1.11.2007 monk

A photo from my painful ride to Yehliu in October I found on a film I just developed.

Labels: Photography, Taiwan day trips, Yehliu

1.10.2007 Sorry to any people who read my RSS feed

I've been doing a bunch of updates to old posts and for some reason it bumps them up to the top of the rss feed. So my feed articles are seriously out of order I'm trying to look into how to prevent this from happening but no luck yet.

1.09.2007 Happy Anniversary! to us! ya

Han and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on Wednesday (Jan 3rd). We returned to the site of our first date. The biiiiiiig ferris wheel in Neihu. It's a pretty exciting milestone for me since this is officially now my longest relationship ever and I'm not even a little bit sick and tired of him yet. :)



He puts up and tolerates with me in a way that only a family member would and he really is my family now... not to mention he's super thoughtful and helpful all the time. Western girls, I'm telling you... find a Taiwan guy!



And there was a dorky photo booth, how could we resist?

Labels: relationships, taipei, taiwan

1.02.2007 Forgive me Wally Gator!

Well it's extremely embarrassing that I haven't posted anything in nearly two months. I guess for the most part I've been so busy with work and life that the site has fallen by the wayside. For awhile I was getting tired of all the work I was putting in here as a means of communicating with loved ones and getting little to nothing back in return... ie one way communication... but the site has taken on a life of its own and even with my sporadic posting I am still managing an average of 50+ unique visitors a day. With all the people out there in the world doing this I'm really happy that there are that many people finding me.

Anyway... new years eve in Taipei. We decided to lay low. Last year I saw the fireworks from a friend's rooftop apartment which was great... this time I didn't have a friend with a rooftop apartment that had a good view, or who wasn't going down into the trenches. The fireworks, for those outside Taiwan, are set off from Taipei 101 (the tallest building in the world). It's usually a pretty good show and my sources touted that this one was going to be "LIKE SIX TIMES BETTER THAN LAST YEAR!!!". Last year was pretty cool, so I figured it was still worth the trip out. I really didn't want to go down into the heart of the madness so I figured we could find a place to see the fireworks from a safe distance since you can see 101 from soooo many places in Taipei.

Before our adventure to find our prime fireworks viewing spot Han and I stopped for some BBQ on Minsheng East Road. Alligator was on the menu so we did it! I'm sorry Wally Gator. Forgive me. There were the typical Taiwan entries like chicken heart, pig intestines, pig face meat (not sure the tech term for that one), shaved rib bones, and cow tongue. The biggest surprise is cow tongue is amazing. Alligator tasted a lot like flounder but obviously more chewy and thicker but it was pretty tasty. It's been a long while since I've "tried something new".



Anyway I didn't bother taking video of the fireworks since I knew there'd be 50 kazillion videos of them on youtube but we did manage to get a good view, unfortunately we still got way too far into the mess of people and didn't even manage to get in the door until after 3:00 am even though we left right after the fireworks. The MRT (subway) was a nightmare with the security guards only letting small streams of people in meanwhile the "waiting area" was like a mosh pit with heavy winter jackets, and no air conditioning.

When we finally got down to the train they were pulling people out of the cars who'd fainted inside because of how many people they were packing in each car. If it hadn't been for Han creating a barrier around me I'm sure I'd have a collapsed lung. I can't believe how many people live in this city.

Labels: gastronomical adventures, taipei, taiwan