that one time I saw Lady Gaga's butt in real life

So guess whose naked bum I recently saw!? LADY GAGA'S!!!

How did it feel? The concert, not her ass. Well, something like this.

And this.

And a little this at times.

And it all made me do lots of this.

Mmk, got my reaction gifs quota for the day. Onto my pictures (stolen from my friends, since my camera took too much viagra and the lens is stuck up):


The stage:

Not sure how she shipped her Gaga castle here, but it was pretty sweet.


The crowd:

A surprisingly high percentage of dudes. Obviously, Gaga has a huge following from the gay community, but I couldn't believe that there were probably just as many guys as girls in attendance.

The props:

This motorcycle had a piano on it, which she played for us.

Also here is a couch. Made out of Lady Gaga's ex boyfriends, named Alejandro, Roberto, and Fernando.

And here is a gay orgy on said couch.

The creepy Lady Gaga head for when she needed to change outfits in between songs.

The outfits:

Not pictured: the meat outfit. Also not pictured in props: the meat grinder she shoved herself into while her dancers "cranked" her out.

The outfits we wore:

Please note my trucker hat with "TAIPEI" obnoxiously bedazzled across the front, my shirt of a tiger wearing a top hat with excessive sequins and diamond eye balls, silver leggings (WORN AS PANTS EWWW) with pink tennis shoes, and fake pink glasses. 

We did not plan on all wearing bling-ed out tiger shirts and had no idea that we all had tiger tops until the day of the concert. MOST AWESOME COINCIDENCE EVER.

Victoria bought a flashing Gaga bow outside the concert.

Dinner before the concert at a BBQ with Abe, who sadly could not attend the concert.

Striking poses of awesome.

Now, this is my first official concert I've gone to in Taipei. Concerts here are weird. First of all, we had a dinner at a BBQ place before the concert and we took our sweet time getting to the concert, figuring that if it started at 7:30, Gaga wouldn't come on until 9:30 or so. I even took the next morning off from work assuming I'd be out all night. But, when we got there at 7:45, Gaga was already singing. Whoops! Turns out it ended at 9:30.

Next of all, in typical Taiwan style, we got some "road beers" before the concert and no one cared that we brought them in with us. Let me first explain the amazingness of these so-called "road beers". In Taiwan, you can drink anywhere. Seriously, anywhere. Before we go out, we often stop at 7-11s and buy beer and drink it outside the store, looking seedy as hell. Few Taiwanese people actually do this, but many foreigners take advantage of the lax laws. People often leave night clubs and bars and buy beer from 7-11, drink it outside, then walk back to the club. There's a 7-11 near a bar that is often populated by foreigners that we name "Club 7" since there are almost more foreigners drinking outside of it than in the club itself.

Anyway, the concert people totally let us bring in our own beer. Now that I think of it, I don't even think they sold any beer at their concert.

And, no one checked our tickets. Our tickets were the third cheapest tickets (though still really freaking expensive!!) but we think we sat in seats better than what our tickets were. I don't know. No one showed us where to sit or checked our seats, we just sat down randomly.

Since it is a Gaga concert, of course there should be much dancing (and the road beers only amplified that desire). So once we got in and found our seats that weren't really our seats, we threw our stuff down and jumped on top of our chairs to get our groove on. But the workers came by and told us to get off the chairs. Ok, fair enough. So we stood up and watched the concert. Until the workers came by and told us to sit down. Um, wut. Sitting down? At a concert? WHAT? The Taiwanese people around us all sat down and people behind us complained. Seriously? Who sits down at a concert? I mean, this isn't a Mozart symphony, it's fucking Lady Gaga. She commanded us all to Just Dance. 

And finally, not really Gaga-related, but this picture was taken after the concert when we were on the MRT and it basically sums up Taipei for you. Men, proudly sporting their Hello Kitty man-bags. This is not uncommon whatsoever. I'm pretty sure I have more testosterone than some of these Taiwanese men. 

Shi ting in a race

I ran my first race a few weekends back in Taipei!! Only a 6k, but a big step for me since I've never ran one before.

As you can see by the above picture, we got our names printed on the race shirts. Most girls put their English names on their shirts, but a few put the pinyin version (English letter pronunciation of Chinese characters) of their Chinese name. It made the race slightly better to run by a girl whose name on the back of her shirt read, "Shi ting". 

 About 10,000 people entered the race, so we had to run quite slow. It was crazy crowded, even toward the end. 


Of course, there HAD to be some ridiculous people who ran with us. Only women could enter the race, but one girl walked the race with her boyfriend. Oh, and the boyfriend held her mini-poodle while she walked in jeans. IN AN EFFING 6K RACE. You couldn't leave your dog home for a few hours?? A lot of Taiwanese are OBSESSED with their dogs. Yeah, we Americans love our dogs and bring them in the car on occasion, or camping, to the beach, etc, but we don't bring them when we run races. Or to restaurants, grocery stores, school performances, and other weird places as many Taiwanese do. And they rarely put their dogs on leases. Oh, but they put their CATS on leashes, as I saw once at a breakfast shop near my house. I have yet to leash-train Potato though, don't worry. Though, I guess I did buy my guinea pig, Mufasa, a leash that one time.

I admit, I definitely would have walked him around campus had he not laid on the floor in protest every time I attempted to "walk" him.

a tour of my neighborhood

A while back my Sunday plans fell through so I decided to take a walk through my neighborhood with my camera. It's easy to forget I'm living in a foreign country sometimes so I decided to play tourist and take pictures of all the cool "Asianness" around me. All of these were taken within a 3 mile walk from my apartment, just so I can show you what my neighborhood is like.


First up, the Taipei Fine Art Museum. It only costs about 1.50$ to enter. Nothing spectacular, but it's cool nonetheless that I live near a museum.

 Next up is the first park I discovered. My favorite part is this flower walk, where orange flowers dangle above you.

Here is the second park, where I go running at night.

Here's the outside of the park.

They have these cartoon characters here EVERYWHERE. I don't know why. My neighborhood is no exception.

This is a historical house that is across the street from the park.

Random Alice in Wonderland stuff. Why? I don't know. It's Taiwan. You don't need a 'why'.

Insert random dragon.

No trip would be complete with random unicorns, of course.

 And last is Xingtian temple, the temple near my house.

And that concludes my little neighborhood tour. I accept tips in the form of cash, credit card, pay pal, first born children, etc.