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

Torture and T-shirts

How an AIM conversation about an internet advertising company's name switches to talking about torture and then T-shirts.

Me: Eyeblaster is the worst name ever
Friend: yeah I know.
Me: when i think of it, i have a bunch of different thoughts. . . all of them bad
Friend: hahaha
Me: it's like a some kind of medieval torture device
Friend: POW right in the eye
Me: give him 10 minutes on the Eyeblaster. . . he'll tell us where the secret base is.
Friend: hehe
Me: isn't there some kind of controversy right now?
Me: with wakeboarding or something?
Me: oops, i mean waterboarding
Friend: its a type of torture
Me: that's funny. . . waterboarding sounds like fun
Friend: it does right?
Me: the weather's great, let's go waterboarding!
Friend: like a cousin of boogie boarding
Friend: They should make a T-shirt like that
Me: haha
Me: i want to get some T-shirts
Friend: Oh yeah.. me too.. the gawker shop is having a sale!

Interesting thing I learned in Chinese class

Normally nothing interesting happens during class, either it's too early in the morning for me to remember anything or I cut class for an extra two hours of sleep (those are the best two hours of sleep ever!)

A little bit background info for people who are not familiar with Chinese characters. Chinese characters are like molecules built up from smaller elements like atoms. These smaller elements are called radicals. For example the character for noodle is (mian4). It consists of two radicals, on the left side is the radical (mai4) which means wheat and the right side is the radical (mian4) which means face. So by looking at the (mai4) provides a clue on the meaning of the word (Noodles are usually made out of wheat) and the (mian4) portion tells us how to pronounce the word.

It's not always this easy though, radicals don't have to be aligned left to right, sometimes they are placed top to bottom, outside/inside. Sometimes all the radicals in a character are for meaning and not for pronuncation. Sometimes radicals are put in there that have nothing to do with meaning or pronunciation.

For example, one word i hate is . On the top is (neng2) which means "can or to be able to." On the bottom there those four little marks that are the radical version of (huo3) which means fire. So I'm thinking, you pronounce the word just like (neng2) and it has something to do with fire.

WRONG! is pronounced xiong2 and it means bear. Bear as in those big furry animals that live in Jellystone park and steal picnic baskets.

It's as if whoever made up these words hundreds (thousands?) of years ago were like. . .

Guy1: Okay, how should we make the character for bear?
Guy2: Dude, it's friday, it's late, we've done a thousand of these already. We're gonna miss happy hour.
Guy1: Okay, then. . .
(Closes eyes and points to a wall with all the radicals)
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the. . .


So what two words did the teacher write on the blackboard?

First word was .　The radical on top is 　which represents a body, inside/underneath of that is which means rice. So what happens when you eat rice? You eventually go #2, and that's what the word means.

The teacher actually wrote "shit" in english next to "" just to make it clear. I thought that was pretty funny.

Second word was ． The same radical on top, bottom is the radical which means water. So what happens when you drink water? You eventually go #1, and that's what the word means.

I am absolutely terrible at remembering how to write chinese words. I usually need to keep on practicing writing a word over and over again before i have it commited to memory but these two words. . . it won't be necessary.

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).