I can't possibly look THAT young!

People always tell me how young I look. That's why I had to start wearing my hair long after college so I'd look a little older to my students. Then I had to start dressing like an adult. :)

Since coming to Taiwan, I've met many people who don't get surprised when I say I'm a first year student. But they get surprised when I say I'm a first year PhD student. Tonight I had the most amusing incident so far. A French-Chinese classmate in my new Intermediate Chinese class asked me how old I am. She herself looks like she's only 17. Plus she's an undergrad so you know she's young! It turns out she's 20 and she was most surprised when I told her my age. She thought I was younger than her! Kaya pa la parang meimei and turing niya sa akin. [So that's why she treats me like a younger sister.]

Siguro kaya ang babait ng mga tao dito sa akin. Baka mukha akong minor na walang alam; kawawang napadpad sa ibang lupalop. At hindi na kasi ako teacher, kaya balik UP style ako dito, shorts at tsinelas. :) [Maybe that's why people here are so nice to me. Perhaps I look like a naive minor, unfortunately cast into some foreign land. Plus, since I'm no longer a teacher, I've gone back to my college dressing style -- shorts and slippers.]

One good side to it is people don't expect a lot from me. (I don't know about you, but that's a good thing for me. :)) My lab does work in nuclear imaging which I'm entirely new to. But I do have a very related background in Physics. Still, people think I don't know anything so it's relatively easy to impress them. I say Gaussian distribution and they gasp. Haha. :) Oh, and this especially works with my Chinese. I say one word -- one word -- like shenme? (what?), and they gasp. Hahaha. :) Hay...