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kua zang in taipei May 28th, 2008

Today I spent two hours learning Chinese, the first of which was in a tiny tiny room. Imagine an elevator but with two desks in it. That’s how small it was. But at least it was air-conditioned since it was another blistering hot day in Taipei. My Chinese teacher is an older lady who is pretty funny. She’s like a mom and she tells jokes that are not that funny but she giggles to herself. Her joke today was (poorly translated into English):

China Air flight attendants are prettier than that of Eva Air. However, China Air has shoddier planes that use to crash often. When the two groups of flight attendants passed each other at the airport, the China Air ones would be like “damn, those Eva Air girls are ugly”. Then the Eva Air ladies would retort “We may be uglier, but at least we don’t crash into the ground”. Then the China Air ladies would say “Crashing is but an instant, but ugliness is for life”.

yea. Anyways, it was a very boring 2 hours of class where we reviewed more pinyin. It’s been 3 lessons and we haven’t even gotten to the meat of what I want to learn - how to read and write. I think i’m going to change it up and get a private tutor who’s a wife of a friend here.

Another thing, there are way too many bugs in Taiwan for my comfort level. On the street today, I saw a big black dot maybe half the size of my iphone. When I got closer to it, it skittered away. This cockroach was so big, I could hear the skittering sound of it’s small little cockroach feet. I also ate some street vendor food in a park and got multiple mosquito bites along my leg and the back of my ear. ouch! Finally, in the downstairs courtyard where i’m living, there’s a nightly migration of snails from one end to the other or maybe they’re just out enjoying the cool night air. At any rate, there’s at least one every square foot. So, i’ve got to tiptoe around these little guys in order to get to my building. I hate thinking about that sickening crunch of shoe vs. snail so I’m especially careful. So in conclusion, there are a lot, i mean a lot, of bugs in Taiwan this time of year. If you don’t like bugs, you would not like it here.

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From my window May 26th, 2008

taiwan.jpg, originally uploaded by beingd.

This is one of the buildings that I can see. It’s typical Taipei. Probably used to be white but stained from pollution and humidity. Houses god knows how many people and businesses. Leaning slightly to one side.

I’ve enrolled in Chinese courses and am gonna head to my 2nd one today. It looks seriously hot out there today so i’m a bit reluctant to leave my air-conditioned cave of an apartment. In the past few days, I went to an 80’s karaoke bar where they print the lyrics on a projection screen. Pretty cool idea I thought to encourage group participation. Had a bbq at an animation office patio.

Got a bit of food poisoning. Walked around aimlessly near Taipei Main Station. Watched a lot of HBO. And got a sweet umbrella too from 7-eleven (which btw is on every streetcorner here in TW), yay! because when it rains here, it really really rains. I’m talking drops the size of a baby’s fist!

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Shannon Falls, Squamish May 26th, 2008

squamish 1.jpg, originally uploaded by beingd.

Before leaving Vancouver, we wanted to do a dayhike to the top of the chief in Squamish. But on the drive up, we saw that Shannon Falls was thundering with spring melt-off and also one person in our party had a nasty hangover. So instead of hiking, we spent the day taking pics of the waterfall and surrounding areas. Ahh, nature how I miss thee.

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What happened to Thursday? oh well May 23rd, 2008

I got on a plane yesterday night (Wednesday) at YVR and 12 hours later I’m in Taipei, Taiwan. It’s 5am, Friday. Wait, what happened to Thursday? oh well. I guess you have to make some sacrifices when you’re a globetrotter like me! haha.

I’ve decided to restart this blog in part to document my travels in Asia for the next two+ months and also to put up some pics that i’ll be taking along the way. Any readers out there still? hello? yea, it’s been awhile i know.

So far, Taipei has been humid, thunderstormy, and teeming with people, cars, and scooters. So far, I’ve had a street stand hamburger and egg, which was actually really tasty. meat, fried egg, lettuce, and some chinese sauce. I’ve had one of the tastiest iced lattes ever. I think this place called Cook’s Coffee, actually strained the latte, then added foam milk on top, I saw a very sad looking black lab in a shady street underpass. It could’ve been dying or maybe just the heat. Either way, my fear of raving mad dogs kept me at a safe distance. I also observed that here a garbage truck drives slowly down sidestreets playing a Beethoven riff while people, shopkeepers, inhabitants, etc. run after it and throw their bags of garbage in there. Kind of like a DIY garbage service. I found it pretty fascinating.

I’ve got a swanky one-bedroom apartment that belongs to my uncle. It’s fully-stocked and never-lived in before so I’m a lucky bastard. Best of all, it’s got full on AC and i’m blasting it. Out the window, I can see nothing but rooftops, apartments, and the outline of Taipei 101 in the distance. Wish you guys were here.

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