Chinese New Years (Road Trip Day 1)

I can't believe the new years break is already over. . .

Friend's company let him use company car over the break. So we took advantage of it and went to a bunch of places around Taiwan.

First stop was JiouFen (九份). But getting there ended being more fun than actually being there. On the way to JiouFen we got lost, ended up driving longer than anticipated. We pass by a clump of 3-4 seafood restaurants, it's way past lunchtime, stomachs begin to make noises, mouths start to salivate. We think, no worries, we're almost there. . . 10 more minutes and we can eat at JiouFen. 10 minutes later, there's no signs of civilization. Uh oh. . . we need to ask for directions.

Immediately my friend says "That seafood restaurant we passed, they probably know how to get there." My other obviously not-so-hungry friend says "We passed by a convenience store 3 minutes ago, we can ask them for directions. Why go all the way back to the seafood restaurant?" And then my other friend says something like "Yeah, I heard seafood restaurant workers are world renowned for their ability to give road directions." LOL, I'm not sure why we had to give an excuse, other than "we're hungry", to go back to that restaurant but it was pretty funny coming up with them.

So we get to the restaurant and have our fill of crabs, clams, sashimi, etc. The lady at the front tells us the directions. And off we go. . . Except, when we walk out of the restaurant, it immediately feels like a typhoon hit us. Wind blowing our umbrellas inside out, rain flying sideways. We head for the parking lot and it feels like a war movie. We have our umbrellas out, not over our heads but pointed straight in front of us, held very low with us crouching behind it like we're dodging bullets. Since we can't see anything in front we end up bumping in to parked cars and trees and almost tripping over stuff, all accompanied by screams and laughter. After what seemed like a mile long trek, we finally get inside the nice and dry car.

10 minute drive later, we end up at JiouFen. Nothing eventful, just a bunch of small really narrow streets and a bunch of old interesting looking stores selling random crap. Supposedly the view is really good, but since the weather was so bad, we couldn't see anything. Our clothes were drenched from the constant rain and it got really cold really fast. So it was a easy decision to leave after a little over an hour of walking around.

Next stop was perfect for our situation. . . hot spring at BeiTou (北投). Taiwan has lots and lots of hot springs. They are typically separated into public pools (one area for men, one area for women) and private rooms. In the public pools you are required to be completely naked. We were almost going to do that and split the guys and the girls up but luckily we found a place that had a private room that could accommodate the five of us. And surprisingly not too expensive, it was $200 NT per person for 40 minutes. . . but upstairs is a restaurant. If you order $400 NT worth of food per person, you get 40 minutes in hot spring for free. (That's only $12.50 USD!) So that's what we did, we were expecting mediocre food since it wasn't really a "real" restaurant but surprisingly the food was really good, real restaurant or not.

After we finish our food, we go downstairs to our private room and jump into the tubs. If you've never gone to hot spring before, it's just like taking a bath. Except the water smells funny and you smell worse coming out of it than you did going in. The minerals and everything in the water are supposed to be great for your body but I can't tell. The only thing I notice afterwards is the smell. It took me two showers to completely get rid of the smell. Anyways, we were supposed to be in there for 40 minutes . . . but it ended up being 2 hours! So the lady tells me her boss is going to yell at her for letting us stay for so long. I'm thinking, how is that our fault? We had no idea, there's no clock in the room, and nobody had a a watch on, and it's too steamy to take out the cell phones.

So I was like. . . "talk to the hand bitch!"



Just kidding, all i said was "oops, 不好意思"

Pizza and Movies

This past Saturday, I went to friend's place for a pizza and movie night.

Side note: Pizza is not cheap in Taiwan! We got two large pizzas and two buckets of chicken. Ended up being $1500NT which is almost $50 USD. The large pizzas here are more like medium size in the US. We had four guys and a girl and we finished it pretty easily.

Side side note: It's weird, everyone sells fried chicken here. McDonald's has fried chicken, Pizza Hut and Dominoes also has fried chicken. I think KFC sells chicken also!

So we had to choose between the action movie War and that romance movie with Catherine Zeta Jones where she's a chef and she cooks stuff and ends up falling in love with some guy.

Like I said earlier, we had four guys and one girl so it's pretty obvious which movie we ended up choosing.

Oh what a horrible mistake that was. . .

The movie was a complete mess, all I remember was guns shooting and punches being thrown, explosions. . . then some naked chick (which my astute friend immediately noticed had one breast slightly larger than the other). . . then some slow parts involving gold horse statues, and then Jet Li killing Chinese gangsters, then that weird looking girl (devon aoki) ordering a chef salad from Japanese gangsters (I'm not making this up!) , then Jet Li on motorcycle killing both chinese and japanese gangsters, and then freakin' NINJAS!!!! And then Jet Li using the ninja's own sword to cut the ninja's head off. . . and more fighting, sushi restaurant, explosions with Ferraris and Spykers in the background. and then Jet Li fights the guy from the Transporter movie, but nobody dies. And then a scene where Devon Aoki opens a box with some old guy's severed head in it. THE END.

I'm sure I've seen movies worse than this but I can't think of any right now.

I voted to watch the Catherine Zeta Jones flick. Stupid friends didn't listen to me. See what happens when people don't listen to me? You get a movie where Devon Aoki randomly orders chef salads and opens boxes with severed heads in it.

Posessed Phones

Yesterday, 7:30 AM in the morning, cell phone rings. I'm still sleeping (no class today), i'm thinking who could be calling this damn early. Caller ID says it's the home landline phone.

Weird. . .

Maybe my mom just wants to make sure i wake up in time for class. I go back to sleep.

Later that day, about dinner time, the home phone rings. My mom picks it up, she says "hello", person on other side hangs up. . . mom gets annoyed and says something like "stupid people, wasting my time" and then she looks at the Caller ID and it's displaying her own cell phone number (!?!?).

Her cell phone is on the kitchen table.

So then i ask my mom, did she call in the morning? She said no, why would she call when she could just walk two seconds and knock on my door?

*cue music from the shower scene in Psycho*

Indian Music Video