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tumbili
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Interests: crazy stuff that is gonna kill me one of these days...
Expertise: Umm, BSing maybe? i dunno, i am not good at making things up on the spot...
Occupation: Student
Industry: Other
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/12/2003
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| Hmmmm.... been a while....
-F
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| Yesterday I met up with Hong-Yi Gao again. He took me too the Taichung Harbor Art Gallery. It was very cool. Hong-Yi got his undergrad in trational Chinese opera and folk art, so he knew a lot about the painters and the buildings that were modeled. It is so nice to have someone that enjoys viewing art with me. Taking 3 or 4 hours just to take in the wonder and the thoughts of someone else through their art. Afterward we went to his apartment and watched some opera. Amazing. I wish I could discribe it. Oh well.
It feels a bit odd with most people gone. Going to be an odd few days.
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| Its been a long time since I posted anything. Most of the intervining time was spent in class, studies, eating, hang out and playing games (Mah Jong anyone?). I saw a few movies (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory twice) and such but over all most of my time has been just hanging out and studying. That is the main reason I have not been posting, just did not know what to write about to make things interesting. However my life became a bit more interesting over the last two weeks, so I figured I would share a bit.
Two weekends ago I cought up wtih Pearl in Taipei for saturday. Snatched a bus up in the morning, it takes about 2.5 hours to get up there but only costs about $5 for a bus ticket. All of the bus lines stop about two blocks from each other and the train station, so I told Pearl we could meet at the train station. Little did I know it would take about 20 one minute phone calls and a good 2 hours to find eachother. It is a big place and we both ended up in underground malls, but little did we know there were three different underground malls right next to eachother. With the help of John, Pearl's UofM friend that was also in Taipei and meet up with us, we did eventually find eachother. Then were faced with the terrible problem of what to do. While Teipei is a big city with a ton of things to do, all them require spending money and the knowledge of when and where, as well as many of them holding little interest for our little group. We ended up going to "that place under the bridge that might have the bootleg studio Ghibli set". Alas, it did not have the set, but it was fun to see, and it was under a bridge. Then Pearl treated me to a very nice dinner in a famous Taipei restaurant (when we left there was a good 2-3 hour wait). Pearl, I'll have to treat you sometime when we get back to UMich. After bumming around the night market and buying 2 tee-shirts, one with the worst english I could find, we sat down for some English Coffee before I headed back. On the way home I decided to splurge a little and spent the extra $3 for an Aloha bus back. I had heard they were nicer. Wow. They are nicer. Every row is a single HUGE leather chair with heat and several vibration settings, you get a blanket, tea and coffee, snacks, and a personal LCD that has 6 channels, and 72 video games. Now that is a bus.
Which brings me up to last weekend. So last thursday I find out at 9pm that my group of friends (including the American teacher) are leaving at 9am on friday morning for a weekend of going around the country. Needless to say, I dropped my plans and missed a class. We took bus and train to Keelong (GEE-loong) for a ghost festival. Our plans backfired a bit when we found out the big shindig was the day before. Oh well, we got to see the sacrficial pig. It was around 660 kg, and if you saw the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it looked a lot like the balloon verson of Violet. Bizarre, replusive, and cruel all at the same time. We promtly left for a small town in the mountains. This town was a tourist town for local Taiwanese people. Very nice, lots of windy, steep staircases all over and all these really cool buildings a tea-houses. Very pleasant. Then we headed back to Keelong to grab a train over to Hualien.
Hualien (literally Flower-Lotus) is the gem of Taiwan's beautiful eastern coast. The city itself is much like every other city in Taiwan, but the landscape and the area and the ocean, fantastic. Hualien is home to the Taroko Gorge. The Gorge is kinda to Taiwan what the Grand Canyon is to America. It is unbelievably beautiful. Every amazing waterfall ladien mountainness place in every movie does not do this place justice. I would go on and on but it wouldn't matter, I cannot describe it, and you cannot see it. I will say that this Gorge has some amazing rapids. I am a sucky kayaker, never really learned, but even I can tell that the many rivers that make up the Gorge are all amazing, and many are heavy class 6 if they are runnable at all. It made me realize how great a place Taiwan would be for a Venture trip. Mountains, Hiking, Kayaking, Surfing all right next to each other. I'll pitch the idea when I get home. We spent most all our time in the Gorge when we were at Hualien. We had two days, one really needs a good two weeks to understand what is there let alone see it all.
After I got home from Hualien (at 3am) it was back to tests and classes. But only for a day. Yesterday after my first final (of three) Mr. Chen came and picked me up and we headed down to Lugang. Lugang is the second oldest non-native settlement in Taiwan. We met up there with Mr. Gao, and student of Mr. Chen. Mr. Gao took us to four temples, a folk art museam and several historic spots. His knowledge of Lugang is amazing. And so where all the things he had to say. Of the many many things he talked about I will mention two. Both were in Chinese Temples. (The Chinese popular religion is its own thing, a mish-mash of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism.) The first is a traditional shrine like incinerator for burning paper with characters on them. It had no particular religious meaning, these are usully found on college campus rather then in temples. They are only for burning papers with writing on them as a sign of respect for the ablity to write. Historically many people were illiterate so any one you could write was greatly respected, and the words themselves were so respected that any paper with writing could be be discarded but had to be burned with ritual. Such amazing respect for knowledge and writing. The second where four carvings in the roof of a temple. They dipicted an old man stroking his beard, an old man having his back stratched, an old man having his ears cleaned and an old man stretching and relaxing. These are the four most pleasurable things in life. Just think on that. I will say no more.
So that is a quick summary of my time over the last few weeks. One more final left. I'll be home before I know, my how time flies. Zaijian for now.
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| Not much has not been going on really. I go to class and such. Thats about it for the moment. What I am actually posting for is my Father. Just to say thanks for all your help in so many ways. I love you too, Dad. Today is the Chinese Father's Day. The word for father in in Chinese is Baba. And the number 8 is also Ba. So, today being 8-8 or Ba Yue Ba Hao, making it Baba Day, or father's day. Go figure. Anyway, Love ya Dad.
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| Wow, it has been a long time. This one will likely be long. Consider this your warning.
So the day after my last post I went to my first hot-pot place. Very cool. Your seated at a table that has a hole in front of each seat. Your then given a large pot of water, which fits in the hole. There are dials on the side of the table and you adjust the table to the temp you would like your water heated to (at least boiling). Then you leave your table to the job of boiling the water and go pick up all sorts of uncooked froozen food and such. After you have made your choices, make a sauce for you planned meal and head back to your table, where the boiling water is there waiting for you. Throw your food in and enjoy. Great idea. A lot of fun.
The next day I went to a traditional Chinese tea house. Amazing. I have decided that a tea set is what I want to bring home with me. And I would also like to learn the rituals involved in Chinese tea. I already know about half of them I would guess, but there is so much more to learn out there. For the first time I had real tea. I mean I have had good tea in American, but here... the tea is real. Of course here tea is like wine. There are plenty on cheap tea bags and modern tea shops but the real traditional tea is where the good stuff is. And like wine, you pay for good tea. And, once again, like wine, tea has no real price limit. There is always a better tea out there and you can always pay more for it. The tea we had translated into High Mountain Tea and was of good quality. It was 980NT or about $30. And it was amazing. I wish I could discribe the complexity and ritual of drinking tea but I feel it will be a loss. If I can find a tea set I can afford, I will just show you all when I get back. I figure China has some history behind its tea, being that tea was "discovered" in China, so had been around awhile. If I can find a book in English about the history of Chinese tea I will be sure to pick it up. (on a side note, that day I also came across an Armani store. There is was a sale, you could get a suit for 20% off the 58,880NT (about $2000) so buy em while they're hot)
Thus began the week, which was filled of tests and the like. Tuesday was interesting. Monday night I had a terrible headache, was a bit loose around the bottom (if you know what I mean), felt like I was going to vomit, etc etc. Tried to go to bed early but was in enough pain to keep me up till 3 am. Needless to say, this made Tuesday morning a pain. I stumbled into class 7 minutes late (the second time I have not been early) and collapsed into my chair. My teacher looked a bit worried but class went on. When I again stumbled into my second class daZhong Laoshi took one look at me and declaired I was to go to the doctor--right now! So she called Oscar (my roommate) and he came and picked me up and took me to the doctor. What I figured, and the doctor agreed with, is that I had too much tea, with too much heat, and not enough water. Not exaclt sure what it was because it was not a normal dehydration, but he gave me some meds and told me to come back if it was not ok in two days. Nice guy. So I took my meds and went to bed. Took a 6 hour nap, and when I woke up I was feelin better, if not good. I was better by Thursday. And in case you were wondering, yes the doctor's office in Taiwan had a fish tank as well. Come on, it is not a doctor's office without a fishtank.
Speaking of Thursday, on Thursday I went out to lunch with my two classmates, who are both Japanese women. One is my age, and the other is 53 and a mother of three grown children. We left after class, and as we walked out into the parking lot to 'mom's' car, she said, "oh, where is my car!" This parking lot is not big enough to lose your car, it only has like ten slots, so we both though "Oh no, it was stolen!" Boy were the two of us mistaken as 'mom' had a driver and she just meant she didn't see her driver yet. So then this amazing Benz pulls up (an s350 with every feature and some after market, which is about $80,000 fyi) pulls up and out pops the driver to open the car doors for us. This was all normal for mom, but my gosh were us kids floored. Well we went to this American/Italian deli. This place clearly tailored to the wealthier Americans, as Americans are used to playing $8 for a meal, no big deal. It had all imported stuff, including wines and beers, cheeses and breads, sauces and dressings, all sorts of stuff. What really cought my attention was a box of Golden Grams, one of my favorite cereals. I was about to buy one when I noticed the price, 350NT (~$11.50) for one box. I guess shipping is a killer. Then mom asked if I wanted to go to a tea house because she knew I like traditional tea, so I went to my second tea house (which was not as good, but was also about half the price). It was a very good day.
On friday I left for a weekend in Taipei, but I don't feel like writing about that now, so I'll do it shortly.
So long for now
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