The Christmas season is in full swing, and that means it’s almost time for the yearly school Christmas pageant. My students will be performing the Beatles song “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They’ve actually done a great job learning the lyrics and choreography, but it’s still a riot watching them perform.
Lexi and I were bored today, so we decided to get some sun by heading to Hsinchu Harbor. While nothing can compare to the actual ocean (which wasn’t visible through the haze), it was still a nice trip. The insanely fresh seafood restaurant we went to for lunch was by far the best part though.
This weekend’s South African get together (I was a guest of my friend, Lexi), and our subsequent trip to IKEA. Details to follow.
After recovering from yet another fun Friday night out, I decided to head back to Taipei in order to buy a few books. The obvious choice for my shopping excursion was Page One books, located in Taipei 101. It has one of the (if not the) largest selections of English titles in Taiwan.
Needless to say, I was in heaven. I somehow managed to restrain myself, and left with only five books (instead of the 20 or so that I originally wanted), a few Rhodia notebooks, and this month’s copy of Wired magazine. My reading selection for the next few weeks includes:
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Dune – Frank Herbert (already 200 pages in, from the train ride home. :/)
Multivariate Statistical Methods – Bryan Manly
Unended Quest – Karl Popper
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! – Richard Feynman
The only thing better would be having access to Amazon.com and Prime shipping, but then I’d probably have no money to eat. 
I also had lunch at Alleycats, which is apparently one of the best places in Taipei to find real American pizza. A 12″ margarita pizza, bread sticks, a draft cider, and a draft beer cost about 800 NT (~$24.75). Honestly, that’s a lot more than I’m used to paying for food and drink, but at the same time, it did satisfy my craving for pizza. As far as the quality goes…my only complaint was that there wasn’t enough sauce on the pizza. It was still tasty though, and I’ll definitely be making a return visit.
My new Yamaha Cuxi Noble 100cc scooter. I was originally supposed to pick it up on Monday, but the shop owner called Iris and told her that his conscience wouldn’t let me take it home in the rain because I “would die.” So, the pick up was rescheduled for Tuesday evening.
When I arrived at the shop, it was well after dark, and I was starting to seriously regret the purchase. In my mind, there was roughly a 0% chance of my arriving home alive. I am not exactly the most graceful person, and going 60km/hr on a scooter is just tempting the fates.
However, Siung (the shop owner) was nice enough to have one of his employees take me out on a driving lesson before I was forced to brave the streets of Hsinchu on my own. The lesson started out fine. Brake here, gas here, stay balanced. Unfortunately, the language barrier made communication a bit difficult, and I missed the part about how to turn the bloody thing. As I was coming down my test alley at a rather high speed, I noticed a young man pushing a woman in a wheelchair into the street. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just turn the wheel a smidge, and avert disaster.” Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the best way to dodge something on a scooter was by shifting your body weight to the side, and I almost hit the poor bystanders as a result. Luckily, my disc brake works exceptionally well, and I managed to stop just in the nick of time.
That was the only major incident, thankfully. I finished the rest of my lesson without incident, and then followed Iris back to the city center, where she told me how to get home by myself. Traffic on the main street by my house (Guang-Fu Road) is bad, but I did fine and managed to arrive home unscathed. I’m looking forward to more outings (and near death experiences) in the near future.
I’m in the process of wrapping up another great weekend in Taiwan. On Friday, Lexi and I headed to Taipei for a drink and so that I could have meeting with a financial adviser. As is starting to become par for the course, our “quick drink” turned into a rowdy evening at Yuma’s and Frankie’s Pie Bar with some expat guys, including an adorable British Java programmer. Lexi and I finally made it back to Taoyuen at 5am on Saturday, and I crashed at her place for a few hours before rushing back to Hsinchu to go scooter shopping with Iris.
When Iris and I finally met up around 10:30 am, she promptly took me to her friend’s scooter shop:
昱雄車行
03-5232505
新竹市經國路2段519號
The owner, Siung, was very nice, and helped me pick out a Yamaha Cuxi Noble, which is a 100cc scooter with a disc brake. Total cost was 60,000, which was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but c’est la vie. After putting down my deposit (I pick up the scooter Monday night), Iris took me to explore downtown Hsinchu, including the City God temple and a to-die-for black noodle shop. More importantly – and this is the girly girl in me starting to come out – she showed me the back alley shopping area where I can find adorable, inexpensive clothes. To hell with SOGO from now on.
Unfortunately, the combination of my Taipei outing, scooter buying, and clothes shopping completely drained me of energy, and I ended up falling asleep at 7pm last night. This means I missed the Moon Festival BBQ that I had been looking forward to for the past week. Blargh. Apparently I also slept through a magnitude 6.3 earthquake as well. I need to start sleeping more during the week and drinking larger quantities of caffeinated beverages so I can survive my rather hectic weekends.
Today was a rather busy day. As I was leaving for lunch, I was given my Alien Resident Certificate by our secretary. This basically grants me legal status for one calendar year, as long as I remain employed with my current company. The upside of this is that I can now purchase my own internet connection and legally buy a scooter. The latter is the de facto method of transportation in Taiwan, so I play to get one as soon as possible so that I can venture out more on the weekends.
Luckily, I met a very nice woman at our school’s Open Day last week who has a friend that sells scooters. She has kindly offered to meet with me on Saturday morning to try and help me find one that I like. If all goes well, I should be braving Hsinchu’s insane traffic by Sunday.
In other news, today was my first Chinese lesson through Chinese Learn Online. My tutor (via Skype), Luise, was absolutely wonderful. I learned how to ask and respond to several common questions. Our dialogue was as follows:
| Pinyin | English |
|---|---|
| A: Ni3 lai2 Tai2wan1 duo1 jiu3 le? | A: How long have you been in Taiwan? |
| B: Kuai4yao4 yi1ge yue4 le. | B: Almost a month. |
| A: Ni3 lai2 Tai2wan1 zuo4 shen2me? | A: What did you come to Taiwan to do? |
| B: Wo3 lai2 Tai2wan1 xue2 Zhong1wen2. | B: I came to Taiwan to learn Chinese |
| A: Ni3 shi4 na3 yi1 guo2 ren2? | A: What nationality are you? |
| B: Wo3 shi4 Mei3guo2ren2. | B: I am American |
| A: Ni3 chi1fan4 le ma? | A: Have you eaten? |
| B-1: Wo3 chi1 le. | B-1: I have eaten. |
| B-2: Wo3 hai2 mei2 chi1. | B-2: I haven’t yet eaten. |
| A: Ni3 yao4 gen1 wo3 yi1qi3 qu4 chi1fan4 ma? | A: Do you want to go eat with me? |
| B: Hao3. | B: Okay. |
As you might have guessed, Pinyin is the system used to translate Chinese into the Roman Alphabet. The numbers at the end of each word/syllable tell which tone to use.
Water Frog BBQ, Jhubei City
Address: 竹北市自強南路與成功15街交叉口
Phone: (03) 550-2352
Just got back for a wonderful dinner at the above restaurant. The place has caught my eye on several occasions as I passed by on the THSR Shuttle, since it is always full of people. After eating there, I am going to wager that there are three primary reasons for this:
1. Price – All you can drink beer + all you can eat yakiniku for 399 NT (about $12.32 US)
2. Quality – The food is actually good, and there is a wide selection of seafood, beef, pork, chicken, noodles, and vegetables to choose from.
3. Atmosphere – Everyone in the open air building seemed like they were having a great time. Also, live music!
So, if you’re in the area and are craving grilled meat and beer, I recommend trying this place.
Ben was in town for the weekend, so I thought it would be fun spend a day or two in Taipei. We were originally joined by Lexi, whom I met through Forumosa. The day started off quite calmly…after spending 45 minutes trying to locate one another in the labyrinth that is Taipei Main Station, we decided to head to Taipei 101 and Sun-Yet Sen for the afternoon. Lexi and Ben hadn’t been to the latter before, and we spent some time walking through the gardens and people-watching in the square. We also caught the changing of the guard, which apparently occurs every hour.
The main event of the day was to be a trip to the Shilin Night Market, which is arguably the best in Taipei. After making our way to the Jiantan MRT Station (Beware: the Shilin station is much further away), we met up with Eddie (my coworker) and Anthony (Lexi’s coworker).
Shilin was, in one word: amazing. It is separated into two distinct sections: one is the new food court, which houses a collection of tasty snacks, and the other is comprised of the streets and alleys surrounding Yangming Theatre and stretching to the Chicheng Temple on Danan Rd. The smells of stinky tofu, exotic fruit, and often unidentifiable skewered meat fill the air, and there are a multitude of vendors selling pirated DVDs, clothing, luggage, and nearly everything else you can imagine. The sheer chaos of the competing sights and sounds is amazing in itself, but it’s the crowds that make Shilin a must-see. You don’t walk here – you body-check your way through a crush of people.
After spending a few hours navigating the night market and testing the strength of our stomachs by having our fill of the aforementioned skewered meat, we decided to find our way to Carnegie’s to find cider (for Lexi) and Guinness (for me). This involved a 20 minute MRT ride and a fun walk through the Xinyi district in search of a restaurant that none of us had visited before. We finally stumbled across it, and it was at this point that our evening took a turn towards epicness.
After a round of beers and jager bombs, Lexi broached the idea that we should try and get the guys as hammered as possible – for funsies, as Sarah Haskins would so eloquently put it. This, of course, seemed like a vastly amusing idea, so the shot buying started in earnest. It was only after several rounds that we realized that, gee, it might be a good idea to check when the MRT stops running, since we all needed to get home at some point. Sadly, this realization came too late, and by the time we left Carnegie’s, the MRT, HSR, and TRA were closed for the night. Fun. With Lexi and I relatively sober, we decided to take it upon ourselves to find a way home. It was decided that we would take a cab to Taoyuen, stay at her flat for the night, and then Ben and I would make our way to Hsinchu in the morning.
So, after an hour long taxi ride to Taoyuen and a last minute trip to Carrefour’s to grab some sleeping kit, we finally fell asleep around 4:30am. Although waking up in a stupor and finding our way back to Hsinchu wasn’t exactly the best way to start the morning, the fun we had the previous night was worth it.
