Dances With Wolves. . . IN SPACE!

Saw Avatar in IMAX 3D over the weekend. Very cool experience. It had better be, I spent NT 400 ($13 USD) for the ticket. For a country where the average salary is half that of the US, that's something like the equivalent of $26 USD for a movie ticket. In Taipei, almost everything is dirt cheap but there are a few exceptions that immediately come to mind. . . movies tickets, mixed drinks, and mexican food. Don't ask my why, I have no idea. . . although I blame the Mexican food one directly on Taco Bell. There is not a single Taco Bell in all of Taiwan. Damn you Taco Bell! Why have you forsaken us? Taiwan is a real country, with real beef burrito needs!

I wanted to write a review about Avatar, but I'm too lazy for a real write up. . . so here it is in a recipe format.

Avatar:

• 5 cups of Dances with Wolves
• 3 tablespoons of The Matrix
• A pinch of Return of the Jedi

CGI the crap out of the ingredients, and serve piping hot in IMAX 3D. . . and you have a pretty good movie.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Pizza Night turned into Tonkatsu Night

This past Saturday, some friends and I went out to try a NY style pizza place. I was looking forward to it as I haven't had real pizza in a real long time. When we got to the place, we realized it was just a hole-in-the-wall/takeout type place. We had a group of 10 people, we would've needed a giant shoehorn to fit everyone inside. Oops, my bad. I should have did a little more research before choosing this place.

So we ended up going to some random Japanese Tonkatsu place nearby. While we were ordering, my friend next to me gets a call from another friend that's on his way to meet us but needs directions. The friend next to me gives out the directions over the phone, the friend on the phone then asks him what the name of the restaurant is. So the friend next to me flips to the front of the menu and scans the pages with his index finger for a few seconds, stopping near the top of the page. . . and then yells into the phone "The restaurant is called Menu!"

He immediately realized his mistake, but it was too late. We all burst out laughing.

After dinner we went to a tapas bar had some drinks/snacks, talked about random crap. . . reminisced about some of the wilder stuff we did back when nobody had a real job. How things have changed. . . I think we left the bar and headed home before 12AM.

Hooters

Hooters. . . to me it's about as American as apple pie or baseball or NASCAR. So it's kinda funny that I lost my Hooters virginity in Taipei of all places. It's not that there weren't any Hooters around when I was in the the US. I remember in college there was a Hooters about 5 minutes from campus. I guess it was probably just a combination of a lack of interest on my part and the fact that I usually hung out with groups that usually consisted of more girls than guys.

What can I say, I have a strict "no sausage-fest" policy when it comes to social outings.

I'm kidding. . .

. . . for the most part.

So a friend was about to leave Taiwan and return to the States. Wanted to arrange a going away get-together. None of my friends could pick a place. . . the requirements was that it had to be open late on a weekday, serve food and drinks, and not be too far from everyone. We went to TGI Friday's a few days earlier so that was out. It was surprisingly hard to think of somewhere else. I ended up choosing Hooters. In hindsight, it seems kind of stupid to have a get together at Hooters for someone who'll be returning to the US. Kinda like taking someone to Macaroni Grill right before they leave for Italy. Lesson learned. It'll be stinky tofu and Taiwan Beer for the next person that leaves Taiwan.

Anyways, so how was the Hooters "experience" you ask?

The buffalo wings were pretty good but the entrees were bleh. I'm not much of a beer guy so I won't comment on the beer. Actually, I can't even remember what kind of beer I had. The waitress for our table sounded like Joey's manager, Estelle from Friend's. . . so sad that I instantly remember some random character from a long canceled sitcom yet sometimes I can't even remember what day it is. I'm getting old. My next post will probably be about me breaking my hip in the shower.

Back on topic. . . I'm guessing most people don't go to Hooters for the food or service, they go for the Hooters girls. They did a short performance. I'm guessing it's some kind of Hooters tradition? It involves two girls one cup. . . sorry, I mean two girls and about a thousand hula hoops. It was impressive how many hula hoops the girls could twirl simultaneously. I didn't know whether to applaud or take my dollar bills out. Then I realized I was in Taiwan and we don't have dollar bills. The smallest denomination paper currency is $100NT (equivalent to $3.10 USD). Way too much. . . so applaud I did.

Brief crappy camera phone video I took of the performance:



Hooters Taipei website: www.hooters.com.tw

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.

Noodle place

There's a noodle place near my workplace that I frequently go to for lunch. It's great except for the fact that it'd fail every health inspection code if it were in the US.

On three separate occasions I've seen a cockroach crawling around on the floor. Not those cute little german roaches, like the one shown below:



No, they were those huge "I will eat your children" cockroaches:



And once while i was eating there, a rat the size of small cat ran underneath my chair. It was so quick i didn't even have time to react, i was in the middle of slurping my noodles.

And then last week, there was 2-3 tiny black ants in my wonton noodle soup. I picked them out but I'm sure i missed a few and probably ate one or two. . . Yum, protein!

It sounds pretty disgusting but I really like the food, it's served fast, it's cheap, and it's close to the office. I'll keep on going back as long as I don't find anything really disgusting in the food or i get sick. But so far that hasn't happened yet (knock on wood).

All-you-can-eat Hot Pot and Soccer

Saturday night, went to 吃到飽的麻辣火鍋 (all you can eat hot pot) and right afterwards we went to play soccer. . . in the dark, 10 o'clock at night, while it was drizzling out.

Not the smartest idea, this. . . stuffing yourself with random hot pot goodness until your stomach hurts and then going outside and running as fast as you can pretty much non-stop for an hour chasing the damn soccer ball. It was a surprisingly good game. My team won the first round, the other team won the second round.

But the biggest victory of all was not a single person puked. We should all be proud of that.
Us: 1, Nausea: 0

Toyota 101, world's tallest billboard

While I was hanging out on saturday night I noticed Taipei 101 was a little different (see pic to the right) . I love how Taipei 101, the most well known building in Taiwan is now sponsored by Toyota! :( To me that's like the Empire State building having a big Volkswagen logo on the side of it. I'm not that big on national pride or anything but couldn't they atleast get a Taiwanese company?

Oh yeah, i had dinner at a hong kong style place near Taipei 101. It was one of the very few times i remember ever breaking out laughing when I tasted my food. You see, I ordered some noodle soup. It looked appetizing in the menu, but when I got it, it looked exactly like instant noodles. I was like, okay it looks like instant noodle but we're in a hip trendy looking restaurant/cafe located in a fairly hip trendy area. . . it can't possibly be instant noodles. . .

Then i tried it.

Lesson learned: Instant noodles by itself. . . not funny. Going to a restaurant and accidentally ordering instant noodles you could've made yourself in 3 minutes for 1/10th the price. . . hilarious.