Memories of Taipei

    I spent seven years studying medicine in Taipei during my college life, so I left varied memories, good or bad, happy or sad, in the city. After graduating from university, Taipei has become a city to visit for me, not a city to live anymore. My impression on Taipei has been fading. Besides, Taipei keeps changing all the time. Each time I go back to Taipei, I feel like I am in a different country. I quite enjoy that. As a city for tourists, I admit that Taipei is an entrancing and energetic city. But living in Taipei is not easy and carefree in my point of view.

On a street of a traditional market, you can see the building of Taipei 101 in the distance.  

    This weekend, I met my best friends, who are also my college classmates, in Taipei because one of them who now studies in the US has a short vacation to be back to Taiwan. Actually, I met the friend in New York last year. Thus it's only 7 months since we met last time. However, to my other friends, they haven't met him for 2 years.  I arrived at Taipei on Friday night after a really really unlucky day. I tried to take the bus to one of my friends' place to stay overnight, but I haven't been to the nearby district of Taiwan University Hospital since four years ago so I couldn't understand his instruction in how to get to the correct bus stop. When I finally found it, I realized I was familiar with the stop in reality because I used it often. That gave me a weird feeling: something you were close to in the past becomes far away nowadays. The only thing that doesn't change is the friendship between my friends and I.

    We seized the scarce opportunity to have lunch at a restaurant called "Focus Kitchen" in the famous YongKang Street (永康街). The food of the restaurant was not conspicuous. It tasted okay but not special, and was a little bit expensive. Fine, everything in Taiwan is more and more expensive. What we focused on was being together with each other. We chatted like we were still college students, which made me miss the wonderful age when we were all young and innocent. Now we walk on dissimilar paths respectively. Some of us are married, one lives in Japan, one in the US, and I might study abroad 2 years later. A lot of my old memories of Taipei emerged. They have lied in the depth of my mind for a long time, and I almost forget them. Undeniably, they are still the demonstrations that I have ever lived in Taipei.

    The lunch lasted to five o'clock in the afternoon. Then we went back to my friend's place on foot for a temporary rest. We watched the movie "Valentine's Day" on TV. (It was Chinese Valentine's Day that day.) Afterwards, we had dinner at Thanh Ky Vietnamese Restaurant (誠記越南麵食館). I am fond of Vietnamese food. The dinner was great, but it was also time to say goodbye to my friends. I am able to visit Taipei readily, but when can I go to the US and see my friend who will be back there again?

    After saying goodbye, I seemed to wake up from the sweet dream, and the neon lights in the city still glittered under the night sky.

Thank to ytree(left) who provided his place to me to stay. And geon(right), best wish to you in the US