1. i wanted mister donut so badly today that i looked up where the closest one from my house is, looked up what bus i could take to get there and proceeded to take a bus i’ve never taken before to a place i’ve never been in order to buy some mister donut. and mmmmmmmmmmmm. they’re having this promotion that if you buy at least $70 NT worth of stuff (~2 doughnuts) they give you a scratch card and you can collect points.. and if you get 10 points, you get a free pon de ring lion (pictured below) cell phone charm. i only got 3 points today and tomorrow’s my last day here! noooooooo! i’m just gonna stand at mister donut and beg people for scratch cards tomorrow.
i have a headache.. so long story short, my dad’s company celebrated its 29th anniversary (since its original founders started it up in taiwan) tonight and there was dinner and singing and drinking and merryment. enjoy some pictures.
some important company people standing together.
singing 傷心酒店 with teh father.
a bunch of old guys singing. it was pretty cute, haha.
my dad’s the one on the right.
uncle “silver” and my dad.
all the young people.. haha.
again.. this time with my dad’s driver standing on the left side.
okay yeah, i really have to go to sleep today. goodnight!!!
today was such a chill day.. by the time i looked up from my position on the couch with my laptop, it was 4 pm and i was still in my pajamas, surfing the web. lol! tonight 阿姨 and her husband ate with us at 王品 (wang steak), and oh my, the meal was freaking delicious. i wouldn’t say that the steak was the bestest steak i’ve ever eaten, but it was probably one of the most tender, and the whole meal in general was one of the best ones i’ve ever had. two thumbs up! we took so many pictures of the food that i condensed some of them.. if you wanna see the pictures bigger, on the right side of this site there’s some links to some photo albums.. click on the taiwan trip one.
salmon wrapped fruit & vegetable salad, ox tail soup with puff pastry on top.. pretty much the best soup evAr and my shrimp & fruit salad with my dad’s “stick” salad in the background.
the humunguous steak (i only ate half), lobster & fish and rack of lamb.
they kept giving us drinks, it was kind of ridiculous.. this picture doesn’t even include the juice and coffee at the end. the left one is this white wine that could make me an alcoholic.. i usually hate drinking, but i don’t know if i’ve just gotten more used to the taste from all the sangria this year at tina’s and heang’s (hehe.. thanks guys :P) or if this was just that good but i really liked the wine.. water, a cocktail and plum tea.
dessert time! chocolate lava cake & ice cream.
creme brulee in a seashell.
my iced coffee with the cute little cream & sugar syrup glasses on the side. see the coffee ice cube in the cup??
it was my dad’s birthday, lily 阿姨’s birthday and my birthday recently, so they gave us this cake.
i’m still so full! yum! tomorrow for lunch will be round 2: leftovers
i must say, this season of so you think you can dance is awesome!! i just watched this week’s episodes today via graboid, and everyone is so good. my favorite this week is the hip hop routine by chelsie and mark, one of my favorite couples (i’ve still yet to decide on my absolute favorite dancers). the struggle behind the dance is that he’s a workaholic and she’s trying to get him to stay with her. i hope you guys like it too! i like this style of hip hop the best, i think.
tonight we ventured out in the rain (but not as pouring as yesterday) to 陽明山 (yang ming mountain) with lily 阿姨 and her husband to have dinner. i remember that the last time i went to 陽明山 it was with bev and our cousins, and they told us scary ghost stories the whole way down.. i got so scared that i felt apprehensive even going back there today, a good 8 or 9 years since the last time! haha. anyway, we had dinner at this restaurant called 食養山房餐廳 (shiyang culture restaurant). it’s a really tucked-away place on the mountain, and you have to walk through these garden-esque places to get to the japanese-style buildings that you eat in. inside there’s tatami mats and everyone has to take their shoes off. it’s a really beautiful and serene place, and the food was amazing, but i’d say it’s slightly boring if you’ve not reached a certain age.. and my mind isn’t there yet still very nice, though.
part of the scenery we walked by.. it looks dreary from the rain (i couldn’t use flash).
inside the tatami rooms, waiting for lily 阿姨 and her husband to arrive (they got a little lost on the way).
and now.. for the food! i took pictures of almost every dish, i think. this one has some kind of spring roll on the left (i didn’t like it), peanut tofu in the middle and a fish thing on the right.
scallop steamed egg. i love steamed eggs, so i liked this dish a lot.
this one was kind of like.. sushi?
abalone and something that LOOKS like fried tofu but wasn’t exactly fried tofu.
seafood, sashimi, vegetable, seaweed salad.
salami-wrapped rice balls with mushrooms on the side.. i love salami
chicken and chinese herb soup.. and then the waiter dropped a dried flower on top.
now i’d like to share an article i read today with you! it’s so cute, it brightened my day. it’s about this pig that wears little boots!
reminds me of that song we sang in lab that time when we started using my piggy pencil (were we high off lab fumes or something? it was so random, lol.)
¯ piggy piggy piggy, can’t you see?
sometimes your tail just hypnotize me ¯
i really don’t have that much to say today, but i’m in the habit of making a post every night now, so here goes. my dad went to play golf really early this morning (no joke, he was up by 4:30 am) and then my mom and i took a cab out around noon to meet up with him and a couple of people he played golf with (aka his coworkers) for lunch. we ate at some chicken restaurant. charles happened to call when i was at the restaurant and after i told him the name of the place (which i promptly forgot afterwards.. most names of places are just a string of chinese words that i don’t recognize or use in daily life, so it’s really hard for me to remember) he told me that it’s a very taiwanese style (as opposed to chinese/shanghai/cantonese style, etc.) food. it was really good, but nothing very noteworthy happened except for when they brought out this tofu dish in a chicken pot.
after lunch we came home and chillaxed for a bit and then we ventured back out to go to a couple shops and get shaved ice at ice monster. it’s this famous shaved ice place, but charles and i never made it out there every time we came back, so i wanted to try it out. it was absolutely POURING rain! we tried waiting the heavy rain out in the car, but it just wouldn’t stop, so my mom and i had to get out and buy the ice to go and run back to the car to eat it. we each had an umbrella but it didn’t matter.. we both got soaked anyway. so the ice was okay (i had the mango flavor) but it’s really about equally as good as shaved ice anywhere else. the scoop of mango ice cream on top was the best part.. it was delicious. i went across the street to try to get a couple of rainy pictures of the place.
if you look really carefully you can see my mom ordering at the counter.. haha.
we had leftovers at home for dinner and i watched walk the line with my parents.. and now my dad thinks he’s johnny cash. we also went on a late-night trip to our local rt-mart to stock up on thick fishnacks (my all time favorite savory snack food.. just don’t smell my breath) because i’m running low at home. and by that i mean i still have quite a few packs but i’m hoarding them just in case someone breaks into my secret closet and eats them.
here’s a video of part of the crazy rain that i took while i was standing in a store.. look at the way the raindrops blow by on the floor. it’s impossible to not get soaked!
so! another day has passed. my mom and i went out shopping (again). i’m such a pro at public transportation now! i love using my yoyo card that’s near the very top of my list of awesome things about taiwan that we don’t have in america. the yoyo card! it’s the kind that you just hold in front of a sensor to use (just like our school badges, but i don’t think it’s as thick) and you can use it for so much stuff. i paid $500 NT for mine a couple years ago cuz it’s a snoopy yoyo card.. i didn’t know that they sell stickers everywhere for you to cover normal yoyo cards with. i feel so cheated. anyway.. yoyo cards are used on the metro, on the bus (which, by the way, is only $12 NT for students.. isn’t that really cheap?), to pay for parking in parking structures.. they’re so great! u just hold up ur wallet (or wherever you keep ur card) near a sensor and off you go! so convenient! i love taking the bus to use my yoyo card. haha..
okay, random aside over.. here’s another one. so one of the buses we often take passes by a fast food place called klc. that’s right.. kLc. i’m still trying to figure out what it stands for. kentucky lovin’ chicken? kentucky loser chicken? kentucky lucky chicken? i wanted to take a picture of the sign and into the store for you guys to see, cuz it’s RIDICULOUSLY similar to kfc, but i couldn’t really do it because of the rain.. and the bus was moving pretty fast. here are a couple of blurry pics.. on the restaurant sign, there’s a picture of a chicken instead of coronel sanders, but it’s drawn in the same way coronel sanders is.
tonight my mom and i went to dinner with some of her friends from college. we ate at an italian restaurant pretty close to my house in neihu.. it was called cara cara, i think.
the kids. they both belong to the lady wearing pink above. i literally stole that dress out of my mom’s closet. HAR HAR!
aaaaaaaaah i woke up so early this morning! alice 阿姨 invited us to go to 九份 (jioufen) with her and her sister, so my mom and i took the bus to meet up with them and then we all took another bus to jioufen. for all the studio ghibli fans out there, it’s the place that spirited away was modeled after. pretty cool, eh? that’s one of the reasons i agreed to go it was ridiculously hot out there today, but the bustling street market made it worth the trip. it also used to be a gold mining area of taiwan, and it’s pretty high up, so the views are beautiful.
entrance to the street market..
this guy was making these crazy recorder-like instruments in all different shapes and sizes. you can really play music with all of them! i bought one for danny (tina, you have to make sure he doesn’t drop it, haha).
after we got home and showered all the sweat and grime off of ourselves, we went back out to a cashbox (karaoke place) and met up with my cousins daniel, alex and alisa. we haven’t all been together for 5 years! check it out.
the lighting in the room kept making these little light halo circle things come up on the pictures, but i think that last one came out okay.
dude! i’m SO afraid of getting bitten by mosquitos now after my leg *incident* that i can’t stand still anymore. i’m pro at taking the bus now, but sometimes we have to wait like half an hour for the bus and i just jump around the whole time.. i totally tire myself out. anyway, here are a couple pictures of me with my parents.. took them at home cuz it’s the end of my birthday over here
thanks for all the birthday messages (and hello kitty e-card, in the case of pants) and to everyone who managed to sign that big card charles got (that got here right on time)! i was very surprised. my memory sucks so much that i was surprised to see the card at all, even though i discovered it in his car the day he bought it.. i completely forgot about it. he was so dumb. he didn’t expect me to be in his car that day.. and i totally wouldn’t even have rummaged around in the backseat for something after i got in his car, it’s just that he kept looking back every 2 seconds as if he were really afraid i’d find something there. O_o thanks guys! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
and tomorrow’s my last day here! noooooooo! i’m just gonna stand at mister donut and beg people for scratch cards tomorrow.
