Triscribe

Category: Taipei

  • TPE

    Unscheduled stop back in TPE. Fell sick to a stomach bug after eating some major fried, greasy but oh-so-good HK food near our HK office in North Point. So stayed back and cancelled my S’pore flight and Prince 2 studies. Oh the well anyways, because had to deal with HR issues, catch up on rest and prepare for week long meeting gab-fest in Malaysia next week. So much to do, so little time.

    Even missed my March Madness :(.

    One bright spot of the trip was to attend one of my staff’s wedding out in the New Territories places.  It’s a pretty big self-contained town which reminded me of how the US cities used to populate its urban areas.. large “projects” types of housing with surrounding shops for convenience.  Sunday we went to the local marriage registrar’s office and there was just a long line of couples waiting to get married.  Interesting stuff and then afterwards went to Tsim Sha Tsui for the banquet.  I got really trashed and barely staggered back to the hotel that evening.  Next day was pretty rough.  Too much fun perhaps leading to the stomach bug.  Well, have to watch out next time.

  • Bean works

    Sunday morning after church sitting in my new favorite place away from home. Bean Works, formerly Cafe de Caffeine. Get to try some pretty interesting but very expensive (US$4.30) cup of joe (they have very cool teas too which is a better value as you get free water refills as opposed to coffee which is a one shot deal). A drink here gives me wireless connectivity which I need as I currently am without DSL at home. Not sure when it’ll be back as I don’t have time to call. The downside of course is that I’m out of touch with my usual net places and emails with F&F. But the good side of things is that I actually can get to sleep at a reasonable time like… before midnight! Or I read books instead of surf the internet until like 2 or 3am.

    It’s been a little over a month now at the new gig and it just gets busier and busier. This week it was bad enough that I finally realized why it was that I wanted to get out of corporate world and be independent. But I’m here so no use crying about it… just knuckle down and just get it done. While doing so enjoy the perks of working here. That includes staying at 5-star hotels and business class flights. The following weekend I’ll be on a hell travel schedule TPE -> HKG -> TPE -> SIN -> KUL -> TPE. I’ll be living out of a suitcase for literally two weeks, back April 1st. All of this obviously is going to pay for me and B-‘s tickets and holiday hotel upgrades later this year. Got to make the system work for me (but am still trying to figure out the system, heh).

    The music at Bean Works is wonderfully calming, nice classical music, evenings with Windham Hill / Narada music and very light jazz on occassion. Quite a civilized oasis from the every day hustle and bustle of Taipei.

    Yesterday, Saturday, was a full day out. The previous evening, out with AJS and another BLS alum who was in from HK. We hooked up at Romano’s Mac & Grill then proceeded to go down the block to a new lounge place called Barcode. It’s a retail outlet for my company’s products but unfortunately they were out of the cigars and that wasn’t so happy. Need to raise that issue to our distributor. I headed home knowing for the Saturday picnic day with my English class and their colleagues in Sanxia Township, Taipei County. We went up the hills to find a place near the river where we could do BBQ Taiwan style. They went to Carrefour and Costco and went to town on the food. Disposable grills, charcoal, lots of meats, fish, seafood, veggies and drinks. They showed me how it’s like to picnic and eat southern Taiwan style. One thing is that with grilled meats you’re supposed to eat it with a small head of peeled garlic. It’s awfully spicey but great. Especially if you just only lightly salt the grilled meat and eat with the garlic. I saw them play games with paper, rock, scissor. The loser gets water dumped on them. So they were out there on a wooden plank with a bucket doing this and taking turns getting soaked. It was so funny and I hadn’t laughed so hard in a long while. It was cold too so it was a double whammy. We had ten of us just eating, BBQing and playing these games. One of the guys had a Kodak DX-6490 model and caught some of it on video. Lots of fun.

    After this, we headed back into Taipei and then went to PartyWorld, a big KTV chain, and then preceded to sing for 4 hours. Luckily they had quite a bit of English songs to select from and went with some old standbys like Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Village People (YMCA). All getting in some English singing in there and they were good too! I wish I could sing though, so hopelessly out of tune.

    It’s all good though…. classic music, in a warm cozy cafe with a little drizzle outside doing Internet surfing. I like.

  • Yellow Fever – A Video Near You

    Home grown movie. Doesn’t look like Berkeley nor Stanford to me but it’s definitely got that California look.

    It’s a riot 😀

    Yellow Fever – The Video

    EDIT: Went thru the credits second time around and it’s UCSD.  Wow, nice campus.

  • I’m almost living on a plane

    So I flew to Hong Kong Sunday night, which was the same day I flew back to Taipei, having arrived Sunday morning, Feb 5th :o.  Stayed in HK for business trip 2 days, THe Excelsior Hotel, Causeway Bay (http://www.excelsiorhongkong.com/) was good and relatively cheap.  I found a nearby Holiday Inn Express that was a couple hundred HK $ more…. Food was great 🙂

    I liked the flight back last night from HK – TPE, it was a 777-400.  Plenty of space width-wise and length-wise, I lucked out to be in front of the bulkhead, seat 55H.  No bumping of the shoulders or elbows in the aisle seat!

    Unfortunately, when we arrived, one of the passengers behind me, an elderly woman seemed to have fainted/passed out.  Not sure for how long but wasn’t responding.  Once the doors opened, the doctor crew came in but by then I had high-tailed it out ’cause it was almost 10pm.  It looked like she had died ….

    I also signed up for the AA Gold/Plat Challenge but left quite a few miles on the table :-(.  I even missed the Steelers beating the ‘Hawks but go team.  I like Pittsburgh, a nice city and people.

     

    ps- can someone fix the link option in the posting? 🙂

  • Back in Taipei

    I just landed and back in Taipei.

    Much thanks to FC for everything.  Friday before I left, he showed my mom and B- My Little Pizzeria on Court St for some classic traditional NYC style pizza.  Everyone loved it.  We were gluttons, eating a whole 12″ half pepperoni and half mushroom pie along with a spinach rolle, sausage roll and a regular calzone!!! Awesome because I loaded up and hope that memory will keep me until I come back to NYC again 😀

    Made it to JFK with 3 pieces of luggage and my computer bag.  I was afraid that I’d be dinged for being overweight but surprisingly they let me through.  But I won’t do that again anytime soon I hope.  Being a “mule” just aint fun even though is obligatory.  Just need to find a limit 😮

    Trip was fine, but i’m thinking that I should avoid the 747-400s which China Airlines flies because my shoulders are bigger than their seats.  Being in the aisle seat, I kept having the flight attendants knock into my shoulder going up and down the aisle.  Hurts them more than me but annoying that I can’t avoid it as if I shift to the side, I’m into the middle seat.

    We stopped by Anchorage again and this time I had more time to check out their duty-free shop.  All the store clerks were Korean!  Some great stuff there but pricey.  They sold lots of fur (PETA beware) for 2-4K depending on size and type of fur.  Beautiful stuff but I wonder who would buy fur coats in a duty free shop?  My flight filled up when we got to Anchorage, it wsa pretty empty leaving JFK.  I wonder, what were people doing staying in Anchorage?  I’d be kinda peeved to have to wait for a 2:30am flight to go to Taipei if I’m there.  Very curious.

    Caught up on some reading on outsourcing and prepping for my HK trip this evening.  Starting my first day at BAT.  I wonder what I’ll say.

    I’ll probably be flying a lot to HK and Macau now so maybe we can get a category for these places as well ;).

    And a belated Happy Year of the Dog to everyone!!!

    =YC

    ps-interesting new WP 2.0.1   This really an improvement?

  • Christmas in Wulai (烏來)

    B- and I went to visit the hot springs around Taipei. Wulai (烏來) is one of the more famous places to visit (the other is BeiTou (北投)) for hot spring rest and relaxation. B- found some places online and ended up settling for Full Moon Spa, a Japanese style place. We had dinner and breakfast included with our stay.

    From the aboriginal Tai Ya Tribe we get a lot of multi-colored arts and crafts which reminds me so much of the type found in South America, Andes, Peru etc. I wonder if that’s by accident or not due to the similarities.

    Nice relaxing time… getting scorched by the hot water and turning lobster like. Definitely like. Will be back 🙂

    =YC

  • Merry Christmas

    Wishing you all a warm, happy Christmas and Holiday Season. A time I think to count our blessings, give thanks, be generous and act in the best of human spirit.

    A lot to appreciate, be thankful for blessings received as well as to to give this year. Hope you all are going to have an enjoyable Christmas.

    Warmest wishes from Taipei,
    =YC

    Taipei 101 Xmas tree

  • Don’t screw a lawyer

    Happy B-day ssw15, co-poster in crime 😀

    So, talk about having your head up your ass: Are Lawyers Being Overbilled for Their Test Preparation? Why do that to lawyers? Is that like asking for it???

    At least now I know what happened to West Bar Review 😀

    Today, did a good thing. We helped a couple get their Taiwan visa immigration papers accepted. Taiwanese government is just really racist and for two years, this couple wasn’t allowed to change status despite trying to do everything the government requested. The problems were (1) one spouse was Filipino which is an undesirable in Taiwan and (2) the government had their heads up their asses and no one knew how to interprete the law. The couple called us and whamo, we got it done. It was hard though and touch and go. But still….. *sigh*

    Taiwan’s 3-in-1 elections was done yesterday. Election reading can be had at the Pan-Green (DPP) mouth piece Taipei Times. If the election rout was any more complete, the DPP would’ve been swimming in the South China sea. Losing Ilan and Chiayi must really hurt the DPP as those were both so key to the DPP and anti-KMT that you could say those places were like what Boston and Lexington was to the American Revolution.

    It’s finally winter here in Taipei. Ugh.

  • Nice Sunday outing – Baishawan (白沙灣)

    B- and I headed out for a whole day of R&R. She found this place within the North Coast and Guanyinshan National Park area.

    We visited my favorite Yonghe Dou Jiang (永和豆漿) for some traditional Chinese breakfast stuff like soybean milk (dou jiang 豆漿), breaded stick etc. Then headed out to Danshui (淡水), the last stop on the redline MRT. From there we took the bus to Baishawan, about a 40 min bus ride. Nice slightly overcast and breezy day. But that’s the best kind fo weather to be traveling and moving about. Feet tired but a nice good day for us. Headed back to Danshui around 5-6pm and ate some HK style food which was great. Good call by B- again on this one. Walked around the Danshui boardwalk and then headed home.

    Tomorrow, back to work.

  • Beijing 北京 back to Taipei 臺北 (台北)

    hey FC, wanted to mention I like what you’ve done with the little tweaks here and there.

    Arrived back in Taipei yesterday. My traveling seems to be always rush rush these days. I forgot my laptop battery pack at my friend’s home in Beijing. The trip out to Beijing airport early morning was pretty busy for 6 am. Most of the highway roads are at least 6 lane highways, 3 each way and plenty of road traffic hmmm. Got to Beijing airport by 6:30am ish and wham, road jam as everyone just stopped at the international airport. I have to say, they got to do a better design and quickly speed up the build up of Terminal 3. There’s no way that they can support Beijing 2008 with two terminals which are about the size of CKS Airport Taiwan.

    At the Beijing airport with the mad rush of international flights early morning, there was a remarkable 5 immigration agents on hand to check your passports …. so everyone was feeling the squeeze. But before then they had a system I’ve never seen before in any other international airport.

    So, you arrive at the terminal and you need to check-in. But before you check in, you need to pass the Customs gatekeepers with your “Goods to Declare” or “No Goods to Declare” card. The problem is that there were only 3 lines but then in the middle of it, they closed down one of them! So all the folks in that line had to go back to the end of the line in the other two custom lines. Ouch. The reason? They were only for the airline crews. Huh? But can’t they also service the other people? By that time, we’re talking about a few hundred people queued up. So everyone’s trying to cut into line and moving forward (just like on the highway, roads of Beijing). Once you’re through, then you go to the airline counter to check in. My Cathay Pacific agent was very nice. He put a priority check-in tag on my luggage so that it would arrive first when I got to Taipei. (It did, I didn’t have to wait long and it came out fast, instead of last). I’ve travelled so many places before and never knew that you could get this nice customer service feature. Great because I hate waiting at the luggage claim carousels.

    So then after the speedy efficient Cathay Pacific check-in (Cathay is starting to get my vote for top airline award here in Asia-Pacific), I hit the immigration check-in wall. When I get there, they saw my English written declaration/exit card but with my Taiwanese Tai Bao Zin “passport” and he said I had to fill it out in Chinese. WTF! Apparently, someone who was Taiwanese had to know how to write in Chinese, not English. So anyways, I did that quickly as best I could (thank God for my drawing abilities learnt as a kid), and then on my way. Had about 10 minutes to spare before boarding time.

    Flight into HK, I had 10 minutes to spare before my transfer onto CX406 to Taipei. One of the downsides of the hub system is that they really cut the transfer times close. By the time I got there, they were already boarding. Luckily there were other planes feeding that flight so I was able to settle in and deposit my bags in the plane’s luggage compartments. Managed to catch the latest Batman movie. Liked it a lot. Wasn’t sure but was that Gary Oldman as the good cop? I was surprised because he seems to always play the bad guys.

    Taipei is very warm and the weekend is good. Catching up with B- with some QT time this weekend. It’s been nice to decompress from the work and enjoy.