Taiwan! (for real this time)

Now that I have some time sitting around in the San Jose airport, I can recap the trip to Taiwan. Going back made me remember a lot of what I miss most about Asia: delicious yet cheap eats, convenient public transport, and bustling nightlife to bum around.

We started with a few days in Taipei, where I met up with my brother and parents and stayed at my grandparents' place. I arrived at night, but the first thing we did after that was head out to a night market type place nearby to get a snack. The theme of my trips to Taiwan seem to always revolve around eating and this was no different. The usual place we go to sells this bowl of noodles for a buck and has no seats so everyone just stands around and eats:



The next day, we took a stroll through the botanic gardens right behind my grandparents' apartment. It was unfortunate that it was in the middle of winter, but there were still a handful of flowers around, including a couple lotus flowers. I'm guessing that place looks amazing with the lake full of flowers in the spring time.



We then headed towards a fisherman's wharf of sorts where we had some more eats, mostly of the seafood variety. It was pretty nice, although there weren't a whole lot of boats around that I could see to classify it as a true wharf.



For Xmas dinner, we had a large family gathering with aunts, uncles, and cousins at a hotel somewhere downtown. It was good to get to see everyone again... a couple of the younger cousins who I hadn't seen in a while had gotten really tall. One of them is like 6'2"! I guess there are some freakishly tall genes running in some traces of the family.



After dinner, the cousins headed out to Shilin Night Market. Stuffed full of food already from dinner, we ended mostly just walking through the shopping area and browsing around. It's reguarly jam packed full of people and always amusing to watch the street vendors picking up shop and tucking it away in a corner when the police come by.



The main event of the trip was a three day excursion through some more scenic areas of Taiwan. I went with my family, my uncle, and my grandparents through Hualien. I had gone there the last time I was in Taiwan, but now had a digital camera handy thanks to Ruth to take pics. It's a gorgeous place, with towering mountains and lush greenery, the most similar place I can think of that compares is Yosemite.





We spent a fair amount of time traveling around in the bus and getting off for some short walks. The next destination was down the coastal area towards Taidong. It was also very nice, although a bit windy.





It was nice to get out to some scenic areas as a stark contrast to the busy nature of Taipei. With the short excursion over, we headed back to the city for the last couple days to see some sites and eat more food.

I also got the chance to hang out with Yedeh for an afternoon, who I hadn't seen since Amy's wedding back in April, so it was good to catch up, although we did spend an inordinate amount of time looking for this particular pearl milk tea place that he wanted to hang out at. As much as I love the experience of being a Third Culture Kid, the singlemost annoying thing about it to date is not being able to catch up with old friends enough. The nature of not having a common hometown anymore makes it tough to hang out for more than a few hours while in town or at a wedding. In any event, our families got a chance to grab dinner together as well:



One of the final highlights during the last couple days was visiting Taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world, but soon to be surpassed by a construction in Shanghai. It was a little absurd to have such a tall building jutting out in the middle of Taipei, but it was a nice view at the top. Unfortunately, their observation deck was closed for the week for New Year preparations, the windows at the top were dirty, and it was a hazy day. It was nonetheless impressive:





I posted some other random pics in my gallery in case anyone wants to check them out.

Ah, finally getting to board the plane now, already 20 minutes late, and with a wailing baby. I really hate airports, airplanes, and everything to do with air travel!

Pink - it's my new obsession

Woohoo, I closed on my new townhouse! The first project is getting rid of the pink in the master bedroom, which called for my first painting expedition. The master bedroom had one really red wall (which was pretty nice) and the rest all pink. Pink EVERYWHERE... on the other walls, inside all the closets, on the window frame, and in the bathroom. Here's a snapshot of what it looked like:



It was pretty much a whole day project yesterday, starting like around 10. It started off just myself and Scott, the agent's son who was in town and offered to help! The first step was applying primer to the red wall since it was so dark:



That was easy enough as a first step.. I did mostly the brushwork around the sides while he did the roller in the middle. We then moved on to painting the other walls in the bedroom and here's one wall done (with the other still covered with primer):



We spent the whole afternoon painting and adding another coat... I was so lucky to have a lot of people help: Felix, Johnny, and Andrew all helped me transform the room. Unfortunately, didn't get time to do the bathroom, which you can see here still pink :(



Nevertheless, we finally finished up the bedroom by dinner time! This pic isn't very good since there's halway light and some weird light spots, but anyway:



The bedroom was pretty straightforward; just used the leftover Bone color paint from the previous owners.. heh. But the bathroom is another challenge altogether! Since I was such a pro from Saturday painting, I tried to get fancy and pick out a different color for the attached bathroom. I wanted a cooler color and got some mixed at Osh, but I think it came out a little bluer than I expected... hope it still looks okay on Monday when I see it fully dried =(

This time, Felix was gracious enough to come out after dinner to help out... it was strenuous painting the ceiling and all the smaller sections in the bathroom, so I'm really grateful for the help! The pictures aren't too good, but I'll try head there one morning so I can take pics with some natural light (at least of the entry to the bathroom):



You can see some of the contrast between the bedroom and the bathroom in this pic. The shade in the pic looks like what I wanted, but I think it's more blue in real life.



Painting is way more tiring than I could have ever imagined and I'm definitely thankful to have friends that are willing to lend a hand.. you guys are great!!

A quarter century old!

Yesterday was my birthday! I feel kind of old, but then everyone around me at work and all the people I had dinner with are older than me, so... I guess I'm not that old ;)

First off, I got an early birthday gift when I received a huge package from Amazon courtesy of Roothie... since I'm moving into my new place soon, I'm going to have to learn to be a little more handy around the house, so she got me a toolset to get me started! Now, if I could only gain some skills along the way as well.... THANKS!!!



To start off the night, we headed to a Singaporean restaurant nearby where we had some tasty dishes, a lot of them with either curry or black pepper. The cake was a nice chocolate mint ice cream cake!! I really like ice cream cake :)



And a picture of me eating it!!



Here are all my friends who came out... there was an empty seat there that was waiting for Ruth :(





After that, we didn't do anything wild and crazy... pretty much just another weekend at our place. It started off with some Bomberman fun and everyone was nice enough to let me win a couple scattered between the domination by Chang. We then started off a poker tourney that lasted well into the night that got pretty draining. We don't really poker much at our house anymore, but had too many people to play a smaller game and it was pretty fun until people started to get exhausted.

It's pretty weird thinking I'm already 25... it didn't seem like that long ago when I was in my early 20s! This, coupled with working for a few years and soon having to deal with a mortgage... it's madness!