an aunt!! She is a small girl (5%ile) but she is so cute and has the best hair ever. It’s since become more tame, but the fact that she has SO much hair makes her all that more cuter. It defies all physics.

I went to Las Vegas for Final Fantasy XIV FanFest 2023

I won the lottery to buy tickets to go to North America’s Final Fantasy XIV FanFest in Las Vegas, NV. It’s a convention for the game where they have events and announcements and bring out the dev team. You get to try your hand at an unreleased portion of the game and there’s concerts at the end of each day (the music is pretty well-loved). They had a drawing and there were essentially 7,500 people who could win tickets for all of the North America region. I signed up just because why not? And then, I won tickets. I invited my old roommate Eileen, who was the one who introduced me to FFXIV, so we went together, and then her husband Howard, Austin, and a couple other friends from the Atlanta crew wanted to just have a vacation in Las Vegas while we were at the convention, so we had a good party going.

It was fun, but miserable at the same time. I wouldn’t recommend going to Las Vegas in the middle of the summer. It was like 113F/45C the whole week and it was BRUTAL! Like that feeling when you open the oven after baking something and you’re blasted with hot air. That’s what it felt like every time you walked outside. The convention itself was pretty fun though, even if a little mismanaged, hahaha (long lines are looooooooong). We also did some fun LV things like going on the ferris wheel (High Roller), eating at a casino buffet, and seeing a Cirque du Soliel show, O.

I went to Asheville with my parents

I love Asheville, we go almost every year in the fall to go leaf peeping. The colors in Asheville change beuatifully and we just go to eat good food and look at all the trees, and also see the baby trees (bonsai) at the NC Arboretum!

I hosted Miriam for a few days

Miriam came to visit! Miriam is a Kiwi radiographer that I met on the ship. She had been travelling for a while before she headed back to the ship and stopped by shortly before Thanksgiving! There was a NEEDTOBREATHE concert in Greensboro that she invited me to. We also visited the NC Botanical Gardens and watched a bunch of bees risk their lives to feed on some carnivrorous plants. We also picked persimmons with Jeff and Felicia at my neighbor’s house, which was quite fun! And of course, testing all the good ice cream and frozen custard NC has to offer at the NCSU Creamery and Goodberry’s. It was such a lovely time and it was the first time someone came to visit me from the ship!

I went on a staycation in Hillsborough

Austin’s birthday is in December and it’s close to Christmas. When I was younger I met someone whose birthday was on Christmas and she was always bitter that people would “double-dip” Christmas and her brithday in terms of gift giving and her birthday never felt special because everyone was busy celebrating Jesus’ birthday (I mean…). So I wanted to do something for Austin’s birthday specifically that was distinct from Christmas so I planned a little cabin getaway in the woods in Hillsoborough (only about 15 minutes away). The cabin was super cute (I even recreated it for my home base in Valheim, haha!) and we spent the weekend playing videogames on a sofa by a crackling wood-burning fireplace. I made cookies, Austin made French toast, and we visited our host’s pottery studio and shop. We visited downtown Hillsborough and walked around, and just generally had a good time enjoying each other’s company away from the hustle and bustle of town.

I met Austin’s parents

Austin had already met my parents, but his parents came up to NC for his birthday and invited me to come to dinner. I was pretty nervous honestly, because my Mandarin isn’t the greatest, but they seemed to like me! We ate at Seasons 52, which was pretty yummy. I had been meaning to check out that restaurant

I went to Atlanta for some friends’ vow renewal

In January, I went to Atlanta for my friends Howard and Eileen who were doing their vow renewal! They got married during the pandemic and had a Zoom wedding (in which I was the only “guest” hahaha) but this time they got to celebrate with friends and family IRL. Austin’s parents live in Atlanta and we stayed with them. We also got dimsum with them at this huuuuuuuuuuge dim sum place, and I even found a pearl in one of the oysters!!

We also met up with some of Austin’s friends and I finally got to meet some of the people he would talk to. They’re a fun group and we went to karaoke afterwards which was fun. One of the friends Michelle would use the remote to make songs go faster and faster over time. It would start off insiduous but then somehow you’re singing faster than the wind, hahahahaha. We ate at a big Asian supermarket that had a food court and the only thing I remember is whatever noodle dish I ordered tasted like Chef Boyardee spaghetti???

I also got to see my old college friend Angela and her husband Bellen! We ate at a ramen place near Austin’s parents’ place and it was pretty good! The split-bowl ramen was a novel idea too. Like split-pot hotpot but you get two ramens to try! yum yum. And takoyaki, can’t go wrong with that.

Anyhow, the vow renewal was fun too, a lot of PSALT people went down together too. The theme was “retro,” so Austin and I went to the mall to go find ourselves a retro outfit. I got some 90s retro fit jeans that are a bit too big, and Austin got some colorful codorouy pants to match the bright colored sneakers.

I donated my hair

Austin needed a haircut and I had decided my hair was long enough so I did my biennial tradition of chopping off all my hair and donating it! Austin also got this slick haircut, wow, so handsome. Too bad short hair grows out super fast and it doesn’t look this nice for long. :( My hair has already started going a little whacky and sideways. Short hair is nice, it’s lighter especially for the warmer seasons, but it requires me to do more styling and upkeep than when I had longer hair since when I had long hair the weight of it would just keep it neat so I could just brush it and be done. Now I gotta blowdry it or risk looking like a protagonist in the latest shonen anime every morning when I wake up.

I took a blacksmithing class

Austin and I also took a blacksmithing class, which non-vow-renewal-Eileen recommended to me. There’s a little workshop called ShopSpace in Raleigh where we took an intro to forging class. It just took a few hours in the morning and we banged out some cool wall hooks! I even put a little bit of a twist into one of them, check it out.

It was super fun, except I burned my hand on some really hot tongs that I didn’t realize had been used. I would definitely go back again and make more hooks if I had a place to hang them first. Making the hook was pretty cool since making a hook requires almost all the basic blacksmithing techniques (kind of like how turning a bowl teaches you pretty much everything you need to know for lathe). Next thing you know, we’re gonna be making swords, or something.

I went to Atlanta for the NieR: 12024 [end of data] Concert

Austin’s most favoritest game of ALL TIME ever is NieR: Automata. It’s a really unique single-player game that explores the question of what makes us human and how we forge purpose in living the life we have. The gameplay factors directly into the storytelling as well–you start the game as one character, then when you finish the story to a certain point, the game has a completion screen, but you’re told you need to reload your save, and you end up playing the same story through as another character, complete with different abilities and tools, giving you a fresh gameplay experience while also giving you a new perspective on the story you’ve already experienced so far. When you play through that second run, you load your save again and the story continues from that first ending point, to continue telling the story, and so on. You end up playing the game to “the credits” 5 times to actually finish the full story (although not all of them are as long as the previous ones). The game also has a lot of funny “joke” endings, where the credits roll because you avoided an important world-saving quest too long and the world ended or you ate a fish because someone told you to for science and it kills you.

Anyways, there was a touring concert for the NieR series which includes NieR:Automata as well as the previous game in the series, NieR:Replicant (originally released in Japan as NieR, and then re-released in Japan as NieR:Gestalt with some minor differences to the Western version). I found out about the tour and told Austin about it in October. It was coming to Atlanta at the end of March, The soundtrack is highly praised for its originality and uniquely having a LOT of vocal work. Videogame soundtracks don’t often have vocal work besides choral singing because it can be distracting for gamers, but Emi Evans the lead vocalist, did a lot of really interesting work developing “chaos languages” that sound like languages that have experienced thousands of years of linguistic drift. So the resulting songs may sound like they’re sung in French, but if you actually understood French it has no meaning. Very cool stuff.

Because video game concerts tend to have a lot of references to the games the soundtracks come from and I hadn’t played either game before, I ended up spending the next five months playing through both NieR:Automata and NieR:Replicant from start to finish and all five of the “true” endings. It was enjoyable and I really appreciated the games’ unique nature, though I think part of my enjoyment was cut short by my own spoilering when looking up information on how to finish certain parts of the game and also the fact that I had a hard deadline to meet. Games are meant for enjoyment, so when it started to feel like work I didn’t really enjoy the actual experience of playing the game as much since I was so worried about finishing the game so I could enjoy the concert. Funny how things work that way, right?

In any case, the concert was incredible. We went down to Atlanta and stayed with Angela and Bellen, and hung out with Howard and Eileen who were also going to the concert! The original vocalists, composer, and eccentric game director (the one with the full on mask helmet) were all in attendance, so it was a fantastic experience, as well as getting a little bit more of the continuation of the story.

If you’re interested in hearing the music, you can find the NieR:Replicant soundtrack here, and the NieR:Automata soundtrack here.

I started playing D&D

D&D is short for Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a genre of game called a table-top role playing game (TTRPG), because it’s traditionally played on a tabletop with figurines and maps to indicate where characters are. There’s an extensive rule book on how things work, but the real magic is that the game is run by a dungeon master (DM), who controls the game’s mechanics. The nice thing about that is that you’re only constrained by your imagination and what the DM will allow. In a videogame, you’re essentially restricted to what has already been programmed into the game in terms of interactables. Ther might be a wall you think you can climb, but if it isn’t programmed into the game to be able to climb it, you can’t. With D&D, there are rules that dictate how interactions are ruled, but the result is left up to the roll of a dice. Perhaps you need a horse. You go to the stables and you find a horse, but you have to pay a fee to get the horse. In a videogame, that means in order to get the horse, you have to get money to buy it. But in D&D, you could buy the horse if you have the money, or you could maybe find a stablehand who you can convince to let you borrow the horse, or maybe you can barter for the horse, or you can come at night and steal the horse, or you can do something crazy like learn how to talk to animals and convince the horse to go with you on its own volition. Most things (“checks”) will be decided by a dice roll. Perhaps you have to roll a dice to be persuasive enough. Perhaps you need to roll a dice to be stealthy enough so someone doesn’t catch you. If you roll high enough, your plan succeeds. If you don’t roll high enough, it fails, and the DM usually comes up with an explanation of events. You try to sneak, but there’s a stick on the ground you don’t notice, and you step on it, alerting the guards. Then they might confront you, and now you’ve got another situation you have to figure out! It’s really fun because you and even the DM don’t really know where the game is going, although there is usually an overarching plot that the DM will be running you through. How you get there is part of the fun. And there’s combat too, but I won’t get too into it.

Austin and I started playing a D&D adventure with our friend Mary who has DM’d a lot of games for other people! I think we were talking about Baldur’s Gate 3, a D&D-like videogame that came out last year and became SUPER popular for how well it was made and how the player(s) get tons of choices to make that actually affect the story. I mentioned that my first and only D&D experience wasn’t super successful–it was overwhelming and not well introduced for a first-timer, and there was a ton of people in the game I didn’t really know well, so I just didn’t really “get it” and thought maybe it wasn’t for me. I could see how it could be fun in the right circumstances, so when Mary offered to introduce me to it again I was excited to see if I could get into it. And it’s been super fun!! We started with a fairly short adventure, and Mary set us up with a lot of resources and helped us put together our first characters. I play as a Goliath (7-8ft tall mountain-born stone-skinned race) ranger, and Austin plays as a halfing (2ft-small practical and small race) barbarian. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to transition to a campaign, which is a longer story with multiple arcs that culminate into a big ending. It’s been a super nice bonding time between the three of us alongside normal FFXIV shenanigans. Mary even had us write a backstory for our characters, which I agonized over for a bit because I am NOT a creative writing person at all but once I started going through some of the questions she asked it was really fun to come up with it! I can’t imagine having the pressure of coming up with story on the spot like she does when she has to DM and improv what happens, but I’ve really appreciated the whole experience and am excited to see where our adventures take us next. Austin and I even each got our more artistically inclined friends to illustrate our characters for us! We need to get a drawing of the two of us together sometime because the height difference is the best part, since I’m like 8 feet tall and he’s 2 feet tall hahahahaha.

I went to Boston to celebrate Daphne’s 1st birthday!

Daphne turned one! She was born and had her first birthday all within the same blog post, hahahaha.

My parents and I as well as Lucy’s mom and sister Maria came up to Boston to celebrate. Daphne has an egg allergy, so we couldn’t get a regular cake. So instead Lucy and all her Pinterest scouring, found this super cute “cake” idea which was just a watermelon carved into a cylinder and decorated with other fruits. I helped carve the cake and the strawberry roses on top, learning a new skill in the process. I also helped make a recipe Lucy found for these black sesame Rice Krispie treats, so good!! Justin made ribs, Lucy’s mom and Maria made a imitation shark fin soup and fried rice, Lucy made a sweet drink with jellies in it, my parents helped with some chocolate covered strawberries… Maria even made a little sign to go into the cake with Lucy’s Cricut.

They invited some of their friends who also have babies to join in the celebration. Not gonna lie, it was unironically the best birthday party I’ve ever attended. I think it was just a lot of fun to make a lot of food together and enjoy watching little Daphne opening presents. It was chill but fun, not too socially draining, and an all around good time.

Well, until my brother’s house caught on fire. We were opening presents and I felt like I sniffed some smoke, like wood-burning smoke, not food-burning smoke. Kind of fragrant? Lucy mentioned that she thought the neighbors were burning incense, so we all kind of shrugged it off. But then I was looking out the window and saw smoke billowing up to the second floor. So I mentioned it again, saying that was a little too much smoke for just incense. We went downstairs to check it out, and lo and behold there was a small mulch fire in the front yard! It was already burning a portion of the siding of the porch. My brother grabbed his two fire extinguishers and thanks to RA training, jumped into action and put it out. The fire kept smoking back up though, so we called the fire department to come make sure it was out. They brought THREE ladder trucks and hosed the whole yard to soak it, and then went inside to do some inspections to make sure it wasn’t something electrical or something.

I also got to see Sisi, Matt, and their new baby Jacob! It was really fun hanging out with them and just chatting. The day seems to go by so quickly when you have a baby; you feel like you just fed them and now it’s already somehow a few hours later and it’s time for them to eat again!

I have another trip to Boston planned this week, but hopefully I can publish this blog post before that trip is over and I have to do even more writing, hahahahaha.

I conducted the 2024 Pocky Survey

I purchased a Pocky holiday tin that had 9 flavors of Pocky inside because I wanted the tin. You know how your mom has this butter cookie tin she uses for her sewing kit? I wanted that for my sewing kit. So I started conducting a survey to see how people would rate the various flavors included in the tin. The original chocolate Pocky is the reference flavor (rating = 0) and then all the other flavors would be tried and rated in comparison to the reference flavor, for up to +3 better or -3 worse than the original flavor. I’m still collecting data, got a couple more people to ask but then I’ll give my dad the info so he can make a spreadsheet and analyze the numbers or whatever. Everyone is taking it super seriously, some drinking water between flavors or smelling the stick to decide how they like it, not just tasting it. It’s kind of amusing but I like that everyone really is giving their all in carefully rating each flavor.

And that’s it for now! I honestly can’t believe I finally made it to the end of this update before more things happen (I literally fly out to Boston tomorrow lol), but hey, big mental load relieved for me. Until next time! (Maybe in a few more years LOL)

Until next time!
Jasmin