| oy how the time goes |
[Aug. 16th, 2006|04:17 am] |
Too much to write about and much that i've forgotten.
My tourgroup thingy has ended and is now over. I'm not overly sad about it but i'm not happy that it ended. It was fun going around Taiwan with a group of newly made friends. I'm thankful for the time I had and the time i spent.
Somewhere along the line... can't remember if i wrote about it or not and i'm too lazy to look.... i was drinking. I seem to like whisky better than beer and vodka much better than whisky. I got to the point where my reaction was slower but my coordination wasn't heavily impaired. When i stood up the room kinda moved around a bit like i was dizzy. And it felt like my hands were moving slowly. Is that actually drunkeness? I was still able to stand on one foot, tilt my head back and touch my nose, so i couldn't have been far gone.
I had a bit more than my friends had to drink (this was in a cabin the tour group brought us to). But i am heavier. Other than the coordination i couldn't tell the difference, but other people said i seemed more relaxed.
That very night, as everyone was going to go to sleep, we found out some of the girls were locked out of their rooms because someone accidently closed the door to go to sleep, and it was pre-locked. so about 3 or 4 people had to sleep outside. We tried to get the sleeping girl to open the door by banging on the window and door. We tried to pick the lock, too. Someone started to widdle away at the wood by the door handle to try and use a card to unlock the door. None of it worked.
I went back down a crap load of dark, uneven steps with my friend to look for blankets for the girls to sleep on. I ended up pulling blankets from my room and the 2nd highest authority figure in the camp. (I had to ask one of the people babysitting us for blankets, who was questioning where i was going to go sleep for the night...)
Don't know if it was because i was slightly under the influence or if it was because it was dark, or what, but i slipped on the first step up and fell on my wrist. My wrist hurt for 4 days and my shin was skinned a bit. That scab fell off about a week after or so. Since we were 4 to a cabin, my friend zen and I slept w/o blankets that night but it didn't really bother me that much and he was only slighly cold (it was predetermined that we two didn't need blankets).
I got a shirt that was too small because i thought it was really cool. It's a teddy bear with a thumb tack stuck through it's body. I got a fob shirt with increasingly bad Engrish as you read on. I also got a picture of Calvin (from calvin and hobbes) pissing in a cup, and a calvin pissin on the calvin pissin in the cup.
I accidently copied the leaving time of one of my friends because i was too lazy to read what the thing was asking of me so i said i was leaving a day earlier than i had to. That kinda sucked but the mistake also put me in a room with friends that were quite and not drunk.. which is not the case with some other people i know. We got "yearbooks" and everyone signed and had fun. One guy, that's been doing crazy funny stuff the whole trip was drawing really weird pictures that were making laugh really hard. This one in particular was of an ejaculating penis, complete with a scrotum. The left division of the scrotum was punctured and leaking something, and the rightside had a man's face stuck in it saying "Help me!" It was in a girl's yearbook. I laughed a long time.
In the morning, my aunt came to get me and we checked out. My friend from Redmond, WA accidently put his yearbook on my stuff, so i accidently took it. Not a biggy, becuase my parents live in Redmond, WA. I'm gonna return it. I walked the 5 mins to my aunts house from the hotel and then I went back to hang with camp friends.
When everyone was gathered together, we went and ate at a potsticker place. The place where we went and spent 1100 NT on potstickers and were overstuffed. We then went to some market place with a lot of small eating things. Some how i got really tired from standing around there and it was oddly boring for me. I think i just didn't get enough sleep. Not too clear on what happened after that but i think we sepereated and i went back to my aunt's place. Goodbyes were short because we were on the transit system and my friends were going one way, and i, the other way (with 2 other friends that wanted to go back to the hotel). Made it back to the hotel and said good bye to additional people then went to my aunt's.
There's a lot of video games at my aunt's place. She has two sons that bought a lot of games. Some, legit, some burned (for the PS2). I got hooked on a game called True Crime. It's like Grand Theft Auto. Set in NY,NY and you get to go around shooting people and doing fun things. Good music, too.
My Aunt's jewerly store was just remodeled and it had a grand re-opening the next day. There's aparently stuff in there worth over half mill USD. Pretty spiffy, huh? Some of my other aunts decided to take me to Taichung from Taipei to hang with my grandmother.
I'll stop here with my backlogged entries. I skipped a lot i think. oh well. |
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| what now!? |
[Jul. 25th, 2006|08:55 pm] |
So um... let's see i've been to a winery.. and tried some of the stuff they have there. It's not all that bad but i ended up liking the Stuff they make with Vineagar.
Vineagar mixed with sweet stuff is that new fad i was talking about. I bought some lemon and plum vineagar stuff for my parents.
I'm missing my cello now... i really want to play my cello.
We visited a marble factory today... not like the round glass balls, but marble slates used to make intricate statues and figurines.
When we stayed in Taichung, I think i was the only person semi-familiar with the area, so I was picked to lead the group of my friends around.
We went to the mall that was 3 buildings connected by bridges. Each had 14 floors. We started by taking a taxi there. We went to the basement and ate in the food court. There were 17 of us.
Afterward, we all split up and we looked/shopped around at the mall.
We all met up and then went to the Electric Alley way by my grandparents' place. I got a 1 gig memory card for my dad's camera. There were 4 stores right by each other and all i did was walk from store to store to get the best price. Some places had it for 2.6k NT and the price i got it at was 1.6 NT.
I helped some of my friends find some anime and speakers/chargers for their iPods. After that we went to my Granparents' bakery, which was really close by.
My aunt happened to be in the store when i got there and so I got some free stuff for my friends. My aunt called my grandmother for me so i could say hi, and she wanted to buy all my friends' food for them. My friends had already started to buy and eat food so fast, that it wasn't possible to do that.
instead my aunt bought some muffins and pasteries for my friends to have later. From the bakery we walked to a movie theater. The movie we wanted to watch was Lucky number Sleven, but it was 2 hrs later so some of us played at the arcade next to the movie theater, some people went back to the hotel, and some people (i did this) walked around and looked at the street vendors.
Sleven was pretty good. I love watching American movies in Taiwan... some jokes just aren't translated... so randomly all the english understanding people will laugh and all the chinese people will just sit there and wonder what is funny.
Lucy Liu was pretty crazy in Sleven.
I seem to be waking up on my own quite often.. right before i need to be up.
The people in charge will give everyone a wake-up call and knock on the door to make us wakeup. I seem to almost always wake up 1 hr before wake-up call.
Today our group celebrated the birthdays of all the august and july people. This was probably done because the head honcho directly incharge of our group has his birthday this month.
We got some watered-down alcohol. Maybe it was so severly watered down that it really wasn't much anymore, but I found the taste of the alcohol acceptable to my palate.
Some people really do turn red when they drink here, even if the stuff is really weak. I think some of the people were suffering from psycho-somatic (spelling) drunkness. I didn't feel anything from the alcohol but there were some that were all giggly from it. I think the 18 and under crowd were really excited for that. Drinking age in taiwan is 18 as it is in other countries too. I guess it was a big deal for them or something.
This whole "loveboat" thing is fun, even though i was against it. I think i like someone in my little group, but i'm pretty sure it's not mutual. oh well. it's still fun hanging out.
my time is about up so i'll just finish it up here. |
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| free time hassle |
[Jul. 15th, 2006|11:44 pm] |
So after leaving the Vocational training place, we come back to the place we stayed at the orginal hotel we were in, on the first day.
I went and visited the taipei 101 building. It's the tallest building in the world so far.. I'm told. I didn't really go all the way up to the top, because I was walking and talking with friends. I got a really good fresh Kiwi Ice drink.
we were supposed to get free time today as long as we were back by 2:00am. Myself and 2 others took this time to go to an internet cafe.
The rules were: no people under 18 years of age could be out and about unless they had 8 people with them. Each group had to have a guy. Everyone had to tell the person in charge where they were going.
This kinda sucked... a large group of my new found friends wanted to go clubbing but the 18- people couldn't go because they were not the right age to go (18). I didn't want anyone to be left out so i tried to get the 16 and 2 17yr old people to come with myself and another girl to the web cafe. The cafe is pretty close to the place where we're living, but the main guy in charge wouldn't make an exception to the 8+people if 18- people were around.
We attached ourselves to another group and then decided to meet at 1:45 at a 7-11. I got drafted to be leader again, so no one better get raped or attacked.. or i'm screwed. Tomorrow is a really big free day for me so... i get to do laundary... >_<
I'm learning a lot about the pop asian icons here... thre's basically J chow and Twins. That's all i can really tell you about music here. I'm trying to figure out what animes i should watch and there are quite a few opinions as to what i should see.
There is tons of good food to be found if you go out and look... I think we might do sushi with my friends sometime soon. I've found that i have more fun just talking with all the people here and eating, than actually doing activities.
It's hard for me to explain, but there are people whose chinese is worse than mine... so i have to translate for them sometimes. Sad thing is, i usually don't understand what's realy going on, fully, either. There's so many people that understand only one kinda of chinese, but everyone is being talked at in Mandarin.
One of the dishes we were served was the reproductive organs of a male fish... the Chinese people told me it was good for my skin... I wasn't sure if i was supposed to eat it or rub it on my skin... I was supposed to eat it... it wasn't too good tasting.
Maybe when my friends aren't near me i'll talk more about my friends. Some of them are from Canada... we always point out the Canadian "Eh?".
I've been told that the southern US accent really pisses off Canadians. There realy isn't much of a difference between them and us. They don't like the Americans coming over their boarder anymore than we don't like the canadians to come over to the states.
more later i guess. |
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| humidity |
[Jul. 12th, 2006|04:23 pm] |
Yay! so taiwan is hot and humid.
I've been busy... there's a lot of People in this tour thingy i'm doing.
There's about 200 people here, ages ranging from 14 to 27ish i think. Average age is 18-20ish.
I get along with just about everone, and i haven't really seen anyone disrespect anyone else. I spend what little free time i have talking and playing cards with the people in my group.
there are about 40 people per group and obviously, 5 groups. I got drafted to be the group leader for the 1st group. I think the only reason that was, was because all the more... assertive people were here on the first day like i was. We all got to know each other, and by the time everyone else got here, the people that really knew me were the most vocal and comfortable about talking in our group.
So, now.. i'm kinda incharge of looking after people in my group. I have to help the counsolors (spelling ><) with stuff. At night i have to help them do room checks and end up going to every room to make sure people haven't gotten lost in Taiwan. I also have to make sure people show up at the right time....
They also entrusted me with passing out 3,800 NT to all the people in our group for dinner, today. That's 100 NT per person.
The other day i was tryin to finish writing about what i'd been doing but got cut off and had to go.
I was supposed to go with my dad on a trip somewhere with his friend, my aunt and their catholic bible study group... i didn't want to, so i bought a map and went wandering around on my own, with an internet cafe and a mall as my reference points.
I was trying to go to the mall to buy some music but i got ther at 10 am and it opened at 11. I talked to some random white guy from canada who had just moved to taiwan. He was trying to pick up the worker at the Starbucks there.... yes... Taiwan is infested by Starbucks, too.
I eneded up going with him to go pick up his CD at a music store down the street. I didn't find any music for me but i bought some Sebileus and Rachmaniov for my uncle who likes to listen to robust classical music. I also picked up a Jackie Chan movie that really sucked... it's called Myth. Honestly.. it really sucked.
Did i mention i finaly found Fearless? I bought it and watched it... It was all in chinese.. i understood most of it, so it was pretty fun for me to watch... though you dont' really need to understand chinese to figure out what is really going on in the movie... there's fighting too.. so you don't really need translations for that.
I went from there to a movie theater about 1/2 or 1 mile away. I wanted to watch superman, because it had just come out and my dad didn't want to see it. I thought it was pretty good.
The first night my group hung out in Taiwan for this camp thing i was doing, we went and watched Pirates of the Carribean 2. It wasn't that good...
I'm not able to get online regularly.. so updates will probably start to decline....
mmm i guess i'll type more about this camp as i get more time... i'm gonna cut it off here. |
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| all day pretty much sitting in a car |
[Jul. 3rd, 2006|05:41 pm] |
i spent the whole day of July 1 sitting in a car.
My Uncle Paul decided to take my father and i out to tour Taichung with his wife. I spent most my time just staring out the window. They wanted to show my dad the changes that were going to be happening really soon to the area.
Lots of land has been set aside and designated to become an industrial development area. Many new jobs will hopefully come to Taiwan and as a result new people, which means a need for housing. There's a lot of city planning going into this plan.
mmmm what else did i do?... I went to a pretty interesting park, too. There's a lot of people selling bikes to ride aroudn the park, where there's parking. I guess the people that manage the park think that the park is so big, that you need to rent a bike to get around. The park really isn't that big.. but it's not exactly small, either.
They had a huge sundail there but it was more like a angled pointy rock sticking out of the ground. i think the only times shown on the sun dial were that of which the park was open, there were also markings that indicated where the shadow should be based upon the time of year.
There was also a supposedly self-contained eco system pond thingy in the middle of the park. People are strongly discouraged (by the signs around the water) from feeding animals in the pond.. but that doesn't really work. One can tell, mostly becasue as you apporach the water, all the fish and turtles in the water get close enough to be fed, but stay a distance away so you don't try to catch and eat them (also discouraged by the signs).
I really liked seeing the turtles, but I think the trio of ducks i saw were more fun. They were normal ducks... one had the green head and the other one was all brown. I never relaly checked to make sure i was right but i pretty much assumed that the green headed ones were male and the all-brown ones were the females.
My uncles and father had a conversation about how the ducks were interesting... one trio had 2 females and one male, while another one had 2 males and 1 female. I heard somewhere that sometimes a 3rd animal will act as a neuter in a relationship. So you have the male, female, and neuter. Might be for protection or something, i don't know. I very strongly could be wrong, too.
Why the duckies? I was looking at the water and then i noticed next to me there was a female/female/male duck trio. They were just standing there looking at me, so i decided to get closer and see how close would be too close. I got close enought in which i could take a really nice picture, so I started taking pictures. The male and one of the females stood up, and took a few steps away, but one of the females was still sitting.
I caught sight of what i thought was an egg and called my uncle over to have a look. I was kinda afraid to get closer to get the correct angle to show the egg... the male was looking pretty angrily at me and quacking.. so my uncle took the camera and tried to get closer. The last female stood up and revealed a solitary egg. We took our picture and then left.
After the park my uncle took my dad and i back to my grandparents' place and then my dad and I went with my grandparents to some kinda banquet.
My grandfather is part of a swimming club, and they just had a change in club officers, so they held a banquet. It was the most miserable time i have had for a while. Not only did i not know what they were saying, but the speakers were way too loud. It was just booming and people sitting next to each other could not hear each other.
The food was okay.. they had raw fish (not gonna spell out the japanese word for it b/c i don't know how), and that was good. A few things had shell fish in it, and though i can eat it, i dont' care for the taste. My grandmother kept trying to get me to eat abalone and clams, but i really don't like the taste. For some reason my dad just defaults to telling people that i'm too afraid to eat shellfish, but it's not that... it's just that i don't like the taste, so such expensive things would be lost on me. I was getting a headache from the speakers, too...
They did have all you can drink stuff. Cranberry juice, orange juice, water, Taiwan Beer, and some kinda liquor. Not really sure what it was but it tasted like whisky but not quite as rancid. It was 58 proof and i took a gulp when someone did a toast. It kinda burned but wasn't bad. I was later informed i wasn't supposed to drink that much for a toast.
People kept toasting so my shot was gone pretty quickly. I got orange juice after that. These chinese people like to toast a lot and for no reason. This one lady at my table kept drinking the stuff. She pretty much finished off the whole bottle. Her husband, was drinking beer and was red-faced after one sip. The woman, however didn't get the flush.
Like i've been telling people.. it's somekinda enzyme that a lot of asians lack, but a few have it. It seems like both my grandparents on my father's side, my father, my sister, and I all have the enzyme, so we don't glow. My mom turns red from smelling rice wine.
The whole change in club officers thing really sucked, though. The MC was too loud, there were too many speeches by people no one was listening to, and there was a cheezy guy with a synthizer doing drum rolls and fanfares every 20 seconds.
Oh yea, i was looking for anime music CDs, and my uncle took us to a mall. Unfortunately, it was a fashion mall and just had clothes. Outside, they were trying to push that car.. um.. the Fiesta. Aparently, they often use scantily clad girls to dance around.... so people will think about .... buying the car...
Another thing they do with scantily clad girls here, is use them to sell a special kind of palm nut. This stuff is sold everywhere and is usually bought by men. When you chew this stuff, it gives you a rush of euphoria... I don't know how strong it is, but it must be enough for people to want to buy the stuff. When you chew it, it turns red. A lot of people just spit the stuff on the ground. About 5 years ago it used to be really popular, but now it's not really that special, but i hear Taiwan is the only place where people do this stuff. Now and then you can see the spit-out stuff on the ground. Kinda leaves a mark on the ground similar to chewing tobacco.
ok.. one more post left to do for today... Bah darn it.. not really goning to get to it. My dad just called me on the cell phone my uncle is letting me borrow... going to go out and eat with his friend... I really dont like unplanned stuff i MUST attend.... hopefully i can remember what i did today.. Today was a good one... |
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| 25th generation |
[Jul. 3rd, 2006|05:40 pm] |
So i found out i'm the 25th generation on my dad's side of the family. The 17th generation came to Taiwan from China. It used to be that my ancestors were burried all over the place, but when my greatgrandfather died, the guys in my dad's family decided to move the remains to a central location.
It's ok for people to move the location of the remains of family after 10 years. I took a picture of my ancestral grave but i need to find a web cafe that will allow me to hook usb up to the computer. At the ancestral grave, I found out that i'm the 25th generation of my father's side.
While at the graveyard, I saw a lot of centipedes. The design of the graveyard was different that what i see in the US. The ones that I have seen are all on hill sides. There are little statues put up that you offer to different gods that are supposed to help out the dead with the afterlife. You're supposed to burn insence (maybe so you're prayers go up to them?) and offer crackers, fruit, and water to them.
It seems like people live on in the afterlife and need spending money and food. Oh yea, there's fake after-life money that you burn to get your dead ones cash in the afterlife. When we're done, you just dump the water out over their grass, and take the food with you. Not sure what the etiquite for that is, but i guess it's okay to eat the food later or something. The crackers are sitting in the livingroom of my grandparnts' place.
I got to see some kinda bird when i went to the graveyard. It was not afraid of me, and I was able to get really close and take two pictures.
After the graveyard, i got to visit some earthquake grounds. There's a museum built around what remains of a school that was sitting along a fault line in Taiwan. The most worthwhile pictures i took there was of the track which sank about 8 or 9 feet... i think. I'm bad at estimating. (earthquake occured on 9.21.99).
I missed a few days so i'll post again after this one... probably 2 more times. |
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| driving |
[Jun. 30th, 2006|04:31 pm] |
Driving in Taiwan is friggn nuts!
Everyone here that has driven is scary... my grandmother, uncles, and my dad's friend (who i call uncle anyway... chinese thing).
Basically... the lines on the road are for show, so that foreigners know that the thing they're standing on is for driving. At no time do traffic lights, yellow lines, white lines, one-way signs or "motorcycle only" indicators actually matter. I've seen about 5 lanes of traffic for indicated 3 lanes.
The painted lines dont' really actually matter, and the most aggressive drivers seem to do the best. Cars are always within 2 inches of each other all the time. Trucks too. Lots of motorcycles are present on the roads too. They pretty much park where ever they want to, drive where ever and drive up one-way roads the wrong way. but cars to too...
I dont' know... it's just really scary being in the car.
My aunt and my dad are chinese catholics. I didn't really think that there'd be any churches here in taiwan, but i guess the missionaries have a pretty good grip on the world.
I went to a catholic school when i was living in Atwater, CA.. for about 2 years. I learned the etiquite for entering churches...
I was taught to dip my fingers in holy water and cross myself as i enter church. (forehead (father), heart (son), and the holy (left shoulder) Spirit(right shoulder)). That's the holy trinity... the three things that are God. It was funny watching my aunt... she puts her hands to gether in a praying gesture (all fingers together, pointing up) and bows at the hips as she enters... i usually associate that with asian god worship. Some people cross themselves then bow, and others just cross themselves. A few don't even bother. Just about everyone i watched, didn't use Holy Water though. It's almost as if the dishes are filled for decoration. Maybe they think it's more of an offering type of deal, because some of the chinese gods and stuff get offerings of dishes of water... which they drink by magic (by magic i mean evaporation).
Because my dad wanted to hang out with his high school buddy, we got taken along on a chinese catholic church excursion. We went to some kinda health spa. It was a botanical garden, orignially, but was converted to a health food place... not really sure if that qualifies as a spa, as i didn't see the pool, massage parlors, mud baths or any of that sort. The food was interesting.. just about everything we ate was grown in the gardens there. I ate a lot of weird plants that tasted weird and gave me gas. The Beef wasn't grown in their garden though.
They made some kinda borth out of beans and then you just tossed the food into it and let it cook. i guess it's considered a "do it yourself" hot pot. I ate some weird mushrooms and flowers. It was fun to eat but it gave my dad and me some.. um.. gas.
According to the someone somewhere, Vinegar is healthy for people. Using this idea... desert was Vinegar mixed with honey. Honestly it's not bad... it tastes like lemonade with an after taste of Vinegar.
In Taiwan there's a lot a common butterfly that is featured on their security seal on the identification cards.. it might the the national animal or bug or something. I'm thinking that's what i saw a lot of...
it's really pretty (i'm starting to get tired of using the shift key). If it's what i'm thinking of, it's a black butterfly about the size of my hand. It moves quickly like a bird sometimes. I used my dad's camera to take a picture of it. Somewhere else i saw a golden spider with one of the butterflies in it's web.. both were really pretty. the botanical gardens, though soothing and cool to be in, really sucked... they didn't have much in the way of flowers. I think they were kinda just starting out.
I'm trying to take more pictures.. usually of stuff i think is interesting.
i think about 2 days ago my dad and i were leaving my grandparents's place to go somewhere and we saw a cockaroach that was incapacitated and being attacked by many ants. the ants were probably 2 mm long and the cockaroach was about the size of my pinky and 4th fingers. The cockaroach was twitching it's legs but couldn't really do much about the ants. After we came back it was gone... no clue if it flew away or if it was carted away by the ants.
My dad was taking me to a sandwich shop... it was like.. a 3 min walk away..a lot of food shops are 3 mins away... for about 2 or 3 dollars i got a full sandwich (square pice of bread) and 2 cups of soy bean milk. Still not sure if the US version of soy milk is nasty, but from what little i've tried, the US Soy Silk is nasty.... chinese soy bean milk is good.. when it's cold and sweetened. my sandwich as made with egg bread (favorite of chinese) and had egg, beef, cucumbers and maybe mayonaise in it. It was good.
On the way back to my grandparents's house we saw some lady spraying at the wall as we approached her... she quickly moved further in the shop (to the other side of a hanging sign she was standing to the right of) so that she was on the left of it. All of a sudden a grey spider about the size of my face ran out from the left of the sign.. she sprayed again and the spider jumped to the ground and ran through a door. That thing wasn't fazed by the spray. that thing was a tank... friggin huge.. like those camel spiders you see in the pictures of US soldiers in that place where we have that war going on.
My uncle Paul took me swimming at 5:30am. He and my grandmother (my mom's mom) always go everyday. My grandmother is 86 years old and loves hearing about me, for some reason. My uncles loves swimming.. he's pretty friggin good at it.. he's like.. 65 years old but can out swim a lot of younger people. He told me to "warm-up" and his warm-up pace was about my "trying to go fast but not all out" speed. the warm up was 500 meters. left me tired.. he improved my breast stroke.. and told me what i was doing wrong with my freestyle. I know how to fix my freestyle now.. but i need to practice the coordination.
i think i did mile or mile and a half of swimming that morning. I'm fairly happy i wasn't sore the next morning.
I got to see a sparrow today. i like how it's pretty much the same birds here and there. the sparrows here, seem a bit more brown than the ones in the US.
have to go now >< catching a movie. |
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| ouch food |
[Jun. 28th, 2006|05:52 pm] |
so... much... food...
i'm used to eating 1 to 2 meals a day... over here it's 3... and more if i go visit grand parents.
they're always trying to get me to eat... as if i'm malnurished in the US. They must think the fat on my stomach is a result of being emaciated... like the picture of the children in Africa and what not.
It is VERY humid here. Yesterday was the hottest day in Taiwan for the summer, i think.
Taiwan is much cleaner than i remember it to be. there's a whole lot less people here in the streets... and the streets arent' as crowded, because most people have decided motor bikes are better than cars... which was not the case when i came here last... i'm thinking it was when i was 16... so about 6 years ago.
I didn't used to drink so much water.. but now i do... It really sucks, because you can't drink out of the tap here. gotta boil or buy water to drink. I've just taken to drinking stuff i don't really want to, just to get enough water... for instance... Tomato juice.
It's not V8.. it really tastes like the juice you'd get from smashing up say... a roma tomato. It's kinda good at first but has a nasty after taste. I drink that because that's what's in the fridge...mostly because i drank all the water.
I seem to remember lots of cockaroaches and lizzards(gekkos maybe) when i came here as a child... I haven't seen either yet, but my dad said at the airport there was on in the pisser as he was trying to relive himself. He thought about pissing on it but then decided against it. They can fly,and on the off set chance that the thing wasn't knocked back by the stream... it'd try to fly... flicking piss and w/e else it was wallowing around in... onto my dad.
In addition to the movies i listed.. i watched an episode of friends and an episode of everyone loves raymond on the airplane. the guy sitting next to me was a graduated EE from seattle, who was headed on his way to Thailand to do a project for Engineers w/o Boundaries. I thought that was pretty cool that he was doing that.. because he was one of 7 white people on the airplane to Taipei. not knowing the language.. i think that's pretty impressive.
I watched a movie with my dad. It was a 2nd run movie theater here. for about 3.50 US per person my dad and i got to go watch the Sentinel (michael douglass and Eva Langoria *can't spell her name but she that hot girl*). it was in english and sub titled in chinese. i guess my dad is more willing to watch movies with sub titles. I only noticed the subs when nothing special was happening onscreen.
It's funny... i was flipping though the channels at my grandfather's place... lots of chinese people seem obsessed about getting that special fold on thier eyelids that come so natural to all White people. The fold is on the upper eyelid and makes the eyes look better or bigger or something. This enhancement of the eyes is really important to squinty-eyed folk. There was a TV show make-over thingy that was making people look "prettier" and there was a lot of focus on the upper eyelid fold.
Food is really cheap here... meals for like... 2 dollars US are really common.. and you generally get higher quality and portions than in the US. I'm sure i'll write more about food in further posts to come.
I some how timed out my sleep such that i was totally unaffected by jet lag.. but i'm sure it'll be worse coming back to the states than it was leaving.
I haven't sweat this much from not doing a thing in a really long time... it's really hot here.. hot and humid.
Grandparents are asking where my wife and children are... i gotta keep telling them that i have yet to ask a girl out on a proper date! I'm quite sure i don't actually need to be in a realationship to get them what they want, but i'm sure it'd be better if i got a girlfriend, got married then had children.... Shotgun weddings and bastard children are usually frowned upon.
My uncles don't know where to take me... the only places they know are massage places(usually older people go there b/c they need massages?) and bars... but i don't like drinking... I can.. but i wouldn't enjoy it.
I haven't spent any money here at all.. there's always a relative here to take me out to eat and i don't know what i'd want to buy here. Actually.. i know what' i'd buy if i had the money to, though.... i don't need it, really... but... there's a lot of processors being made here. I think AMD and pentiums are made here in Taiwan. Asus is based here too...
crap uncle taking me out to eat now.. guess i'll go now. i'm on his computer :p |
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| i'm illiterate! |
[Jun. 27th, 2006|11:35 am] |
ok.. so my... livejournal commands are in conji (chinese writing) so i'm not too sure what i'm doing on this computer most the time. I'm at an internet cafe.. i think for like.. 60 cents i can use the internet and the computer for 1 hr. it's not too bad
except for the fact that i can't read much of what is on this computer. Random stuff will pop up asking me if i want to save my passwords and if i wanna display nonsecure items.
plane ride was okay... i watched about 3 movies and a few shows and listened to some classical music.
Failure to Launch
Ultra Violet
the Matador
think my time is up... gonna log off |
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| stepping into the future |
[Jun. 25th, 2006|02:06 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | redmon wa | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | none | ] |
So on Monday at 2 am i'm going to be on an airplane to Taiwan. I'll be crossing the international date line, into the the land of tomorrow.
There's a 15 hr difference. Since just about anyone reading this will be from the west coast, that's our time +3hr but opposite time of day.
I'll try not to spoil what happens, for you guys.
I was tasked with mowing the lawn today. The lawn is so small my parents decided to get a manual mower. the thingy is just a spiral helix-bladed pushing machine. It doesn't require anything but me pushing.... sounds like it sucks, but it was really a lot of fun. The bad part is, you have to go over spots more than once.
I told my friend here in WA that I own 3 games for the ps2:
Dynasty Warriors 5 (which happens to be based on some kinda epic Chinese story)
Champions of Norrath (like... Diablo II but made by the Everquest people, but more fun, especially with multiple players.)
and Dragon Quest VIII(makers of Final Fantasy and the animator for Dragon Ball)
I listed the Games to my friend on aim... he must not have been paying attention (gave excuse of doing work at work, talking on phone, and doing AIM) because he asked me if i had ever heard of Champions of Norrath a few lines later.
We played that at Carson's apartment (carson is a formor Classmate that is working 3 jobs for the summer). We played till 2:30 am. Carson skipped morning work but was there for the other jobs. He's a bit crazy.
mmm tired again.. gonna go to sleep now.
the post before this is about my cello... i seperated that b/c this got to be pretty long. |
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runningaccident's journal