ellen blog

project catchup

2009-08-05T22:42:00.017-05:00

i realized a lot of my projects never made it here. please excuse any repeats.

red, white, black are kalie's wedding colors!

first 3D tote!

after months and months, i was finally inspired to make myself a tote. i was waiting so long for this! his name is 'allen'.

rock candy takes a lot longer to grow than we thought.

pediatric cupcakes for elizabeth's birthday!

happy chicken = free range + halal (happy in life and death!)

more pediatric cupcakes for patricia and kalie's birthdays!

moose lake nights

2009-08-05T22:25:00.003-05:00

what i had been working on in moose lake to wear to kalie's bachelorette party. the theme was 27 dresses, which became an old/ugly prom dress party, which became an ugly/ridiculous dress party. i realized i had none of the above and did not have huge faith in thrift store shopping, so i made this! i made the clutch too!

northern minnesota is gorgeous!

2009-07-29T21:56:00.015-05:00

sunday (jul26) i decided to drive up the north shore. turns out minnesota past duluth and along lake superior is so beautiful! driving up I35 into duluth is gorgeous as you see the harbor from the higher up hwy. then (as suggested by the vetrinarian i shadowed on thursday) i drove through duluth and took the scenic hwy61 along the north shore.

here's a scenic pullout right north of duluth. i love rocky beaches!

someone before me had piled up some rocks.

the vet had suggested i drive up to grand marais, but that would have been a day of 8 hours of driving, which did not sound attractive. i made it up to split rock lighthouse, about 20 miles north of two harbors, mn. unfortunately for the cars behind me i drove pretty slow so i could take it all in. i guess that's their fault for choosing the scenic drive instead of the express route ;)

here is the lighthouse and the view from it.

another view from the lighthouse. you'd fall right into the big rocks, green water, and along the rusty orange cliff!

the rocky beaches below the lighthouse were pretty and had some fun rocky puddles!

after split rock lighthouse, i drove back down to two harbors, which is pretty unremarkable.

i walked out on this dock.

until i got to these bikes, i noticed the swarms and swarms of nats. OMG. after i got as far as that last picture, i ran back to shore. didn't even make it all the way to whatever that is at the end of the dock. the view was still nice despite the bugs.

after two harbors, i drove back toward duluth. i stopped at scenic cafe, just north of duluth and highly recommended by one of the vets, for dinner.

scenic cafe's building is unassuming (which is nice), but the food was kind of expensive and fancy without being spectacular. i had curried mussels.

finally i stopped back in duluth, this time with a camera. it had gotten darkish and cloudyish.

a view of the famous bridge in duluth. 3 kayaks are going to go under it; i guess they don't have to raise the bridge for the kayaks.

i left duluth just as it was starting to rain hard. the interstae out of duluth is kind hilly, that, plus the rain, and the setting of the sun, created a beautiful orange and shiny view as i was driving out of duluth. wow, north of duluth is WAY prettier than the stretch between moose lake and duluth.

a bit after i got back from duluth, albert, one of my classmates, arrived to start his internship in moose lake!

monday i didn't do much after the internship. it was really nice weather in the evening. i gave albert a tour of moose lake, we ate at art's cafe, and then took a two miles walk on the bike trail.

tuesday i decided to drive my bike up to carlton to bike the last 15 miles of the munger trail from carlton to duluth. from carlton, the trail starts out going through jay cooke state park. wow, the trail immediately is beautiful, incomparble to the whole stretch from finlayson to carlton that i had been biking. unfortunately this part of the trail also has a lot of patches of very torn up pavement, so it was a very bumpy ride. the most ominous part of the trip was that the whole way to duluth was basically downhill, which meant a glorious trip there, but a hard trip back! it was evening, and there were clouds, so i thought it would be wise to hussle. i finished the 30 mile trip in 2 hours and 12 mins, even with all the uphill, which is pretty good for me! i think the air in my tires was KEY! i got rained on a bit, which was even more motivation to keep up the pace. my legs were exhausted, but it was amazing! and the trail really was beautiful: patches of forest, ravines, mini canyons, rivers, lakes, etc.

wednesday (today!) i biked my favorite route (moose lake to mahtowa and back, 25 miles). i don't know why, i just like biking toward mahtowa so much more than biking toward willow river. 25 miles has become my standard longish-but-still-doable-after-work. today i tried to keep up a good pace. i ended up averaging 14 mph and finishing in 1 hour and 47 mins. i think this will have been my last bike ride during my stay here. (sad.) i've gotten kind of hooked on biking. i always start every trip regretting my decision to go, but by the end, it is exhilerating to know that i have biked 25 miles, or even 50 miles! tomorrow there is rain in the forecast and i leave on fri. i am sad to see my retreat come to a close.

truly, it has been a retreat. i have gotten used to life here: basically no responsibilities save showing up to follow someone around during the day, biking in the sun, or crafting during the dark and raining hours; eating well; sleeping well.

playing catchup

2009-07-29T20:06:00.013-05:00

i kind of fell off the blogging wagon after last sunday. here's what i remember of what i've been doing since.

on monday, after a 12 hour shift with OB (saw a cesarean!) i made myself bike 12 miles since i knew rain was in forecast for the next couple of days. i was really not into it ;( partly b/c all day in OB i was thinking about a new project i wanted to work on...just in time for the rain to come! after biking i drove up to cloquet, where there is a walmart, and bought my materials!

tuesday and wednesday were pretty rainy, so i began my project. my friend kalie is getting married in august, and this coming saturday is her bachelorette party. the concept is wearing an ugly bridesmaid dress, but most of us don't have that, so it became an ugly prom dress concept, but then really it just became an ugly dress party. i didn't really know what to wear, so i decided to make something! tuesday night i made an electric blue pleated skirt completely from tulle! the next night i made a short hot pink skirt with satiny material layered over a lot of tulle! i couldn't decide which one i wanted to wear.

wednesday i had planned to bike with the pharmD student but it was super rainy. fortunately the weather cleared up by thursday, so we biked about 20 miles (to willow river and back)!

friday i did my favorite route, to mahtowa and back (25 miles)! thursday and friday i also continued to work on my "ugly dress". i started making a top, and also a matching clutch purse!!! i will post pictures when it is all done! basically i don't know how to make actual clothes, so it all just wraps around and ties. and i've discovered the fun of pleating and volume!

saturday, ellen, patricia, and kalie came up from the cities and visited!! i gave them the grand tour of moose lake, we did some great thrift store shopping (ellen bought an amazing ugly dress, and i bought some suspenders for a quarter!), we drove down to willow river to check out willow river days, had some sweet corn, saw part of the parade, ate at gampers (which i would really not recommend), and "hiked" in moose lake state park (also not that thrilling).

i've always wanted to wear suspenders but never sure if i could pull it off. there wasn't a mirror that i could find, so the girls took a picture of me so that i could decide if i wanted to make the 25cent investment.

part of the tour of moose lake was the moose lake city park, which i didn't make it out to much. there are two docks, a playground, and a bandstand; next door is the camping grounds.

in willow river we all had some sweet corn!

everyone looks like all smiles but the misquitos were deadly and we were miserable. patricia and ellen are poking out of a detour we made to avoid a bog. we are not good hikers ;(

our detour is on the right and the bog is on the left!

they all had to leave in the late afternoon, which made me kind of miss the city. i made myself bike about 12 miles, through the moose lake state park bike trail and a bit on the munger trail. i didn't really like that route. earlier that day, an anesthesiologist on call at the hospital, who was staying at mercy, had pumped up my bike tires. i had no idea what bike tires should feel like, but apparently mine were really flat. it made a world of difference!

i had a nice dinner of candy strip beets and beet greens! beets are so fun!

50 miles!

2009-07-19T20:55:00.002-05:00

biked 50 miles today (to carlton, mn and back)!! carlton seemed like a ghost town, nothing but the gas station was open. even their public library is not open everyday! all the restaurants and stores were closed. i saw three hardcore bikers a few times on my way to carlton, and saw them again at the gas station at carlton. they were three physicians from abbott biking an 8 day tour of minnesota! they had started in hinckley and were planning to make it to duluth today. (70 miles in all!) the day before, they had started in the twin cities.

anyway, not much of note happened. i do like biking north toward duluth better than biking south. somehow it always feels easier. i have now biked the 44 mile stretch between finlayson and carlton. i'm tempted to drive up to carlton at some point so i can bike the last 15 miles to duluth to see what the trail is like.

agates

2009-07-18T19:55:00.003-05:00

today i joined the almond popping pharmD student and his brother for the agate days festivities. this weekend is agate days in moose lake. apparently moose lake is the agate capital of the world. what is an agate? these rocks with lines and other markings.

we went to the moose lake high school gymnasium, where agate collectors from all over were displaying and selling their rocks. then we had "homestyle cooking" at art's cafe. since i have been freezing for about a week, i had a "hot turkey sandwich". it was two pieces of white bread with turkey breast in between, topped with mashed potatoes and gravy, plus cranberry sauce. it was both disgusting and delicious. major tryptophan food coma after. after lunch we walked over to get in place for the agate stampede. agates, quarters, and a lot of other rocks are spread out on a segment of a street, and when the cannon goes off, everyone rushes out and tries to collect agates and quarters. it was kind of crazy. i found an agate. most people found a little bucket full. but i got no quarters! ;( ;(

later i went back to the moose lake city park to check out art in the park and back to the high school on a mission to find a pair of moose earrings. i thought that would be the perfect souvenior for my time in moose lake. alas i did find a pair, i don't super love them, but they will do if i never find another pair. there's not much shopping here.

even later i biked about 10 miles (to sturgeon lake-ish and back).

then i ate beets+beet greens+chicken breast+this purple root thing. and this morning before i went to the agate days festivities i bought another 2 bunches of beets for next week! my poo poo is going to be red.

friday night in small town minnesota

2009-07-17T22:14:00.003-05:00

nick gave me the grand tour of bruno (population 102) and askov (population 368). then we ate at peggy sue's cafe in willow river (population 309). after, we watched his brother's bar league softball game in denham (population 40!!). driving back into moose lake and mercy, i kind of felt like we were getting back into the "city".

dress!

2009-07-17T16:20:00.003-05:00

i was shadowing an anesthetist today, and the female surgeon in the OR had on a scrub material dress! cool!

funeral home, then duluth.

2009-07-16T20:32:00.003-05:00

i spent a day in cloquet shadowing a mortician/funeral director. it was kind of a quirky day. i'm always the only student shadowing at each site everyday, but for whatever reason, today nick (another student in my class also doing this internship) was scheduled with me at the funeral home. i think it worked out really well, since while usually when i am shadowing it is nice to have the one on one attention from the physician or nurse (etc), today it was nice to have a buddy. it wasn't the dead bodies that bothered me, but the strange/strong personality that makes a funeral director. i think i might have felt a little uncomfortable there on my own.

that said, the funeral director was incredibly nice. he even bought us lunch at mexico lindo. which, coincidentally, someone had mentioned to me on tuesday as the best mexican food ever. it was decent. i had a chimichanga.

we were let out of there early since not much was going on, and since we were now only 20 miles from duluth, we went on a spontaneous adventure to duluth! we saw the waters of lake superior, saw the bridge go up and a giant boat go through, climbed big rocks, skipped little rocks, visited the visitor center, and browsed some shops. IT WAS SO COLD. but it seemed a shame not to go, so we braved it. canal park in duluth seems like it was be really nice and fun if it was warm out.

hearts

2009-07-15T21:38:00.003-05:00

didn't get back until 7:30p, so just biked about 8mi (to sturgeon lake and back).

anyway, when i got back and took my shirt off, i noticed that the sunburn i had gotten a few days back had started peeling from the center of my back out. it formed a perfect heart shape! i wish i could take a picture, but it was just impossible to twist my arm all the way back there.

roots + greens

2009-07-14T19:35:00.003-05:00

i don't know why, lately i think it's funny to cook roots with their own greens. tonight i had onions cooked with their very own green tops and chicken, plus some beet orange pasta from yesterday!

beets: my new favorite food!

2009-07-13T20:38:00.004-05:00

got lazy today. after a day in outpatient oncology, i found myself in ER for a few hours. by the time i got back to walter's house at about 6:30p, i was hungry and tired. no biking, just made dinner. boiled round yellow beets and long red beets, beet greens, and an apple cinnamon brat.

then did i make mac 'n cheese?!

no way! with the left over yellow and red beet juice, i dyed some pasta orange! saved for the next few days. i tasted some; the flavor is SO GOOD!

back to blogging about my food. some things never change.

O_O

2009-07-13T07:29:00.005-05:00

i realized last night as i was going to sleep that: i don't think moose lake has a chinese restaurant! (or any non western european restaurant for that matter now that i think about it.) i don't know why, i feel that is kind of refreshing!

super pleasant sunday!

2009-07-12T20:47:00.012-05:00

yesterday dr. reed (who i had shadowed in the ER on tuesday) called to invite me to her home for sunday! so this morning i set off on a series of gravel roads to her property. i got there at 9a, in time to watch her (and even try my own hand at!) milking her goats! she's got a nice little barn with milking goats, kids, egg laying chickens, barn cats, and a pretty little horse! she brought a large pail of goat's milk in, and i got to watch her make cheese! it's amazing that with the milk of the two goats she milks day and night, dr. reed makes cheese, yogurt, cream, buttermilk, and ice cream.

the property that she has made her home is pretty amazing. she has miles of trails for hiking, lots of maple trees that she taps for sap and actually makes her own maple syrup, a patch (at least) of wild blueberries near the house, lots of trees some of which became the lumber that is her house and her other buildings, solar panels and a wind turbine that is sufficient for 96% of her power needs, compost piles that date back 3 years, and an amazing vegetable garden. she has a greenhouse to get her plants going, then a large outside garden, then another part of her garden that is covered by a hoop house and can stay warmer, then yet another part of her garden that she plants vegetables that can grow more toward winter (at which point she can pull the hoop house over to cover the winter garden). she plants snow peas, shelled peas, green beans, celery, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, different lettuces, different peppers, newt potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, carrots, horseradish, fennel, beets, every kind of tomato, many kinds of chilies, garlic, different shaped eggplants, asparagus, melons, watermelons, pumpkins, squash, strawberries, raspberries, many kinds of other berries, a couple of different apple trees (just from what i remember), and more! then near the house, she has a giant herb garden, with many herbs i have heard of and many more i have not. she has a few different cold rooms in her basement of different coldnesses where she can store a lot of her fruits and vegetables and cheese to eat over the winter. her maple syrup operation is also quite impressive! the trees are tapped, with tubbing that runs all around and into a reservoir, which then has tubing that runs the sap to the syrup house where they have to boil the sap down 25:1 to make syrup. on her property, she has vegetables, dairy products, eggs, and maple syrup (which she uses in the place of sugar for everything) to sustain her and her husband, and a lot extra of many things to give away to friends. i think sustainability is a huge goal of her and her husband!

it was such a pleasant sunday; dr. reed showed me all around her place and we chatted while she made cheese, watered her flower gardens, and made killer blueberry wild rice pancakes! it's amazing that she began to build her home and life on this property at the start of medical school, and even had goats to milk before school started. she really knew what she wanted both in her career and in her life, and went all out for it!

i watched her make those pancakes, but forgot to take mental note of the recipe. i want to document what i remember so that maybe i can recreate it sometime. 1C whole wheat flour + 1C whole wheat pastry flour + 1Tbs baking soda + baking powder (?) + pinch of salt. 1/2 a stick of melted butter + 3 egg yolks + 1/4C maple syrup. combine dry stuff + liquid stuff + goat buttermilk + vanilla (?) + goat milk until correct consistency. then fold in cooked wild rice + blueberries. lastly fold in the egg whites, which were first beaten until stiff. butter the hot griddle and make pancakes! i don't know if i have forgotten ingredients or messed up the order, but doesn't it sound delicious?! we had these amazing pancakes with butter and her maple syrup, plus easy over eggs from her hens, and coffee with goat milk cream. she also sent me home with a bottle of her syrup!

i got back to walker's house a little after 4p, was still feeling lazy after yesterday's biking, but decided the two pancakes and two eggs (one brown, one green!) i had earlier merited some sort of physical activity. i biked a leisurely 12.5 miles round trip just past sturgeon lake (going south) and back. i wanted to make it to this gorgeous farm/ranch i saw last time on my way to willow river. apparently it is owned privately by a family. the building on the left is the house, and the equally gorgeous building on the right is the barn!

the munger trail basically runs right next to hwy61. here's a nice little stretch of the hwy with tall, straight pine trees lining the side!

there you have it in terms of pictures of the munger trail. two posts back were pictures of the trail going north of moose lake, and this post is going south. the rest in between is more or less the same. at least the part that i have ridden, which is about a 30 mile stretch from finlayson to mahtowa.

surprise!

2009-07-12T07:44:00.002-05:00

i guess when you bike straight with the sun coming from one side...you do not get bilateral sunburns. last night i discovered a patch of sunburn only on the left side of my left calf.

i am doomed to have strange tans

2009-07-11T20:12:00.013-05:00

didn't go biking thursday because i got back late from camp heartland. friday i was touring the hospital's lab for 2 hours in the morning, and then at the retail pharmacy in the clinic across the parking lot following a pharmD student (who had a stash of almonds in his white coat pocket and would pop 1 or 2 almonds every 20 mintues or so) around. we got let out at 1:30p (instead of 5p)! so i decided to go for another bike ride! i was really tired, but somehow i still made it relatively easily to mahtowa (25 miles!) and back. the sun was super shiny on the way there, and when i got back i realized i finally got a sunburn. but instead of evening out my farmer's tan, i basically only burned my back because i sit so forward on my bike! + all sorts of straps: bag, camera, bra, tank top...it's a riot back there!

i finally took my camera along, which made me realize even more that, although the trail is wonderfully paved, there is really not a whole lot to see along the way.

after getting back from biking friday evening, i realized my tires were pretty flat. i went to alco and bought a super light tire pump and, on impulse, bought a little "bike computer"!

saturday morning i went on a search for a farmer's market! there is one grocery store in moose lake, and it is kind of crappy and not cheap. some people had mentioned that there might be a farmer's market on saturday in the parking lot of the hockey arena...and there it was! there were only 2 stands...apparently it is still early in farmer's market season. i purchased round yellow beets and long red beets, romaine, onions, some big round purple root thing, green beans, and a cantelope.

then set off (toward the south) for my bike adventure to finlayson! the whole trail has been really flat so far, but near finlayson there is a group of hills. i had to get off my bike twice, once on the way there and once on the way back ;( but it was fun to climb the hills and even more fun to go down them! i totaled 38.6 miles today! i was so tired the last 5 miles. and with my new bike computer, i've realized...i'm a really slowwww biker...i averaged 10.6mi/hr ;(

finally back, i was exhausted. i drove back to mahtowa to purchase some brats. apparently tj's corner store has the best brats. when i biked there, i couldn't really buy brats and bike back with them. for dinner, i had boiled yellow beets, steamed beet greens, and a chicken wild rice brat. it was DELICIOUS! i had never made beets before, i never thought i liked them, but the yellow beets were SO GOOD and sweet. i thought about taking a picture of my dinner, but then i was too tired and hungry, so alas, no picture.

maybe next time i'll actually blog about why i am here, the internship.

tired.

2009-07-08T21:38:00.003-05:00

biked to barnum and back. i think about 12 miles. my butt is starting to hurt...

schedule of last 3 days:
monday. met with CFO of the hospital; occupational therapy
tuesday. ER
wednesday. quality improvement meeting; hospital pharmacy; chiropractor
take home message: paperwork, paperwork, paperwork

blah!

biked 18 miles tonight!

2009-07-07T21:43:00.002-05:00

9 miles to willow river from moose lake.

crafts and cruising

2009-07-06T21:10:00.002-05:00

i have no roommates in this 4 bedroom walters house, and i am officially lonely! last night i realized i had to shorten my dress pants (even though they are already "short"). i had the dinner table all to myself, and i was feeling especially crafty! i spread out my bath towel on the table, got out my iron, some safety pins, and my sewing kit. my hemming looks not too shabby if i do say so myself! first time i've ever hemmed too! i have another pair to do, but i'll probably do it tomorrow night. tonight i am pooped, because i just got back from a...

25 mile bike ride! i biked on the willard munger state trail, from mercy hospital in moose lake to mahtowa (a tiny town, literally 4 square blocks big) and turned back. on the way, i almost biked over a very slithery snake! and there is all sorts of mini-roadkill on the trail. from mahtowa it is another 26 miles to duluth. alternatively, the trail goes as far south as hinckley, 38 miles from moose lake.

i am in moose lake!

2009-07-05T22:08:00.006-05:00

after a brief hiatus...back by popular demand! ha!

i am in moose lake, mn!

after an uneventful but glorious drive up i35...an awesome hwy: smooth, divided, sunny, blue skies, white puffy clouds, 80 degrees outside! there was a slight traffic jam on i35 heading south, all the people coming back from their 4th of july weekends, but i guess not many people heading up north at the end of a long weekend!

walters house, where i am staying, is modest, but new: 4 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1 living room/dining area, 1 fully equipped kitchen, central air. right now i'm on "moose lake wifi 214". is moose lake all on wireless? wow what a savy place. it's definitely a step up from phi rho. also, walters house essentially shares its parking lot with mercy hospital, where i will be doing most of my internshiping, so extremely convenient. unfortunately i have no roommates at the moment, and am not sure when i will get any, so it's quite lonesome here. so far i have settled in, made a giant pot of celery+carrots+chicken+pasta. and a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. some things never change.

tomorrow i will start to explore moose lake. i am most excited about: <http://www.munger-trail.com/traillogs.html>. too bad i can't ride a segment of it each day.

anyway, for those who are still interested in getting honors for summer session! yesterday i realized that moose lake is only 1hr45mins from phi rho...so all the noncampers+kalie should come up and camp one weekend!!! unfortunately i am not allowed to have any guests at walters house, but i bet there is good camping around here! or you guys should come up and bike with me for the day!

thus is the start of my 1 month summer internship in medicine (sim) in rural minnesota! i realized on the drive up that my summer is going to be all about going back to my "roots". even though i have lived in mn since i was 2 (save the 4 years of undergraduate), rochester is hardly representative of mn. for the first half of my summer i am going to experience up north mn for the first time! and then later, i'll take it back even further and go to taiwan for 3 weeks!

and so it begins.

crafts

2009-05-19T07:42:00.005-05:00

new bike!

2009-04-11T01:32:00.002-05:00

boston highlights

2009-03-26T23:03:00.015-05:00

back in boston to hang out with shereen and tristan and megan! it was trissy's birthday, so shereen and i made a traditional peanut butter creation: quadruple layered peanut butter cake with chocolate frosting!

delerium nocturnum at otherside.

cold and windy revere beach!

our trip was amazing: running, pilates with meggles, revere beach, arboretum, chicago's, otherside, bloc 11, plus the best part was big digits at tt's. and a surprising turn of events...shereen picked up a free magazine at revere beach and discovered that tristan da cunha was playing at pa's lounge. rex complex, which was playing with tristan da cunha, was AMAZING! shereen took pictures of rex complex on my camera.

sunshine on the institute. i never knew that the view of the river just outside of senior haus was so gorgeous!

birthday card, etc.

2009-03-15T00:18:00.004-05:00

my roommate's birthday is tomorrow and this card is waiting for her on the kitchen table!

we also had a party on friday, which involved funfetti cupcakes and a peaches+cookies+cream ice cream cake and bowling! (desserts made by me of course.)

i am a ridiculously bad bowler, but i look SUPER speedy in this picture!

projects...

2009-03-10T19:33:00.021-05:00

i haven't posted in a while. since, i've been super crafty!

starting with halloween ('08), i convinced my roommate to dress up as "things that are striped" after being inspired to wear ribbon!! she went as a zebra and i as a busy bumble bee! i wore a black shirt and pinned yellow ribbon all around me. too bad you cannot see my wings in this picture. miraculously, they turned out quite like insect wings, wire frame, white plastic bag body, and kind of tear-drop-shaped and turned down.

next i tried to think of something cute and practical to give my friends for christmas.

blank canvas totes with felt cutouts, sewed on by embroidery floss. all, of course, signed by me!

but maybe the best part of christmas was that i embroidered our stockings!

and then, after my first experience with an advent calender, it was off to winter break! i couldn't believe i had finished a semester of med school, 1/4 of our classes before step 1 of the boards. it had been a productive semester (wrt to projects anyway).

after the initial bento making burst, i had not kept up the lunches like i thought i might. right before break, i went to an asian grocery store and found some rice molds and veggie cutters! my second semester lunches don't quite live up to first semester, but i've been doing some interesting things with meatballs. [turkey+tofu+celery or turkey+tofu+bittermelon or turkey+tofu+eggplant or turkey+canned pumpkin (my favorite)]

finally, last thursday, i went to school for 8am class, but was 5 minutes late. so...i just decided to skip the whole day. i built a layout (and designed the logo!) for pnc's new newsletter!

then the second half of my day i made a birthday card for albert with all the extra felt i still have.

my roommate (the zebra) and i topped the day off with a grocery trip. it was the perfect day.

i miss...

2008-11-14T21:02:00.001-06:00

college,
and shereen,
and shauna,
and crazy times,
and chipette halloween night,
and postering allston,
and the grocery cart ride down mass ave.

10/27/08 lunch

2008-10-26T20:06:00.001-05:00

exam question

2008-10-25T21:30:00.003-05:00

an old exam question from my biochem class:

While of the following statements is FALSE? DNA chips:
a) can be used for detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms and for measuring the levels of mRNAs.
b) refer to DNA adhered to a surface that is available for base pairing with a complementary probe.
c) can have hundreds of thousands of unique sequences on a single chip slightly greater than 1 square centimeter.
d) have been used to show that different cancer cells have distinct patterns of gene expression.
e) are now the currency of preference at Las Vegas casinos.

i hate when they write such ridiculously obvious questions. i'd rather that they write a really easy question that is not so obvious so i can at least feel good about myself when i get it right.

o yeah, the answer is "e".

10/21/08 lunch

2008-10-20T16:52:00.001-05:00

10/20/08 lunch

2008-10-19T23:33:00.001-05:00

omg i've seriously outdone myself.

10/19/08 lunch

2008-10-18T22:13:00.002-05:00

first earring hanger

2008-10-18T21:01:00.002-05:00

omg i found this, which, i think is the only picture of my first earring hanger!

10/18/08 dinner

2008-10-18T19:44:00.006-05:00

second bento.

hello kitty doesn't quite look like hello kitty, but i'll try to improve next time. i think the problem is all the face stuff is too high up. she actually should have a much larger forehead. and also the whiskers are too in the middle of her head. i should get props for the shape of her head though! not perfect, but hand formed! other people have hello kitty head molds for their rice. one problem was that the carrots for her bow did not stick well, so i'll have to think of a solution for either sticking them better, or use something other than carrots.

i also fried up a little stack of <3-shaped eggs to prepare for future lunches. i am getting really good at making these eggs!!

my first bento: 10/18/08 lunch

2008-10-17T23:58:00.004-05:00

and hopefully more to come!

<3-shaped egg

2008-10-17T22:23:00.008-05:00

today i was eating lunch and this boy in my class had a really cute lunch, which reminded me, i need to make cute lunches. this is also part of enjoying the small pleasures of life! i spent the afternoon looking up cute bento creations online, but realized i'd have to set my goals a little lower due to time and equipment and budget constraints. then i remembered...

when i was in the netherlands, i think this was in rotterdam, i bought a cute little heart-shaped frying pan! to make heart-shaped eggs and pancakes! so tonight i broke it out!

the first attempt looked so cute in the pan...

but when i tried to flip the egg, it didn't really look heart-shaped anymore. for the second attempt i whipped the egg before hand, and only used 2/3 of the egg...

but i think the heart-shapedness of this egg is still questionable. finally, for the third attempt, i just used the last 1/3 of the previously whipped egg...

i think it is definitely a <3-shaped egg!

being a doctor might be a miserable existence...

2008-10-16T23:30:00.006-05:00

i'm starting to realize that being a doctor might be a miserable existence... BUT, i've also learned to enjoy life's small pleasures! here's a summary:

1. after anatomy finished at the beginning of october, i took out my cute sheets and blankets again!

2. then i was shopping at walmart (which i love to do b/c i feel like everyone hates walmart (b/c they are stupid and pretentious) and i just feel bad for it) and came across some awesome supplies and realized i needed to bring back the earring hanger! i had made one in my dorm room at mit, but the one i built last week (pictured below) is, without a doubt, AMAZING.

3. last week i started using my qoo lunch box and this week i started using my small hello kitty tote that is just about the size of a lunch for my...lunch!

4. tonight i rediscovered some cute pins i have!

5. and tonight i finally took pictures of the highlights of my CUTE room! photo-tour of my room begins here.

6. finally, since my last post, i've gone to some pretty good music! a couple weeks ago i went to see thee oh sees at the turf club. they were pretty good, but i REALLY liked one of the opening bands, skoal kodiak (who are local!). turns out turf club is a pretty great venue; they have a smaller stage downstairs and had a band (they were pretty good but i have no idea who they were) going while the upstairs was setting up between bands, which is pretty awesome for someone like me who was again alone and awkard at the show. i also think i like gay beast (also local), but have not seen them yet. AND! on tuesday i went to DEERHOOF! which confirms my theory that only asians can do cute. anyway, it was an amazing show.

the scarring party

2008-09-27T23:40:00.003-05:00

last night i went to my first concert since moving up to minneapolis. there was a free show at the whole, which is a venue in the basement of the student union. i had never been, or heard of the bands, but the first band, the scarring party, from milwaukee, seemed worth checking out. the whole is actually a pretty decent venue, but since it is a university venue, there is no bar. which, doens't really bother me, i guess. unfortunately there were also not many people there...

but...

O_O the scarring party is AMAZING! i hate describing music, so just check them out or their myspace!

first attempts

2008-08-31T19:58:00.003-05:00

today i tried using my calligraphy brush, which was like $3, which = crappy. these are my first attempts from today and yesterday.

med school + mid life crisis

2008-08-30T20:48:00.008-05:00

it's been 3 weeks of med school.

9 days of lecture + anatomy lab, 4 study days, 1 written exam + 1 practical exam, and so far 3 days of partying + class/lab + general laziness

i feel like i've been at this forever. there is no easing into med school, you just get thrown into the cold cold water. but after two solid weeks of studying, and taking the exam, and getting my score back, i finally feel i can do the next 2 years. i had definitely never studied so much in my life.

at the same time, i know i can't carry on continuously like i did the past two weeks. i had a mini mid life crisis today and went out and bought watercolors and brushes. so here i am, writing, listening to the song shauna and i recorded, and looking at a flower i painted and taped to my wall. i find a little comfort in my creations.

on painting: inspired by vermeer, i wanted to paint clouds, but when i started, i realized that to paint watercolor clouds you have to paint blue around them to make the white clouds and that all of a sudden seemed extremely difficult. flowers are probably the lamest and easiest to paint with watercolors. hopefully next time i'll challenge myself a little more.

also, i just got a sore throat.

blindness

2008-08-11T23:18:00.002-05:00

i feel like in asian dramas, going blind is a big archetype, and usually it is caused by an accident like falling. is it that easy to go blind from falling? hopefully we learn this in medical school...

white coat

2008-08-08T23:21:00.002-05:00

and now, medical school begins...

holland

2008-07-31T14:51:00.007-05:00

i had a wonderfully productive 2 weeks visiting shauna in the netherlands! i visited just about every city in the netherlands and also brussels. also, shauna and i wrote/recorded a song (more to come on that later)! no time to blog in detail or caption my pictures in the near future, but i did manage to chronicle my vacation at picasa.

ti-89: found O_O

2008-07-04T13:38:00.003-05:00

OMG MY MOM JUST CALLED ME AND SAID THAT SHE FOUND THE TI-89 MY BROTHER LOST IN OUR COUCH CUSHIONS!

LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER I BOUGHT ONE!

>_<

ti-89: bought

2008-07-03T22:57:00.010-05:00

when my brother started taking UMTYMP last fall, i (in a strange moment of kindness) gave my brother my ti-89. i figured i wouldn't need it anymore, that i was going to med school, and leaving any use for a graphing calculator behind me. then, of course, after a couple of months, my brother lost it. and my parents had to get him a new calculator. at which point i realized, THEY DON'T EVEN MAKE THE TI-89 ANYMORE! it has been replaced by the ti-89 titanium, an uglier, heavier, more memory version of the ti-89 i first got in high school.

the more i thought about it, the angrier i got! mostly at myself for just offering up my ti-89...just like that! i've now lost it forever! AND i suspect that my brother purposely "lost" (ditched it somewhere at school) the calculator so that my parents would buy him the ti-89 titanium that all his classmates had. i guess what i thought was a nice thing to do actually condemned him into being the kid with the shitty calculator. (he was probably like the kid with ti-83. totally lame.) but...i was quite attached to my calculator. in fact, i HATE the heavy titanium version!! so ugly and heavy! OMG SO MAD AT MYSELF!

this past week, i have again been thinking about my lost ti-89. even though i won't be doing a lot of math in med school, graphing calculators are still way easier to use than scientific calculators!! even if you are just doing arithmetic, the big screen with multiple lines and memory is essential! HOW CAN YOU STAND A SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR?!?! anytime you do anything your previous line disappears from sight! WHA! so, even though i just got 2 (one pink, one yellow) GREAT calculators in taiwan, i decided, i would just die if i didn't get my ti-89 back! SO...i made my first ebay purchase tonight! $74.01 + $6.99 shipping for a (the seller claims brand new) ti-89. is it new? i have my doubts. but at least, hopefully since the seller claims it is new, it won't have any obvious wear. actually, another seller was selling one still in the package! but...i just had to know TODAY that i'd have it...and that sale wasn't going to end for 3 days.

i actually should have another graphing calculator, my first love, the ti-85. but, i can't find that anywhere!! it should be in my room...BUT WHERE IS IT! alas, i loved the solid look of my ti-85. i like the functionality of the ti-89, but aesthetically, the 85 is my true love! i am tempted to buy one of those on ebay too! the 85 you can get for like under $20 i think!

anyway, i feel much better now that i have won the bidding on my 89.

another vacation!

2008-06-22T15:26:00.004-05:00

i just bought my plane tickets for another vacation! i'm going to visit shauna in the netherlands during the last two weeks of july. then it's the start of med school on aug 6!

in other exciting news, this is my first post from my new computer! a few weeks ago i got my 15.4" thinkpad t61 in the mail!

spending so much money lately...

fort san domingo diy

2008-05-24T17:43:00.008-05:00

i finally decided to make my fort san domingo diy (a gift from taoyuan tour buddies, which we picked out together at taiwan storyland!). it was basically a postcard sized piece of tag board with the fort san domingo pattern on it. when i started, i realized, it was a bit more hard/complicated than i had imagined O_O ! tools i used included: scissors and box cutter, metal ruler to make straight creases, elmer's glue and q tip for glue application, PATIENCE! it's not perfect...but i thought it turned out decent. hopefully the resemblance to the real fort san domingo (bottom picture) is apparent. more pictures at picasa!

cute stuff from taiwan

2008-05-22T21:07:00.005-05:00

on my picasa, i posted pictures of a sample of the cute stuff i got in taiwan. check it out!

day19: shilin, danshui

2008-05-17T15:05:00.014-05:00

wednesday, 4/16/2008:

this was my last day in taiwan! it has been a great trip. i went to some interesting places, ate some amazing foods, and did some great shopping. and i met so many interesting people along the way. and, for the first time, i can really say i have become friends with my cousins. i am going to miss EVERYTHING and EVERYONE! anyway, getting along with the activities of my last day...

the plan was to go to my uncle and aunt's familymart convenience store in danshui to visit my cousin (who was working there) and eat the most amazing steamed dumplings ever. before i left, i ate some ore of my pudding. on the way to danshui, i shopped the shilin traditional market, bought some stuff (like a vegetable peeler and a REALLY cute pig watch for 100NT/$3!) and basically ate my way to danshui. first, at the traditional market i got a shuang bao tai (twins), basically fried dough with sugar...delicious! then outside the mrt station i bought a zhuabing (kind of like a scallion pancake, but more fluffed up) with basil and an egg on top! the most important goal for the day was eating the steamed dumplings (picture) that are sold right outside my uncle and aunt's convenience store...i have been waiting to eat them my whole trip! last time i was in taiwan, i ate them, and they were the absolute most amazing! but before even making it to danshui, i was already REALLY full! i took the mrt to danshui, then transferred to the red38 bus and got off at zhenli university (aletheia university) stop, right in front of the convenience store. first order of business was the steamed dumplings. it was the height of lunch time and there was a huge line! last time i was there, the owner told me the two tricks for making his dumplings. 1) the cabbage must be dehydrated by mixing them with salt, incubate, then wash the salt off, and spin the water off the cabbage. this makes the cabbage crisp! 2) steaming the dumplings in high heat so they are done really quick! tada...the best dumplings ever. by now i am beyond full.

for the rest of the afternoon, i kept browsing the small convenience store, and basically ate whenever my stomach didn't feel like it was going to explode. this was my last chance before coming back to minnesota!! first, i had a milk flavored pudding, it was white! [and now i will rate all the puddings i've had in the past few days: (1) milk pudding (weiquan), (2) egg pudding (imei), (3) red bean pudding (carrefour/generic), (4) egg pudding (weiquan). 1 = best] to drink i had a winter melon tea, pretty average thing to drink in taiwan, but pretty refreshing, i like winter melon tea a lot. then i was hanging out behind the counter with my cousin, not the widest of places, and i walked by the espresso machine and all of a sudden *shshshshhshhhh!!* !! the machine just started apparently i had brushed the mocha button! apparently this happens a lot, my cousin quickly grabbed a cup to catch my mocha...it was actually pretty good!! a mr. brown espresso machine! then, while browsing the store, i came across some REALLY interesting snacks, tiny sugar coated crabs. i tried one...it tasted like a mouth full of harbor! the most disgusting "food" i ate during my entire trip (maybe entire life!). my cousin seemed to enjoy them and ate the rest of the package. later my cousin had kfc for lunch, and of course i had a piece, whoa the spicy chicken is REALLY good! taiwan's kfc also has egg tarts! finally, my last accomplishment at the familymart was drinking a row of yangleduo! once during the trip when i was walking on the streets of taipei, i saw someone was drinking a row of yangleduo. they weren't drinking just one of the tiny yangleduos, and they weren't drinking one of the big bottles, but a row of tiny ones (usually the tiny yangleduos are packaged together in shrink wrap in rows of 5). it never occurred to me to drink a row still stuck together! what a cool idea!! so i had to try that. because, one tiny yangleduo is never enough. but somehow i think it's not the same to drink the big bottles of yangleduo...this was the perfect way. anyway, the afternoon i spent at familymart was really productive in terms of eating. i also saw some interesting snacks: a package of cheese singles that came with a plastic cheese singles man figure, "crispy mint" m&m's (is this novel? or do i not shop the candy aisle enough?), sushi flavored chips, seaweed flavored chips, cartons of iced lattes that advertised latte art on the front (too bad it doesn't look like that inside!). as it was approaching dinner time, i was still completely stuffed!

next my aunt took me to buy some xi bing (chinese people's equivalent of wedding cakes) to take home. they are meant to be given away to celebrate weddings, but are tasty whether you have occasion to eat them or not! they kind of remind me of mooncakes, but are flatter, bigger, and way tastier. my favorite one had a hmong bean and salty egg yolk filling, but there were a lot of different fillings. even though i was so full, the store owner kept encouraging us to sample everything...this stuff is really rich!

back at home i'm about to explode, but we are supposed to go to dinner, my last meal in taiwan! first i do most of my packing, hoping that i'll digest some of the food i ate, but no such luck! it was SO HOT i thought i was going to melt. about an hour later, it was time to head out for dinner. we had planned on going to hot pot (my favorite type of meal), but we could tell my grandpa really want to go to steak, since he KEPT being like, ellen you should try the steak. so, despite being grossly full, we went to eat steak. it had a buffet salad bar, but it was really all i could do to just eat the steak...and drink lots of tea to wash it down. but i felt like my grandpa would be upset if it appeared i didn't like the steak, so i worked really hard at it. all i can say is, it wasn't a pleasant experience. it would have been pretty good. after dinner, my aunt took me on a quick trip to buy some pineapple cakes and it was home to finish packing.

the next morning, my flight would leave shilin at 5am to catch a 7:30am flight back to osaka, detroit, then minnesota. an end to the most amazing 3 weeks!

WORTH EATING: milk pudding, imei egg pudding, shuangbaotai, zhuabing with basil and egg, steamed dumplings, row of yangleduo

full set of pictures at picasa!

day18: yehliu, keelung

2008-05-14T23:33:00.011-05:00

tuesday, 4/15/2008:

tuesday morning i ate another two pudding cups and an ice cream bar for breakfast! and then hurried on my way to yehliu. the fastest way is to take a bus from taipei directly to yehliu, but for some reason i insisted on taking a train to keelung first... from taipei train station i took a train to keelung train station, which had a helpful tourist information center, which told me to take the keelung <--> jinshan bus to yehliu. 45NT ($1.50) gets you the ~40 minute ride to yehliu. when i got on the bus, i asked the driver to let me know when to get off for yehliu. but as we were riding along, it seemed to be already more than 40 minutes and the bus driver hadn't said anything! but the view out the window was especially spectacular after 40 minutes, so i was busy looking at the great view of taiwan's north shore. i love rocky coastlines! finally it seemed to be too long and the route was getting away from the coast, so i asked the driver if we had passed yehliu. he was like, o no i forgot!! he was like, don't pay, just get off and cross the street, and take the return bus a couple stops, be careful when cross the street!! lol...he could tell i was a total tourist i guess. so i got on the next bus, which came pretty soon, there's a bus like every 10 minutes. and a couple of stops and only 22NT (~75 cents) later, i was at the yehliu stop! despite taking the bus past my stop, i thought the whole experience was a good deal: half price to yehliu and i saw some great views of the ocean! from the bus stop there were signs to yehliu geopark, but i still had to ask directions a few times. on the way there i passed yehliu harbor, which smelled GROSS. after a short walk, i arrived at yehliu geopark!

yehliu geopark is a small peninsula on taiwan's north shore. the small area is full of interesting rock formations, and is most famous for a rock formation in the shape of a queen's head (picture)! i had heard that, due to natural weathering, the neck of the queen's head is getting thinner and thinner and will one day break, so i made a point of going to check her out during this trip. basically the rocks at yehliu are harder on top than on the bottom, so erosion makes them thinner on the bottom than on top, which makes them look like enormous mushrooms (picture). there are some footpaths on the peninsula, but for the most part you are free to walk off the footpaths and into the formations and touch them. the only formation that was off limits was the queen's head. past the main rock formations, you can continue to make a loop around the peninsula. i made it almost to the tip of the peninsula, but then came back around the same way since there was no one else there and i got a little scared. there is no designated route, no footpath, only large rocks and large waves... but according to the brochure, you can make the loop. i found the whole peninsula to be a spectacular, mysterious, even magical place! the rock formations themselves are pretty strange looking, the areas with water pools and mossy rocks are quite beautiful, and the peninsula is a great balance of vegetation, rock, and waves! even though i was at the park in the early afternoon and it was VERY sunny and hot, i really enjoyed the 2-3 hours i spent walking around the peninsula. i felt like a fantastic story full of pixies and elves could definitely be set there. at the end of my taiwan vacation, this was definitely one of the highlights of my trip! on my way out of yehliu i walked through a very touristy market that sold a lot of seafood products like dried squid. there were a couple vendors that sold fried seaweed! i tried a sample, was pretty good. then i took the bus back to keelung.

next i took a bus to reifang train station (faster than train) to take a train to pingxi. the pingxi line is another small tourist rail line (like jiji). but when i got to reifang, the information center person told me not to go because it was too late in the day, and that i wouldn't be able to see anything by the time i caught the next train. disappointed, i turned around and went back to keelung. (although, one good thing is...now i feel like i really know how to take the bus in and out of keelung...)

the next destination was keelung's miaokou night market, famous for it's foooood! by the time i got to miaokou (a short walk from keelung train station) it was 6:30pm, and i hadn't eaten since breakfast! unfortunately, the whole experience wasn't as expected. night market food really requires experience. when i ate at danshui, my cousin knew what was good, what was not. at miaokou i was on my own, and i had varied luck. first i had an oyster omelet, which is supposed to be really good at miaokou (being by the ocean and all). i sat down and ordered, and as i was eating, i realized that i had sat down right in front of the vat of oysters waiting to be cooked...the smell was totally unappetizing! but the oyster omelet was decent, but not really one of my favorite foods. i tried to look for food that i hadn't eaten before. i saw these interesting fried buns. all i can say is...it turned out to be a total waste of stomach space. i think mine had tuna and green onions inside. next i saw these fried crabs, which was REALLY tasty! but difficult to eat in a night market setting. that food vendor didn't have any tables to sit at, so i looked for something to eat that had tables so i could also eat my crabs. i sat down at a dessert stand and had another shu bing, this time with peanut soup in it. the one i had at taiwan storyland was way better, too much peanut soup in this one. finally, i got in line to buy my taro flavored pao pao bing (bubble ice), ice shaved so fine it's like ice cream. miaokou is also famous for its pao pao bing, and it was decent. two things i should have eaten but didn't: ding bian cu (some kind of soup with flat stuff in it?) and an quan sanmingzi (some kind of sandwich). well, i got to save some stuff to eat for the next time i go to taiwan!

finally i walked back to the train station and took a train back to taipei and went back home to shilin. on the way back, i finally took pictures of the two checker board stores near the shilin mrt station. these stores have become popular all over taiwan. basically the stores are full of cubbies, which are rented out, so that anyone can rent one or two cubbies and sell anything they want! there is always a lot of random and interesting things in those stores!

what i thought was interesting was that, on the day i went to national palace museum i didn't eat lunch and was unbearably hungry by 4pm, while traipsing around keelung area until 6:30pm without lunch was completely bearable...i guess the national palace museum is not sufficient to take my mind off hunger...

WORTH SEEING: yehliu

WORTH EATING: fried crabs

full set of pictures at picasa!

day17: shilin

2008-05-11T17:23:00.012-05:00

monday, 4/14/2008:

again, my cousin was still sleeping when i got up in the morning, so more ktv homework! we were planning on going again later in the day, so it was cram time.

as we were getting ready to leave, we started eating the lao tien lu stuff. OMG SO GOOD! seriously, how do they get the spices so just right?? the duck wing was exceptional! and so was the stomach thing, i'm not sure what animal it is of, but it was very crisp!

after breakfast we went to carrefour, kind of like a super walmart. i had hoped to get some handy kitchen supplies (i really wanted to get some metal chinese style spoons) and stationary and candy and other miscellaneous things. turns out i was pretty disappointed. i didn't find any kitchen supplies i liked and the stationary section was too small to have any good choices. i did get some pretty good gum, airwaves, my favorite gum!! i don't even like gum, but i always stock up on airwaves when i go to taiwan. we don't have good gum in the states! i also got a pack of this really good japanese grape hard candy that has a gooey filling and tastes EXACTLY like a grape. but the most important thing is that i realized i hadn't eaten my fair share of ice cream / popsicles and pudding! my first choice was a box of morinaga milk caramel ice cream bars (picture). packaged in small yellow boxes, morinaga milk caramels were a staple for me growing up. every trip to taiwan involved stocking up on this candy! this was the first time i saw ice cream bars of that flavor! there were also ovaltine ice cream bars, which i thought would be really good! but i opted to get taro flavored ice cream bars instead. i figured two boxes of ice cream bars was enough for the last 3 days i had left in taiwan. my cousin also picked out some more muoji ice cream. and then i also picked some yangleduo popsicles, kind of like a chubby mr. freezey. then it was to the pudding section! i picked a strip of weiquan brand and a strip of imei brand pudding. then i also decided to try a strip of the carrefour generic brand pudding in red bean flavor. each strip had 3 pudding cups! next, my cousin and i picked out some food for lunch in the deli section. they were selling various yan shuei ji (salty chicken?) parts. my favorite part of the chicken is its back, and you could just buy the strip of the chicken that is its spine! purchases in hand, we went back home to eat! ...mainly i wanted to try my desserts ;)

after lunch, my cousin went to take a nap and i continued my ktv homework.

then, my two cousins and their bfs and i met up at the holiday ktv again! we got right down to business, here are some of the songs i sang:

rainie's yu shang ai
rainie's jie muo qiao ke li
ariel lin's fei ni muo shu
danson's zao fei ji
danson's zui ai hai shi ni
SHE's wu yue tian
SHE's lao po
jordan chen's wo ai de ren

again, the songs are not picked because i necessarily like them the most, but because i found them easy to pick up!

after 5 hours of ktv, we left and strolled through shilin night market on our way home. i had a "da bing bao xiao bing" (big bread wraps small bread), which is one of the famous food vendor products at shilin night market. the "small bread" is fried, and then crushed, then flavor added, then wrapped in the "big bread", which is a large moist flat bread. i had black pepper flavored, my cousin had taro flavored. pretty good! then home, and more ice cream bars later, sleep.

WORTH EATING: morinaga milk caramel ice cream bars, taro ice cream bars, imei pudding, chicken spine, da bing bao xiao bing

full set of pictures at picasa!

day16: ximending, shilin

2008-05-10T23:29:00.010-05:00

sunday, 4/13/2008:

so as my cousin and i were planning to go see sharon li, i asked if we could see any other celebrities...ones that i actually like! my cousin searched a while online and found that yoga lin (too bad that vcr clip doesn't show clips of him crying because that is always my favorite he looks like he's in kindergarten and you just want to hold his hand and help him cross the street!) was going to go to ximending!! i LOVED the first season of one million star and yoga was definitely my favorite contestant...and the winner! anyway, sunday was the day we were going to go see yoga! but my cousin hadn't gotten up yet, so i started my ktv homework, by first trying to think up songs that i knew. i had a whole list of them before my cousin got up!

we left around 12:30pm to go to ximending, and yoga was supposed to show up at 2:00pm. when we got to the spot, there was a small crowd (picture) in front of a small stage. the crowd was much smaller than i had imagined. all these girls were sitting in front of the stage, holding little signs that were buns and said "yoga". a few people had big signs. some people had signs of lcd lights! and one person even had a peter pan sign! my cousin and i tried to squeeze in from the side, but i think we were not appreciated, hehe. they were broadcasting some of the songs he sang on the show, about 5 songs, and they kept looping. yoga, was of course, late. a dj went up on the stage and started talking and then was saying how yoga had this surprise new look. we waited patiently. finally this van drives up, and then tries to back up right next to the stage, but has to make a turn to do that, seriously almost ran us down. of course we didn't want to move and lose our spot so the van just really slowly backed up next to us, and we were basically squeezed as much as possible. somewhat frightening, but taiwan drivers have really good technique (if not courteous), right? anyway, then yoga POPPED out of the van and OMG O_O what happened to him?!?!?! purple satin shirt and purple belt, hair slicked back, all because he decided to sing an elvis song, his only song. i was pretty shocked. i come all this way to see him and he turns himself into a cheap elvis impersonator (and a really bad one at that)! the whole event was supposed to be to advertise for his concert...not so we could hear him sing, hehe. but seriously, he was always so good at picking songs in one million star. and now he's turned into a monster singing an elvis song. omg i can't believe it. i don't have words for how upset i was (and still am). anyway, i still took a lot of pictures.

after the yoga fiasco, my cousin took me to this japanese restaurant (he ming?) i think still in ximending. but first, she took me to a papaya milk shop! papaya milk is one of my favorite foods! i can't believe i hadn't had any yet my whole trip! anyway, onto the japanese restaurant. probably the best thing i had there was my kiwi cocktail! lots of kiwi chunks in it! i had a beef dish that was raw when it came and the waitress lighted the pot so that it cooked on the table. it was okay, more of a show than tasty. my cousin had this sticky pancake thing, pretty good. she also got these other sticky cake things as appetizers, not too impressive. anyway, after some slight shopping in ximending, it was time for dinner! my cousin was meeting her bf and his uncle+family for dinner and insisted on dragging me along. but before leaving ximending, my cousin took me to lao tien lu, the best place to get "lu wei", which is basically all sorts of things cooked in soy sauce and spices. we got duck wings, chicken wings, duck eggs, some kind of stomach, tofu, and there were so many different things there and a million different kinds of tofu. we didn't eat it until the next day, but i will just say now, OMG IT WAS SO GOOD! usually i'm not a huge lu wei fan because i'm not a big soy sauce fan, but seriously it was really good.

o yeah and on the way out of ximending we stopped in a convenience store and there was an incubator for warm drinks...it was all cans in there! lots of canned coffee in there, but there was also canned ovaltine! AND SUPAU! who drinks supau warm?!?!

anyway, my cousin's bf's uncle+family we went to eat sizzling steak plus salad bar. the steak was a lot like the steak my cousin took me to the other day. the salad bar was pretty normal, but had some interesting chinese dishes, for example chicken feet that still looked like chicken feet but already had the bones removed! SO FULL! especially because we just ate not too long ago...

but then on the way back home, walking back from the mrt stop, my cousin is like, omg the minced meat on rice is SO GOOD at this one stand, so she convinces me i have to try it, so a bowl of rice with minced meat later, my cousin is like, omg the "yan shu" (basically where there's lots of choices but everything is fried) at this other stand is SO GOOD, so then somehow we are standing there picking stuff out... my favorite is chicken butts on a skewer (usually 5), and we also picked squid, chicken chunks, and chicken skins (yeah just the skins, fried...). so then the food vendor fries it, and right before being done, throws in some basil (the best part!). the chicken butts and chicken skins are SO GOOD!

in case you haven't noticed, i have now entered the phase in my trip where i crazily eat everything in sight...not many days left and so many things left to eat!

anyway, back at home, my other cousin takes me into her room and she watches me as i do my ktv homework, practice practice practice. what i found is that, it's not about necessarily picking songs you like (because of the short practice time), but picking songs that you, for whatever reason, are better at singing, both lyric and melody -wise. i couldn't possibly memorize the lyrics, but i had to get really used to reading the words fast and how the melody goes, because at ktv, when the singer's voice is gone, sometimes it's pretty hard to figure out how you are actually supposed to sing, it depends on the song. what is cool is that on youtube, you can get a lot of the mvs in the ktv version, so that the words are really big and you can follow them as they turn blue! in these videos the singer's voice is still there, which is important for initial practicing, but then i also found a really good youtube account that has ktv videos in which the singer's voice is muted!

WORTH EATING: papaya milk, lao tien lu, yan shu

full set of pictures at picasa!

day15: din tai fung, guang nan, bulk earrings, ktv

2008-05-10T17:43:00.009-05:00

saturday, 4/12/08:

again a late start to the day! i called my aunt and we decided to meet at the sogo at the zhongxiao fuxing mrt stop. when i got there, i wait and waited for about 15 minutes, which wasn't that long...but then my aunt called and was like, omg there are 2 sogos! when exiting the zhongxiao fuxing mrt stop, if you take one exit, you go into a sogo, if you take a different exit, you go into another completely separate sogo! anyway, then my aunt and i found each other. then we walked a small ways and she took me to din tai fung, a restaurant known for its xiaolongbao, which has very thin skin but does not rip (apparently a huge feat). the restaurant was packed and there was a line waiting outside (it's a pretty famous restaurant i think), but we used the wait time to decide what to order. here's what we ate (keep in mind that it's just my aunt and i): 10 xiaolongbao (picture), 10 steamed vegetable dumplings, 1 vegetable baozi, a plate of wontons, 1 order of drunken chicken, 1 black pepper pork steak, 1 taro baozi. the food was GOOOD. my favorite was the vegetable steamed dumplings. the wontons, which were not in a soup, were actually very good. i had never had them like that before! i thought the xiaolongbao were pretty good, but i actually like thicker skinned xiaolongbao (like what i had in hualien), so it was hard to appreciate the effort they put in to make the skins so thin. when ordering, my aunt keeps being like, omg should we order more, omg pick more stuff. so i'm thinking she's got a big appetite. then we are already eating and she keeps being like, omg do you want to order more? so i'm eating eating and it's like so much food, and she's like, eat more! i'm like, omg help me! she's like, i can't eat a lot because my doctor says i have a little diabetes. O_O well it was really tasty. actually the best was the ginger that they kept on serving, which was sliced into super thin slivers. you eat the xiaolongbao by dipping it in black vinegar and ginger. besides the food, ding tai fung is really very crowded, you sit pretty close to the next table. another thing that contributes to the crowded atmosphere is that the servers are checking on you every 5 minutes, bringing you ginger, or taking away empty steamers and plates. since the place is so crowded, it is really cool that there is a big pouch next to your table where you can put your purses, and then cover it with a cloth. finally, i thought the bathroom experience was pretty unique at ding tai fung. the toilet has an armrest kind of thing on the right with a lot of buttons knobs...i wasn't really sure, except that it appears there is some butt washing functions. the flushing was not on the armrest, but in a normal spot on the toilet (thank god). then after i noticed another thing that looked like a soap dispenser, but it was a dispenser for toilet seat cleaner!

anyway, after going to the bathroom, my aunt and i left ding tai fung to shop a bit on the streets outside of sogo. this area had okay street shopping, but it's overpriced because this is a more expensive area. but then you have a better chance of coming across better stuff, although i thought the gong guan area shopping was still better.

at around 3:30pm, i said goodbye to my aunt and met up with my cousin at taipei train station mrt to accomplish goal (2) from the day before: go to the area near taipei train station for some shopping. again, the goals for this shopping trip were 1) stationary and 2) bulk earrings. but, before starting our goals, we saw a small crowd outside the station, and checked out what was all the fuss. at the time i had no idea who this random guy was that everyone was watching, but my cousin said he was pretty famous, so i took pictures of him. turns out...he is jordan chan, a famous singer from hong kong who was the original singer for wo ai de ren, a song which yoga lin sang so well on one million star!!

anyway, last time after coming home from guang nan, my cousin explained to me the usefulness of crayons! she uses them as highlighters in her textbook! it works great because they don't bleed, you can definitely see through it, and also come in lots of colors!! so this trip back to guang nan (now with my other cousin) was to purchase some crayons! you might wonder why i would make a trip just to buy crayons, but i can only say that taiwan crayons are way better than american crayons!! when we got to guang nan, i first went to the notebook section and discovered that, in the week i was gone, guang nan had put out a whole host of new little notebooks! so i picked out 4 more little notebooks that had nice plastic covers, before going to the pen section to pick out a crayon of each color! again guang nan was incredibly crowded, but since i had experience and knew exactly what i wanted, the trip was relatively quick. plus, we were in a huge hurry! next stop was the bulk earring place again. last time i had only shopped in one store, and this time, basically we only had time to shop in two stores. the main mission was to buy some earring hooks so that i could change the hooks on my earrings if i had a pair that had bad hooks. more earrings and hooks purchased, my cousin and i rushed back to shilin for the main event of the day!

my two girl cousins (about my age), their bfs, a boy cousin (middle school), and i had a 4 hour session at holiday ktv! initially i had asked them to take me to ktv because i wanted to experience it, but then after, i realized that, going to ktv is about the most fun one can have! the music blasting and the microphone in your hands, singing your heart out...that has to be the reason for living! the place is a lot like a hotel, and you get a room, with a number like 487 on the door. inside are couches and a big tv and the ktv equipment including 2 mics. there is a little touch screen used for picking songs. the room is dark and the music is loud! also, each room has a private bathroom (which later i found out was really important since there is lots of drinking). all ktv also comes with a buffet, which, isn't that great, but important since you have to drink at ktv! also ktv is fun with a large group, but that means you aren't constantly singing, so eating is a good alternate pastime, and a good way to replenish energy between songs. since we sang all chinese songs (you can pick english songs, but then where is the fun?), my main goal was to get at least enough words to make the songs recognizable. it was fortunate that i had been listening to much taiwan music in the past year, but still not enough. i still couldn't get most of the words for most songs, even ones that i listen to regularly. the words just flash by so fast, and i just don't recognize enough chinese characters. i realized that going to ktv is a game. if you can sing popular songs, well that's good. but, the winner is the one who can sing songs no one else knows! in that respect, i was actually doing well! because of my compulsive idol drama watching, i was listening to a lot of music that probably is mainly listened to by preteen kids in taiwan. my cousins were laughing at me because i like rainie yang and cyndi wang's super cutsie songs! (in my defense, i also really like bands like 1976 and tizzy bac.) one song i sang that no one seemed to know was rainie's jie muo qiao ke li. the last song i sang was fahrenheit's meet on february 30th. my girl cousins and their bfs (all in their 20's like me!) were like, omg we have no idea how this even goes! so i was the only one singing (trying), but then my middle school boy cousin pipes up and is like, o i know this one! they all laughed! ha! in any case, they all told me that people practice before they go to ktv and that i should have done my homework! although i was leaving taiwan soon, i begged them to go with me again! it was just too much fun and 4 hours was way not enough!

between the 6 of us, we each payed 500NT (~$17) for 4 hours, the buffet is included but the beer was extra, and the 500NT per person included the beer we ordered. since it was saturday night, it was a relatively expensive time period, but we had the middle school cousin's student id and some other member card or something from one of my cousins' bf. all in all, it came out to be cheaper than going to a movie, considering it's twice as along, there is a buffet, and beer. and WAY MORE FUN than a movie!

WORTH SEEING: ktv!!!

WORTH EATING: ding tai fung steamed vegetable dumplings

full set of pictures at picasa!

day14: national palace museum, gong guan

2008-05-10T16:36:00.016-05:00

friday, 4/11/2008:

friday morning i noticed my cousin had these marshmallows that were pudding flavored and had a filling!! i ate 1/3 of the bag...hehe.

after the long day on thursday, friday was another late start to the day. by the time my cousin and i got out the door, it was quickly approaching noon. we wanted to accomplish two things that day before 5pm: 1) national palace museum, and 2) go to the area near taipei train station for some shopping.

in our rush to accomplish these two tasks, it didn't occur to us to have lunch before going to the national palace museum. touring the museum was nice, lots of old stuff, mostly replicas, but our time there can only be described in one word: hungry. i guess 1/3 bag of pudding marshmallows was not enough to sustain me. by about 4pm, my cousin and i were at our limit. (it's not that i have to have meals so regularly, it's that the national palace museum wasn't sufficient to keep my mind off of hunger. okay i admit it, i'm not the most patient for museums.)

my cousin took me to this amazing sizzling steak dinner for only 180NT ($6). the restaurant, "da kuai" (big piece), is a chain, and was very modest. the steak was delicious, but the corn soup was pretty not delicious. the steak, 3 pieces of tender (and fatty) steak, came out on a sizzling platter with some pasta and mixed vegetables (pasta and veggies were pretty boring) and an egg cracked onto the the hot plate. the egg is a little excessive? but admittedly delicious. they also had melon soda and apple soda! which at first sounded really good, but turns out is more novel than tasty. and then we didn't have time to go shopping near taipei train station, since at the national palace museum we had decided it was better to do the national palace museum trip well than to do both the museum and the shopping but only half well for both.

after dinner, my cousin had to go meet up with her boyfriend, so i decided to go back to the gong guan area outside of national taiwan university to do some shopping. as i was walking by the ntu campus, i noticed a double decker row of VERY neatly organized bicycles (picture)! the double decker bicycle rack was accompanied by a sign with diagrammed instructions (which seemed like they might be much needed!). i guess even though bikes are small, space is still a premium. again most, if not all, of my purchases in the gong guan area were earrings. there was one vendor, a woman right outside of the face shop, who sells very good silver earrings. i had bought two pairs of earrings from her the week before when shopping in the area with my uncle, but then bought four more pairs this time! walking along the street i saw another vendor with similar earrings. turns out the two women are basically the same, but have separated to two spots. i bought two more pairs from her! and then a few more pairs of earrings later, my friend bonnie came to meet me at the gong guan mrt stop around 8:30pm. bonnie is my taiwan indie music exchanging buddy! we had planned on having dinner together, but i was still incredibly full from that steak, so we went to a japanese restaurant, where she had dinner, and i had this really good baked sweet potato cake topped with ice cream and red beans. bonnie and i parted at the mrt stop and i went back home to shilin. on the walk back home from the mrt station, i went to the convenience store to buy a yangleduo. they usually come in these tiny 2 inch high bottles and you always drink a few but never feel it is enough, but this time i decided, if i'm going to drink yangleduo, i'm going to drink yangleduo! so i bought a huge bottle! hehe.

full set of pictures at picasa!

day13: checheng, jiji

2008-05-04T21:44:00.016-05:00

thursday, 4/10/08:

got up again at 4:30am to catch the 6:05 train from taichung to ershuei. this is a "qu jian" train, which means it's really slow. the train finally gets to ershuei at 7:09am (over an hour later!) and ershuei is not really that far from taichung! at ershuei i bought a oneday pass train ticket for the jiji line.

the ticket guy suggested i take the train all the way to the last stop, checheng, and make that my first stop, since it was so early in the morning and not much was going on yet. (man, and i had made such an effort to get an early start to the day!) the next train on the jiji line left ershuei at 7:55am, and it took about an hour to get to checheng.

very few people were on the train, and by checheng there were even fewer people, and none of them looked like tourists. checheng was dead. i walked around. the train station is made of beautiful wood boards, and the surrounding view is beautiful too. the town seems to be built on a hill and surrounded by mountains. i walked up the narrow, steep streets and looked at all the homes and small food shops that were packed together. there was no one on the streets, and the homes and stores had no sign of people. the town seemed to be from another time. then i saw a little path that went into some trees and decided to take it. the path was basically a lot of stairs through trees, and by the time i got to the end, i had gotten two misquote bites, one right below an eyebrow and one on a knuckle, both were incredibly itchy spots. the end of the path was a large road that was winding up the mountain, so i turned around and went back down the path, this time trying to avoid more bites. walking back toward the train station, i finally saw an information center, next to what looked like a pond. the lady at the information center suggested i go see the big water reservoir, which apparently is a really nice view, but its way is back through the path of steps and a little farther, and i decided the risk of mosquitoes was not worth the view. checheng is an old logging town, so there are a lot of woodcraft diy shops and wood souvenirs. apparently in checheng you can get lunch in a wooden bucket, so i set out to find a place to get my wooden bucket. the information center lady said there were two restaurants, and one of them appeared to be closed, so i went to the open one, which of course was dead at 10am. they were still able to make me up a lunch to go. the lunch was 300NT (~$10)!!! and later i was to find out it was definitely not worth it! instead of going to see the water reservoir, i toured the plum winery in checheng, which was basically me walking through some halls with rooms of distillation equipment on one side, then walking through a bar, where i tasted plum wine and plum vinegar, and then walked through the gift shop. by now it was about time to wait for the next train. i didn't want to miss it because there was only one every two hours. i'll be honest, checheng wasn't thrilling, but i can see how it is a nice place to go to get out of the city.

i got to the jiji train station (the oldest train station in taiwan) and ate my wooden bucket lunch in front of the train station, not because i was hungry, but because i figured that would make it lighter. jiji wasn't lively either, since it was a weekday. there are at least two bike rental places right across the street from the train station, and as i was peering at them, one of the bike rental owners came and guided me to her shop. it was 100NT (~$3) for the whole day. the lady set me up with a bike, a lock, and a map. and she let me leave my wooden bucket at her shop. by then it was pretty sunny, and although i had been drinking water all day, i decided to be careful on this biking experience. i asked if there was a more shady place to bike and she directed me toward the green tunnel, basically a road with trees lining both sides. turns it it would all involve biking on roads...with cars again. in fact, while jiji is known for its biking, the majority of its biking is still on roads. the bicycle shop lady assured me that since it was a weekday and there were very few people and very few cars, i would be okay. and so off i went. after the hualien biking experience, i was less afraid. and now i have found the trick to biking on the road. when i hear a car coming, i just try to bike really straight and let the car do what it needs to to avoid me. and since there isn't too much traffic in jiji, looking both ways is sufficient at the intersections. the lady at the bike shop said that there would be a small hill, but in reality, the green tunnel (at least from the jiji side) starts as a very steep, winding road up a mountain/hill. i couldn't go very long before i got off the bike to walk it, and then didn't go for much longer before i realized i would be too scared to bike down the hill too. so i turned around and skidded my way back down, giving up on the green tunnel. (there's plenty of roads in the states with large trees lining both sides anyway!) i biked onward and saw the jiji weir, a big watershed. then biked back toward jiji train station, along the way enjoying jiji's countryside and agricultural type scenery (picture). as i was biking past these guys fishing by a river created by the jiji weir, i heard a large flopping near the ground and yelped and came to a stop! the fishing guy had a chuckle. i looked down and saw that he had caught a fish, and just put it by the side of the road for the moment! later, his friend came and put the fish in a bucket...there were two fish total in the bucket! i was biking and trying to look at my map at the same time, but i did arrive back near the jiji train station smoothly, as the town is pretty small. near the train station is the start of a bike path that runs along the train tracks (and cars cannot enter). as i was biking by the tracks, i noticed that every once in a while there was a shop or a cafe that was across from the tracks. one was a seashell shop, which i visited. one of the destinations along this path is an old confucian school, which looks like a temple. as tourists (including me) were checking out the confucian school, right next door is a normal middle school. i could have just walked right off the confucian school and into the kids having recess in the middle school... seems like a lot of tourist destinations in taiwan have schools right next to them! shortly after the confucian school, i started biking back to the train station. by now, midafternoon, the area was slightly more lively. i went to return my bike, and i think the bike shop owners were happy to see me back in one piece after my uneasy start. although the bike trip may sound unexciting, it was actually very nice to just bike along and notice the agriculture and people along the way. there were interesting crops and interesting people, which i haven't listed, but have to be experienced on your own. after returning the bike, i walked along the street next to the train station. one of the stands i walked by was selling banana egg rolls, that they were making right there on the spot. after the really nice owners encouraged me to eat at least 5 pieces of their sample egg rolls, i realized the egg rolls really were quite good (i usually like banana flavored things, but not things that have multiple flavors including banana), and i bought some to eat while waiting for the train and a box to bring home to the states and a box to bring to my relatives in shilin. since jiji is known for bananas, i also bought a bunch of tiny bananas...worst bananas i have ever had...completely no flavor! then i went to wait for the next train back to ershuei, i had spent about 4 hours in jiji. then from ershuei another train back to taichung, and called me uncle who came to pick me up from that station.

my grandma, uncle, aunt, and two cousins, and i went to dinner. then my uncle to took me to the high speed rail station. the station looks a lot like a small version of a large airport. everything is very efficient. you go in, there is a big lobby, and then escalators on both sides that go up to the platform, depending on what car your ticket is for. they don't want you going up to the platform too early, clogging the way. so i waited in the lobby area until about 10 minutes before my train, which is at 9:58pm. in each car of the train there is a luggage compartment, which was handy because i had a very big piece of luggage with me! the seats and the whole feeling of the train is a lot like a plane, and the whole atmosphere is very different from taking a normal train, probably because it is so much more expensive. on the back of the seat in from of me there was a map of all the cars and what they had inside. some cars even have public telephones and vending machines! and there is even a business class car on the train! the lunch boxes and snacks they sell on the high speed train are also way better than on the normal train, but that is also reflected in the prices. the whole experience was beyond comfortable and relaxing. exactly one hour later, the whole idea is that the train is fast but it's so comfortable i wouldn't have minded more time on that ride, i was back in taipei train station. (taipei is the only high speed rail station that is in the same building as the normal train station.) to get from the high speed rail to the mrt part of taipei train station seemed ridiculously long with my VERY heavy luggage, but i got there okay. when i got to shilin, thankfully my uncled called me and came to pick me up from the mrt station so i didn't have to drag my luggage all the way back home. an end to another long day!

WORTH SEEING: checheng and jiji countryside scenery

full set of pictures at picasa!

day12: alishan, taichung

2008-05-04T20:08:00.016-05:00

wednesday, 4/9/08:

after going to bed at 10pm the night before, i woke up (not)bright and early at 3am (pretty good, i still got 5 hours of sleep!) to take a shower before meeting the sunrise tour in front of the hotel at 4am. i had signed up for this tour, 300NT (~$10), with my hotel the day before. the tour was a caravan of vans that picked up at many hotels and then started on the way to yushan national park. on the way there, when it was still very dark, we stopped at a clearing and the tour guide (the driver of the van at the front of the caravan) pointed out a lot of constellations to us. then we were back in the vans and on to yushan. this young girl (maybe middle school?) threw up the whole way, i guess because it was really early in the morning and the trip was quite winding. finally we got to the spot, and by now, it was already pretty bright out. i always thought that it would be really dark before seeing the sunrise, but i guess it's light spreads out to us way before it peaks out from the mountaintops. we all lined up, basically at the side of the road, and the tour guide started talking, and told us not to worry, he would tell us when to watch out for the sunrise when the time came. the tour guide taught us how to take pictures of the sunrise (which would have come in handy the night before at the sunset...) and then took out some postcards to show as examples of what he meant, and then was like, "and you can talk to the photographer of the postcards if you want!", and then he's like, "it's me!", and then he sold us the postcards (tricky!!) for 100NT (~$3) for 16 postcards. before the sunrise the sky was really beautiful, kind of like the sunset, with the multicolored clouds, but i didn't get many pictures of that because the tour guide telling us not to take pictures yet because it was not the sunrise yet. finally it was the sunrise and the sun popped out from behind the mountains (picture), and that was that. and then after a very short while, went into some clouds.

AFTER i had seen the sunrise, i realized it was not necessarily that easy to see it! right after we saw the sunrise, this woman asked me, "is this your first time to alishan?" i'm like, "yes." she's like, "my friend came to alishan 5 times and didn't see the sunrise 5 times! you are so lucky!" i'm like, "huh?" i had never thought that i would have gotten up at 3am to NOT see the sunrise... the tour guide had explained to us earlier that the chance of seeing the sunrise that day was 70%, and that as we got closer to yushan, he would decide a place to watch (he has a few that he regularly takes people) that would give us the best chance. in fact, the day before, the people did not see the sunrise. if there are clouds blocking then there is no sunrise. we were fortunate that there was a distance between the top of the mountain and where the clouds started, so that we could see the sun pop up before it traveled into clouds.

ALSO, later i was randomly watching tv in taiwan and there was a commercial for 7-eleven that's theme is the alishan 7-eleven (yeah, there's a 7 in the shopping/restaurant area of alishan and the moment i saw that i was like, "omg that 7 must make so much money!). anyway the commercial features all these random people that work on alishan (for example a train driver) and shows how long they have been there, implying that they are reliable...like 7-eleven, ha! anyway, the tour guide for my sunrise tour was one of the people featured in the commercial! he was a pretty good tour guide, good knowledge, enough humor without being annoying.

after actually seeing the sunrise, i felt the whole group sigh with relief. it was before 7am and we had all accomplished the primary goal of our day, hehe. on the way back to alishan, we stopped at a few yushan national park sights. one was these two, dead, large trees... on another stop, we looked out onto beautiful rolling mountains and also a rolling sea of clouds! the "cloud sea" was way more beautiful than the sunrise, i thought! but, i'm not sure that my pictures did it justice. we also stopped at a spot where we had to take a million, really steep and scary, no handrail stairs to the base of another giant tree...and then take all those stairs back up. the stairs and altitude made me panty, hehe. then it was finally back to alishan.

when the tour dropped us off back at the hotel it was just before 8am. i got my stuff together and checked out of the hotel and then went to the 7-eleven, where the city bus tickets are sold. i bought a ticket for the 9am bus back to chiayi, it was 214NT (~$7). then went to the restaurant where i could use my breakfast voucher from the hotel. i got the breakfast to go and then went back to wait for the bus. as i wound down the mountain, i decided i would go to jiji the next day and then head back to taipei in the evening. the trip down the mountain by city bus only took about 2 hours. at the chiayi train station, i bought the next ticket to taichung. then at the chiayi train station, i ate my breakfast for lunch: daikon patties, half a salted egg, a mantou, some stir-fried cabbage. there, i also went to the info center to inquire about my trip to jiji for the next day. i didn't get much information, but did get a handy backpackers guide to traveling taiwan by rail, which i got for free, but i think it's supposed to cost money.

when i got to taichung, i decided to check out stockyard 20, which is an art gallery in an abandoned warehouse next to the taichung train station, before calling my uncle. i had read about it in my little taiwan by rail guide on my way to taichung, but the gallery was overrated. i guess i mainly didn't like it because there was only one artist on display, and i really did not enjoy his art: part psychedelic, part gross. he was actually there talking about his painting and people (normal looking but probably in their midlife crisis and wanting to feel open and cultured) were asking all these questions and taking pictures of him.

my uncle picked me up from the train station, and brought me to what he thought was the best place to get bawan, this meatball that is ground pork with a thick stick clear skin that is fried and then steamed (or something like that). i had a bawan and a bowl of cellophane noodle soup. the bawan was pretty good, even though i thought i didn't like bawans. changhua, a city close to taichung, is actually famous for their bawans, but i guess taichung thinks it's got some pretty good ones too.

i had told my uncle my plans for the next day, and before he had insisted that i take the high speed rail back to taipei, so we decided to go to the high speed rail station and check it out and buy my ticket ahead of time. the station is slightly outside of taichung, but still not too far by car. we bought a ticket for the 9:58pm train from taichung to taipei. there were assigned seats tickets (which is what i bought) and free seating tickets (which you are not guaranteed a seat, but may have to stand, but is discounted), but then there was also some discount because it was going to be a thursday. the ticket turned out to be something like 560NT (~$19).

then we went back home, ate dinner with the family, and then i went out to shop jing ming first street, which is really close to my grandma's apartment. there were some nice things on the street, i liked the earrings there on the whole, but didn't end up seeing anything that i liked exactly, sos didn't buying any earrings. then i came across a sanrio store and ended up buying the cutest sanrio calculator!

and then it was back home by 10pm. i was SO TIRED, and then i realized i had gotten up at 3am...so i was immediately to sleep! (and my plan was to get up at 4:30am again to begin my adventures the next day!)

WORTH SEEING: yushan sunrise, yushan cloud sea

full set of pictures at picasa!

day11: alishan

2008-05-04T15:06:00.025-05:00

tuesday, 4/8/2008:

i got up at 4:30am, caught a train around 6:30am from taichung to chiayi, and at around 7:50am rushed to ticket window no.5 at the chiayi train station to buy my train ticket to alishan. there was only two trains for the day: 9:00am and 1:30pm. in fact, usually there are only two trains on the weekends, and just the 1:30pm train on weekdays, but now is an exception because it was cherry blossom season. i wanted to take the 9:00am train, but the guy at the ticket window said there were no more seats left (but i could buy a standing ticket). who knew so many people would be going to alishan on a tuesday, but i guess cherry blossoms really change things. but then the ticket guy told me to go outside and to the right, and see if there were any tickets. so then i go out there, and there's actually another ticket window, which was closed, but then this guy comes up and is like, "are you going to alishan?" i'm like, "yeah." "do you want to take a little bus?" (you can take a city bus or little private buses up to alishan, but the train is definitely part of the alishan experience.) i'm like, "no i want to take the train." finally he takes out a pair of tickets from his pocket and sells me one, 399NT (~$13), same price as what the tickets actually sell for.

the alishan forest railway is one of only 3 alpine railways in the world, taking about 3.5 hours to run from the tropical (banana and betel nut trees) chiayi city through temperate forests (bamboo) and finally stopping in the alpine (giant cypress) climate of alishan. the back of my train ticket (picture) had a map of the train's route, which goes through a big knot as the train circles its way up the mountains, and then zigzags as the train goes forwards and then backwards to go up the steep final ascent. in the middle of the route is a stop at the town of fenchihu, which is famous for its lunch boxes. the train didn't stop long, but a lady came on the train selling lunch boxes (100NT/~$3, kind of expensive for lunch boxes in taiwan), and i bought one. the lunch had a lot of tiny servings of different dishes, they were okay, but the coolest thing about the lunch box was the plastic sheet that separated the rice and the dishes so that the rice was still as white and pure as new!

my seat on the train (a window seat!) happened to be next to another guy the same age as me. (so random again!) he was a masters student in taiwan, and had taken a week to circle all of taiwan (taoyuan --> keelung --> taitung --> kaoshiung/kenting --> alishan --> jiji --> hsinchu/neiwan --> back to taoyuan), sleeping in parks and train stations along the way! again, i felt that my traveling was very not efficient, but thinking back, i enjoyed each part of my three week trip, even if it was not the most straight of routes. i think there is so much fun in the traveling part (navigating public transportation, walking, getting lost) of sight seeing, and the part where i talk to random people (sitting next to me on trains, or to ask directions, or when buying things). anyway, we chatted and wound our way up the mountain together. i can only say he is quite unique.

when we got to alishan train station, i called my hotel, 青山別館 (qing shan bie guan), which came to pick me up. to even exit the train station, you have to buy a ticket to the alishan forest recreation area, 100NT (~$3), student price, yeah my mit id still serves me well! i left my stuff in the hotel room. it was small, but clean, and only $1800NT (~$60). when i was getting ready to leave, i realized that the area right below the back of my neck was peeling like nothing else, i guess i forgot to apply sunscreen there in hualien, this is already day6 since the bicycling in hualien. anyway, then i went back to the front desk of the modest hotel, where they equipped me with chinese and english maps and sent me on my way.

everything in the alishan forest recreation area is within walking distance of each other. from the train station, you can walk to the shopping/restaurant area and the hotel area, from there you can walk to the trails. i set out from the hotel at about 1:30pm and spent about 4 hours slowly walking through the trails, which for the most part make a loop. the trails were pretty crowded because of cherry blossom season...even on a tuesday! i started the loop from the right, and the majority of the beginning was looking at cherry blossoms and plum tree flowers. the paths are very well groomed and it was all pretty easy going. as i got to the left side of the loop, i started entering the giant tree portion of the trails. while the cherry blossom part was sunny, this part was very shady and nice. i thought the two complemented each other so well and i had such a pleasant walk that afternoon. as i was entering in the more foresty part of the trails, i came to a temple and some shopping, and an elementary school! here i am touristing my way through these trails and i can just walk right up to some kids dribbling a ball during recess outside their school... anyway, one of the things grown on alishan is wasabi! so i bought two small roots, and the lady taught me how to prepare it to be brought back to the us, take off the whiskers, clean it, soak it in water, wrap it in wet newspaper, and package in some plastic bags. she let me try the wasabi, you just grind the root and eat! anyway, then i entered the giant tree trail, somehow from the end, and it started with a sign that said, "giant tree no. 36", and there was an especially big tree, and then you walk a while and then a sign said, "giant tree no. 35"...and this went on for quite a while, for like a million stairs up and down. sometimes it's like SO MANY stairs and then all you see is this really big tree... 36 giant trees was the first giant tree trail. then i went on the other giant tree trail and it was another 20-some trees. but in the end, i thought it was a really nice walk. after the giant trees, there was an area with all these random tree trunks that looked like various things. i thought the golden pig tree trunk looked A LOT like a pig!

finally it was back to the shopping area. i walked up a lot of stairs to the train station to scope it out, where the hotel told me to watch the sunset. but, it was still pretty sunny, so i walked back down to the shopping area and ate at a small food stall: bamboo shoot soup and dragon whisker veggies. then back up the stairs to wait for the sunset. i'm not experienced with taking pictures that are not in the best possible light, so i had no idea what to do. but, the good thing about digital cameras is that you can take a million pictures, and after trying a lot of different settings, i think i might i have come out of it with one halfway decent picture. then there wasn't much to do on alishan, since the shopping area is pretty small, and everyone sells the same stuff, and it's all food anyway, so i walked the lots of stairs to the hotel, then back up to the shopping area, then back up to the train station, then back down, back and forth quite a few times. the stairs made my legs pretty tired and the altitude made me somewhat panty. i was afraid i wouldn't be able to get to sleep right away (did i forget that i had gotten up at 4:30am that morning?), and knew i had to get up early the next morning (to see the sunrise!), so kept on taking the stairs. at one point, in front of the train station, was an aborigine guy singing and these older ladies dancing, it was pretty cute. i finally went back to the hotel and went to sleep around 10pm, and fell asleep right away.

it had been so muggy in taipei, and so hot in taichung, finally the air was so nice clear and cool on alishan! that night i turned on the ac (to be sure) and got in the giant blanket and had a GREAT night of sleep!

WORTH SEEING: alishan forest railway, alishan

WORTH EATING: dragon whisker veggies

full set of pictures at picasa!

day10: taichung

2008-04-29T23:40:00.013-05:00

monday, 4/7/2008:

monday i took a picture of part of my sunburn to follow up on hualien's mishap. this is now day5 from getting burned. for some reason, this oval spot next to my watch was burned especially bad...reflection off my watch face? anyway, that part went through some extensive peeling in the last few days, became very white, and then got especially red due to the sunny adventures in bali/danshui and the children's recreation center. my arm looked pretty ridiculous.

anyway, that day i planned on going to taichung, to visit my grandma (mom's side) and uncle+family, but didn't get to a very early start. first i ate a gui yuan (some kind of chinese dried fruit) cupcake, which tasted like a normal cupcake, plus a gui yuan flavor, and plus occasional gui yuan chunks. what really held back my start to taichung, though, was finding a hotel for alishan. on my train ride back from hualien, this guy suggested i visit alishan. he said to take the train up the mountain and then there would be a lot of hotels. i asked if there were any he could recommend, but he just said there were lots and not to worry. so this was my plan, just get myself up the mountain and then find a hotel when i get there. my cousin thought it would be better to book one first, and while at first i thought it wasn't necessary, later i was glad we went through the trouble. we started with a list of hotels i had found, and she looked up prices and reviews online. finally we settled on 青山別館 (qing shan bie guan), the reviews said it was affordable and clean, and later i would learn that, the reviews were right! we booked the hotel, it was 1800NT (~$60), a pretty good deal i thought!

with the hotel booked, i went on my way. i pulled this huge suitcase with me (since i was bringing some stuff to my family in taichung) to the mrt station, took the mrt from shilin to taipei main station, and then had to find the greyhound type bus stations, which wasn't that easy. unfortunately, the bus stations are not actually in the train station (unlike the mrt and trains, which are all in the same building). i tried to follow the signs and at least exit from the correct exit (there are like a million exits out of taipei main station), but as soon as i left the train station, the signs stopped. i asked a few people, but they didn't seem to know where the bus stations were. finally i asked this guy that seemed to know. i wanted to take ubus (tong lien), not kingbus (guo guang hao), but the guy pointed to kingbus which he thought was pretty close, and then ubus which he insisted could only be reached by way of a huge skyway across a busy intersection that involved a million little steps up then down (and i had this huge suitcase with me). after his directions, i'm not saying his directions are bad just that this place is seriously this hard to find, i still wandered around a while (pulling my giant suitcase) before finally finding the kingbus station. but then after entering the kingbus station, i realized i just had to cross the street to get to the ubus station, so then finally i got to the ubus station. these buses in taiwan are really convenient. since monday afternoon is not a busy time, you just go and buy a ticket to taichung, and then wait for the next bus, which comes every 15 minutes. since there wasn't a lot of people, everyone could get on the next bus. the drive to taichung is only about two hours. i didn't leave shilin until around noon, but i still got to taichung around 3pm.

i got off the bus at the stop near this big hotel, which is also near my grandma's house. she walked out to get me because i didn't remember how to get to their apartment. on the way back, i guess she didn't want to go all the way back to the apartment (really not that far) to drop off my suitcase, so insisted we stop by the market near the apartment WITH my suitcase. i protested, which she was just like, "let's just put it by the side of this road", and then i was like, "okay i'll roll it through the market". we bought fruit: guava and water apples (only my favorite fruit in the world and you cannot get it at all in the us). we also bought some scallion pancakes and other stuff from this really tasty looking stall (picture). one of the best things we tried there was this flat meatbun with basil and a fried egg on top! we also bought some goose meat, which i like. then it was back to the apartment to eat!

after dinner my uncle asked me my plans for going to alishan the next day. at which point he brought up that, since it was cherry blossom season, train tickets might not be as easy to come by as i had imagined. since i planned on going to alishan on a tuesday, i didn't think there would be any problem. but the alishan forest railway only sends one train up the mountain on weekdays and two trains on weekends, but since it's cherry blossom season two trains everyday. still, the seats for two trains i guess was not enough to go around. the hotel i had booked was surprised i had not already booked my train tickets and gave me the name and phone number of a guy who might have tickets to sell me. the guy said he had nothing at the moment, but told me to just try my luck at the train station, and if i was out of luck to call him 30 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave. of course i would have no problem getting up the mountain because there are buses, but half the experience of going to alishan is the alishan forest railway. i could also buy a standing ticket, but the ride up the mountain is pretty winding and 3 hours long, and more importantly, i wanted to be close to the window.

anyway, all turns out well, in case this post is causing any anxiety.

full set of pictures at picasa!

day9: ximending, children's recreation center, modern toilet

2008-04-29T23:38:00.022-05:00

sunday, 4/6/2008:

i spent sunday with my other cousin, the one who took me down danshui old street the night before. first we went to ximending, a popular and youthful shopping area in taipei, and the site of the movie exit no. 6. after some shopping, we happened across a mos burger, and i had a sudden urge for mos burger, so we entered! mos burger, the mcdonalds of asia, is known for its burger buns that are made of rice. i had some kind of beef rice burger and my cousin had the fried seafood one. i was so busy taking pictures of my burger that my cousin was finally like, don't you want to include me in a picture? i guess i'm always so into taking pictures of food that i forget people want to be in pictures too. my favorite part about mos burger is the sink that is next to the trash, so you can wash your hands (without having to go all the way to the bathroom) after you eat and throw away your garbage. after mos burger, we passed this popular noodle shop, which had a ridiculous line and all these people standing and squatting right outside eating the noodles. in taiwan, people really know what's good and what's not good to eat. the really good places always have so many people willing to wait in line forever. then we passed the famous old theater in ximending, before getting back on the mrt to our next destination.

there were two important preplanned goals for the day, and the first was to go to taipei's children's recreation center to see sharon li, one of the contestants in the first season of one of taiwan's singing competition shows, one million star. i LOVED the first season of that show (never did watch the second or third season), but actually disliked sharon li. her singing is never very inspired, almost boring, but you can tell she works really hard at her dancing and singing. but, since i loved the show and thought it would be fun to see taiwan celebrities that i had been watching on my computer, i insisted on going and started to work up an enthusiasm for sharon li! actually, the truth is, sharon li isn't much of a celebrity, since she wasn't even one of the more popular contestants on the show, but she did make it to the final 10. we got to the children's recreation center just as the show was about to start. it was mostly little kids and their parents, and there wasn't very many people. there were two singers that sang before sharon li. the first, a guy, named zhi xiang, apparently has an album coming out. the second, a girl named wa wa. i had no idea who they were, but tried to act really into it and took a lot of pictures, to get the full experience. i wanted to act totally crazy, partly to get the full experience, and partly because the singers were singing to a really cold audience and i wanted to see how the singers would react if they thought someone in the audience was actually obsessed with them. my cousin, though, was less amused by this idea, and then i didn't have the guts to go through with it. finally sharon li came on and started singing. this whole time i'm loving my 10x optical zoom camera (btw, my camera is black, not silver), because all my pictures are SO close up! anyway, sharon li was sharon li, nothing has really changed since the competition. she had a few fans (people that didn't just happen to be there with their kids) and one person holding a sign. the last song she sang was without any accompanying music, and i remembered the movie function on my camera, so i decided to try it out! too bad i started it after the song began, but whatever. also too bad that i decided to shoot it vertically and now i can't figure out how to rotate the video so sharon li is right-side-up. other than that, my camera faired surprisingly well! the video is clear and the sound is really clear too! i was pleasantly surprised! anyway, after her singing was the autograph session. it was really sunny and sharon li's mom had come (sharon li is famous for always bringing her mom everywhere. her mom was at all the tapings for one million star.) and held an umbrella for sharon li to block the sun as she walked the 2 minutes to the autographing table. there was a pathetically short line to get an autograph from her, maybe 40 people? anyway, after an autograph and a picture with sharon li, my cousin and i had accomplished the first mission of the day.

the reason i had wanted to go to the children's recreation center was to see sharon li, but my cousin had wanted someone to go do the kiddie rides with her. so we walked around the place, ate some food (quail eggs again, a watermelon popsicle that was actually a pink wedge with a green rind and chocolate spots for the seeds, and then this ice cream that looked really cool but then turned out not to look like the picture but then actually tasted pretty good it was melon flavored, among other stuff i can't remember), and then went on three kiddie rides (swings, twirly things, carousel). btw, there are no melon flavored anything in the us, but in taiwan many things come in melon flavor! i like melon flavored things even more than melons themselves! my cousin wanted to go on the bumper cars, but the line was ridiculously long. then we were too tired of the long lines, so we decided to be done with the children's recreation center.

then we shopped around shilin night market briefly before we went to accomplish the second important preplanned goal of the day: EAT AT MODERN TOILET! my cousin and i met up with her bf (he was a good sport. he wasn't really amused with the place.) and went to the shilin modern toilet, a restaurant that has a bathroom theme, where you eat sitting on toilets and eat out of toilets. i had a spicy hotpot, which came in a toilet bowl (picture). when i tried to move the toilet, a little of the spicy soup spilled over the edge, which made the whole thing look even grosser...HAHA! all the meals come with a drink, which mine came in a plastic bed urinal (extra 30NT/~$1) but i had them not put the drink actually in it so it wouldn't get sticky, and a dessert, which is a poop-shaped ice cream in a little squat toilet. the various meatballs in my hotpot were not the tastiest, but each had a unique look and filling. when the ice cream came, i was so busy taking pictures that my ice cream was half melted by the time i finally ate it. the table next to us was two very not skinny girls and they each got the extra big dessert (extra money) which was ridiculous and actually did look kind of gross when it came out in squat toilets. and their squat toilets were much bigger than our squat toilets. we wondered if they'd be able to finish...and they did. all in all, it was overpriced food, but a fun experience and a cute idea. and i'm glad i went!

after modern toilet, my cousin and i shopped around shilin night market some more. seeing all these girls in taiwan carrying around bucket purses, i wanted to get one too, so i got a cheap one on the street. actually, i had no idea they were called bucket purses, but i was explaining to my cousin, "you know those purses that look like a bucket?", and she's like, "you mean bucket purses?", "no way!"...hehe. then we headed home, where i caught the very end of tka!! and some of a rerun of why why love! on an actual tv!!

WORTH SEEING: modern toilet

full set of pictures at picasa!

day8: bali, danshui

2008-04-29T23:21:00.025-05:00

saturday, 4/5/2008:

saturday was my second seriously sunny day since i had been in taiwan (the first being when i got burned in hualien). after the very patchy experience in hualien, i spent a long time and applied sunscreen REALLY well and thoroughly. then, my cousin and her bf took me to bali. last time i was in taiwan, i had gone to bali on my own, saw this egg on the grass in the park, took a picture, but then lost my pictures from the trip. i had been thinking about that egg and curious about why it's there ever since. (i still don't know anything about it.) luckily, this time, we easily found the egg again (picture). the bali and danshui area is also really good for biking, and i saw lots of bike rentals, but my cousin and her bf didn't seem to be interested. my next trip to taiwan i am definitely going to spend a day biking in bali/danshui (and drink lots of water!). after the bali mission was accomplished, we took a ferry back across the river to danshui. and now began my personal one day tour of danshui, at least half of which, was a food tour!!

first stop was a ma's plum tea, taiwan's most famous plum tea. it was pretty refreshing on a hot day, and pretty good as far as plum teas go. next stop was danshui's famous fishball soup. danshui is famous for its fishballs. we each had a bowl of fishball+wonton soup and a meatbun. first i was eating my fishballs and i was like, "AHH!", and quickly grabbed my camera! and my cousin and her bf were laughing at me. all the fishballs i have ever eaten are just solid fishballs, but these fishballs had a ground pork filling! i bit into my first fishball and was SO SURPRISED! anyway, i usually don't like fishballs, but these were pretty good, and the soup was pretty good, the wontons were average. next i started eating my meatbun, which was pretty average, until my cousin explained that the meatbun is supposed to be eaten with the special red sauce (seriously that is the name of the sauce). generally i don't like sauces, and i almost always try things without their sauce first, but i tried the red sauce and it was SO GOOD, kind of sweet and ever so slightly spicy.

next mission on our tour of danshui was to the "niu dan" (literally: twist egg) store. my cousin kept talking about it before so i just had to go! the store is filled with lots of machines, which you can put in 50NT (~$1.50), and then twist the knob, and out pops a plastic egg that has some cute figure inside! each machine has a theme, and about 6 different possibilities that can come out with the egg. i wanted to get a mini shaved ice figure that can actually shave a tiny ice cube, but that machine was no longer at the store! instead, i finally decided to twist the machine that was dispensing figures of mini niu dan machines...apparently the little figure will actually work too, it comes with lots of little eggs, i have yet to put mine together! then on my way out of the store, i saw another machine that was dispensing cute nintendo ds styluses, so i twisted one for my brother.

next we were on our way to fort san domingo. on the way we passed an old, western style church, which of course everyone who passed by wanted to take pictures with. then we went to the bathroom at a phone company (or something?)'s building. in taiwan, there are many toilets with the two function flush, like shauna had blogged about previously. they come in all different kinds (buttons and levers), but all the ones i have seen were well labeled. this one was kind of like a normal lever flusher, but there were two levers. the smaller flush (for after peeing) was the bigger lever, since it's used more frequently, but also labeled with the character "small", which in chinese can also mean peeing. the bigger flush (for after pooing) was the smaller lever, and also labeled with the character "big". outside the building, was the mascot for the phone company, which was pretty cute!

on the way to fort san domingo, we also passed streets by the danshui river that i think were in jay chou's secret (which we saw the night before). my cousin and her bf said that the big tree that almost touches the water was in the movie. (they are slightly obsessed with this movie.)

fort san domingo, a fort that has been occupied by the spanish, dutch, and british, was not the most exciting of stops on my tour of taiwan. it's basically looking at old western style buildings and rooms, which is not wildly fascinating for me. i think i would have liked to go there alone, though, so that i could read all the placards and learn some history. instead, we basically walked through and looked at / took pictures of everything. i thought it was ironic that i took pictures with some giant dutch clogs, because i had originally planned on going to the netherlands to visit shauna this spring. when leaving the place, we walked through a nice, well-groomed path, and noticed some cute tiny flowers. they reminded me of the lego flowers i used to have when i was younger. somehow, the three of us (each with our own cameras) became obsessed with taking giant pictures of these flowers, and this is where i realized/discovered the macro function on my camera! (okay, i'm not the most experienced photographer.)

after fort san domingo, we walked through aletheia university, which my cousin and her bf said was also part of the filming location of the movie secret. the campus is large, so we couldn't really make out what was in the movie, but it's a nice campus to walk through. what i thought was strange was that, within the college's campus, there were also elementary and middle schools. is there no drunken streaking on this college campus? the campus was more like a park (at least the section we were in) and there were a lot of families with kids there, and a lot of pigeons. these kids were feeding the pigeons, and i finally made good use of the 10x optical zoom on my camera (mine is black, i feel that is important to note) to sneak pictures of the feeding, without scaring away the pigeons (or letting the kids know i was spying). i made a good choice with the camera! the zoom is great and the image stabilization definitely works well!

and then my cousin and her bf took me to eat a gei, of course at the best shop for it. i had never even heard of a gei before! but it was soooo goooood! it is basically a big fried tofu, with cellophane noodles inside, and then the tofu is sealed shut with fish paste. on top is a special red sauce, i couldn't tell if it was the same sauce, probably not, but similar, less sweet, slightly more spicy.

at this point i was passed off to my other cousin, who had just finished taking an exam for getting into a masters program. she and her bf met up with us. they hadn't eaten all day, so now begins our food tour of danshui old street: a whirlwind of eating! first of all, danshui is famous for it's very tall and cheap ice cream, that is not necessarily good, just cheap (well it wasn't too bad). they come in pretty tall for 10NT (~30cents) or REALLY tall for 20NT (~60cents). it's difficult to finish the REALLY tall one, but i wanted to take a picture of it!!! so i got the mango and taro twist REALLY tall cone and my cousin broke off the top part and helped me eat it ;) next we ate grilled stinky tofu...OMG SURPRISINGLY SO TASTY!!! then we had some seafood sausages. and then candied and roasted taro, sweet potato, and some REALLY purple potato-y thing that was a taro crossed with a sweet potato (literally). then we had quail eggs on a stick, again really tasty. the quail egg vendor has this (basically a) frying pan that has all these impressions in it, basically just big enough to crack in a quail egg. that fries a while, then gets turned, and the result looks like a meatball, but tastes like a bite sized fried egg. the quail egg vendor strings 5 on a stick and sells them for about 15NT (~50cents). i also tried part of my cousin's corn dog, surprisingly, REALLY tasty, but i guess i've never really had a state fair corn dog in the states, only the gross ones you microwave or bake from frozen at home. and we had the famous danshui shrimp rolls. they were okay, nothing special. then we had these fried shrimp balls, what a waste of stomach space. then the eating was finally over.

my cousin and her bf went home on his motorcycle, but i stuck around danshui and walked the old street toward the mrt station. while the day was hot, it was getting to be quite breezy at night and by the danshui river. there was an occasional singer trying to perform. i enjoyed walking by the river, feeling the breeze, and slowly trying to digest. there was also a woman playing the guzheng, a traditional chinese string instrument. i watched a while and then rode the mrt back to shilin.

WORTH SEEING: danshui

WORTH EATING: fishball soup, special red sauce, a gei, grilled stinky tofu, quail eggs on a stick

full set of pictures at picasa!

day7: guang nan, bulk earrings, shilin night market

2008-04-29T13:04:00.018-05:00

friday, 4/4/2008:

i wanted to buy stationary, so my cousin took me to guang nan, near taipei train station. that place is amazing: cheaper prices and selection, selection, selection! mainly i wanted to buy little planners and notebooks that i can carry with me always to jot notes and contact information of strangers. (i was starting to think i had made a habit of it, since i always made sure to take notes of what i did everyday during my vacation, and i would often need to take out my little notebook to exchange emails with strangers...but, since coming back to reality, i have found that, once again, i talk to the same people everyday.) and of course i wanted to buy pens! o yes...and RULERS! as for notebooks and planners, i had a few criteria: 1) a plastic protective cover. 2) some sort of pocket that i could stick scraps like contact info or train tickets. 3) cute. after a lot of searching, i did find a few models that met my demands! and the searching was quite painstaking, partly because there was a great selection, and partly because all the customers in that store are packed like sardines, saying "excuse me" all the time, trying to get to the next section of the aisle. it wasn't the beginning of a school year or semester or anything, yet there were SO MANY students in that store! taiwanese people must LOVE stationary, which is why their stationary is SO AWESOME! the pens always write SO WELL (picture), i don't know how white people in the states can stand their severely inferior pens! ALSO! in minnesota, i have been tutoring these two boys from taiwan, and one of the boys carries a ruler in his pencil case. and the moment i saw his ruler, I FELL IN LOVE WITH IT! it's a clear plastic ruler (which is helpful when you are trying to line up the ruler, opaque rulers are a pain), BUT it also has a wide metal strip wrapped around one side so that the ticks are in metal on one side and plastic on the other. it's amazing because i have had plastic rulers break, but this is so well protected by the sheet of metal! anyway, of course at guang nan, i found rulers like that!! i probably spent at least 2 hours sifting through every inch of guang nan. my cousin was done after like 30 minutes, and had to wait for me. she was about to kill me as i was finally checking out.

i wanted to continue to the next stop on our shopping trip, but my cousin absolutely could not go one more step, so we took a break and had lunch at a small cluster of food vendors. the duck blood and stinky tofu soup was pretty standout, something i didn't think i'd like, but ended up liking quite a lot. i didn't really like the duck blood, but the soup and vegetables were tasty, and the stinky tofu was also surprisingly tasty. stinky tofu is an acquired taste, and i have somehow acquired it, because i know i didn't like it when i was younger. also, everywhere is advertised these "frog eggs" vendors, which i had to try because i work with frog eggs in my research. well, i was disappointed because the drink looked nothing like the frog eggs i work with. the "frog eggs" are basically tapioca balls, but it's the big kind, so way too big to look like the frog eggs i work with, also they just don't look anything like frog eggs. if anyone has ever had those basil seed drinks, they look EXACTLY like the frog eggs i work with in my research. and on the topic of drinks, in taiwan, they are SO GOOD at designing awesome things that are perfect at what they do. for example, most drink places have these plastic bags that are exactly the right shape to fit around the drink cup so that you really can carry around your drink in a plastic bag without worrying that it's going to spill. also, there are these drink "bags" that don't have a bottom. it's basically a plastic handle to carry your drink! i really wanted to take a picture of one of these, and my cousin was like, okay we'll just get a drink. but i thought it was somewhat ridiculous to buy a drink to take a picture, but i wanted the picture, so we were going to. but then this random guy had one, and i was like, let's just ask if we can borrow his for a picture, but my cousin wouldn't (was too embarrassed) and so we didn't ask. but then when he left, he just left his drink + plastic handle! so you can check out the picture in picasa!

anyway, next stop was near the back of taipei train station. my other cousin had told us about the place that all the street vendors buy their earrings and such to sell! all i can say is that, it's not very good quality, and you wouldn't want to pay more than these discount prices for these earrings. but they can get pretty cheap there, so it was definitely a worthwhile shopping trip! some stores make you buy at least 10 pairs of earrings to get the discount price. (for instance, the discount price might be 30NT (~$1) and the "regular price (WAY OVER PRICED)" would be 150NT.) some stores were like, if you buy 5 pairs of earrings it is 50% off, if you buy 3 pairs of earrings it is 25% off. this is the "bulk price", but my guess is that people who actually sell earrings and buy A LOT would get an even lower price. the great thing about this place is the selection. usually when you buy earrings on the street, it's a really random selection, but here, there's every color of every style. (so good jewelry is a little like this in a more expensive, less big, kind of way.) again, i spent quite a bit more time here than my cousin had patience for.

after basically only two stops on our shopping trip, my cousin looked like she was about to die, so we head back toward home, but then met up with her bf at shilin night market for dinner. when eating night market and street vendor type food, it actually is pretty important to have a tour guide. they knew which of the million vendors selling shui jian bao (pan fried meat buns) was the best. and it really was VERY GOOD! i had the veggie one, that had a cabbage filling. the line was extremely long, but very worth the wait. we also had these some-kind-of-dried-seafood-put-in-a-batter balls. i wasn't a huge fan. and another popular night market food we had was seafood, meat, tofu, or vegetables on a skewer and grilled. the squid is REALLY good. finally we had this awesome ice that was ice covered with grass jelly, then topped with tapioca, pearl barley, and candied sweet potato. the ice was completely hidden by the grass jelly! with all that sweet stuff on top, the ice was SO tasty!

then we went home and watched jay chou's secret, which i thought was fairly entertaining, but nothing special. i always think jay chou is really full of himself, so i'm never too impressed.

WORTH SHOPPING: guang nan, bulk street vendor jewelry area

WORTH EATING: duck blood and stinky tofu soup, shilin night market shui jian bao, skewered and grilled squid, grass jelly tapioca pearl barley candied sweet potato ice

full set of pictures at picasa!

day6: gong guan, shi da night market, tong hua jie

2008-04-28T23:34:00.005-05:00

thursday, 4/3/2008:

today was a laid back day, after my escape from dehydration in hualien. i took my time to get ready in the morning. my shower actually hurt quite a bit, as i was definitely developing a severe sunburn. the most unfortunate thing was...i did not apply sunscreen very evenly on my face (or arms either, but that didn't matter as much), so there were definitely patches of my face that were burned more, such as the top of my forehead. in fact, the top of my forehead did not peel thin layers of skin like a normal sunburn, rather, whole and thick pieces of skin were coming off my face. about the dehydration, i have learned my lesson, and am now entering a phase of my trip in which i am constantly drinking water. my dehydration stems from a fear of mine that, when i have to go to the bathroom, there will be no bathroom. i have learned a few things since the beginning of my trip: 1) there are a surprisingly abundant opportunities to use the toilet. 2) when you sweat a lot, you don't have to pee a lot 3) but you really should drink a lot.

on my way to the mrt stop in shilin, i passed this random store that had these two mini chickens just hanging out in front (picture). they weren't tied up or penned up or anything, they just never ran away. and they just hung out like they were pets, like poodles or something. people walking along the busy sidewalk in front of them didn't seem to phase them at all. my uncle and i agreed to meet at the gong guan mrt stop on the green line at 12:30pm. this is the area right outside of tai da. first we picked a restaurant for lunch (there were about a million to choose from). we settled on korean food, but the restaurant turned out to be not that good. then we shopped our way to the taipower building mrt stop (the next stop on the green line). all i can say is, tai da students must be the happiest students in the world! the shopping in that area is so good! there is definitely good di tan (street vendor) shopping and bad di tan shopping...and this was definitely GOOD di tan shopping. i ended up buying a lot of earrings. in that area i could find more quality, unique, tasteful earrings that were, of course, more expensive than your average earrings on the street, but not over priced either.

after arriving at the taipower building mrt stop, we took the mrt to the shi da night market. it hadn't really gotten busy yet, but we just walked the one street. then we took a cab to the tong hua jie area. a quick walk through and then we went to an all you can eat hot put buffet, where you still order what you want, but you can order as much as you want, but there is a time limit for how long you can eat, 2 hours. my favorite thing about the restaurant was the tables, which had tissue dispensers built into the side for every seat.

other than discovering a great new shopping spot, the day was pretty uneventful. after hotpot i head back to shilin. even though shilin is home of one of taiwan's most famous night markets and is known for its xiao chi (taiwanese street vendor food), i never have stomach space left by the time i'm coming home and so haven't yet ate at the shilin night market!

WORTH SHOPPING: gong guan area outside of tai da

WORTH EATING: hotpot

full set of pictures at picasa!

day5: hualien

2008-04-28T18:28:00.009-05:00

wednesday, 4/2/2008:

on my last day in hualien my tour buddy took time out of class and took me biking by the ocean! she came to meet up with me at the hostel about 8:30am, where i rented a bike, and we biked (through the city) to nanbin park, where the bike path began. i was really nervous about biking through the city, but i made it through alive. although the past two days had been cloudy and sometimes drizzling, this morning was VERY sunny! the ocean was a beautiful blue and i was very excited to be seeing a lot of it. we started on the trail. the destination was chishingtan. not long after we started out, i realized i was severely not feeling well. the night before, after getting back to the hostel, i had realized that i had not drank water in like two days, since i left taipei, so i walked to the nearest seven and bought a liter of water and drank half of it. i guess that was not enough to rehydrate me, plus the really intense sun did not help. now i know why my tour buddy was in a hat, sunglasses, a mask, long sleeve shirt, and gloves! i was like, "aren't you hot?" she's like, "but the sun!!" anyway, i wanted to forge on, but we rested a lot along the way. hualien has mountains (with beautiful clouds sometimes!), industrialism (all these stone factories), and beach/ocean. at first i really paid attention to the beautiful scenery along the way (picture). then somehow i realized we were definitely no longer on the correct path, because i hadn't seen the ocean in a long time and i kept on riding next to dusty trucks. at this point, i decided it was pointless to go on and so my tour buddy led me back to the hostel the short way, through the city. as we turned around, i could see a glimpse of chishingtan, the destination!!! but i was feeling too nauseous to care, plus my tour buddy said she'd just take me back to chishingtan via motorcycle once we returned our bikes...good plan! i think we got back to the hostel around noon or 1pm. after a short rest, my tour buddy took me to her home, near the hostel, where she lives with her family. then we went back to chishingtan on her motorcycle. unfortunately, by then, the sky had clouded over again and the water was back to a grey color, but it was still very nice to feel the ocean breeze. i wanted to get the full experience before i went back to taipei, so i changed into shorts and flip flops and waded among the powerful waves! it was cloudy and the water was cold, but still fun.

then it was back to the shops near the train station that sold hualien's famous muaji, a sticky dessert made from rice flour and that has various fillings inside. hualien is supposed to be known for its muaji, but it's actually sold all over taiwan and asia, and i didn't taste anything really special about these muaji. they had these handmade ones that were pretty good, but i guess i'm not a huge muaji fan. the best was the ice cream muaji, sticky rice flour wrapper with ice cream inside! my cousin wanted me to bring some muaji back to taipei for her and my mom wanted me to bring some back to minnesota, so i left the store with two shopping bags of various muaji. then we went to buy my train ticket, and went back to say hello to the guy (i talked to my first day in hualien) in the information center. it wasn't until then that we realized how much sun we had gotten that morning, because of the info center guy's remarks. i guess it was so bad that he gave us complementary bottles of sunscreen. i was all (or patchy) red, and my tour buddy's nose (the only part of her not covered) was red. that morning i had even applied sunscreen! but i guess unevenly and not very well...hehe. i decided to take the 5:31pm zi qiang hao back to taipei. there was still time before the train came, so i went back to get another ice cream muaji for the train ride! as i boarded the train, i realized how much stuff i had with me: messenger bag (with my purse in it), duffel, and two shopping bags of muaji. i must have really looked like a tourist, with all this stuff, plus i was wearing a hooded t-shirt and shorts and tennis shoes while others were in normal pants and sweaters (it was getting a little chilly and there was drizzling by now), and i also had the worst sunburn by then. my seat on the train happened to be next to this guy who, i found out later, happened to be the same age as me (so random!). he definitely gave me a weird look when he got on the train. he started scarfing down his dinner as soon as he got on the train, at which point i realized i was pretty hungry (i had eaten a slice of bread for breakfast and some pineapple later in the day and the muaji ice cream, but not nothing else since i wasn't feeling well), at which point i remember my second muaji ice cream! unfortunately it was somewhat melted by this time, but still good. anyway, i started chatting with the guy next to me, from which i learned two things: 1) we were taking the special taroko train, which meant we would be in taipei in about 2 hours! the train runs on the same tracks, but has these two layered wheels so that when turning, the train does not have to slow down, but can just kind of lift off the tracks. the train cars were pretty nice since they were new. 2) i should go to alishan. he suggested a few different places i could visit during the rest of my time in taiwan, but really pushed alishan, suggesting i take the little train up the mountain, walk around, stay the night in a hotel, and wake up really early to see the famous alishan sunrise. i ended up taking the suggestion and it turned out to be the best thing i did the whole trip!

we got to taipei 7:40pm, only a 2 hour and 9 minute train ride! i headed back to shilin by mrt, had a little dinner at home, chatted with my grandpa, and then my cousins, and sleeeeep!

WORTH SEEING: chishingtan

WORTH EATING: hualien handmade muaji

full set of pictures at picasa!

day4: taroko, hualien

2008-04-28T10:54:00.020-05:00

tuesday, 4/1/2008:

the day before, the hostel had arranged for me a one day tour of taroko national park, 998NT (~$30). i like exploring places on my own, but usually on a tour i can see more sites because my own transportation involves public transportation (which often involves waiting) and walking (which is slow), and because the tour is better at planning an efficient day. usually i don't mind having a less efficient day and even seeing less stuff if i can navigate my own day, i always have more fun, get to talk to interesting people, and feel more accomplished at the end of the day. but today, i decided to leave it to the tour guides and see as many taroko sites as possible, life is such a compromise. two other people from the hostel were also going on the taroko tour that day, a romanian woman who was teaching in taiwan and on vacation, and another woman on vacation from hong kong. (the hong kong woman took a week, flew into kaoshiung in the south of taiwan, traveled by rail up the east coast of taiwan, visiting taitung, hualien, yilan, and finally taipei, and then flew home from taipei...i need to plan a more efficient trip next time!) a van came to pick us up at the hostel at 8am and took us to the tour bus at the train station, where our tour officially started. it was about a 40 minute drive from hualien to taroko national park. shortly after entering the park, we were let out after the tour guide explained that the bathroom there was "award winning". ...i guess it was okay for being in the mountains, but nothing special. in fact, on this 3 week trip, i felt that, in general, all the bathrooms were pretty okay, i don't think i had any particularly frightening bathroom experiences. most of the first part of the tour was just sitting on the bus and looking out the window as the tour guide pointed out stuff. he kept saying, i can't let you get off here we have to keep driving because there is danger of rocks falling on us, which i guess is partly true. the view was pretty good; the marble gorges (main feature of the park) were pretty impressive. we did get to get out of the bus at a couple of places to take pictures. at the tunel of nine turns (picture), we were finally allowed to take a small hike/walk. this is an extremely easy and short "hike". then we were bussed to the lyushui trail, and took another small hike. then we had lunch at grand taroko formosa (some fancy hotel) at tiansiang. what i really wanted to do, though, was eat at the little foodstalls nearby!!! and we were pretty much on our way back to hualien, stopping one or two times more to see a few sites. the last stop on the tour was chishingtan, a beach just north of hualien. the whole day was pretty cloudy, so the water wasn't very brilliant, but it was still nice to watch and hear the waves lap onto the beach. this was supposed to be the last stop of the tour (~4:30pm) before heading back to the train station, but since we were close to the harbor, the three of us that stayed in the same hostel asked the tour guide/bus driver to drop us off at hualien harbor instead of taking us back to the train station. at the harbor (pretty normal harbor), we saw some boats and docks and what was left of the fish market was pretty small, but there was still some pretty interesting seafood to look at. our purpose for taking a detour to the harbor was to try the very cheap sashimi! i wondered at the hygeine of the sashimi, which was sold by one of the vendors selling seafood, and cut by this old woman with grubby hands. the three of us got about 9 pieces of sashimi (3xtuna, 3xsalmon, 3xbass) for 100NT (~$3)! i'm not a huge sashimi fan, but it was pretty good, very fresh! after eating, there was not much to look at. the clouds looked somewhat ominous at the time, and the harbor seemed quite a long walk back to the road, so the seafood vendor called us a cab and we rode our way to nanbin park. nanbin park has another beach, this time made up of large rocks (i love this kind of beach!). we took pictures, and i even caught a rainbow! then next to the park is nanbin night market (where i had wanted to go the first night, but didn't quite make it). again we didn't pick a very happening time to go to a night market, it was just starting up, but we walked through the games section and food section. i think it would have been fun, with friends, and later at night. my hostel mates went on their way to the street of stone art craft, and i stayed at the night market to meet up with my tour buddy again!

my tour buddy took me to meet four of her friends and we went together to a japanese restaurant. it was fun to chat with them and they asked me a lot of interesting questions, one that i remember was, "are american guys or taiwanese guys hotter?" after dinner we walked around hualien a bit. by the time we went our separate ways, it was 10pm. my tour buddy took me back to the hostel. i was so thankful for how easy transportation became once i met up with my tour buddy!! that night i stayed in the hostel's 6 bed dorm style room, which was a good deal at 400NT (~$13)!

WORTH SEEING: taroko national park, hualien coast scenery

WORTH EATING: cheap fresh harbor side sashimi

full set of pictures at picasa!

day3: hualien

2008-04-27T17:14:00.019-05:00

monday, 3/31/2008:

unfortunately, i always have a late start to the day. after getting up and getting ready, i realized i might not make the 10:30am train to hualien, so i waited to leave for the train station to take the 12:18pm zi qiang hao to hualien. the trip takes 3 hours, and on the way i ate another bag of lucky snacks and a bottle of kiwi juice i bought at a convenience store before boarding the train. one comment i have about trains (and this is true about the greyhound type buses in taiwan too) is that it is good that they have bathrooms, but it seems like a lot to ask of me to squat and aim for the "toilet" while the train/bus is jostling around. luckily there were no mishaps. and there was a sink and toilet paper!

i arrived in hualien at 3:20pm, and promptly went to the visitor information center that is in a building to the right of the train station as you exit out the front. although i didn't need it, i will have to say, the guy tending the info center has excellent english. he suggested some places that i could still visit by foot for the rest of the day. i walked to my hostel, formosa backpackers hostel, which took about 15 mins. after getting situated at the hostel, i headed back out into the city. my first destination was pine garden, which turned out to be a building on top of a hill. it was after 5pm by the time i got to pine garden. i guess i didn't set out from the hostel immediately after i got there, and the walk to pine garden was somewhat long and, honestly, kind of miserable, since it was drizzling. at one point i started to go up a somewhat steep hill that was also curving. i happened to be on the inside of the curve (on the left) and there was no sidewalk. the sidewalk was on the other side of the road, but i was too scared to cross the street to get to it, and i knew that pine garden was going to be on the left. as i tried to stay in the minuscule shoulder of the road, a ton of bicycles with middle school and high school boys came streaming down the hill. seems kind of scary! it was drizzling and the road was curved and they were just on the road and it was steep! most were two on a bike. some bikes were also in pairs, joined by having one biker holding onto another biker's shoulder. i finally made it to pine garden, and after going up that hill, at least there was a nice view of hualien, especially the harbor (picture). i think that was more worth it than the pine garden building itself. since it was after 5pm, the exhibits were all closed except one, which had all these household items made from banana tree trunks. the coolest was the cloth that was made from the fibers of the tree trunk, and the clothes made from the cloth. they weren't like, o these are made from bananas, they were quite fashionable! next it was back down the hill and i had planned on going to the night market by the ocean. but i got a little lost, and when i asked for directions, the guy made it sound like way too far away to walk. another day and i would probably have gone anyway, but i was already tired and it was not the best of weather, drizzling on and off. he suggested i go to the street of stone art craft, which was a little closer, and that was next on my itinerary anyway. ...not that it was too close either... on the walk to stone street, i thought i was lost again, because i had to walk through a part of town that didn't seem to have much going on, and it was dark by then, so i was somewhat uneasy, but alas, i kept on going and finally got to some neon lights! street of stone and art craft is basically a square, which is lined on two sides by many many small stores that sell stone jewelery and other stone crafts. hualien is known for its chrysanthemum stone, which is cut from fossilized coral (i think). this has a beautiful effect, with many patterns that look like flowers! these stones were really, very beautiful! most of the stores were similar, but every rock is naturally different and also cut different, so i spent quite a while sifting through all the stores and ended up buying two chrysanthemum stone pendants and a pair of coral bead earrings, each item at a different store. i had gotten to the stone street earlier than planned because i didn't go all the way to the night market, so i kept walking around the square until 8pm, at which point there was an aboriginal dance show. in the middle of the square is a small stage with a bunch of stools in front, and apparently there is a dance show there every night of the week. the dancers looked to be about high school aged and i thought they did a pretty good job and were pretty enthusiastic. at one point, when they were doing a bamboo poll dance, one girl's foot got snapped by the polls and she fell and twisted her ankle. one of the guy dancers that was on the sidelines for that dance immediately joined in and danced the girl part (because there weren't any extra girls), not a beat was missed. at the end they were selling these yarn braided headbands, a simpler version of what the dancers wore, for 50NT (~$1.50), and kept on saying how it was money to contribute to these kids students school fees, so then i got suckered into buying an ugly headband, but i was pretty impressed that these kids came everynight to perform (i'm sure it's not always the same kids), so i figured the headband was worth it, since the show is otherwise free.

in hualien i had also contacted a tour buddy! she had suggested the hostel i stayed at. she had classes during the day, but we were supposed to meet around 6pm! my uncle had lent me his cell phone to use during my trip in taiwan, and somehow, i'm really bad at using that phone... anyway, somehow i never answer any calls. my tour buddy and i finally got a hold of each other shortly before the dance show was about to start, and she came to meet me at the street of stone art craft. we watched the show together. then it was about 9pm, and i had been walking around the entire evening, since about 4:30pm, except the hour i had been watching the dance show. the idea of walking across town back to my hostel was quite depressing. when i saw my tour buddy, her little motorcycle, and the extra helmet, i was REALLY relieved. we went to eat. she took me to gong zhen bao zi, a wellknown shop in hualien for eating xiao long bao (little steamed meat filled buns). they were pretty good. then she took me to get pearl barley ice...which sounded REALLY GOOD, but i was kind of cold, so i opted for the hot version, pearl barley soup, which was still really good. it was nice chatting with my tour buddy. i had walked around by myself all night so it was nice to just sit, relax, eat, and chat with a new friend. then she took me back to the hostel.

the first night at the hostel i stayed in the private double room, which i thought was a good deal at 1000NT (~$30). the room was japanese style, everything on the floor, nice hardwood flooring, and very cute. i had a great night's sleep, finally in my own room after sharing a room and twin bed with my cousin for the past few nights!

WORTH SEEING: street of stone art craft

WORTH EATING: gong zhen bao zi's xiao long bao, i bet the pearl barley ice would have made this list

full set of pictures at picasa!

day2: hotpot, longshan temple, chiangkaishek memorial, taiwan storyland

2008-04-26T20:38:00.017-05:00

sunday, 3/30/2008:

another day, another salty soy milk! on the way to the salty soy milk (this time with my other cousin and to a different breakfast shop, but also near home), we walked through the traditional market again. my cousin ate a "twins" (shuangbaotai), which is basically a piece of sugary fried dough that has identical halves. i broke off a piece and tried it...tastes like heaven. anyway, finally to my second bowl of salty soy milk and i also got a shaobing youtiao (flaky bun with stick of fried dough...i know it may sound the same, but this fried dough is totally different from the previous fried dough). the shaobing youtiao was also exceptional, way better than any i have eaten in the US.

we are never very good at getting out early, so that means, by the time we get back from our breakfast excursion, it's time to head out for lunch! today my grandpa, uncle, aunt, 1 cousin, and i go to a hotpot restaurant nearby! hotpot is only my very favorite meal! i order the lamb meal, of course. it's not much different from shabu zen in boston...i think even the dishes are the same! i'm pretty particular about the process of eating my hotpot. first i drop in the corn and tomato, they mostly contribute to the soup; usually i don't eat them. then i start eating my thin lamb slices, never boiling more than 1 or 2 slices at a time so that i can keep track of them so they never get over done. after a few slices, i start boiling my various meat/fish balls, as i continue with the lamb. i also start boiling the taro chunk, because that needs a while. if there is seafood, this is when i boil and eat that. then i boil and eat a few leaves of vegetables. then boil and eat the mushrooms, don't cook the mushrooms too long. then i start boiling the tofu products. then i eat the meat/fish balls. all this time, i'm continuing to eat a few slices of lamb in between. then i eat more vegetables. then i start to eat the tofu products. then i finish off the vegetables, lamb, and eat my taro chunk. now the soup is mostly empty again and i crack my egg into it and make and eat a poached egg! finally i cook the cellophane noodles. (omg writing this made me so hungry.)

after hotpot, i left the family and headed out to longshan temple to meet my tour buddy! when i was doing research on my trip, i came across taiwan's youth travel website and the wonderful tour buddy program! taiwan seems to be trying to promote tourism to taiwan among foreign youth, and so have created a host of wonderful programs! in the tour buddy program, taiwanese college students are trained and volunteer to be tour guides. this is awesome because college students are way more fun than middle-aged tour guides (no offense to them), the tours are one on one, and because these tours are free! when i got to the longshan mrt station, i found out that my tour buddy had also brought 4 of her classmates! they were so much fun and so sweet (picture)...hanging out with them turned out to be one of my most memorable experiences during my 3 week trip! the tour began at the longshan temple in wanhua, where the tour buddies showed me one of the more famous temples in taiwan, and explained a lot of its history and the cultural and religious practices in the temple. then we went to the nearby huaxi street tourist night market ("snake alley"), where you can eat snake and baby alligators and such. it was still afternoon when we went, so there wasn't a whole lot of activity, but we were still able to see some animals: snakes, baby alligators, etc. the tour was coming to a close, but i found out that the tour buddies were college students from taoyuan, which meant that to meet me in taipei they had taken a 45 minute train ride, so they planned on spending the rest of the day hanging out in taipei. i was 臉皮厚 and invited myself into the rest of their day!

...and this is where the tour really started! first they took me to eat shaved ice. then i found out they were going to go check out the chiangkaishek memorial, a place i have gone to a million times, but truly enjoy every time. it is a really nice, open, relaxing space in the middle of busy taipei! AND, i haven't seen it since it went through its name change and some other ridiculous changes in decor, due to politics of course. we went to chiangkaishek memorial, took pictures and saw the ridiculous kites that are hung in front of chiangkaishek as he sits in his memorial hall. next stop was dinner and the tour buddies decided to take me to taiwan storyland, which is next to the taipei main station mrt stop. this basement space is a mini-neighborhood that has been decorated to represent taiwan from the 50's to the 70's. the entrance fee is 180NT (~$6), but then you get 180 taiwan storyland dollars to spend in the "museum". inside are old streets, food stalls, restaurants, a movie theater, a school room, a police station, barber shop, dentist, western medicine, eastern medicine, a pub, little shops, games, and many more things i can't remember, all 50's-70's style. we ate at the food stalls; i had an oyster omelet. then we were walking around and one of the tour buddies had stopped to eat at this non-impressive looking food vendor that just had all these big dry buns hanging on his cart. but then we all tried some of what she got...and omg...it was SO GOOD! first the guy drizzles sweetened condensed milk in your bowl, then he puts in the big bun (which is really a flaky basically hollow pastry bun with a little sugary filling inside), then he drizzles more condensed milk on top, then he adds some hot water to the bowl, and then you eat it! i found out a lot of taiwanese people don't even know about this, but it tastes amazing! apparently it's called 牛奶碰餅 (niu nai peng bing) or i also heard it called 疏餅 (shu bing). after eating we explored the various streets and scenes in the museum, bought some souvenirs of candies, and played some games with our left over money. we played a very rudimentary pinball game! and we also all bought tiny diy models of famous places in taiwan! i have yet to start mine, but i'll post when i finish ;) then it was pretty late, so i headed back to shilin on the mrt and they took a train back to taoyuan...hopefully they didn't have class too early on monday morning!

WORTH SEEING: chiangkaishek memorial, taiwan storyland

WORTH EATING: salty soy milk, shaobing youtiao, hotpot, 牛奶碰餅 (niu nai peng bing)

full set of pictures at picasa!

day1: shilin traditional market, jinshan, yangmingshan

2008-04-26T16:37:00.014-05:00

saturday, 3/29/2008

i left minnesota thursday morning, arrived in taiwan (and finally shilin, where my relatives live) late friday night, couldn't sleep at all that night, and saturday morning the activities on my trip came to an official start!

first thing on my agenda was having a bowl of salty soy milk. my cousin walked me through the shilin traditional market and then to the nearest breakfast shop. salty soy milk is one of my favorite foods! it's a bowl of hot soy milk (unsweetened) and then they add salt, a little vinegar, sesame oil, little dried shrimp, salted dried daikon, green top onion, spicy oil, etc. but the soy milk looks curdled, i think from the vinegar. don't let the curdled look stop you from drinking the most delicious soy milk ever!!

anyway, back home, and then my uncle came and he, his gf, my cousin, my grandpa, and i, went to taiwan's north coast area to see the little cubby, in a big tower of cubbies, where my grandma's ashes are stored. then winding through more and more traffic on the way to jinshan, we passed a zongzi (sticky rice and meat wrapped in bamboo leaves) shop in sanzhi, liu jia's zongzi, which is supposed to be well known. it was like a dozen small zongzi for 100NT (~$3)! the sticky rice was made perfectly so that each rice was it's own self, and not smashed together and merged with each other. i'm not a huge sticky rice fan, but the zongzi were made well enough that it was still worth eating. (i hate wasting stomach space and calories on bad food in taiwan, because i know i only have 3 weeks worth of eating!) then to jinshan youth activity center for lunch (the zongzi was a snack, hehe), which is my grandpa's routine. i had a drumstick and rice set, definitely NOT worth eating. from jinshan we wound through more traffic and stopped at these docks on the north coast. there was a lot of rapid water there, i think from an energy plant or something, i don't remember. there were people selling kites and snacks: grilled squid, fish balls on a stick, ...corn dogs (didn't expect that). also there was this scooper truck thing that i thought was really cute! it looked like a little dinosaur as it scooped trash and debris on the beach. and then we wound up yangmingshan. there we ate at a food stall on the side of the road, not that we were the least bit hungry. the bamboo shoot soup and the fried taro and fried sweet potato (picture) were SO GOOOOOD! especially the fried taro and fried sweet potato, which were lightly battered before they were fried. then we just turned around and wound back down the mountain because everyone was tired. next time i'm definitely going to go to yangmingshan by myself so i can see a few things other than just food.

then back home, at which point i was asked, "you want to have some dinner?" i was like, "o god, save me!" instead my uncle walked me to the mrt stop and back so i could learn my way. then i chatted with my other cousin, who didn't come with us. she has a table full of snacks in her room. and even though i was still beyond full, the snacks were just too cute!! she had taiwanese, japanese (she was the cousin who gave me those amazing japanese crackers i posted about before), and even american snacks (can you believe she loves snyder's pretzels?!). i chose a bag of taiwanese chips that she says are a staple for every tawainese kid. the chips are called "lucky" and are in the shape of hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds! and are SO TASTY! then i finally had my first (although short) night of sleep.

at the end of every post, i will include a "worth seeing" and a "worth eating" section. almost everything on my trip was worth it, but the stuff i list at the end are high recommended and should not be missed!

WORTH EATING: salty soy milk, yangmingshan bamboo shoot soup and fried taro and fried sweet potato

full set of pictures at picasa!

ktv

2008-04-12T19:27:00.001-05:00

i can only say, going to ktv is about the funnest thing i've ever done.

trip

2008-03-26T23:48:00.002-05:00

i'm leaving for taiwan in less than 12 hours!

my plan is to take notes on where i went, how i got there, what was fun, what i ate. also documented with pictures. it will be a series of posts when i get back.

...unless i get lazy.

we the living

2008-03-09T13:39:00.004-05:00

this is why i want to be a doctor:

"Comrade Commissar, you see, I love him. And he is sick. You know what sickness is? It's something strange that happens in your body and then you can't stop it. And then he dies. And now his life--it depends on some words and a piece of paper--and it's so simple when you just look at it as it is--it's only something made by us, ourselves, and perhaps we're right, and perhaps we're wrong, but the chance we're taking on it is frightful, isn't it? They won't send him to a sanatorium because they didn't write his name on a piece of paper with many other names and call it a membership in a Trade Union. It's only ink, you know, and paper, and something we think. You can write it and tear it up, and write it again. But the other--that which happens in one's body--you can't stop that. You don't ask questions about that. Comrade Commissar, I know they are important, those things, money, and the Unions, and those papers, and all. And if one has to sacrifice and suffer for them, I don't mind. I don't mind if I have to work every hour of the day. I don't mind if my dress is old--like this--don't look at my dress, Comrade Commissar, I know it's ugly, but I don't mind. Perhaps, I haven't always understood you, and all those things, but I can be obedient and learn. Only--only when it comes to life itself, Comrade Commissar, then we have to be serious, don't we? We can't let those things take life. One signature of your hand--and he can go to a sanatorium, and he doesn't have to die. Comrade Commissar, if we just think of things, calmly and simply--as they are--do you know what death is? Do you know that death is--nothing at all, not at all, never again, never, no matter what we do? Don't you see why he can't die? I love him. We all have to suffer. We all have things we want, which are taken away from us. It's all right. But--because we are living beings--there's something in each of us, something like the very heart of life condensed--and that should not be touched. You understand, don't you? Well, he is that to me, and you can't take him from me, because you can't let me stand here, and look at you, and talk, and breathe, and move, and then tell me you'll take him--we're not insane, both of us, are we, Comrade Commissar?"

Ayn Rand, We the Living, Part ONE, Chapter XVI

facebook

2008-03-02T23:50:00.001-06:00

i'm thinking about deactivating my facebook (can that be done?).

new project

2008-02-27T23:54:00.008-06:00

i have been working on my jclub presentation the last two days, so even though i finished sweet relationship this weekend, i haven't found a new drama to watch yet. finally i finished the ppt tonight, and now i have also decided on my new project: bump off lover. actually i have been meaning to watch this for quite some time. but when i first wanted to, i couldn't find the episodes. tonight i realized that trusty mysoju.com has just finished posting all the episodes!

i know there are horror dramas, which i can't imagine being scared for like 14 episodes on end...would i just live in fear for 2 weeks? anyway, i'm not sure if this drama is actually supposed to be scary, but it'll definitely be a change from the normal romantic comedy idol dramas i like so much. i'll probably start watching tomorrow night.

tonight i was browsing dramawiki. they have a page for listing tw 2006 dramas, a page for 2007 dramas, and a page for 2008 dramas. so i was looking to see what dramas i haven't seen that are worth watching. this is how i decided to watch bump off lover. there is also a page for upcoming tw dramas. turns out, there is an upcoming drama called 劍道．愛("jian dao. ai" or "kendo. love"). there isn't a synopsis page yet, but all i can say is...THEY TOTALLY COPIED ME! i wrote a drama called 跆拳道﹐ 愛到 ("tai quan dao, ai dao" or "taekwondo, love came"). check out my drama!

tasty snacks

2008-02-24T18:11:00.011-06:00

when my mom came back from a vacation to taiwan recently, she brought my brother and i each a tiny pack of japanese snacks. she said they were from our cousin. all she knew was that they were really expensive, but didn't know exactly how much they cost. at the time i scoffed. what's the point of such expensive snacks? last night i was hungry so i ate mine.

THEY WERE REALLY GOOD! here i have scanned in the front and back of the package so you can see what i ate (and how big the package was; that's a 6" ruler). click on the image so you can see it bigger and the crackers better! on the back is a little picture of each kind of cracker you can find in the mix. there were a few of each of the smaller ones and only 1 or 2 of each of the larger ones. each cracker was as delicate, as tasty, and as carefully made as the pictures suggest. each type of cracker had its own, unique, and tasty flavor. i only wish i could read the little descriptions on the back.

on the packaging i found a website, but i couldn't find this specific snack pack in its list of products. on top it says "welcome to *something something something something* kingdom". one of the houses on the right is a link to is history. bottom center is a link to it's "store". at the castle's door is like a "quote of the day" or something. top right is some old guy's house or something. anyway, that's all i can make out from the chinese characters they use without having to pull out a dictionary. it's a pretty cute site though. makes the snacks even tastier!

spending money

2008-02-24T01:17:00.015-06:00

i'm going to taiwan!

i've seriously spent like no money since starting my job one and a half years ago. now, i'm finally planning a vacation! here's what i spent in the last week:

00847.76 plane ticket to taipei (mar27-apr17)
00249.99 sony cybershot dsc-h3 (black)
00039.99 sony np-bg1 lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack
00014.99 lowepro rezo 50 camera pouch
-0025.00 best buy gift card from coupon for buying camera!
---------
$1127.73

another sweet relationship update

2008-02-24T00:22:00.005-06:00

i just finished sweet relationship.

here are some final thoughts:

first, i take what i said about megan lai back. her character becomes progressively annoying. i still like her as an auxiliary actress though.

second, it seems like every drama always likes to throw in a new character during the last quarter of the show. the character is not really a main character because he/she is not in most of the drama, but he/she has a lot of air time during at least a few episodes. many dramas follow this general storyline: first quarter only the audience knows the two lead characters are meant to be, in the second quarter one lead falls for the other, at the end of the third quarter the other lead finally starts to show hints of reciprocating, at which point this random last quarter character comes in to drag the drama through the last quarter and into the last episode. sweet relationship is no exception. the last quarter character is played by gu xuan chun, a japanese guy whose chinese is really hard to understand and who is really gross and who eats especially gross. i think his character is actually supposed to be attractive, i just find him incredibly gross, especially in this drama. he was in both the rose and they kiss again, so i guess qu you ning really likes him.

third, qu you ning really likes to have cute chubby little boys in this dramas!

fourth, still not a huge patty hou fan, but again, i loved vic's acting in this.

fifth, the storyline wasn't that exciting, but the drama was very well made. many really good and/or really cute scenes.

finally, the dramas always have previews for the next episode at the end of each episode. i always hate watching the previews because they give entirely too much away. yet, i still watch them because i can't stand not watching every second of the videos; it would feel incomplete; what if i missed something? however, even with the extensive previewing, the ending (of the last episode) was sufficiently surprising (well not surprising, but not in the preview) and cute/not a complete let down.

difficult decisions

2008-02-11T17:00:00.001-06:00

life is full of difficult decisions.

this weekend, my brother wanted me to take him to the library, so while there, i decided that i should start reading (for pleasure) again. i think since high school, i have read maybe 1 or 2 books not for a class. i will admit it, but yes, i am ashamed. every week, newsweek interviews a writer and makes a list of his/her top 5 favorite books. a few weeks ago, they interviewed ha jin. he sounded like a modern day amy tan. and i like newsweek, and i liked amy tan when i was young, so i figured i would like ha jin. i checked out two of his books: waiting and war trash. i started reading waiting first (probably because it was shorter). it is set in cultural revolution china and is about a doctor who is trying to get out of a loveless marriage (to a woman his parents picked and she has bound feet) so he can marry is nurse girlfriend. anyway, it was totally boring. why do people write with so many dumb descriptions in such a generic way? like, who cares if a bird flies off in the distance as the protagonist walks along in the countryside? so then i became worried that all this asian drama watching had numbed my senses and made me too impatient to read. maybe i forgot that cultural revolution stories are always so cliche. [actually, i did immensely enjoy the cultural revolution novel gang of one by (a family friend!) fan shen, one of the maybe 1 or 2 books i have read since high school. seriously, i would recommend it. a fast and enjoyable read!]

so then, i decided to read something else. i had bought a copy of we the living (by ayn rand) many, many years ago, and now i finally decided to read it. by contrast, rand's descriptions are tight and fitting: "They put their bundles on the floors, and their bodies on the bundles, and slept...When at last, snorting and groaning, the train rumbled in, men besieged it with fists and feet and ferocious despair." the first chapter ends like this:

"Alighting, she stopped for one short second of hesitation, as if feeling the significance of the step. Her foot was sunburned, and she wore a home-made wooden sandal with leather straps. For one short second the foot was held in the air. Then the wooden sandal touched the wooden boards of the platform: Kira Argounova was in Petrograd."

and it was upon reading this that i knew i wanted to finish the book. you can tell already that kira argounova is going to be a hero (the likes of roark and dagny!) and now i realize why i couldn't finish waiting. the protagonist in that novel is anything but a hero. who wants to read about him??

the only problem is, i really want to know what happens next in we the living and i really want to know what happens next in sweet relationship. so what am i going to read/watch tonight?! life is full of difficult decisions.

what are they teaching kids in school these days??

2008-02-11T08:52:00.000-06:00

last night my (13 year old) brother asked me if i was going to vote in the US presidential election this year.

i said, "probably not."

"why?"

"too lazy."

"then you should vote for me."

"who would you vote for?"

and without one bit of hesitation, my brother said, "obama."

"why?"

again, immediately, my brother said, "because he is black."

my brother explained to me that, at one time, in the US, black people could not even vote! (*gasp*) seriously, that was his reason.

i then tried to explain to him that voting for someone merely because of the color of his/her skin is discrimination.

he said, "no, it's DE-discrimination."

2 korean movies

2008-02-10T14:10:00.000-06:00

in the past week, i watched two korean movies. both were SO korean. SO KOREAN!

lover's concerto this was recommended by shauna, but she has yet to see it. the lead guy is the male lead from my sassy girl, in case anyone cares. i don't want to say too much (i'm not going to link to a synopsis, because the wikipedia gives WAY TOO MUCH information), however: this was one of those movies that is supposed to have twists and surprises, but it is sooooo korean (to the point it's like parodying itself, seriously), so i could usually guess what the twist was before it happened. and then the other thing i have to say is: melodrama melodrama melodrama!

love, so divine this is also sooooo korean! but in a romantic comedy type of way. this movie was purely enjoyable. kwon sang woo (i first saw him in stairway to heaven and immediately took notice of him, but i think many people know him as the male lead from my tutor friend. he's my second favorite korean actor, right behind gong yoo!) plays a priest-to-be that ends up falling in love with a girl (surprise, surprise). anyway, the movie isn't a major work of art, but his character is totally precious. a very well done very normal movie with a totally cute/precious character. o! also, lee sun gyun (the cool/cute cousin who almost stole the show in coffee prince) has a cameo in the movie (it's easy to miss, look out for him eating cotton candy!). definitely worth watching (and rewatching).

sweet relationship update

2008-02-10T13:17:00.000-06:00

i have now finished episode 3 of sweet relationship. doesn't seem very far, but i'm now twice as far as i was since my last post.

i have decided that i LOVE vic in this drama! he's so grumpy all the time, and i have realized he is really good at being angry. and everything about him and how he acts in the drama! which is strange because seeing him being himself in interviews (etc) i feel like since his meteor garden days, he has become more and more like--the only way i can describe it is--monkey+girl. i just feel like he's been castrated and is now working in the Forbidden City, or something. but really, in the drama, he's great. it just shows again how great qu you ning is as a director. i once read this article that asked qu you ning about his casting cai yi zhen (wu xiong) in they kiss again, since she was not well received in her previous drama, summer x summer (i didn't think it was so bad; i actually quite enjoyed that drama and didn't mind her character.). qu you ning said something like, she just needs good direction. and if no one else can make cai yi zhen shine, qu you ning can! (well i don't know, not enough of they kiss again has aired yet.) but really, qu you ning is so good at making his characters both special and very real. some of his very classic characters: kui (the rose), baihe (the rose), zhishu (iswak), xiangqin (iswak), and even zhishu's mom (i LOVE her!). they are totally ridiculous, but so real to me. in qu you ning's dramas, each character, each drama is special. think about it, kui is nothing like zhishu, both played by joe cheng. (but think about mike he's dramas...i feel like he always plays the same character. that's what most idol dramas are like, which is fine, people are soooo typecast.) and vic in sweet relationship is totally different from his real life monkey+girl aura (thank god). i really can't describe it, he's great. of course not all credit goes to the director. i feel like vic is generally pretty good at playing a character that is not monkey+girl. his acting is pretty good in this, which contrasts patty hou's acting. it's her first drama, and i wouldn't say she's bad (it's sufficient for an idol drama), but i feel like vic can act way better than her. for instance, in this last episode, they were both sick, but vic's sneezes were way more convincing.

one complaint: even though this whole drama is supposed to be about food, i don't feel like my senses are overloaded with lots of food. unlike nodame cantabile, in which i got to hear lots of good music every episode, here i don't feel like there is an abundance of good food. (soups are pretty boring.)

sweet relationship

2008-02-07T20:47:00.000-06:00

i have watched 1.5 episodes of sweet relationship, but i am going to prematurely give some of my thoughts on the drama. this is not binding, since, keep in mind, i have only seen 1.5 episodes.

the drama starts at this really nice french restaurant, where this rich/important old guy is cooking dinner for his daughter's graduation/birthday (i couldn't tell which). you first meet vic as he is storming into the restaurant. you learn that vic is the head chef, and vic is mad that someone else is making subpar food in his kitchen. vic sees this pot of soup that the old guy had made and immediately dumps the whole thing down the drain, despite many protests and people trying to restrain him. at that moment, when the soup was going down the drain, i knew i was going to continue watching this drama (within the first 20 minutes of the first episode!).

vic's character is so classic idol drama: talented guy who will not tolerate other people's mediocrity and is always yelling at people. hey, a lot like chiaki from nodame cantabile!! he is (rightfully) elitist like zhi shu in iswak. and i like his personality, the way he thinks, and what he believes is wrong and right. and he is always so right. i won't say that vic is the most attractive guy, especially in this drama, but i do think his look fits well with the character. his attractiveness comes from his mad elitist cooking skills, and not from the strange elf ears that stick out from his chef's hat...

i don't know how i feel about patty hou (the daughter, who will obviously become the heroine). this is her first idol drama, and first acting experience? (i think.) she's totally cute/pretty, but a little generic. i feel like she doesn't have her own look. like ariel, ella, even rainie, they are not objectively the most beautiful, but they are not generic and they totally win you over. (see, this is also why i think vic as the chef works well. and why we all love joe cheng!)

usually i don't care that much about the auxillary characters, but for some reason i have always liked megan lai. at first i thought her character would be the evil/jealous type, but so far (1.5 episodes) she seems cool, and even cute sometimes. i hate when there is an auxillary character that is evil/jealous. it's just an easy way for the drama to cause problems between the leads. and then i am constantly nervous about what that evil/jealous character is going to do next. i'd rather the problems be more spontaneous so that i'm not biting my nails the whole time.

finally, i found out that the director for sweet relationship (qu you ning) also directed iswak! now that i know, i can't believe i didn't realize it earlier. one thing that i noticed about qu you ning's dramas is that every so often he likes to film a scene where the camera is moving around a bit (hard to describe, hope you get it), which seems unusual for the average idol drama. the camera moves around as if the scene has ghost/ufo music to it! and there has already been at least one scene like this in sweet relationship. qu you ning's dramas are always just ever so slightly more raw, so that, every once in a while, i feel like i've actually walked in on some real live (awkward) situation. he has a mix of sugary packaged drama idol scenes and real people doing real things scenes. qu you ning has directed: the rose, it started with a kiss, sweet relationship, and they kiss again. the rose and iswak are two of my favorite dramas, and i am currently watching sweet relationship and they kiss again. qu you ning's dramas are always very well cast (so i have faith in vic, even though he wasn't my favorite male lead before.) and the dramas always have very good characters--characters that make you OBSESSED about the drama. the rose, for example, has an auxillary character, kui. he has long hair, wears frilly girl bath robes, and is in love with his sister. BUT, no one who has watched the rose can help but fall hopelessly in love with kui. when watching these dramas, i get the feeling that qu you ning loves making dramas. this is an art to him and he takes care to make each one special. [on the other hand, dramas directed by lin he long (devil beside you, corner with love, why why love, romantic princess, etc.) are thoroughly entertaining, but very predictable and generic. i like his dramas too. they are sure to be good quality idol dramas, but that is all they are: idol dramas.]

o yeah, and the drama is basically about eating.

so, i am very much looking forward to watching the rest of sweet relationship, and have high hopes for it (definitely a bad idea; i am setting myself up for a let down...). so far the drama is setting up to be a pretty generic idol drama, but i believe in qu you ning! i'll let you know when i finish!

fertilization

2008-02-06T18:10:00.000-06:00

today i had an almost perfect fertilization with my super fertile fresh testes! in a petri dish of hundreds of xenopus eggs, only 2 did not fertilize. i'm so good at fertilizing eggs...muahahahah!

here's part of my job (i do this 3 times a week):

~one week before fertilization, i inject a low dose of human chorionic gonadotropin into a female xenopus. this is to prime her, or get her eggs ready and at the same stage. (at first, i was really nervous about giving frogs injections, because you can't be like, "okay don't move, or it'll hurt more." but it's okay, seems like they usually can't feel the injection at all!)
the night before fertilization, i inject a high dose of human chorionic gonadotropin into the primed female.
the morning of fertilzation, i squeeze and massage the female, while aiming her butt at a petri dish. eggs come squirting out into the dish! (easier said than done. you have to grab both legs of the frog, split them apart and stretch them out so she can't kick herself out of your hands. and it's best if you cover her eyes so she feels safe. and you have to massage and squeeze her while you are at it. and you only have 2 hands. i am now an EXPERT at this!)
meanwhile, i drugged a male frog, cut it open, dissected out its testes, and stored the testes in the cold room. they can be used for up to 1 month!
i cut a small piece of a testis, mash it up with teethed forceps, and touch all the eggs with my testis.
i wait 3 minutes, allowing all the sperm to attach to the eggs.
then, i flood the dish with water. the osmotic shock makes the eggs take in the sperm!
~1.5 hours later, the single cell eggs should have begun to divide into two cells!
and my embryos are on their way to growing up!

these xenopus embryos are in two cell stage. i stole this picture, but this is pretty much what my embryos look liked. unfortunately, many times, instead of looking like this, the the embryos are all rotten and smelly.

a weekend of movies

2008-02-03T17:18:00.000-06:00

i don't know what to blog about, so i'm just going to copy shauna. i saw two movies this weekend:

六號出口 (exit no. 6) i've been meaning to watch this for a while. main motivation: ethan 阮經天 (ruan jing tian)!! and then i was interested to find out that yazi (ring 徐宛鈴) from 超級星光大道 is in it as well. the movie is about some weird happenings around exit no. 6 of the ximen mrt station. there's 4 main characters: a good girl, a bad girl, and two goof-off guys. a girl disappears and they spend half of the movie looking for her (i was looking forward to this part of the movie, but may have been a bit disappointed, but this was still the more interesting half of the movie). the whole time i was watching it, though, i couldn't really decide if i liked it that much, but was thinking, "this is one of those shauna artsy movies." are there really people like this in real life? except the "good girl" do they or did they ever go to school?? i guess the whole point of the movie is like, yes there are youth like this in taiwan. i think this was generally well received, so i think if you were not me, you would enjoy it. well i guess it was pretty good. there's a touch of romance, friendship, and mystery. the ending is kind of weird, and i feel like they were trying to say something about life, or youth, or whatever (i hate that). best part of the movie was the soundtrack, so i'll be downloading the ost! o, and of course it was awesome watching ethan ruan be a hacker. but i'd rather he not have long dreads... anyway, the conclusion is: watch it.

sydney white i randomly downloaded this a while back and this weekend thought, why not? this movie stars amanda bynes (i liked her in she's the man, but her voice is actually kind of annoying/nasally in this) and matt long (omg i LOVED him in jack and bobby, why did that show get canceled??). this is a typical teen-flick...and not done well at that. sydney white (amanda bynes) wants to be in this sorority because her mom was in it, and then of course the sorority girls are mean, and sydney ends up living with a bunch of (7) loser guys. (i could not stop thinking about EC when watching those guys! no offense to anyone, it was in a good way...) o, and then tyler prince (matt long) is the president of a frat, and sydney's love interest. rachel witchburn (the president of the sorority) hates sydney because rachel also likes tyler prince. rachel also has this campus hot or not page, which she is, of course, #1, but sydney eventually is #1 on it. am i dense? it was not until the last ten minutes of the movie, when tyler prince kisses sydney white to wake her up (in a totally-hot-just-got-off-my-white-horse type of way), when i was like, OMG THIS IS SNOW WHITE! her name is WHITE, he is PRINCE! she lives with seven weird guys! then it was only THE NEXT MORNING, when i was like, OMG THE HOT OR NOT PAGE IS THE MAGIC MIRROR! yeah i am dense. o then it was only NOW, as i'm writing this, when it clicked that the president of the sorority is WITCHburn. but then after realizing matt long is supposed to be a dashing prince...i decided he wasn't a good choice for the character; he doesn't have the stature to be a dashing prince. conclusion: don't watch it.

does any of this make sense? shauna, watch exit no. 6 (you can stream it with veohtv here) and blog about it.

family picture

2008-01-24T14:50:00.001-06:00

LEFT TO RIGHT first row: my brother, pochacco, me; second row: elephant, wolfy, piggy, doggie, sharky (can you tell that grey puff ball is a shark?? look closely!)

i came across this picture that was taken about a year ago! these are some of my brother's most cherished stuffed animals. when i was young, i had stuffed animals on my bed too, but they always ended up on the floor by morning. my brother actually hugs them, pets them, loves them. they are some of the softest stuffed animals ever! i like to steal them because i don't like to actually put the effort into making my own stuffed animals soft. i didn't realize this before, but stuffed animals are only cool if you love them. i always hated mine.

dumb kids, smart kids

2008-01-22T12:09:00.000-06:00

this weekend i was helping out in the 3-4 year old sunday school class at church. some kids are just so loveable...and some kids are REALLY not.

kids that are not loveable have/are...
1. runny noses
2. dirty faces
3. smelly (somtimes the smelly kids are so clingy, wanting to sit on my lap.)
4. dumb/slow
etc.

but this one kid in my class is AMAZING! he is 3 and a half. he is the ONLY kid in the entire class who colors in the lines, and usually picks appropriate colors. this past christmas, the kids all got sets of stickers to make the nativety scene. all the kids just put their stickers on randomly, having the wisemen upside down, or basically flying to the manger. this kid, however, put the correct stickers in the barn (baby jesus, joseph, mary, etc.) and all people and animals were right side up and ON THE GROUND!!! also, since there was not enough room in the barn, the kid lined up the three wisemen outside; he told me that the three wisemen were on their way to see baby jesus. not only does this kid have commen sense when coloring and placing stickers, he also can write his name...legibly!!! he is the only kid in the class who can write his name on his paper to the point that i can just glance at it and know what it says. this week, he had another name written on his paper, so i asked him who that was. he said it was his sister. and then he proceeded to tell me he had two sisters and was then able to write the name of his other sister as well!!! OMG THE KID IS AWESOME! NOT ONLY THAT! he is incredibly athletic at 3 years old! he can drop kick a ball...like drop it and kick it in the air. he can catch pretty consistently. he throws like an adult. when he kicks or throws a ball, it invariably hits the ceiling of the classroom. most of the other kids have trouble writing their names and also cannot catch!

UMTYMP

2008-01-17T17:11:00.000-06:00

last night i checked my brother's UMTYMP homework.

which brought back many memories! UMTYMP was one of the (maybe THE) defining experiences of my middle school and high school life. i entered the university of minnesota math program in 7th grade, and for the next two years took algebra i, algebra ii, geometry, and precalculus. 9th grade was the start of 3 years of calculus (no math in 12th grade!). during these 5 years, we covered about a chapter a week, and amazingly, the teacher usually was able to cover the material for the entire chapter during the two (solid) hours we spent in class each week. it was in UMTYMP that i learned to write my math homework neatly, to fully utilize the example problems in my math textbook, and the joy of finishing homework ahead of time. i have always been good at following directions, and afterall, what is an algebra textbook but a giant book of protocols? it was after entering UMTYMP in 7th grade when i first felt the pressure of a full homework load, and first experienced the cramped hand of a two hour lecture and note taking session. it was not only the math, but also many other aspects, that made up the cherished experience of UMTYMP. taking math with the same group of people for 5 years, i got to know some interesting people and made some very dear friends. every thursday we gathered at the local community college from our respective schools across town to catch up, copy homework (i was almost always the copiee), tease each other, eat snacks, and of course listen to lecture. maybe the most important aspect of UMTYMP was a very amazing professor, dr. schwartzbauer, a university of minnesota math professor who we had for calculus i and ii. actually, he was old, unmarried, lived with his mother, and had cats, but we idolized him. he was truly an amazing teacher and very passionate about teaching us the magical subject of calculus. he also gave us his take on a whole host of other topics. i remember he did not believe in the thinning of the ozone layer and, during one lecture, explained to us the chemistry behind his theory (despite being a math professor). he also does not go out of his way to recycle (and i have learned from him in that respect). his favorite movie is citizen kane and his favorite author is ayn rand. we, being bright-eyed and innocent, had no clue who ayn rand was (let alone how to pronounce her name!), but promptly went out and read the fountainhead (still one of my favorite novels!). i have heard that dr. schwartzbauer has since retired: a huge loss for the UMTYMP program.

anyway, back to last night (excuse the above paragraph, i just had to indulge my UMTYMP memories). all of a sudden my mom decided i should check my brother's math homework. she had been doing this for him last semester, and had done this for me during my first year of UMTYMP. my brother is in 7th grade, and in the second semester of UMTYMP's algebra sequence. when i came home from work last night, i found that actually working through / checking the problems was not time consuming at all. while doing this algebra homework the first time around in 7th grade i felt as if i was doing math all week, i found that i can now do the whole week's homework in under two hours. i guess i have become older and wiser! (although, i did always think that he has less homework now than i did during my algebra year in UMTYMP. turns out, his algebra i and algebra ii are being covered by ONE textbook, while i had to go through TWO textbooks in one school year when i was in the program. my two books were each no less thick than his one book. so, we almost always did a whole chapter a week, while i found that my brother's class often splits one chapter into two weeks). this week was the first 4 sections of chapter 8, something about functions. i think this was his first introduction to functions (i hope so), because i heard him say, "f times a plus f times b" when referring to f(a) + f(b). then i asked him what a function was, and all he could do was point to the diagram of a "function box" in his textbook. (it kind of looked like a weird food processor. put x in through the top and it spits out f(x) through a spigot on the side.) it was quite obvious he had not taken the time to read completely the text and the example problems. does he think he is too good for the book? obviously he is not. he had to completely redo all the problems for section 8.3. as i was checking, he was like, "o i do not have that many wrong?" i was like, "well this whole section is wrong." he's like, "well that's encouraging." IS IT MY JOB TO BE ENCOURAGING?! plus his problem is he thinks he does not need to read the book, so the solution should be to beat him down and cut off some of that confidence! i guess my brother is not like me. he likes positive reinforcement, and i do not. also, i do not really believe in it. to combat his laziness, my mom and i have devised a new system (i think a mix of positive reinforcement and negative punishment? or is it positive punishment? idk, i hated psychology.):

A. my brother gets $10 if, for that week, he gets every problem correct. (won't likely happen.)

B. my brother gets $3 if he gets less than or equal to 3 problems wrong. (still unlikely.)

C. my brother has to pay us $1 if... (much more effective, muahaha!)
1. my brother cannot correctly answer something specifically stated in the textbook.
2. he copies a problem statement from the textbook incorrectly.
3. he misses answering parts of a problem.
4. he misses a negative sign.

actually, i came up with part C, at which point my brother started crying, so my mom appended part A, at which point he still would not stop crying, so then she added part B. another one of his problems is that he likes to wait until the last minute to finish his homework. so, while i was trying to check his homework, he was still doing it, meaning we were fighting over the textbook. and we were at it until midnight. i do not have a creative way to fix this, only to say, "you have to finish half of the problems over the weekend."

after less than a week of blogging, i have realized, i tend to ramble. this got really long. but, hopefully you can see that UMTYMP was really one of the most cherished experiences of my life. and it just really irks me that my brother does not do his math homework with the same amount of respect and tedium that i once did.

two jewels of wisdom

2008-01-16T13:08:00.000-06:00

i've realized that shauna's blog is (at times) more informative than my blog. so, i've decided to contribute two jewels of wisdom that i have gathered during my time in biomedical research purgatory.

1. specialize in anything chronic

lauren, a dentist turned phd student in a lab that shares space with my lab, studies chronic pain. as a dentist, she specialized in chronic jaw pain. her patients had been in pain for years by the time they saw her. generally, they had no problem waiting another two weeks to see lauren. in her line of work, there are few emergent cases, which means much less oncall type situations and less "sure i'll squeeze you in" type appointments. as opposed to dentists who specialize in acute pain...

2. pick animal models that grow slowly

in my research i work with xenopus laevis (african clawed frog) embryonic spinal neurons. meaning these xenopous neurons are a model for the human neurons we want to know more about. xenopus embryos develop fast and their neurons grow fast, which makes them a convenient model. the neural tube forms in xenopus embryos less than 24 hours post fertilization. and...to culture (cut off a piece of tissue from the back including spinal cord, dissociate the cells, and plate out single cells/neurons on glass) neurons at the stage i want, i have to catch the xenopus embryos in a 1-2 hour window. which means my schedule in the lab revolves around the development of my xenopus babies. AND...because the neurons grow so fast, i have to do my experiments 14-20 hours after plating out my cells. i have to get back to lab and i can't be late! trying to do experiments on neurons much after 20 hours means dying neurons or neurons that are no longer growing (using growing neurons is important for us!!). and thus, my days revolve around xenopus embryo development and neuron growth. as opposed to a rat or mice model. rat and mice development is more or less measured in days. while their neural tube forms closer to ten days post fertilization (more waiting), i can culture embryonic rat hippocampus neurons any time on day 18. and to catch them while they are still growing fast (but not as fast as xenopus neurons unfortunately), i can do experiments on them anytime within the first 3 days after plating!

better yet, skip animal models altogether and join the growing field of computational neurobiology and make the computer work around your schedule.

hmm...seems my two points are actually pretty similar...

string players are so cool!

2008-01-13T16:13:00.000-06:00

last night i finished the japanese drama nodame cantabile. i have had some bad experiences in the past with japanese dramas. i watched itazura na kiss recently, the japanese version of iswak. (well itazura na kiss was made first and iswak was based on the japanese manga itazura na kiss.) my problem with japanese dramas is the amount of screaming (baka! baka!) and a very literal interpretation of the manga. is it really necessary that when the heroine is slapped, she is thrown across the room, or into a tree? there is also an abundance of ridiculous/ugly/gross characters/storylines. and nodame cantabile is no exception. despite being leery of japanese dramas, i decided to watch nodame cantabile because it won best mini series at the the most recent seoul drama awards (a very new, international, but korean award ceremony).

turns out i thoroughly enjoyed the drama! it is basically about two piano students at a music academy. the girl (nodame) is a sloppy player, but very expressive/talented. the guy (chiaki) is a perfectionist and has a dream of being an orchestra conductor. the storyline is nothing more than a very typical asian drama story--sloppy/poor girl likes perfect/rich guy, who eventually also falls for sloppy/poor girl--but executed very well. the standout element of the drama is its score. (nodame cantabile also won best director and best music director!) the music is amazing and refreshing after watching an abundance of dramas with the same old pop music. there is a wide variety of classical pieces: piano, piano duets, orchestral, piano concerto, even an oboe concerto! i have never liked the oboe, but i appreciate it a bit more now. the romance (of course very important) is very convincing. unlike many dramas in which it does not make sense that the awesome guy falls for the weird girl, chiaki is at first moved by nodame's expressive piano playing, if not attracted to the girl herself. it's natural that chiaki, a guy who LOVES music, grows to appreciate nodame, a girl who makes exquisite music. their relationship develops at a very natural and convincing pace, and is a classic example of two very different people learning from each other (popular drama theme). at 11 episodes long, the drama was neither rushed nor did it drag. despite the exaggerated nature of japanese dramas, i grew to love both leading characters. as i was watching a scene where nodame is feeding chiaki a bite of pudding, i suddenly realized, there is a level of cuteness that only japanese people can reach. i don't know how to describe this drama other than enjoyable and it made me smile.

also, there is a really cute violin player in nodame cantabile. string players who carry their instruments on their back like a backpack are so cool!

btw, mysoju.com is one of my favorite sites to stream kr, jp, or tw dramas! they have an extensive library of english subbed dramas. they don't host the videos directly on their site, but gather all the different episodes and parts together for each drama so that you just have to click on their links to watch an entire show. you can watch the videos embedded on their site or go to the hosting site (youtube, veoh, dailymotion, gofish, etc.). they are constantly linking to different sites as different parts of dramas get taken down from sites like youtube and veoh due to copyright issues. props to mysoju!!

first post

2008-01-11T12:37:00.001-06:00

when i was volunteering at the salvation army good samaritan medical clinic this monday, a very old, retired nurse asked me, "so how is your job as an emt?"

i was an emt (mit-ems!!) in college, which is how i came to be doing nursing assessments at the local free clinic. now, though, i work as a research technician in a molecular neuroscience lab.

i explained to her that i now work in research, and then almost as an afterthought, i added that i would be going to medical school this fall. she promptly replied, "i have never had a desire to be a doctor." then she explained that doctors were too far removed from the patient. she wanted to take care of patients. i smiled, but inside i was aghast. man, i just want to get away from the lab bench! basic science research--talk about far removed from the patient.

and next year, i will most definitely leave the lab bench! this morning i just mailed a $100 check to university of minnesota medical school. they call it an "acceptance deposit", which must be paid within two weeks of the acceptance letter and is "non-refundable after may 15, 2008." does that mean it IS refundable before then? nowhere does it explain how i can get that money back should i decide to go to another school. (also, nowhere in the packet of materials i recieved with my acceptance letter does it specify the "pay to the order of" for that check.)

confusion aside, with my first (well maybe only) medical school acceptance, i feel i am finally moving in a forward direction post mit graduation. it has been a long year and a half since my undergraduate graduation. this purgatory that is the time between undergrad and grad school has been filled with frustrating biomedical research, living at home with my parents and little brother, and hundreds of hours working on applications in coffee shops. in an email, an MD friend, upon hearing of my acceptance, wrote, "welcome to the game!" after going through a year of the med school application process, i do feel that this career choice is (unfortunately) a game. as i accept my first acceptance, i feel very excited to be going back to school, but i also wonder HOW MANY ASIAN DRAMAS CAN I WATCH BEFORE I BEGIN MED SCHOOL?!

and so for the next six months, i will earnestly watch asian dramas, discover more chinese music i like, write my own dramas based on the lives of my friends, and blog about how i wish i live in taiwan (instead of dreary minnesota). med school here i come!!