Yilan bound

I'm off on a bike trip from Wulai to Yilan! Expect an interesting blog post soon.

BBQ Lunch

It's Friday!  And the girls went out for lunch together again.  I'm not sure if it's the start of a Friday tradition or it's a tradition that's been going on for a while and I didn't realize it (cause I've only been back here for 4 Fridays).

This afternoon we went across the road to this lunch place specializing in BBQ meats.  I can't believe I haven't been to this place yet!  It's right beside a lot of the places I already go.  I think I never went in because everything inside is in Chinese and it feels more like a restaurant than a food cart which I'm used to ordering from.

Jasmine helped me pick what to eat.  Her and I both choose the Honey BBQ Chicken.  Unfortunately when we arrived at the cashier, it would appear that Irene (our co-worker) ate the last one!  Gah! So I opted for regular BBQ Duck which is always a favourite of mine, while Jasmine had the soy sauce based Chicken.

Lining up to order

mmmm... if you like asian style bbq meats.

Everyon's meals.  Mine on bottom middle is the BBQ duck, then Anni on bottom right had BBQ pork on rice, Theresa (food not pictured) had beef fried rice, Katy top right: BBQ duck, Irene top left: the last Honey BBQ Chicken, and Jasmine to the left with her Soy Sauce Chicken.

I think you get to pick you side dishes because there's maybe 6 different ones to choose from.  I didn't end up having a choice and I wasn't sure if the choice was made for me by Jasmine or not.

Really good value!  The meals fluxuate between $2.50 - $3.  Also comes with clam & ginger soup and sweet barley tea

As you can see, it's really good value and all the food was delicious considering the price.  I traded some of my duck away to get pieces of the soy chicken, bbq pork, and honey chicken so I got to try most people's food.  Everything was really good.  But I think I'm still a sucker for BBQ duck.  Maybe it's because I've been having chicken my whole life, so duck is something a little more "special" still for me.

Alright, to finish off this post I just wanted to snap the picture of the "pedestrian lane" taking up the middle of the road.  That line of umbrellas walked for at least 20-30 meters along the middle of the road while traffic was whizzing by them on both sides.  It looked pretty comical so Anni and I snapped a photo lol.

Mexican Night!

Hola!  Thursday night I invited Ali, Niki, and Anne over for Mexican dinner.  I made Mexican 1 or 2 times a year or two ago for them at the Cingpu house when we all lived together and it got rave reviews so I wanted to invite them over for another Mexican fiesta!

It smelled like Mexico in the apartment but outside it was crazy torrential rain.  Anne and I got drenched walking from work to the Carrefour (groceries) and then back to my apartment; And we had umbrellas!  It didn't seem to matter because the rain was so huge, and blowing sideways enough that my shoes and pants were soaked by the time we reached home.

Anne helped me shop around Carrefour for all the ingredients we needed.  I needed to buy lettuce, tomatoes, ground beef, salsa, cheese, chili flakes, and onions.  After several minutes of exploring, we discovered Carrefour doesn't carry salsa so I picked up some cilantro and a lime to make my own fresh salsa (ended up tasting better anyways).  I can't seem to find chili flakes anywhere either so I picked up some hot sauce.  I thought it was like.. a piquante type sauce but I tried it today on my pasta and it's actually more like Vietnamese thick orange hot sauce. lol... ah well.  I also sold the place out of ground beef.  There were only 2 packages in the whole store despite having a very large meat section.

We arrived home around 7pm and I started getting things ready.  Made the salsa and Ali/Niki arrived at 8pm.  I went down to pick them up from the MRT station and we decided to pick up Come Buy bubble tea for drinks since I don't have any cups in the house yet.  Niki and I ordered the Mango Yogurt Bubble tea.  A really nice light mango smoothie drink.  They were out of yogurt and so it took about 15 minutes of waiting.  At least it wasn't cold out.

Anyways, back up to the apartment and ~45 minutes later: Voila!  Burrito time!  I don't have a microwave and the tortillas were cold from the fridge so I ended up taking a pot and filling it with a small amount of water, then boiling the water and waving the tortillas in the air above the steam.  It seemed to do the trick.

Hey!  Who is that lady in the picture?  Yes Eliza, you were there in spirit!

The burritos received rave reviews!

 
Being the awesome friends that they are, Ali & Niki brought over some gifts.  One was a large bag of cashews (pictured behind the picture of Eliza).  Aparently these are "homemade" by Niki's mom's friend in Hsinchu.  They're very tasty and I think the fact that I know they are "homemade" makes them taste even better psychologically.

Niki had also been in Tainan the day before (southern Taiwan) for work, and brought back bags of this famous Tainan pudding.  Hoo tschuh! ("delicious" and my god is that 'tschuh' word difficult to type phonetically in roman letters.  I'd love to hear people try to pronounce it based solely on my spelling.. lol).

The characters say "Red Brick Pudding".  Red Brick as in the old school houses located in the older parts of Taiwan.

This pudding was sesame seed flavoured. Geez so yummy.  I ate half and saved the rest for the next day (now) which I just finished eating while I was writing this blog.

Well that's it!  Hope to have another Mexican food night again soon.  And now, I have extra tomatoes, cilantro, and onion so I'm going to make some salsa for opened taco chip bag from Costco.

7-11 Grand Opening

It was the grand opening of the 7-11 by our work today.  11:45am was abuzz with pre-opening jitters.  All the festivities started at noon and despite the heavy rain, spirits were not at all dampened.  Nothing particularly interesting happened, but it was a fun "spectacle" to witness and I took pictures for you to see.

Flying streamers littered the soaking wet street

The front walk way of 7-11 was packed with balloons and a special guest...

It's Rainbow man! (I've forgotten his real Chinese name)

He's the main mascot for 7-11 here in Taiwan

As you can see, he's getting mobbed by the sea of children dressed in red track suits.  Mr.Squirrel gazes on in terror.  Snoopy looks nonchalant.  No one really cares about him

This picture isn't so good, but it's the only one I could get of the dressed up Snoopy who looked creepy!  Snoopy is supposed to be this fun cute little dog, but this was like a skinny full grown man about 6 feet tall wearing a thin fur suit and a dog head.  He made a big entrance out the doors but none of the kids cared.  Their hearts belonged to rainbow man.

Big line-ups inside!

Balloons decorated each aisle.  As you can see, the 7-11 is "New Open!"  Break out the champagne from aisle 2 :P

A simple buffet was set up and was set to open at 12:30.  It wasn't a very big spread considering the number of people, and I didn't want to stick around for the massive crowd that I knew would be descending on the table. 

Back outside there was a City Café mobile coffe truck giving out free "kafay".  Teresa and Katy waited in the big line up but I'm not a coffee drinker so I passed.

This is for my own reference.  7-11 sells this "Coffee Jelly Milk Tea" (pictured left).  Anne highly recommends it.  I'll give it a try next time I'm passing by without breakfast.

Snoopy is this months special free gift.  The bags are some of the swag you can get if you collect enough 7-11 snoopy stickers (spend $70NT or $2.50CAD and you get a sticker). 

Thought I should snap a picture of myself for the fans.  Of course it's the blurriest pic of the bunch :P

Snoopy says thanks for reading!

The View

Yesterday was another beautiful morning.  This picture was taken from the apartment window around 9am.  It was so nice out that I thought I'd get a panorama photo.  My camera isn't the greatest at panoramas as some of the perspective is quite skewed and my stitch job is pretty sloppy but it does the trick!

View from our apartment.  Click on the image to enlarge!

Unfortunately the weather didn't last and by the evening it had down poured twice (short bursts of big rain).  But the walk to work in the morning was a scorching 32 degrees.  It wouldn't be so bad but I try to wear nice looking clothes to work so the dress pants and polo + cardigan can get really sweaty.

I've since dropped wearing any sort of sweater over top of my shirt because it's just too darn hot!

Apartment Show & Tell + Improvements

I thought I'd share some pictures of the apartment since I haven't shown the pictures to many people other than my parents and Eliza.  This post is going to be picture heavy.  Hooray!  Break from all my jibber jabber.

To start, here's some pictures of the place when I first looked at it with Johan and the landlord.  Based on the other apartments I looked at online with Ali, I knew right away this was the place I wanted.  It was a decent size, amazing location above the subway, 15 minutes walk from work and Johan and Ali/Niki, and the price was right (~$500 CAD/mo)

Picture of the living room looking down from the upstairs "tree house"

Landlord filling out rental agreement

Here's the kitchen.  1 stove top, and a laundry machine.  The sink is pleasantly large and deep.  Above the sink is a drying compartment.  You put your wet dishes in there and you can press the dry button to have them dried fast.  I just leave them to air try cause it's hot enough.

Mini fridge/freezer combo.  It looks pretty small but I've found it to be large enough.  Honestly, how many of us have fridges that are half filled with stuff we don't even know about or use?  This makes us think about what's in the fridge/freezer because if we're not using it, then it gets eaten or tossed out.  Also there's a large "cupboard/closet" under the stairs.  You can't see inside but there's a hanging bar so that you could potentially hang jackets in there.

Photograph from the living room looking back  into the apartment.  The door in the middle is the entrance .  To the left are stairs going up to the "tree house".  The tree house is about a 4 foot tall area above with a large/deep closet and enough room for a queen mattress.  A nice way to separate the sleeping quarters from the rest of the house!  Eliza wanted a "loft" so I was on a mission to get her what she wanted.

Aforementioned deep closet.  It's sort of difficult to use while bending over/kneeling on the floor.  I don't have much stuff so it's all in the downstairs closet.  I predict that will change when Eliza takes over :P

Apartment came furnished with a wall mounted 32" flat screen.

Also furnished with a new computer desk/chair and a 3 person wide sofa (ugly couch cover!  when Liza gets here we'll be finding a replacement for it).

Also came with a closet there.  Pretty basic.

Anyone want a spare 30 inch flatscreen?  Landlord said I could throw it away if I want.

Alright.  The downfall of this particular place is that it's one of those shower + toilet bathrooms.  Where the shower is not separate from the rest of the room.  Not a deal breaker because the rest of the place is the full package.

 Okay!  So those were all pictures I took before I moved in.  Here's a few improvements/changes since I've moved in.  It's obviously a work in progress but it's starting to feel much more... "home-y"

Added shower curtain for Eliza.  Others thought it couldn't be done but there it is!

The space between the wall and the shower was a bit narrow so after these pictures were taken  I moved the shower rod out into the room a bit more.  It obscures the mirror slightly but who needs the mirror but who needs the mirror when you're in the shower?  The curtains primary purpose is to keep the rest of the room relatively dry.  It works well!  Eliza will be pleased...

The landlord had initially installed these really white lights.  I hate white light.  It feels so sterile.  So first order was to replace all the white lights with warm lights.  I also bought a paper lamp (in the corner) which really gives the space a much warmer feel to it.  I've also hooked my computer up to the flatscreen so that we can watch shows/movies on a bigger screen.  The setup works really well!

Here's some warmer light pics of the living room and kitchen.

I wished I took night-time pictures of the apartment with the white lights for comparison.  The white lights really made the place feel... gross.  So really happy with the changes.

Finishing Rant:  Frick, fluorescent lights are expensive!  The cheapest I can find are $4/bulb.  That seems ridiculous to me.  I hear it's about the same in Canada so relatively speaking, they're really expensive for locals here to afford them.  Also, I went to about 4 different stores (including a hardware store) and you can't even find old school incandescent light bulbs.  I guess it's an energy/waste reform.

Anyways, there's a sneak peek into the new digs.  Hope you like :)

ps - visitors welcome!  We're planning on buying an inflatable mattress for guests.

The bus? No English? No Problem!

The Taipei bus system has been something that I've always been wary of.  Subways and trains I have no problem with because there's usually plenty of English, and the stops are really obvious.  On buses, there's a lower frequency rate, and you can easily take the wrong way and end up somewhere random.  There's also the added complexity of knowing when you have to get off.

The buses in Taiwan usually have almost no English, and the maps are all in Chinese.  There's an LED ticker at the front of some buses.  Sometimes there's English and sometimes not.  So you can see why I'd be apprehensive about taking the bus.  However, from Friday nights bus adventure I thought I'd give it a try because Anne said that it's more fun riding a bus because you can see stuff outside.  Plus, a lot of the time it's cheaper (MRT = ~$0.80, BUS = ~$0.5 of course depending on where you get on/off).

For starters, Google Maps is amazing.  Simply brilliantly executed.  On my phone I entered where I wanted to go, and within a few seconds it had several routes mapped out for me.  I chose the "least transfers" route and waited in front of my building for Bus 642

This is actually a picture of the bus stop at my destination but I thought it made a better first image for the blog post

Picture of the front of the National Taipei University at Gonguan MRT station

I've reached my destination:  Guang Hua Digital Plaza

Google Maps magically knows when you've boarded your bus, and as you move along in traffic, the little blue arrow moves you along your route.  There's also an extremely handy little interface that shows you each of the bus stops, it's name (usually in Chinese), but the most important part is that as you pass each stop, the interface updates and you can see exactly how many stop you have until your destination.  It's brilliant!

Mug shot for the fans

Out front of the Digital Plaza was a little market going on.  Lots of hand made goods including soap, honey bee farmers, fruit vendors, tea and medicinal vendors, candles, garlic, watermelons, the whole gamut.

There was even some Chinese belly dancing going on.  A crowd had gathered to watch including this man and his cute little white dog.  Pics for you mom.  Sorry it's hard to be sneaky with this crappy phone camera!

I should have mentioned, the reason I went out this day was because I had no plans during the day, and I needed a bunch of stuff for around the house.  Guang Hua Digital Plaza (at Zhongshan Xinsheng station) is the best place in Taipei for cheap technology.  I wanted to pick up 4GB of RAM for my computer because it runs a tad slow at home.  Also I needed a headset/mic for Skype, a webcam, and a DVI to HDMI adapter to hook my computer up to our flatscreen.

My faithful companion makes another appearance

Found some great deals.  Ram was only $45 for the 2 sticks of 2GB.  Webcam: $17.  headset with mic: $10. DVI to HDMI adapter: $1.50.  It's fun because you can barter with the merchants at this place, and because there's 100's of small shops crammed into this 4 story tall mall, everything is really competitively priced.

Now that my bus confidence was up, I decided to try and take another bus to Ikea.  I had never been to Ikea before and I knew it wasn't so close to an MRT station so bus actually made sense in this case.  I punched Ikea into Google Maps on my phone and followed the GPS prompts to find the bus stop.  The bus stops in this area are located in the middle of the road, and the bus has it's own dedicated lane.  It confused the heck out of me at first and I ended up doing almost a full circle of the block trying to figure out how to get into the middle of the road after realizing it wasn't along the side of the road as usual.

The bus dropped us off in the middle of the road in front of the Taipei Arena.  Massive LED screen out front showing commercials and adds for The Avengers and Battleship.  There must have been some student event going on because there were floods of uniformed students pouring into the arena.

Around the corner from the arena was the Ikea!  The multi-national flags out front helped me find the entrance.  This whole Ikea is located underground.  The inside is basically the exact same as any Ikea I've ever been to with the exception of 60% of the signage being Chinese only.

After some deliberation I bought a large floor lamp (one of those 4 feet tall paper ones), an 18 piece dish set (heavy!), a toilet brush, shower curtain rod, and a cutlery set (it's difficult to find cutlery in the stores around town that I've checked).  I stuffed everything into a large Ikea bag and headed back outside.  The plates, cutlery, and lamp were quite heavy so I punched in Qizhang station (home) into Google Maps, and selected "least walking" as my parameter.

As instructed, I found a different bus stop and waited for the 1802 bus which took me all the way back to Zhongshan MRT station where I then transfered into the MRT and made my way back home!  Very minimal walking!

Big shout out goes to Google for not being evil and providing all these amazing services for free.  And also another props to Anne for convincing me that the bus is easy.

Lastly, for all you dog lovers out there, snapped this from the bus :)