Ringtones rock!

Hi all,

I forgot to mention (how could I?) that I've finally broken down and gotten a new moblie phone. I've finally joined the mobile phone trendies and am the proud owner of a Motorola RAZR.

Not only is it one of the best designed phones I've seen, it does one thing that I absolutlely love.

Custom mp3 ringtones.

Awww yeah baby!

Right now my main ringtone is the Motown classic, Ain't No Mountain High Enough - The duet version (but I don't know exactly who is singing. The original version featured Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.)

If you need me call me
no matter where you are
no matter how far...

-Kirk

Happy New Year's Eve

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this afternoon.

It's een quite the week. Monday was off for the Christmas holiday, and then I had Friday off since I had to burn off vacation...

Not bad having a 3 day workweek.

Wednesday night I closed down my favorite Italian place. It was pretty cool. All the mood lighting that's usually dim was turned up to full intensity, signaling it was time for us to vacate the premises.

I got to try anchovies for the first time ever. At least I think it was the first time. I doubt I would have forgotten ever trying it before.

It's that... memorable.

All I can say about anchovies is make sure you like the taste of very fishy fish and salt.

Besides having my first anchovies experience, I had one of those times where you didn't want the conversation to end, but it had to because of work the next day.

Stupid responsibility.

It's been a while since I've had that - And it was quite nice.

I just need to work on my short conversation game. I'm just not doing something right.

-Kirk

The fortune that's good. And bad.

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this evening.

Tonight we met some family friends for dinner at a Chinese food place. And one of our fortunes said:

You will inherit a large sum of money.

Which is pretty good, right? You can't go wrong with money. But then you you realize it kind of sucks because to get your large sum of money, someone has to die.

Hmmm...

-Kirk

Christmas dreariness

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well on this Christmas day.

Well, instead of a white Christmas we got a rainy one with residual snow that's not white, but turning into a grey / charcoal.

And where is the sun?

I need that big ball of fire to feel complete. It's only December and I'm already feeling the winter blues.

It's definitely one of those days where you just want to stay in bed all day long and listen to a Norah Jones CD (I recommend Come Away with Me). Which I am, just not in bed :)

I do feel sleepy though.

I still haven't been sleeping well ever since getting back from vacation. I'm still waking up in the middle of the night / morning to toss and turn for a few hours and try to go back to sleep. Don't know what's up with that.

Maybe I need to stop taking naps after dinner too.

On an entertainment note, I finally watched the whole thing of It's a Wonderful Life. I've only seen parts of it - off and on over the years. I was given the dvd for my birthday (because K found out I'd never seen it).

I realize the movie is a classic and is has been nominated / won many awards in its time, but for some reason, I didn't get the full effect of its worthiness. I wasn't sure what I was expecting honestly. But I know when I feel like a movie feels long, it's never a good sign... I think it's the flow of the movie. Quite a bit of time was taken to build up the characters, but the actual lesson learned seemed to be too brief.

I do have a disclaimer with my review though - I was falling asleep during the last half of the movie so I may have to revisit it at a later date.

But the movie was quite sad! Something that I didn't expect initially.

So yeah, that was last night...

-Kirk

And the music stopped

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this evening. Well I guess it's morning now isn't it?

It's been one of those weeks where time goes by, and you're really not sure what you did or where the time went.

I was on vacation Monday so it was a nice extension to the weekend. Last weekend I threw off my sleep schedule by sleeping in until 3 p.m. on Saturday. It was kind of crazy. I was up for a few hours, and then it was dark.

It was kind of a drag.

Saturday I bought my magic home theater system. I've been waiting to buy this one for a while. It's an Onkyo HT-S780. So far, so good. This sytem packs quite a punch and has more speakers than the average human needs. It's a little overkill for a bedroom system, but I'll be strong and suffer...

So I was up till 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning installing everyhing. The system sounds pretty kickass though. My only gripe so far is the angel hair spaghetti speaker cabling that was kind of lame. It's like stereo boombox wire.

Needless to say, Monday I was pretty tired. I was lucky I didn't have to work.

Over the week I've been shopping and just doing the usual nothing :)

This evening I've managed close down and be kicked out of a Coney Island and a Starbucks. Not too shabby of a night.

-Kirk

Time for bed.

So I did some shopping on Amazon just now. And I thought the "Where's my stuff" order information actually read "Where's my shit?"

Going to bed now.

-Kirk

Mister Donut - I love you.

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well. I can't believe I forgot about Mister Donut in the recap...

Taiwan is a melting pot of different cultures. There's stuff from Japan, the United States, Europe, etc. But this trip my cousin helped me discover the wonders of Mister Donut. Please be warned that the Taiwanese site homepage has a rather loud sound clip so be warned. Behold the Taiwanese Mister Donut site. Here's a link to the quieter Japanese Mister Donut site.

And I've verified that it is indeed #1 in Japan :)

I love these donuts. If you've stopped buying donuts because they're too sweet (think of those evil donuts that have the initials of KK) - Mister Donut is perfect for you. In the store, there's a brochure you can look at when ordering your Mister Donuts. And there's a rating of how sweet it is (relative to the other Mister Donuts). Even the sweetest one is not super sweet according to American sandards.

Here's a look at all of the fine donuts you can buy. My favorite is the Custard French. But it's not just your run of the mill French Cruller. It's dipped in chocolate. And, it's got custard goo inside.

And yes, the goo makes it that much better.

Next I have to show you the Triple Chocola. This version of the Cruller is chocolate, filled with chocolate goo, and dipped in chocolate.

So tasty!

And finally, I had a Pon De Ring. Yes it does look like a teething ring. But I wanted to try it to see if the shape made a difference.

It does. It helps you gauge how much to eat at once.

Oh yeah, I've also had the Chcolate, which is pretty much what it looks like. A chocolate glazed tonut. Kind of like a chcolate donut hole, but bigger.

Mister Donut will be one of the reasons why I go back to Taiwan.

-Kirk

View from the top

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well.

Back to the recap... Where did I leave you last? Ahh, The Taipei 101 building...

So my cousin, her friend, and I went all over the city. Before we did any shopping, I told them that I wanted to try some bubble tea from Taiwan. I've had it in Canada and the United States, but I wanted to see what the more "authentic" versions tasted like.

Apparently the stuff that we have in N. America is edited for our sweeter tastes.

The places we went to had never heard of fruit flavoring put into bubble tea. When I told my cousins about how we have "fusion tea" were it's green tea and some sugary syrupy flavor, they just looked at me funny.

So it's truly just tea. And sometimes milk tea. Don't get me wrong, it's sugared up, just not flavored with nice fruit flavors like green apple, kiwi, or mango.

I'm not saying that there's no fruit infused bubble tea in Taipei - I'm just saying that I wasn't able to find it (I had it twice).

Anyway, back to Taipei 101. So far it's the tallest building in the world. For now.

This particular part of town is very nice. It breaks the stereotype I had of Taipei. Everything was nice and clean, shiny and new. All of the surrounding areas had very posh shopping. There was even a movie theater! Many of these areas are connected by covered, open air walkways leading to the building itself. There were many young people around, but not as many as I'd expected (probably cause it was a weekday). Maybe cause it was a school night or something. But I'd say there were mostly people in their 20s to 40s? All the high fashion reminded me of when I was poking around Tokyo howevermany years ago.

So for dinner we met up at this restaurant on the 4th floor of the Taipei 101 bulding. I can't really tell you the name (because I coudln't read it) but I just know it had 2 characters in the name :)

So dinner was very tasty. But best of all, I got to feel my first earthquake!

I thought a train was rumbling by.

It was kind of funny - Everyone just looked at each other, confirmed it was an earthquake, and just kept on eating.

So that was the excitement for that night.

After dinner we went up to the observatory on top of the building and did the touristy thing - Tons of pictures and enjoyed the view.

the following day my cousin picked me up at 9:00 in the morning to go sightseeing. Our first stop was to take a train up north to an old mining town turned tourist area. Back in the day, it was a booming mining town until everything was gone (mined?) and many people left. Well, the town changed to a tourist attraction because of the mountains and the great views from the top. Tourism also increased after they filmed a movie there.

The vew at the top of the mountain was super nice. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the top. It was a little cold and rainy so we didn't eat outside - it was a bummer too because they had a very neat rooftop restaurant area. Anyway, I was still not feeling well so I had very little to eat.

One thing that was extremely helpful was that the menu was partially in english! I was getting tired of going to restaurants, looking at the menu (all in chinese which I can't read), and my dad asking me what I wanted to eat off the menu.

From the momuntain we could see the coastline as well. I tried to get some good pictures (which I should get around to posting, along with my DC and NYC pics from earlier this year).

Anyway, so we had to get a move on because we had many other places to go...

So we rode a train back to the main Taipei Main train station and switched over to the metro (the new-ish subway). We rode the red line all the way till the end to Danshui. We walked along the riverside and poked around the area.

Which led to the most favorite part of the trip...

Usually when I travel for pleasure I rarealy get homesick. Not like summer camp where you want to go home right away, but I didn't realize how much I did miss home until we stopped at the not very well known Seattle based coffee shop called Starbucks.

So there we were, sitting by the river, on the 2nd floor of the Starbucks on the outside patio. Drinking tea and coffee drinks out of real mugs.

On a cultural note, apparently the Taiwanese don't like using paper cups inside the cafe - It feels cheap and/or low class. So when you drink in, there's only one size - the standard mug size. Anything else you get the paper cup.

Who knew? In retrospect, I should have stolen a mug.

Anyway, so I had some Tazo tea (although not the same flavors at home), hung out, talked, and we watched the sun set. As it got dark, we could see tiny lights across the river off in the distance.

And that was my favorite Taiwan moment.

Being in Starbucks reminded me of home, and of course it's my favorite hangout. I couldn't have asked for more.

So after Starbucks, we headed off and went back to the downtown area (where we were the night before). Apparently, my cousin is a huge fan of Chili's. But sadly, her friends aren't - So she rarely gets to go.

The thought of getting something to eat other than Chinese food (In Taiwan, they just call it food) sounded super good - and my appetite suddenly came back.

Besides, I was really feeling the need for a salad.

The goofy thing was that if you didn't look at the people that were in the restaurant, you'd think you were at a restaurant in the U.S. Seriously - Even the tabletop tiles were similar (if not the same). There were quite a few caucasians in the restaurant too, which I thought was funny.

I'm sure they wanted an escape from "food" too.

Wednesday we returned back to Taichung from Taipei. It was nice to be back at my parent's place. We took the rest of the evening pretty easy. Did some light grocery shopping (for stuff to bring back) and ate at a really kick butt Teppanyaki place. (I also found out that the word "teppan" means the steel cooking surface, and "yaki" means stir-fry). I loved it - the focus was on the food - not the showmanship of the chef. There was no flinging of food, no clanging of cooking utensils. Just some really well seasoned vegetables and fish.

While I was staying at my dad's place, I fell in love with pineapple jelly on toast - so I had to make sure I bought a j ar back to the States.

So now this brings us up to Wednesday night. Thursday (all day) I went with my dad out to the countryside to see one of my aunts. She lives out in farm country where they grow Chinese radishes (or just "radishes") - Anonther not so good smell for me. :) We had to ride a train out, then a bus. Then we had to walk in the last part of the trip (about 15 minutes).

The last time I was there (about 4 years ago), all the roads were just dirt. This time, they were freshly paved. I know paved roads are a good thing, but it really takes away from the "countryside" effect.

Anyway, Friday my dad took me out shopping and sightseeing around Taichung. I've actually never seen too much of it - So it was nice to get out and walk around. Once again, shopping malls are shopping malls. And roadside stands are pretty much the same. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything.

For lunch, my dad took me to a Chinese place, but there was a twist - The menu was "Shanghai style." So that was interesring. We had this crazy pork dish that was really good, but I would have hated to see the nutrition statistics on it.

Saturday morning, we took the 4:20 a.m. bus from Taichung to the airport and I was on the plane by 8:30 a.m.

One thing's for sure, I can't say I was bored on this trip :)

Anyway, so the trip home was 4 hours shorter because of a pretty strong tailwind. I wasn't going to complain :)

On the way home, they showed 3 movies, but I only watched one - That Hillary Duff movie, The Perfect Man. It was cute, but kind of sucky and unrealistic at the same time.

They also showed Sky High and Noel - I had no desire to watch the first one, and I missed the 2nd one because I was listening to music and napping.

The trip home was definitely quicker. It felt really really good to hear those 2 words from the Customs guy: "Welcome Home."

-Kirk

How I got my Christmas groove back.

Hi all,

One quick thing. Today I bought my very own Christmas tree from none other than Target. It's a baby 6.5 ft tree, prelit with white lights.

3 pieces. Setup took less than 5 minutes. I was lovin it.

-Kirk

Mind the generation gap

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this evening.

I got back yesterday early afternoon - I tried to stay up as long as I could but was starting to feel woozy after 5 p.m. or so.

I slept until 9 this morning.

It's nice to be back, that's for sure.

Anyway, let me go back to the recap...

Where did I leave you last?

So yeah, the hot springs experience...

Just to demo, my dad takes me into the bathroom to show me what hot springs water looks like - It's a good thing too, cause if I had no warning, the sight of the water would have had me running for the hills.

So apparently, hot springs water (in this context) is all natural, coming from source within the mountains that I was never got to see. I'm sure if I had my hiking gear on, I would be able to go to the source, but I wasn't that motivated.

And as a sidenote, I keep on calling it hot springs water because I'm actually not sure what to call it - and from my prior experirence, "spring water" is what eventually comes to me in bottles. On the other hand, pure unmolested hot springs water should never be bottled.

Ever.

Anyway, back to the experience. So my dad turns on the hot water spigot and this cloudy water first comes out, and then it gets progressively darker. If you wanted to make a hasty generalization, you could just say it's "muddy." But it's not mud per se - I'm sure there's a little natural earth in there for good measure, but the hot springs water is chock full of mineral goodness.

Cloudy, brownish-grey goodness.

So like I said, I'm glad my dad prepped me and let me know what was up. When you turn on the water (pretty much anywhere) you expect crystal clear water to come out right?

So let's see, the smell was a quite different as well - My first impression was it smelled like water that had a lot of iron in it.

Are ya grossed out yet?

Honestly, if I wasn't into trying everything at least once, I'd be really hesitant - But I had heard so much about how good hot springs water was for your skin, and how it's really relaxing.

Once you got used to the smell and look of the water, it wasn't too bad. I'm not much of a tub soaker, but I was in there for a good half hour or so.

Before doing the hot springs thing, I had told my dad that I wasn't much of a soaker, so he knocked on the door a few times to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep. :)

The trip up the mountain had been in the evening / nighttime so you couldn't see much outside. But the trip back turned out to be not as fun.

I got bus sick.

Luckily, I did not yack - but I wasn't the same after that. I was super sensitive to smells after that. Any food that was being cooked outside, or any unidentified scents made me feel not very good. Plus, I completely lost my appetite for a few days.

On the funnier side, the bus that we took back from the mountain had a subwoofer. So we were jamming to some sort of Chinese music with a heavy bassline. And we were sitting far enough back where that's all we heard.

Thump thump thump. Rumble rumble rumble.

Plus, did I mention that the majority of the buses were manual transmission? That probably added to the bus sickness factor too.

So after the mountain excursion, we rode another bus back to Taipei. We had this bus driver that hauled ass on the highway. People drive pretty crazy in the city, so I expected it everywhere else - But this guy was driving pretty fast. Passing cars on the left and right, weaving throughout traffic, changing lanes (while cars were still in them), you name it. And best of all, we were in a bus. Again, I thought wwe were going to hit stuff, but we never did.

In Taipei we visited family and I was able to hang out with my cousin and her friend. They took me shopping all around the city. We went to everything from department stores to all of these little roadside stands and shops.

On a whole, the department stores were, well, department stores. Just varied in levels of poshness and store names. Not much different from the ones back home. Now the street vendors and alleyways that had little stores was where all the action was. The stores where everything was displayed and you could haggle over pricing.

After visiting a few of these stores, I just coudln't take it - I had to exit. Let me try to explain. Normally I'm used to shopping where there's nice, orderly displays (think Target or Costco on a weekday) and I get plenty of personal space - nobody's pushing me out of the way to get to stuff, I can leisurely look through stuff.

Shopping at some of these places felt like what Brawl-Mart was the day after Thanksgiving.

OK ok, maybe not that bad. But I had to get that dig in there.

So basically, I bought nothing during my visit in Taiwan. I took spending money and used hardly any of it. (shrug)

So ok, so me, my cousin, and her friend did some shopping around town, and then met up with my parents and other cousins at the Taipei 101 buildling.

(to be continued)

Birds prohibited.

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this evening / morning.

It's been quite the vacation - I've done quite a bit of travelling around the potato on a stick shaped land of Taiwan.

I can't believe my time here is almost over. It's Thursday night here - Just one day left before I head for home on Saturday early morning.

I know it's been a while since I've written - but I'm pretty tired, but I will go as far as I can...

So where did I leave you last?

Saturday morning we left at 5 a.m. to catch the super early train to Kaohsiung where we visited some family and had lunch at a swanky hotel restaurant that had a serious gold fetish. Almost everything was either gold, gold plated, or trimmed in gold.

A little much if you ask me, but hey, what do I know what swanky hotelgoers like?

I'm sure the goldness had something to do with prosperity or something like that. Anyway, this restaurant was on the 10th floor (I think) so the views of the cityscape were pretty nice. The food was pretty good as well.

After lunch we were headed on a journey into the mountains to one of the resort towns where there were hot springs. We took a train to a nearby city, and then rode a bus up the mountain. One thing that Taiwanese bus drivers need to have is major driving skillz. This guy was taking these super tight turns in this huge bus. Oh yeah, for extra bonus driver points, the bus was manual transmission - Which I'm sure was necessary for mountain climbing, but I'm just used to the buses back home where they're automatic.

Anyway, so we're going up the extremely twisty mountain in this bus - Dodging cars, people, and other various road hazards. From my view up top, it looked like we were going to hit stuff all of the time. But we never did.

(This mountain driving would end up being not so fun for me later)

So fast forward to the hot springs experience...

For those of you that aren't familiar with hot springs- I had heard about them (and avoided them) but my dad convinced me to go. Apparently there's different kinds. Like I've heard in Japan where it's just one big ol spa like atmosphere where everyone goes in and soaks in the hot springs water. And there's like minerals and stuff in this water that is supposed to be really great for your skin.

Well one thing was for sure, I wasn't going to do the public thing - No way. So my dad found a place where there's a tub in the bathroom and instead of hot water, it's replaced with this spigot that just outputs hot springs water.

(to be continued because I'm falling asleep)

-Kirk

Love letter from the TSA

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well. Depending on what time zone you're in, it's either afternoon (in Taiwan) or early morning (back home).

So let's see, where do I start?

The flight was not as painful as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong - It still felt like a long assed time, but I wasn't totally bored like I thought I'd be.

Just for the record, the website was wrong on the movies (unless I read it wrong). I saw Must Love Dogs (cute and predictable), The Island (sucked the big one - Scarlett, what were you thinking?), Polar Express (so-so, bordering on creepy because the animation was a little too lifelike) and Fantastic 4 (only caught the end so it was ok).

Like usual (when I travel), it still hasn't totally sunk in that I'm here. I get into this airplane, and hours later I'm somewhere else. Usually it's just a different part of the US. This time it's a different part of the world.

Kinda crazy.

The entire flight it felt like all I was doing was sitting and eating. The food was pretty good (I think my lunchtie training with TV dinners has done me well). No real complaints there.

This time the flight stopped in Osaka, Japan - The airport was a little depressing. I coudln't put my finger on what it was - I guess I was expecting a little more? (shrug) It was lit up by those really really birght and intense lights that you commonly see in gymnasiums - so that might have killed it for me.

The flight from Osaka to Taipei was pretty uneventful. I was so tired that I was pretty much asleep for most of the trip.

I was awake for dinner though :)

My dad picked me up at the airport and we made the journey to Taichung by bus - Another 2 hours or so.

So yesterday I'd been travelling for almost 24 hours. A new record for me :)

As I opened my luggage, I was pleasantly surprised with a card from the TSA saying that they had gone through my luggage. Which was nice because usually I didn't think they let you know - you just opened up your luggage and stuff woudln't be where you expected.

The note also said that I should get some new clothes, I'm too old for Superman underwear, and that I should learn how to pack my suitcase better.

Just kidding.

Whoever packed my suitcase did do a pretty good job though :)

The weather's been pretty nice. Before I left I had checked the weather report and it said that it would rain every day. I seemed to have dodged the rain bullet today. Hopefully I'll have good weather the rest of the week.

So on a cultural note, it's election time here. I think the actual election is tomorrow. But the candidates (or representatives) drive around in these huge well decorated car caravans with loudspeakers blaring. It's usually someone talking, / yelling but I've also heard drums, firecrackers, and just other randomness. Also, the president (of Taiwan) is coming to visit tonight, so there's a bunch of cops patroling the streets as well.

Today was a day of rest so we've been taking it easy. My dad took me around town to do some light shopping.

Tomorrow (and the next few days) we'll be doing the Tour of Taiwan to visit some family and sightsee...

-Kirk