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To Taiwan, Again
2007-05-09 00:00:00
We arose to a loud knocking at our door, 8:00 had come too fast. Breakfast was had, bags packed, and we checked out of the hotel. Once the car was packed we drove out to the Snake Kiln, continuing with the motif of ceramics and teapots. Cathy thoroughly enjoyed the kiln, meanwhile Yan-Shih and I were able to chat and see some new sights. The gift store was perused, wares purchased, and we continued along the highway to Tainan. Several hours later we reached Tainan, an altogether different driving experience. Taipei is fast and hectic. Tainan is slow and really hectic. We parked the car and wandered toward the main tourist area. Sitting next to the temple was a small food stand, which Yan-Shih had discussed before as being 'blissful.' The main food was these little meet patties coated in a slimy bread/dumpling type of thing. Dripping in sauce, these were yum. We finally made it into the temple and walked around. Having seen the main parts of the temple, and finding ...
More About: Taiwan , Again

Into the Mountains
2007-05-09 00:00:00
The alarms woke us up quite early and we wandered down to breakfast. We quickly ate, packed, and jumped in the car. Next we drove to the Confucius temple, parked nearby, and began to walk. Midway, just off the road, a flower market appeared. Cathy and my dad instinctively wandered under the tents, surrounding themselves with orchids and a myriad of other flowers. I tried to hurry the two along, but it was like rushing two fat kids in a candy shop. A while later we managed to escape without any purchases and walked up to the temple. Yan-Shih and I had already seen the temple before, having played cards in the nearby park for several hours. My parents wandered inside as we chatted outside. Once they were ready we ordered a few more drinks, and walked back to the car. We began a mission to find Anping Fort, near the western part of the town. Due to a myriad of reasons we never found the fort, but instead became distracted by another market on Anping Road ? the Sword Lion mar...
More About: Mountains , Mountain , Mount , The Mount

Sun Moon Lake
2007-05-07 00:00:00
Breakfast was had at the hotel (same chain) across the street. Full of energy we started our drive around the lake. First we stopped by a Wen Wu Temple, a large and well visited temple. We wandered all around, Yan-Shih thoroughly explaining the small nuances of the temple. In front of the temple Cathy bought a bag of tangerines and we wandered back to the car. Second we visited a peacock farm. Having only seen a few peacocks in my life, I found them quite intriguing. The birds appeared to be in mating mode, with shivering courting occurring everywhere. Third we visited a small aboriginal village that the road cut through, where we wandered the gift shops, Cathy eventually purchasing a bamboo teapot. Forth we saw a huge pagoda, which we hiked to the top of. Finally we visited a temple nooked in the curve of the road, where Cathy purchased another teapot. Then we went back. Lunch was quite exciting. We sat down, ordered our food, and waited. Named after CKS' love to eat...
More About: Moon , Lake

Back to Norm
2007-05-07 00:00:00
Today has already presented several interesting stories. First, Yan-Shih went to the dentist and had her teeth cleaned, then one wisdom tooth pulled. On my way to my "office" I saw a dog running in the MRT, which is slightly humorous considering three or four employees were running after it. I wonder what the rest of the day will entail. Sadly somebody is sucking up all the bandwidth here at the cafe, and I know who it is. Maybe I should make some IRAA business cards.
More About: Back

Taipei Tour Guide
2007-05-07 00:00:00
Early in the morning Yan-Shih and I took the bus to the hotel, knocked on the door, and wandered across the street to a breakfast plane. Quite a bit of food was ordered, enough for them to sample, and soon we were off. Yan-Shih needed to check in with her work to take another day off, so I brought my parents to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. We left the MRT and walked into the pavilion; the National Theater and National Concert Hall on either side of us. I can only imagine for my parents the feeling of being in a place that they had seen via photograph just weeks before. We walked up the steps to see CKS' huge statue, glanced at the guards, walked around the garden some, and headed to the Taiwanese Handicraft shop. The store is what you would expect, various art pieces (most likely overpriced) from various parts of Taiwan. Many were magnificent, as I tried to curb Cathy and my dad from making any premature purchases. After looking at all the floors we walked out, across the...
More About: Tour , Guide , Taipei , Guid

Busses Really Do Hate Me
2007-05-07 00:00:00
Yan-Shih and I waited for the big green bus, yet she needed to go teach. Waiting alone the bus came, and I asked to a girl behind me, in my crap Chinese, ?does this go to the --? ?airport? she replied. I jumped on and started the journey. Tonight my dad and step-mom, Cathy, would arrive in Taipei. It was rush hour, so I attempted to leave enough time to get out on time. Around 5:45 we started waiting, however the bus didn't come until almost 6:20. Leaving Taipei was painful, the streets were like a parking lot. Finally the bus jumped on the freeway, and 7:00 came (about the time my parents would arrive), and we were still 20 minutes away. I was somewhat relieved, as I knew they would need to pick up baggage, fill out forms, and go through customs. To my dismay the bus left the freeway and toured Taoyuan, a city near the airport. Once again in a parking lot, we twisted around busy streets dropping people off. The bus was almost empty, and stopped at a red light. The bus ...
More About: Hate , Real , Really , Ally

Playing Tour Guide
2007-05-06 00:00:00
For the last two weeks I have been touring Taiwan with Yan-Shih, my dad and Cathy (step-mom). I've finally returned to Taipei, finally back online, and ready to start studying and trying to make some money. Wish me luck.
More About: Tour , Guide , Guid

Taxes, I Hate You
2007-04-26 00:00:00
The tax man has come, yet again. I'm especially proud of myself this year: my taxes were 100% done by April 13th, which certainly beat last year (I had about 2 hours left). I fared quie well, and considering I didn't work that much, will even be getting a slight refund! My state tax is especially interesting: I technically didn't have any Oregon income, as I telecommuted from another country. I still included the income however, as the situation would be an "iffy special case." In other, somewhat unrelated news, I've purchased my ticket to Hong Kong for The Big Trip. Yan-Shih and I will be prancing around South West China, Tibet and SE Asia on our next journey -- and it all starts in Hong Kong. Yan-Shih found a great deal, yet the site was in Chinese. I crawled and whined through the site and, with her help, was finally able to purchase the ticket. Almost everything worked flawlessly, except for one little dropdown menu -- it wouldn't show up in Firefox, so I had to run IE und...
More About: Taxes , Hate , Hate You

A Bussing Man
2007-04-26 00:00:00
I'm a bussing man, I'll admit it. In middle school I had a great bike, could bike all over town. Then in high school I had a car, could drive all over town. Then I went to uni, lived in the middle of a big city, and didn't need a car. Sold. Since then, I've been riding buses everywhere. Cheap and good for the environment; I can't complain. I saw the bus coming, it was of the crappy variant (and the kind that a) drives too fast b) always passes me). With that said, sometimes I freaking hate riding the bus. Yesterday was one of those days. In the morning I ran to catch the bus, in fact, I ran in front of the bus crossing the street. I waved him down, but alas, he drove right by me -- he did make a little hand gesture to catch the next one, which was five minutes later. That night the traffic was once again busy and the bus couldn't get over. Passed again. The next bus was 10-15 minutes later, and I was late meeting YS. Today I vowed not to let the bus pass me. I woke up, put...
More About: Sing

Taiwanese Opera
2007-04-26 00:00:00
This weekend Yan-Shih and I went to CKC Memorial Hall and saw my first Taiwanese Opera . I was expecting to see big ladies singing at the top of their voices, but instead there was much dancing, "sword" play, and great costumes. Although I went mainly to appease Yan-Shih, I actually enjoyed myself. If you are in Taiwan, and have a chance to see an opera, don't miss it!

To the Hot Springs
2007-04-26 00:00:00
After a mediocre breakfast we were on our way. Just a five minute drive up the road we reached the entrance to the hot spring, but a slow drive and long hike (climb!) was needed. We parked, and started to get ready to go. I was wearing a pair of sandals when it suddenly hit me: crap! my adventure shoes were back at the hostel! Not wanting to hold up the group, and with no other choice, I borrowed a pair of shoes (two sizes too small) and started hiking. Climbing. For much of the trek we were using ropes, or climbing on all fours. After an hour or so our group reached the bottom of the ravine, and a shallow river greeted us. We changed into our swimming gear, forded the river, swung around a big rock, forded the river again, and finally reached the natural hot spring. Interestingly enough, one of the girls in the group fell off the rock and into the river -- Kelvin to the rescue! A large group of people were already at the springs, but left as we were just arriving. The water was in...
More About: Ring , Rings

Back to Peggy's
2007-04-26 00:00:00
Throughout the day we snacked, and Peggy baked some banana bread. That night Yan-Shih, myself, and Peggy's family went to a steak resteraunt and gorged on some yum food. I was slightly too full by the end, but that is what big dinner's are for. Victory is ours We visited a night market, hosted in a large parking lot, and snacked some more. Once we started getting tired we walked back to the car and went back to Peggy's house, and quickly fell asleep. The next day Yan-Shih and I would say goodbye, and head back to Taipei filled with memories.
More About: Back

Taxes, I Hate You
2007-04-15 00:00:00
The tax man has come, yet again. I'm especially proud of myself this year: my taxes were 100% done by April 13th, which certainly beat last year (I had about 2 hours left). I fared quie well, and considering I didn't work that much, will even be getting a slight refund! My state tax is especially interesting: I technically didn't have any Oregon income, as I telecommuted from another country. I still included the income however, as the situation would be an "iffy special case." In other, somewhat unrelated news, I've purchased my ticket to Hong Kong for The Big Trip. Yan-Shih and I will be prancing around South West China, Tibet and SE Asia on our next journey -- and it all starts in Hong Kong. Yan-Shih found a great deal, yet the site was in Chinese. I crawled and whined through the site and, with her help, was finally able to purchase the ticket. Almost everything worked flawlessly, except for one little dropdown menu -- it wouldn't show up in Firefox, so I had to ru...
More About: Taxes , Tax , Hate , Hat , Hate You

A Bussing Man
2007-03-29 00:00:00
I'm a bussing man, I'll admit it. In middle school I had a great bike, could bike all over town. Then in high school I had a car, could drive all over town. Then I went to uni, lived in the middle of a big city, and didn't need a car. Sold. Since then, I've been riding buses everywhere. Cheap and good for the environment; I can't complain. I saw the bus coming, it was of the crappy variant (and the kind that a) drives too fast b) always passes me). With that said, sometimes I freaking hate riding the bus. Yesterday was one of those days. In the morning I ran to catch the bus, in fact, I ran in front of the bus crossing the street. I waved him down, but alas, he drove right by me -- he did make a little hand gesture to catch the next one, which was five minutes later. That night the traffic was once again busy and the bus couldn't get over. Passed again. The next bus was 10-15 minutes later, and I was late meeting YS. Today I vowed not to let the bus pass me. I ...
More About: Sing

Working From The Cafe
2007-03-15 00:00:00
My life has slowed down to a pleasant pace. Almost every day I wake up, have breakfast with Yan-Shih, then head to Mr. Brown's Coffeeshop. So, why Mr. Brown's? Cause he gives me free internet. Throughout the day I ready/study and work on the web, trying to make it rich. While it should be obvious, I thoroughly enjoy I.T. and traveling. One of the things I plan to add to my list next is an MBA, although I want to achieve this goal with a little pizazz. During the meantime, I teach a private lesson occasionally, and still work for a little English school, creating lessons. Have to pay the "bills" somehow. Overall, life is good, and you can expect more updates shortly.
More About: Work , King , Cafe , Working , Workin

Back to Peggy's
2007-03-14 00:00:00
In the morning we packed and headed back to Peggy's. Throughout the day we snacked, and Peggy baked some banana bread. That night Yan-Shih, myself, and Peggy's family went to a steak resteraunt and gorged on some yum food. I was slightly too full by the end, but that is what big dinner's are for. We visited a night market, hosted in a large parking lot, and snacked some more. Once we started getting tired we walked back to the car and went back to Peggy's house, and quickly fell asleep. The next day Yan-Shih and I would say goodbye, and head back to Taipei filled with memories.
More About: Back

To the Hot Springs
2007-03-14 00:00:00
After a mediocre breakfast we were on our way. Just a five minute drive up the road we reached the entrance to the hot spring, but a slow drive and long hike (climb!) was needed. We parked, and started to get ready to go. I was wearing a pair of sandals when it suddenly hit me: crap! my adventure shoes were back at the hostel! Not wanting to hold up the group, and with no other choice, I borrowed a pair of shoes (two sizes too small) and started hiking. Climbing. For much of the trek we were using ropes, or climbing on all fours. After an hour or so our group reached the bottom of the ravine, and a shallow river greeted us. We changed into our swimming gear, forded the river, swung around a big rock, forded the river again, and finally reached the natural hot spring. Interestingly enough, one of the girls in the group fell off the rock and into the river -- Kelvin to the rescue! A large group of people were already at the springs, but left as we were just arriving. The wa...
More About: Spring , Ring , Rings

My First Sugar Cane
2007-03-14 00:00:00
We were on the road by 8:00am, heading to the mountains. Still a little tired I napped for part of the way, and sometime later we were at a road-side seafood resteraunt. We met with the rest of the "group," twenty people in total. They brought the food out and we started eating. Quickly the plates were empty, and I thought: "Hmm, still a little hungry." Somebody joked about, "ok, let's go," and everybody started laughing. What wasn't known to me, or lost in translation, is the fact that we would be having something like 10 courses. An hour later I hobbled away from the resteraunt, climbed into the car, and started napping again. A few hours later we reached the initial campsite, not quite where we had intended to stay, but a place that was at least available. We put our tent up, and started to walk around. Dinnertime came and we walked up to the aboriginal stores, and went into the resteraunt. Every store along this route somehow knew Peggy, so good food and discounts w...
More About: Sugar , First , Cane

To Southern Taiwan!
2007-03-14 00:00:00
Several months ago Yan-Shih and I debated what to do for the Lunar New Year break. Should we fly somewhere, or travel Taiwan ? Because everybody was trying to fly somewhere, ticket prices were triple what they normally are. Plus, we are likely going to Tibet rather soon, so should save our money. One of Yan-Shih's friends lives in South ern Taiwan. We decided to make an adventure and join her, along with many other people, for a trip into the mountains. Today, at 5:30, we caught a train from Taipei to Tainan. The ride takes about six hours, and is quite beautiful. Both sides of the train track for much of the way is dotted by rice patties and mountains, yet there is development on every corner. Arriving in Tainan we left the train station and got some bubble tea (much cheaper than in Taipei), and ate lunch. There is a conveniant free shuttle that circles Tainan, which isn't that big to begin with. We first took the shuttle to the **** Temple, and walked around for quite s...
More About: Southern , Hern

Top 100 Mountain
2007-03-14 00:00:00
Waking up rather early we walked back to the resteraunt and ordered breakfast, another five course meal. Soon we were packed, in the cars, and on the road. Since we were driving through the Jade Mount ain National Park, there was almost no development. What a relief. We drove and drove, finally reaching the bottom of the mountain we were about to climb. I was under the impression that the mountain wouldn't be cold, so only brought a sweater and pair of shorts. Even at the base I was cold, so I put on my pants and hoped that I wouldn't get too cold. Everybody else was wearing double layered waterproof jackets, warm pants, with big backpacks. Indeed, both Yan-Shih and myself were a bit out of place. Even though the two of us get almost no excersice on a daily basis, we both have hearts of iron, and trekked up the mountain with no delay. I should mention that the mountain wasn't like "hiking," as I was told, but more like climbing. We reached the top after a few hours, and...
More About: Top 10 , Top 100

China Images, Finally!
2007-02-14 09:51:03
I've finally taken the time to rotate, crop and upload the images from our trip to China . There are about 100 that I ended up posting, plus a few from my previous trip to China. If you are interested, you are more than welcome to view them on my gallery.Feel free to send me an email if find any of them interesting, I would love to hear what you think!
More About: Images , Final , Image , Finally

Yea, We Missed The Train
2007-02-14 09:51:03
Oh, no. Our train from Shanghai leaves at about 4:30pm, so we intended to leave Hangzhou between 11:00 and 1:00 (the train ride is about two hours). I woke up around 9:00am, packed, and woke Yan-Shih. She got out of bed, prepared a little, then picked up the train tickets. "Oh, @!#$%!" "What?" "We are so screwed. The train leaves Shanghai at 11:24!" For those who can't do math, 9:30 + [time to train station] + [when time leaves] + 2 hours = screwed. Needless to say, there wasn't much chance we were going to catch the train, but considering we had to, we weren't going to give up. So, we ran out of the hostel, checked out, and jumped in a taxi to the train station. We tried to talk to the train people about swapping out the tickets for the next day, but they said we could only do that in Shanghai (the train still hadn't technically left). The next train for Shanghai was at 1:00 -; would we want a ticket for that? After some scheming, we decided to take the train two ...
More About: Rain , Train , Miss , TRAI

Umpa Lumpas
2007-02-14 09:51:03
Back in Guangzhou, things don't seem to be too bad. Yan-Shih woke me up again, wanting to brush her teeth. She kindly let me sleep after that, although I couldn't. At some point I decided to stop trying to fake sleep, and played some rummy. While in Guangzhou, we had two options: 1) buy the fast train ticket for 70kuai, leave in under an hour. Or 2) buy the slow train ticket for 45kuai, leave in five hours. Considering the cost to change my airline ticket would be 175usd (actually more than I paid for the round-trip ticket to begin with), we were in turbo-cheap mode. Normally we are just plain old cheap, but now we were REALLY cheap. We took the later train. As a reward, we decided to visit the little rice ball store that we liked so much. The store had, on endless repeat (same song the last time we were there), some version of The Umpa Lump a song, but in Chinese. You know, Umpa Lumpa Doomba Li Do, or whatever the words actually are. (Sorry if the song is now stuck in...

Goodbye Girlfriend, Hello FedEx
2007-02-14 09:51:03
The day was quite bittersweet. I dropped Yan-Shih off at the border so she could take her flight back, and I, dropping my head below my shoulders, took the subway back out to the hostel. For the next few days I would be trying to conserve money, just awaiting my passport.
More About: Girlfriend , Friend , Girl , Hell , Good

Mission Achieved, Back "Home"
2007-02-14 09:51:03
Luckily next to the hostel there was an Internet cafe, which I joined as a member. So, for my remaining time in Shenzhen, I spent the majority of the day in the cafe watching movies. My new roommates, one from Taiwan, the other from Canada (but originally from Mali), both snored heavily (and you know how much I like snoring). I enjoyed some great talks with the guy from Canada, as he shed light on his quest for securing a better future. As one could expect, downloaded material is everywhere in the cafe. I located one of the shares in the cafe, and there were hundreds of gigs of movies and shows. All pirated. I watched a few episodes of the TV show "Heroes", then watched half a season of "Prison Break", which is now one of my favorite TV shows. Meanwhile, to help myself academically, I read all the stories from my Continental Literature book that I wanted to, and for pure pleasure reading was given a book of Deja Dead, an international best seller suspense novel. It was ...
More About: Home , Back , Miss , Sion , Mission