Taipei : Shilin Night Market

Hello blogosphere! It's almost 3 weeks now since my last post! Didn't realized I had been involuntarily abandoning this space for so long now. Working had sucked out almost every ounce of energy in me for the past 3 weeks. Honestly working is not that bad, well not as bad as I thought it would be at least for now. It's just that I spent the first two weeks tagging; more than 15 hours a day, 7 days a week and by the time I got home, whatever energy that's left was only sufficient for me to shower.

But it's my off day today and hence finally having the time to kick some life into this space. One of the things I really miss while working is food. Seriously, it's blissful enough if we got the time to actually eat but to eat really good and nice food is so rare that when we have the chance, we don't mind just spending a little more for it if you know what I mean. And so today, I'm going to blog about food, Taiwan street food more specifically.

Taiwan is very well-known for their night markets. Honestly, everywhere in Taiwan, from north to south, east to west, there will be night markets and it's the best place to source for cheap and yummy food. Hence we decided that despite our very limited time in Taiwan, we must at least visit the largest and most famous night market of Taiwan; the Shilin night market.

We selectively decided to eat less during lunch just so that we could save more space for dinner. But still, having only one stomach, it was totally insufficient to take in as much as I wish to. Seriously, the minute we got to the night market, there are like a 1001 stalls selling food after food after food and most of them looks so tempting and good I was so spoilt for choices. We didn't get nor had the capability to try all of course, but we managed to conquer some of the must-eat-in-Taiwan from our list of food at least.

#1 - Taiwan sausages! I mean why go all the way to Taiwan for Taiwan sausages when we have plenty of it in Malaysia right? But it's definitely not the same as the ones in Malaysia honestly. You have to try it to know it. It tasted even better and more flavorful with flavours ranging from garlic to pepperoni to choose from.

#2 - Look at those greasy, fat, well-grilled Taiwan sausages. Yummy yummy.

#3 - The stinky tofu stall. It stinks so much I wish I had selective anosmia. Just kidding. Honestly, the smell kinda stink but maybe because it's covered up by the aroma of the surrounding good food, the smell of the stinky tofu is still pretty much bearable imho.

#4 - Rated one of the top 10 food of the world, the stinky tofu of Taiwan is stinky to smell, crispy to bite and pretty good to eat especially when eaten with it's sauce and chilli. It's definitely better than eating bugs seriously.

#5 - The stinky tofu pose.

#6 -  Fishballs of assorted flavors. There's the curry, satay, wasabi and I-forgot-what.

#7 -  Them fishballs being cook.

#8 - More Taiwan sausages. And long ones instead.

#9 -This potato cheese stall that is really really famous and has a lot of people queing up each time but we didn't get to try this in the end because there was always so many people.

#10 - McDonald's sundae cone twin but a milkier version.

#11 - Grilled scallop in 'whatever' flavor. Honestly, I'm not making the 'whatever' up. They really have a flavor called the 'whatever' flavor.

#12 - Fried oyster omelette. Their oysters are really fat and juicy and even their chilli sauce tasted more like satay sauce.

#13 - Super huge meatball.

#14 - The whole meatball is pack with mince pork goodiness.

#15 - Grilled bacon wrap asparagus. I love this too.

#16 - The famous XXL chicken cutlet

#17 - The chicken cutlet was really huge, so huge that we had so much difficulty finishing it in the end. But tastewise, I felt that it's similar to the ones we have back here.

#18 - Fried pao which looks and smelt really good but we were too full to try.

#19 - Lu Wei. A local Taiwan favourite where it's something like lok-lok but they boiled the ingredients in some sort of flavoured broth.

#20 - Of course, the night market is also the place to go to look for cheap and nice clothes. Didn't really shopped much that night because I was more in the eating than shopping mood.

#21 - Full but still not so satisfied because there's so much left to try. *greedy*

I really love the Taiwan sausages the most among everything that night. Of course, braving the stinky tofu was a good experience too. In fact I find the stinky tofu pretty good that I thought it was kinda addictive. All 3 of us was so full at the end of the night that I could literally felt my stomach screaming to explode. I really wish we had the stomach of the cows then so we could had tried more. Nonetheless, it was definitely a good start to our gastronomic adventure in Taiwan and after proudly conquering some of the must-try-in-Taiwan off our list, we wrapped our day with a good night shower and sleep. :)

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Starting Work

It's almost 2 months now since we were all giddy with happiness after we passed our Profesional 3 exam. From then on, my world had been changing and moving so fast; I let go of one phase of my life and was on transit to the next phase. June and July definitely went by even faster than the bullet train. For 2 whole months, I was absolutely comfortable with my life and how it was every single day.

Until 2 weeks ago, on my first day in Taiwan, I received news that we had all been called for induction. I was frustrated but not much surprised because to be honest, I kinda had expected that we would be called for work anytime soon since most medical graduates always get called for work about 2 months after their graduation. I was only frustrated because they were supposed to send us some letters 2-3 weeks prior to the induction and they didn't and it was such a last minute information at such a wrong timing. Nonetheless, after some consideration, I decided to fly back to Malaysia for the induction and thus, making the decision to recollect the holiday mood and to start getting serious.

I was in Melaka the whole of last week for my induction with about half of my uni mates. For those who are not familiar with the term induction, it's basically a 4 days course where we were provided free accomodation and food but we had to attend like plenty of talks by various representatives from the government from morning till almost midnight every single day. Induction is like the honeymoon before tough times as a house officer comes. The most exciting thing about the induction was finding out where we got posted imho. We all knew we would get the letter on the first day but they kept us at suspense until midnight and only released our letter before we go off to bed. Although most of us got the hospitals of our choices but almost everyone got pretty emotional after finding out where they were posted to especially those that were posted to East Malaysia.

So now, this is really it. Everything still felt so surreal honestly. We were all supposed to report for work today but because it's a public holiday here in Johor (Melaka and Kedah as well), we got an extra day off and only have to report for work tomorrow. I'm so thankful to have this extra day to sink in the fact that I'll be starting work in a whole new environment, whole new hospital and with a whole new bunch of colleagues tomorrow. I'm also thankful that I'm still close to home and there's actually a pretty big ocean of us who got the same hospital too so at least we are all not alone. I'm feeling pretty anxious but at the same time I'm feeling pretty excited also already, to face this new chapter, new journey and new challenge.

My group members during the induction.

The half of us who were in Melaka. Missing everyone already.

This journey for the next 2 years is definitely not going to be an easy one for all of us but as quoted by one of my friend, K :

' Roses are red, violets are blue, HOUSEMANSHIP is tough, but we can get THROUGH!'

So yes, to all my fellow dearest uni mates, all the best once again in whichever hospitals you guys are right now. We all can surely get through this. :)

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