A Cry for Help (Suicide Attempt @ 大蹈程)

Everyday, as long as it's not raining, I commute to work by bicycle. I take this beautiful scenic bicycle route following the Danshui River along the east side of Taipei City. I highly recommend it, riding in the morning makes me feel much more awake when i start the day, and it mellows me out after work in the evening. It's even more beautiful when the sun goes down.

This morning's ride was a bit different than my usual ride though. The weather was great, a bit hot, but nice clear blue skies. . . similar weather to the last time something like this happened. I'm almost at my office, waiting for a traffic light to turn green when an older lady comes up to me and tells me something in Taiwanese and points towards the river. I don't understand Taiwanese so I ask her to speak in Mandarin. Then when she started speaking in Mandarin I realized, my mandarin sucks, i can only understand half of what she's saying. . . but it doesn't matter because when she points again, I finally noticed what she's talking about.

There's a person covered in mud at the ledge holding onto the railing, . Honestly, from a small distance away the person looked like a drunk homeless guy, so I was hesitant to do anything. I was thinking to myself, I was already late for work. Someone else will help that guy. But then I slowly walked closer to the mud covered homeless guy and realized that he was actually a young girl. . . i'm guessing maybe 20 years old. Difficult to tell since her muddy hair was covering her face. Another older guy was also walking towards her and he started trying to talk to her, asking her if she's okay and holding onto her arm so she wouldn't fall/jump in again. She didn't respond, she only started to quietly cry.

I'm not sure what my plan was at that moment but I climbed over the railing and jumped down onto a large flat rock sticking out above the mud. The ledge was probably a little less than one meter above the muddy bank of the river, the only danger of falling would be getting my shoes and pants dirty. I think my plan was to push her so she'd be more safely on the ledge because at that time half her body was hanging off the side. But another older guy followed me over the rail and while standing on the ledge he tried to pull her up but he could only get her halfway up before I helped out and pushed from below. The original older guy then pulled from behind the railing and we got the girl over the railing and back on dry land.

By that time there was 5-6 people surrounding her and someone called the authorities. So I went to the nearest water fountain and tried to clean off the foul smelling mud from my hands. Just so happens to be an small empty bucket next to the fountain so filled it up and put it front of the mud covered girl who still didn't say a word, just quietly crying. And a lady watching the scene told me I was really nice and thoughtful. . . i wanted to reply with "I know!" but instead I thought it'd be better if I just nodded. After that I got on my bike and went to work smelling like smelly river water but feeling pretty good that I helped someone a tiny bit. . . someone that maybe didn't really care for the help but hey, probably better than doing nothing.

Drunk Cockroach

Last night I saw a cockroach drinking from a discarded beer can. I kind of regret not taking a picture of it. It's exactly how you would imagine it would look like. The beer can was tipped sideways on the sidewalk and a big ass cockroach (the nasty kind that flies) had it's head inside the opening. It's butt was angled upwards and moving up and down a bit, it really looked like it was excitedly enjoying beer for the first time. I wonder if cockroaches can get drunk. . .

Anyways, speaking of getting drunk. I got pulled over Saturday night for drunk driving. . . well technically drunk riding as I was on my motor scooter. That was an interesting experience to say the least.

A little background on how the Taipei police catch DUI people. Mostly during weekends but sometimes on weekday, checkpoints are setup randomly at key points around the city, almost always at on ramps to bridges and highways. You have to slow down and let the police take a look at your face and smell for alcohol.

My girlfriend and I were on our way home from a Mexican restaurant/bar. We were supposed to go there and watch the World Cup semi-final match or something like that with some friends. When we found out that the match starts at 4 AM, we said F that and we left. On the way home we passed by two police DUI checkpoints. No problem at either one, police let us pass. I told GF "Wow, crazy amount of cops tonight." When we were at the most 2 minutes away from our destination, unbelievably there was yet another checkpoint. While we were approaching it I jokingly told the girlfriend "Watch, we're gonna get stopped."

Two seconds later. . . the cop takes a look at my face, same as the two checkpoints before except this time I get asked "How much did I drink tonight?" I responded "Nothing" but I did not say it in complete confidence. I was lying. I think he knew it. I'm such a bad liar.

He tells me to turn off the engine and show him my license and registration. I'm a bit nervous now. He looks at my license/registration and asks me to walk over to the patrol car. He asks me again "How much did I drink tonight?". . . this time I said I had one or two sips of beer. I changed my story, unsurprisingly he doesn't believe me. He takes out the breathalyzer machine. He asks me "Are you sure you only had one or two sips?" trying to pressure me into confessing. I say "Yes, only one or two sips."

Now I'm really nervous. This little machine in front of me will decide if I will forever have a criminal record, if i will be fined a huge sum of money, have my license taken away, and have my motor scooter towed away. As I blow into the breathalyzer I'm thinking "What if it's defective? What if it's been tampered with?" I mean the difference between being fine and going to jail is miniscule, only a small fraction of 1% BAC (Taiwan's limit is 0.055%).

I hear a beep. That means I can stop blowing. I nervously wait for the readout on the small digital display. It feels like forever, but in reality it was probably 3 seconds.

Eventually, it flashed "0.000%"

Hahahahahahaha! Cop loses, I win! I actually only had at the most 1/4th of one beer, almost two whole hours before the breathalyzer. I was only nervous because I have very low tolerance for alcohol, a 12 year old girl could probably out drink me. I look completely wasted when I've had one or two drinks even though I feel fine.

There was a million funny things I could've said to the disappointed cop. But (very typical for me) I couldn't think of a single funny thing to say. We just rode off, relieved, tired, excited and glad that it was over. Definitely an interesting experience.

Role Reversal

While eating dinner one night, I noticed how things are different. I was eating at the dinner table and my mom was in the living room playing Wii and I asked her when she's going to eat dinner. She said "just one more game."

If someone could go back in time and tell the 12 year old version of me that my mom would one day be playing video games (and to the point of not wanting to eat dinner). I'd never in a million years have believed it. Come to think of it, back then my mom probably wouldn't have believed it either.

It's funny because I've stopped playing video games. It's not because I don't have time. It's more that they literally make me sick. Last year I tried playing Halo 2 (maybe 3?) and I got motion sickness after 20 minutes. Recently I tried playing a game called Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (what's with these long ass names? What happened to names like Q-Bert, Dig Dug, Frogger) Anyways, that game also made me sick after about 30 minutes or so of playing. I'm thinking maybe the graphics in these new games are too realistic. The last games I played for longer than 5 minutes were Grand Theft Auto 3 and the original Counter-strike circa 1999.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the left, Counter-Strike on the right


I guess this is like a forced retirement from gaming. Oh well, there's always doing something productive with my free time. Yeah right!

I'm glad there's still Solitaire and Minesweeper.

Date Night

Saw Date Night (約會喔麥尬) last night. Note: Chinese name translated back into English is "Date Oh My God!"

The most interesting part was that the ending surprised me. Not because there was a big plot twist or anything, but because it was kind of abrupt. Which was good because the story was beginning to surpass my tolerance for stupidity (as illustrated in the graph below).

















I guess I've become accustomed to watching overly long, drawn out stories in movies. Is this a recent trend? Do people feel like they're not getting their moneys worth if the film ends too early? Most new movies end with me only having one feeling at the end. . . a feeling of relief. Relief that the crappy movie is over, quickly followed by disbelief. . . disbelief that I paid money to see this crap.

Anyways, Date Night was not one of those movies. Overall a pretty decent movie I guess. I LOL'ed a few times. Yes, it's not very original and the story gets stupid sometimes but as long as you don't think too much, it's pretty enjoyable.

3 out of 5 stars.

Interesting Sign of Economic Recovery

I work in the FPD industry. To call business slow would be a huge understatement. Although, recently it has been picking up. And as a whole the Taiwan economy is picking up as well.

I occasionally ride the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) train. These trains are fast. They top out at 300 km/h and takes about one and a half hour to get from the top of Taiwan to almost the very bottom (Taipei <-> Zuoying). Which roughly the distance between NYC and Washington D.C.

When the THSR service started a few years ago, like everyone else I was like WOW! After every business trip I'd think to myself "I can't believe I'm home already!" Fast forward to now and I've already taken it for granted. The rides feel like forever. Now, I'm complaining how there's no personal video screens, no music, no internet. . .

Reminds me of the video clip below:


Last week while riding the THSR to a customer site I noticed something very special.

The old ladies are back!

Let me explain. You basically only see two types of service people on the trains. Flight attendants which are usually young attractive girls, and garbage collectors which are usually older ladies. When business is slow, as it usually is in a recession, they layoff the garbage collectors and make the flight attendants collect the garbage. Conversely, when business picks up they hire back the old ladies and let the flight attendants do what they do best. . . look pretty and push those overpriced refreshment carts.

So. . .
Young ladies picking up garbage = Taiwan's economy doing bad.

Old ladies picking up garbage = Taiwan's economy is recovering.

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.

Annoying Commercial

I hate this commercial. Especially the last part, it makes me want to punch her in the face. But sadly, I think it's not her fault. I believe having the voice of a 10 year old girl is considered sexually attractive with young men in Taiwan.

Some background on this commercial. It takes place in an internet cafe. I don't know if any still exist in the States but they are very common in Taiwan. They are usually open 24 hours and are the preferred hangout spot for young men. They typically provide free unlimited soft drinks and the fancier places have free snacks (chips, popcorn, warm bread/butter) and newspapers/magazines. Actually, I'm not sure if they still do this anymore, I haven't frequented an internet cafe in many years. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't let people my age in. I'd have to find my college student ID and change the 2000 and add a little tail to the last '0' so it looks like 2009.

Which reminds me, I remember they had police curfew checks at these internet cafes. At 10PM or 11PM policemen would come in and ask to see everyone's ID cards. Anyone under the age of 18 would be shot. . . or fined. . . or politely asked to leave. One of those, i forgot which one. Anyways, this always made me a bit nervous because my online game name is "Ronald McCopKiller". They never usually look at the computer screens though.

Back to the commercial. The product they are selling is an energy drink. Similar to Red Bull. The last part of the commercial, the girl says "Won't let you fall asleep." I know I'm old, because that seems absurd to me. A product that prevents you from falling asleep?!?! Ludicrous I say! Sleep is pretty much the best part of my day.

Here's another similar commercial. Equally annoying.

Cancer Research Keeps Me Warm

It's freezing today. 15 degrees Celsius (59 degree Fahrenheit). To those in the US, that might not seem that cold but it's different in Taiwan. Buildings here either have no insulation or very little insulation. So if it's 15 degrees outside, it's 16 degrees inside.

Usually this means my hands are freezing, they're always the first to get cold. But not anymore. Many months ago I downloaded a program called Folding@Home. It allows me to donate my computer's extra unused CPU cycles to simulate protein folding. I don't really know what that means but from the Folding@Home website it says:

". . . when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes"

So I'm guessing the goal is to try to find out why proteins don't fold properly. This information could be useful in finding cures for many types of diseases.

What does this have to do with warming up my cold hands? Well, when I set my CPU to run at 100% high performance mode, Folding@Home basically turns my notebook computer into a the world's flattest space heater. Right now my CPU is running at a toasty 87 degrees Celsius (189 degrees Fahrenheit). The hot air it's blowing out the side and the now slightly heated keyboard keeps my hands nice and warm.

It's a Win/Win/Win situation. . . Win for disease research, win for keeping my hands warm, win for . . . . . .

Oh yeah, hopefully a win for getting me a new notebook soon. I'm hoping running the CPU at 100% utilization all day (and the CPU fan at max RPM all day) will blow something up in this old computer. Then it's new notebook time! :)

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.

Interesting Brand Names

Since I moved to Taiwan almost three years ago, I've noticed a few interesting brand names.

There's a brand of water called 多喝水 (duo1 he1 shui3) which literally translates into "Drink More Water." At first I was turned off by it. . . I was like, how dare a bottle of water tell me what to do! I'm an grown adult! I'm not going to drink more water just to spite it! But then I thought, well. . . maybe the bottle of water is looking out for my health. I mean water is better for me than soda or coffee. I'm so confused! What should I do?!?!

I ended up buying a green tea because it's cheaper. I don't know how that works. I mean green tea is just the same exact water but with flavor added. It's like ordering a plain pizza for $20 USD but if you decide to add pepperoni topping it becomes $10 USD. The beverage market is strange.

Anyways, back on topic. . .

I'm not much of a milk drinker so I don't usually pay attention to the milk section when I'm out shopping but this brand stood out. I have so many questions when I see this brand.

Who is Dr. Milker?!?!
Is he/she a medical doctor that spends his free time milking cows?
Or is this someone that got their PhD in milking?
Could you really tell the difference between milk from someone with only a masters degree in milking to someone with a PhD in milking?
Can you really get a PhD in milking?
Can you milk a cat?
I wonder what cat milk tastes like.


Then I think it's probably just some marketing person's idea. . . I'm thinking of starting my own brand of orange juice. . .

I'm gonna be so rich! Nobody steal this idea from me!


Oh yeah and my favorite brand name in Taiwan is. . .

*drumroll*

黑人牙膏 (hei1 ren1 ya2 gao1). This translates to "black person toothpaste."

What's even funnier is there's a cheaper toothpaste called 白人牙膏 (bai2 ren2 ya2 gao1) that translates to "white person toothpaste."


Yes, these are real products. I usually splurge for the black person toothpaste. Only the best for my pearly whites.

24 Days of My Life in Pictures

A few months ago, I wrote a post about a guy that took one picture everyday for 18 years straight to document his life. It inspired me to try it out myself.

It's kind of sad that I only did it for 24 days straight before I lost interest. It's much more difficult than I thought. . . to force yourself to take one picture that will forever represent that day in your life.

Here is 24 days of my life from end of May to mid/end of June 2008 in chronological order:

Random Bicycle Race with a Complete Stranger

I'm planning to sell my bicycle and buy one of those newfangled folding bikes. Actually, I've been planning to sell it for like 4 months but I've been too lazy to get off my ass and do anything. First I have to wash and prep the bicycle, then I have to take pictures of it, then I have to print out flyers, then I have to post up flyers everywhere. It's not helping that i think the bike is only worth $5000 NT which is only like $165 USD which isn't much of a motivation.

So anyways, I finally got to washing my bike on Saturday. Decided to go downstairs to the riverside park for a short easy ride to make sure everything is working okay. About 20 minutes into the ride, I pass some older looking guy, i'm guessing 50-60 years old. Then about 2-3 minutes later, he passes me back. At that point I was at nice-easy-ride speed. So I turned it up a notch and repassed him thinking that was the last I'd see of him.

A few minutes later, he flies past me. I mutter to myself "oh no you didn't old man." So I turn it up another notch but all I can do is follow him because there's too many other bicyclists and I can't pass. When traffic clears up I pick up the pace and pass him. I go pretty much as fast as I can for 5 minutes, never looking back, then i slow it down slightly when I'm confident that the old man is given up.

He still caught up and passed me! Except this time he was breathing much louder and sweating noticeably more. You could tell he was tired. If I was a bigger man I would've just let him win and give up. Let him have the satisfaction of beating me. . . but nope. I passed him again and I went as fast as I possibly could go. I was surprised I had anything left. I eventually slowed down and looked back about 5 minutes later and I couldn't see him anymore.

It felt good until I realized the following three things.
1. I'm slightly nauseous from riding so hard.
2. I only barely outran someone that's old enough to be my father.
3. I rode so far, I didn't know where I was anymore.

Go-Karts Round 2

From my last post about Hooters, I joked about breaking my hip:

I won't joke about that stuff again. I think I got my hip knocked loose on the go-kart track.

Yesterday, some friends and I decided to head back to the go-kart track that we went earlier in the year. Weather was perfect and we had a lot of good racing. Most of the people in the group didn't go with us last time so the first time around I lapped everyone like twice. But by the third session, huge improvement by everyone. I couldn't lap anyone and was even passed a few times.

This is probably why my hip doesn't feel so great today. On the last session of the day, since everyone was more consistent and competitive, we were spending much more time side by side. Coming into the hairpin turn we had three people going for the apex at pretty much the same time. I had a feeling this wasn't going to turn out well.

The first person that reaches the apex loses his rear end and does a 180 spin and comes to a stop in the middle of the corner exit. By that time I've already committed to taking the inside line since I have another car directly to the right of me. I slow down as much as I can but it's too late. BOOM!

Ouch. . . and then I see my friend who took the outside line speed away, waving his hand as to say "Cya!" to the both of us. What a great friend! I know who's gonna get brake checked the next time he's behind me.

I have bruises on my elbow, my ribs, and my hip. My whole upper body is sore and I'll probably walking with a slight limp for at least a week.

But looking forward to the next time we go back.

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

Anyone remember that bug scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?

Just came back from lunch. While I was out it started raining like crazy. . . like "build a ship and load up thousands of animals" crazy. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring an umbrella. Unfortunately, umbrellas only protect you from rain when it's falling at a downward angle, which it usually does but today's rain was not so cooperative.

Because I do not like the idea of working for 6 hours in soaked pants I decided I would try to wait for the rain to turn from category 5 typhoon level to run-of-the-mill heavy thunderstorm level before I walked back to my office.

While waiting for the rain to stop I played with me cell phone to kill some time. A few minutes pass and then I feel a slight movement on my lower back. I didn't think much of it, I thought it was the wind or something. I continuing playing with my phone. A minute later I feel more movement except now on my upper back. . . now I'm thinking something isn't right. So I start jumping around and feeling the back of my shirt. And then the freakiest feeling in the world happened. . . something was trying to crawl into my hair! I freaked out and bent down and flicked whatever it was off of me. A humongous cockroach landed a few feet from a lady standing near me. I didn't even have to look to know it was humongous because I could feel the mass when I flicked it and it actually made a sound when it hit the ground.

The lady jumped away from the cockroach and then she looked at me and I looked at her for a second. We both had one of those "WTF just happened?" looks on our faces. Well, mine was more of a "Did a cockroach just crawl under my shirt, up my neck, and into my hair?" look. While hers was more like, "Did you just grab a giant cockroach from your hair and throw it at me?" look.

I pretended like I wasn't freaked out and I walked away. While I was walking I felt all over my back and hair to make sure there wasn't anything still on there. I did this for awhile, hard to get that feeling out of your mind. Ugh. . .

I'm thinking the heavy rain floods the crevices/sewers where roaches hide during the day. I'm guessing that's why I had my encounter today. Lesson learned. . .

#1: watch out for cockroaches during heavy downpours.
#2: stuff shirt into pants. . . always.

Watch the scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (specifically the shot at the 1:52 mark):

Flight back from NY

I believe Ang Lee took the same flight as me, but i'm not 100% sure it was him. I only briefly saw a person that looked like him and his small entourage of people being escorted by China Airlines staff past the mass of people anxiously waiting in line to be stuffed into the economy section.

Side note: Why are people always in such a rush to get in the airplane? First of all, the last time I checked everyone has assigned seating. Secondly, it's an 18 hour flight. . . or 18 hour 10 minute flight for those lucky people that got on line early. . . way to go! 10 free minutes!

I thought I lucked out when I checked in, I got the last window seat available. After I get to my seat this chubby 10 or 11 year old kid wearing a straw cowboy hat, black t-shirt, shorts, and orange crocs shoes sits next to me. His parents nowhere to be found. Great!

He had the worst case of ADD imaginable. I'm not kidding, he couldn't sit still for 2 seconds.
I had to tell him twice to stop bumping his elbow into me and stop shaking the seat. While we were waiting to takeoff he was simultaneously watching the safety video, looking out the window, and flipping through the airline magazine. He'd look at the TV for one second then out the window for one second then back to TV then to magazine then to window then to TV etc etc etc. . . And when I say flipping through the magazine I mean strictly flipping through the magazine, he didn't even look at most of the pages before he flipped to the next page.

At this point, I'm thinking, this is going to be a long flight. That's when he looked around for a second and then put his hand down his pants and scratched/grabbed/molested his private parts. That's not the worst of it, right afterwards he'd pick his nose with the same hand and bite his nails.

That was it. . . GAME OVER. I'm out. I'm not sitting with this kid for 18 hours.

This kid had absolutely no clue on what socially acceptable behavior is. What kind of parents don't teach their children how to behave in public? Then I thought probably the same kind that lets their 10 year old boy go on international flights alone with no adult supervision.

He played the testicle tug game two or three more times before the fasten seat belt light finally went out and I jumped to first empty seat I could find.

Then I started thinking, maybe this kid is really clever and he did this on purpose so he could get both seats all to himself.

Nope, when I looked back from my new seat a few minutes later the ADD kid was still ADD kid. The guy sitting directly in front of ADD kid had a really annoyed look on his face. Everytime the ADD kid moved or got up from his seat he'd shake the seat in front. So basically every 30 seconds. Good luck trying to sleep. . . hahahaha sucker, I got the last empty seat!

The rest of the 18 hour flight was uneventful, watched some crappy movies, food was pretty bad as usual, but the time passed by surprisingly quickly.

Was nice coming back to Taipei.

Inspirational Story

I saw this on Digg earlier today, usually i don't post stuff like this but I thought this was really interesting. . .

Some guy named Jamie Livingston decided to take one polaroid picture a day, everyday, to document his life. He did it for 18 years straight from March 31, 1979 to October 27, 1997. . . he died of cancer the next day on October 28, 1997.

Some of his friends decided to make a website where all 6000+ of his pictures can be viewed. Unfortunately it's down due to too much traffic.

Here's a link to a few of the polaroids (a little bit slow to load):
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131
Mostly same pictures minus a few. but much faster loading:
http://www.experienceproject.com/uw.php?e=224637
Here's a link to more background info:
http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/only_the_blog_knows_brook/2008/05/mental-floss-di.html

I've decided to try the same project as Livingston, take one picture a day everyday for as long as possible. . . hopefully skipping the getting cancer and dying part of the project.

Today's pic:

LOL, don't expect much. . . my life is not particularly photogenic, especially on weekdays.

Update 24-Dec-2008:
Results from my own attempt at this project.

Suicide at 師大 (ShiDa)

I found out this morning that someone committed suicide yesterday at ShiDa. A young girl jumped off the top of the building where I go to class. . . about a 10 story fall. I overslept yesterday so I completely missed the whole thing. My classmate actually heard the sound of the impact and another classmate was able to get a closeup view of the rescue effort. . . well, more like cleanup effort.

When my friend told me what happened, I was thinking to myself this doesn't make any sense to me. This happened at 8AM. . . why kill yourself so early? What's the rush? Why not get a few more hours of sleep and then jump off the building. That's the great thing about buildings, they don't go anywhere! And I think the weather was beautiful yesterday. . . It's always raining in Taipei, why kill yourself on a beautiful day? Suicidal people are weird.

On a side note, I've decided to take a break from school. Work has been really hectic recently and there's no sign of it letting up anytime soon. Plus I'll be in NY for two weeks in June. My plan is to get myself to learn the class material on my own and try to start reading newspapers. We'll see how that goes. . .

So, unfortunately, no more stories from school for at least the next few months.

Snoopy Sno-cone Machine

Does anyone remember this thing? I was browsing through a blog that I frequent once in awhile, when I saw some hello kitty drink holder. I'm not sure why but it instantly brought up memories of the Snoopy Sno-cone machine my sister and I had when we were little. I vaguely remember the sno-cone ice that came out of it could be made just as easily with a plastic bag and a hammer, and the flavoring liquid it came with was just red sugar water. . . but I think we had a pretty good time with it or else I wouldn't remember it twenty plus years later.

Crappy weather

I should really be studying Chinese but I'm so far behind that I don't feel like starting because even if I catch up this week, I'll just fall behind again when work gets really busy.
















It rains a lot in Taipei. I should be used to it by now, but I'm not.

The forecast is usually wrong though. I don't even know why I look at it. I think maybe the guy that does the forecast is in a bad mood today and wants everyone else to be in a bad mood. We'll see. . .