Graduation, Great Food, and Games

Wow, time flies! A mere week and a half ago, Chris and I flew to Atlanta to see my cousin Katherine graduate from GeorgiaTech. She graduated with Highest Honors in Polymer Engineering -- you go girl!

I have some nice pictures of the graduates processing in, as well as Katherine sneaking coffee into the ceremony and trying to hoard balloons on her way out:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/Atlanta2008

When I was little, I visited my relatives in Atlanta almost every summer, so we took it easy and didn't do much sightseeing this time. During the week, Chris and I worked from the Google Atlanta office, which is conveniently located by the Midtown MARTA stop.

Slight rant about the MARTA: The cars often smell like pee. The first time I boarded the train and got slammed by the stench of urine, I assumed that it must be emanating from some bum, because the train itself looked so clean. But I didn't spot any clear suspects, and after moving around to lots of different spots, I figured out that the entire train reaked. Nobody on the train even seemed to notice. I've ridden subways or light rail in eight major cities so far, and have never yet encountered a city where people peed on the trains. Seriously, gross.

Other than that, the week went quite smoothly, and I learned a lot about how to set up video conferences!

Great Food

Ecco

One thing never changes about my visits to Atlanta -- pigging out! On Friday, the entire family had a reason to celebrate. It was my aunt and uncle's 25th anniversary, Katherine graduated from college, Kally and Kasandra finished finals, and Chris and I were done with work for the year! So we took everyone out to an excellent European/Greek/Mediterranean restaurant called Ecco (near Midtown). We ordered a ton of food, and it was *all delicious*. I'm sure nobody reading my blog cares about this, but I want to write down what we got, so we remember in case we go back! (The bolded items were particularly excellent.)

• Prosciutto di Parma: farmhouse ham aged for 24 months
  
• Bresaola: house-cured beef eye round
  
• Sopressata: coarse pork salami with clove
  
• Aged Gouda: Holland; cow’s milk; firm
  
• Parmigiano-Reggiano: Italy; cow’s milk; hard
  
• Fried goat cheese, honey and black pepper
  
• Piquillo peppers stuffed with mushrooms, sherry and manchego
  
• Oak-grilled asparagus and marinated tomato salad
  
• Chili-braised pork with garlic and homemade pappardelle
  
• Spolettoni with mushroom ragu
  
• Grilled hanger steak with arugula and tomato
  
• Fried cauliflower with saffron
  

My aunt ordered a "seared petite," which isn't on the menu anymore, but it definitely deserves to be on the list of favorites. None of us knew what "petite" was, but I'm eternally grateful that she asked the waiter. Turns out it's a cut of beef from the cow's shoulder, and it's particularly tender. Yummm. The service was so friendly and warm too -- I'd definitely love to visit again sometime.

Suno

Katherine took us to a fantastic shop called Suno that specializes in shave ice. Chris and I had some good shave ice in Hawaii, but this stuff was way better -- the best I've had outside of Taiwan, actually! We got gigantic plates of shave ice covered with condensed milk, fruit (mango, lychee, strawberry, kiwi) and Oreos. The ice was cut so fine that it stayed soft and fluffy until the last bite. Apparently "Suno" is FOB-ese for "snow" so no wonder it was so awesome. Should have taken pictures.

Other Highlights

• The best Tofu House I have ever been to, anywhere. SO many sides, and everything was so well-spiced.
• Three different varieties of ice cream cakes and pies, since my aunt and uncle have a friend who owns a Bruster's franchise.
• A gigantic church potluck with fifteen families, and someone brought dou-pi (bean curd skin?), which I haven't had since I was a kid, sooo good.
• Chinese-style hot pot.
• Christmas cookies galore!!

I'm getting extremely hungry just writing this post, so maybe I should move on.

Games

Besides eating, we also spent a lot of time playing games. We played tennis whenever the weather allowed (once in 20-degree gusting winds, and once in 60-degree oppressively heavy fog that kept steaming up Chris's glasses), and when it didn't allow, we played Rock Band, Scattergories, and Blokus. And I watched my favorite childhood movie ever, the Sound of Music, with the girls. My relatives even dug up embarassing home videos of me when I was in junior high, for Chris's benefit. My starring moment on film was a monologue about how evil home video cameras are -- man I was smart! There was also the one where I was caught singing "glooo-ry glory Halleluuuuuuuu-jah!" with a hula-hoop. Yeah, definitely evil.

It's nice to feel like a kid again for a week. Never mind that people keep asking me when I'm going to have kids. :-P

To Infinity (Fresno) and Back

My hilarious British high school physics teacher, Mr. Kirby, once taught us that infinity was in Fresno.  We solved so many problems that started with "moving a 1 Coulomb charge to Fresno," that to this day, my classmates and I (including Chris, whom I wasn't dating yet) think that "Fresno" and "infinity" are strong synonyms.

This weekend, we finally made it to infinity, and honestly, the Coulombs can keep it.  Fresno sucks.

The Sunnyvale Tennis Club's 6.5 combo men's doubles team made it to the District Championships, so I went out to watch Chris play.  I thought it would be a fun opportunity to take pictures, but my camera ran out of batteries and I had to use my Blackberry.  Not that it matters.  It was ferociously cold and dreary, and the whole weekend looked basically like this:

After shivering through a day of matches (complete with me jogging around the courts wrapped in an emergency blanket), we woke up this morning to find that our car looked like this:

We stayed at the Piccadilly Inn, supposedly the best hotel in Fresno, to avoid something like this.  But apparently, bandits broke into our car to steal Chris's new remote controlled helicopter that he'd just gotten for his birthday.  We initially though it must have been some drunk kids, because they didn't bother taking our toll money from the glove compartment, or the XM Radio.  They even broke into another car on the lot and didn't take anything.  But later, when we were getting our window replaced, we noticed evidence that they'd used a crowbar.

Luckily, Super-Low Price Auto Glass (yes that's their real name) -- the only auto glass repair place open 7 days a week in Fresno -- was able to fix it in about an hour, and $135 later, we made it to the day's match.

We still don't know how useful it is to make a police report (we called them, and they said they would call back to get the full report, but it's 11 p.m. and they haven't yet), or whether we should push the hotel to help reimburse us...but maybe we'll figure that out later.  A little too tired to care right now.

The good news of the weekend is that the team won just enough sets to make it to the Sectionals in January!  They didn't win the championship, but just managed to win the wild card spot.  I'm happy for them...and even happier that the Sectionals are in Sacramento instead of Fresno.

Couch Potatoes: Enabled

Well, we had a fun-filled, action-packed couple of weeks.

First, we visited the Google NYC office for a week, and we got some fantastic food while we were in the city. Two weeks later, I'm still salivating over the "surf" part of the "Surf and Turf" at Morimoto (yes Iron Chef Morimoto). Fabulous hamachi strips mixed with fresh cherry tomatoes and avocado in a soy/citrus sauce, *mmmmmm*. The appetizers were also amazing, especially the beef carpaccio and the rock shrimp tempura. This may be one of my favorite meals at a restaurant, ever. The sake was certainly the best I'd ever had (but I guess this alone is not an impressive statement, given that the only sake we tried before came from a dollar store and had been through two years of college storage before we finally got around to opening it).

The day after we flew back from New York, we went to Candlestick Park to watch the Patriots crush the 49ers. The backstory to this outing is that Chris bought completely overpriced tickets for this game, the day before Tom Brady's gruesome knee injury. But happily, they still won, and Chris was ecstatic that he got to see the "air show" (Cassell's 66-yard touchdown pass to Moss). Now, we didn't have Patriots garb, so we showed up in Red Sox shirts. We got a couple "Red Sox?! Are you kidding me?!" reactions, but otherwise we blended in with the hordes of 49ers fans also wearing red (oops).

Amusingly, we did end up hearing more chants of "Let's go Red Sox!" than we did chants for the Pats. Even better was listening to the Sox beat the Angels on XM Radio as we sat in traffic on the way home from the game. And even better than that was watching the Sox win the ALDS series a few games later. Sweet sweet victory.

Of course, this weekend is different. The Sox lost in extra innings to the Rays last night, and the Pats were dominated by the Chargers.

On the bright side:

• Our couch (from Customs House) got delivered! It's a glorious L-shaped sectional that both Chris and I can stretch out on it without intersecting AND it seems to be indestructible by cats (so far). Looooove it love it.
• Speaking of cats, we finally cleaned up enough of our condo so that we could let them out of the second bedroom. Freedom! It's hilarious how they fishtail and make scrabbling noises in place as they try to make sharp turns on the hardwood floors. Silly cartoon cats.

So, after our exciting travels and plenty of hard work, we are now blissfully enjoying our couch-potatohood for a few weeks.

Katy and Stav's Wedding in Sedona

Last weekend, we had the pleasure of seeing Katy and Stav tie the knot in the gorgeous Sedona, AZ.  Before our trip, I had never heard of Sedona, but we can see now why John McCain chose to buy a house here.  Armed with multiple warnings about how to deter timeshare sharks, we managed to eventually leave without buying any property, but I must say that we were tempted. Big sky, red rocks, good friends, and awesome mojitos. Why come home to failing banks and performance reviews!?

We took a fantastic Pink Jeep tour and went off-roading among the beautiful cliffs and buttes (Broken Arrow tour, highly recommend it).  Pink Jeep was apparently made famous by its Sedona outfit, and our tour guide drove us up and down lots of steep rocky hills, through some fantastic scenery.

The most interesting part of the ride, however, was when Chris started chatting with another guy in our jeep, who turned out to be the press secretary for U.S. Representative Lynn Westmoreland, the congressman who was made nationally famous by the Colbert Report.  Here's a video of Colbert's interview with Lynn Westmoreland in case you didn't see it.  He had some interesting backstage stories about that taping, and talked about how he thought he would be fired after scheduling that particular appearance.  All I can say is wow, I can't imagine having his job...but on the bright side for him, at least the Bulldogs won!

Here's a picture that our tour guide took for us:

We also got a chance to visit Montezuma's Well and Montezuma's Castle, and we hiked around Bell Rock and Courthouse Rock.  The hiking trail was supposed to have one of those mystical "vortexes," but our hunt basically consisted of pointing to suggestive-looking rocks and chortling, so the vortex spirits never revealed themselves.  (Ugh...that was terrible.)

More pictures of our trip and the wedding are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/KatyAndStavSWedding

My Best Friend's Wedding

Last weekend, Chris and I went to the wedding of my best friend since the fourth grade, Judy Hodes (Judy Mintz now!). I can't believe how many years have passed since we met, and now we're all grown up and married, sniffle! Seems like yesterday that we were making our California missions together at Old Orchard. Ahh, Old Orchard... I still remember that our mascot was an owl named Hooter. Then one day, his name was suddenly changed to Oscar (or something), with the explanation that "Hooter was not the name of the nineties." LOL. I'm not sure I understood what that meant back then.

On the other hand, I can't even remember what mission I chose, so I suppose on some level, it's believable that fourth grade was a long time ago (and maybe also educationally useless, ouch).

The ceremony and reception were held at a beautiful temple in Rancho Palos Verdes. This was the first time we went to a Jewish wedding too, and Chris got to wear a yarmulke -- cute no?

I also got to see my other high school buddies, Shar, Mel, and Sarah! Shar and Mel we see a couple times a year, but Sarah I literally haven't seen since we graduated from Hart, so it was fun to catch up.

We carpooled from SCV (yay environment) and initially joked about how we would have a great game of "what ever happened to..." during the drive, but as it turned out, we have no idea what happened to most people, so this game wasn't as promising as initially advertised. In two short years however, it'll be time for our 10-year reunion. Scary.

Anyways, here's Judy looking gorgeous on her throne!

Here's a few more pics if you're interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/JudySWedding

Everything was so lovely and fun...and surprisingly rowdy! I can't tell whether the fun and rowdy bit is characteristic of every Jewish wedding, or if this is more a reflection of a party planned by Judy, but I am super-impressed that she organized everything herself! My wedding would have been a catastrophe if I hadn't had the help of my phenomenal wedding planners.

During the reception, Judy's dad re-introduced me to my fifth grade teacher, who to my horror, I didn't recognize on sight. My main memory of that class was that she made me be the "group leader" of my team's "covered wagon" as we planned our journey on the Oregon Trail. Being a totally shy Chinese girl who never said anything in class EVER, I was terrified. I also remember being very anal about making everyone bring enough casks of water.

Ironically, over the past few weeks, I've been floating the idea of leading a week-long backpacking trip through the Grand Canyon with any interested friends, but I had to be reminded by Chris that we would need to carry water (and water is heavy). Apparently I was smarter and more responsible in the fifth grade than I am now. Sigh.

After the wedding reception, we decided to drive straight home, which took something like seven hours, so it was like 4:30 a.m. by the time we made it back to Palo Alto. Just in time for a 10 a.m. meeting the next morning, two hectic days of work, and a three-day trip to Lake Tahoe with my team, yay!

Then the next day, Colette came to visit us, en route from Beijing to Philly, with great stories about watching the Olympics in China. What a fantastically fun couple of weeks, and a nice restful Labor Day weekend to top it off!

We're Moved!

Last weekend, we finally moved in to our new condo in Palo Alto. We were worried that we would like the place less when we replaced the realtors' designer furniture with our um, dirt-cheap Craigslist/K-Mart ensemble, but so far, we've been even more delighted with it than when we originally decided to make our offer. It's infectiously sunny and cheery.

The depressing part was when we realized how much stuff we accumulated since college. Freshman year, I had two suitcases and a computer. Last weekend, we filled an entire 17-foot U-Haul truck. (!!!)

Andrew, who flew out from Maryland to help us move, was in charge of putting stuff into the truck. He was determined to find the absolute optimal packing, and it was fun to watch him pack and un-pack the truck over and over. Maybe I should have mentioned that it's an NP-complete problem.

He did a very impressive job though! Here's what it looked like at the halfway point:

Meanwhile, Chris, Tommy, and his girlfriend Tiffany were tasked with carrying boxes from the apartment (which was on the third floor) to our staging area (parking space). When Tommy first walked into our apartment and saw that I was trying to sell off a lot of our furniture, he demanded to know "why don't you keep it?" Later, I'm sure he realized how great it was that I decided to let miscellaneous strangers walk off with the heaviest pieces of our stuff:

And what was my job? The "feeble injured one" was in charge of monetization. I sold a sofa, a loveseat, a TV stand, a big L-shaped corner desk, a cabinet, and a microwave -- all WITHOUT INTERNET, using my new Blackberry. (Comcast disconnected us early, boo.) Craigslist is awesome; I was impressed how quickly people took our stuff, and how they hardly even bargained (except for one guy who haggled me down from $20 to $15 for the microwave, haha). Total day-over-day revenue increase: $325.

Afterwards, we treated the crew to Olive Garden, which is walking distance from the condo. Here's us waiting very hungrily to be seated:

And here's the crew at our place after dinner. Thanks again crew! Note how there's a gallon full of pennies on the dining table. I remember someone being particularly incensed at having to lug our gallon of pennies up and down several flights of stairs, but in defense of the penny-jug, it did turn out to be a superior doorstop, even when pitted against heavy doors.


One Week Later

Behold the progress we've made!

Er, okay, not so much. It's actually gotten worse. But to be fair, we spent most of the day working on the upstairs bedroom and den, which are relatively tidy now.

We also moved the cats today, after a week of leaving them alone in our big empty apartment. I suppose it sounds kind of mean that we left them behind, but on the whole, it was probably less stressful to leave them to play in a big empty apartment than to have them constantly underfoot and shredding boxes while we unpacked. At least that's how we rationalize it to ourselves. Honey, with her laser green eyes in this picture, probably sees through our laziness. :-)

Today was the first time we felt sad to be leaving Avalon Parkside. Somehow, before we removed the cats, it still felt like our home, but now it's completely empty and ready for someone else to move in. We officially turn in our keys on Tuesday. Our home of three years...no longer. Of course, if Avalon Parkside decides to pocket a big chunk of our security deposit, most of this nostalgia will probably be erased. We'll see, heehee.

Now, back to watching scantily-clad men prancing around (i.e. the Olympics).

More (higher-quality) moving pictures here if you want them:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/MovingToPaloAlto

Bat Country

This weekend, we helped our friend Paul assemble his project for Burning Man. It's called Bat Country and it's an awesome 21-foot Sierpinski tetrahedron built out of baseball bats and softballs. More accurately, Chris helped. I helped to eat all the delicious food, my arm being too gimpy to do work and all that. ;-)

We were really impressed by the project and how solid it felt when everything was put together. You can see from the picture how many guys are standing on the top!

We're Homeowners!

It's official! We got the keys! It's ours! :-)

Delightfully, our new home is a short stroll away from all the nifty shops on California Ave. and we already love the farmer's market they have every Sunday (amazing stuff!). It's also close to the CalTrain station and just a few blocks from some tennis courts at Peers Park. And we're pretty excited that we're basically across the street from Mollie Stone's, so we can actually walk to get groceries. After three years of living next to a fire station and a dirt lot that would eventually become a Lowe's, we are ECSTATIC to be moving someplace where we can walk to so many awesome things.

(Note that we did walk to the Lowe's once or twice to buy light bulbs, but few things are as useless to a renter as a home improvement store. And there was already a Home Depot down the road! Give me a break right?! Anyways it was sad when they finished building it, because we were desperately hoping it turn into a Borders, haha.)

We don't move for a couple more weeks, but we'll be starting to Craigslist some of our current furniture and shop for some new stuff. Our brothers will be coming up to help us move during the second week of August.

If you're shocked and amazed at how suddenly we decided to buy this place, so are we. I looked back through our emails and realized that we didn't seriously start looking for a place until June 10, when we first wrote to a couple potential real estate agents. We decided to make our first bid on June 23 (which we lost, probably for the best). A mere week later, we bid on this lovely condo at Palo Alto Central, and now, here we are! I always assumed that I would be terribly picky before making such a gigantic investment, and that I would be searching for 6-12 months at least. Looks like I was only off by an order of magnitude or so, heehee.

On the brighter side, three years ago when we moved out to California, I chose our apartment (which we're still living in today) without even seeing PICTURES it. I was actually on a beach in North Carolina with only some very shady cell reception when we committed to it, so we've at least raised our standards a little bit since then. :-P Plus, we've been pretty happy at this apartment, so I suspect I just have totally awesome judgment.

Our kitchen doesn't have those hot new granite countertops, but then again...our kitchen doesn't have those hot new granite countertops. :-)

Anyways, we're super excited, and we'll post more pictures and updates as we move in!

Fourth of July Celebrations!

Well outwardly, we didn't do much to celebrate the 4th of July this year. No fireworks or barbecue party -- we just sat around, lazily watching the Wimbledon semifinals (hooray for Federer and Nadal), and the Red Sox (who beat the Yankees again, sweet!). But we do have a couple reasons to be super-happy this Independence Day:

• We're officially in contract for our first home! Last week, after a mere three weeks "in the market", we made an offer for a lovely condo in Palo Alto. The sellers formally accepted yesterday, and on Monday, we get to write down a large number on a check and send in our downpayment! More fun details about the search and what the place is like later (still keeping fingers crossed until everything is actually finalized and we get the keys, haha).

• Today I also made my triumphant (okay, actually pretty lame) return to the tennis courts! Last week, I asked my physical therapist when I could play again (not serving or hitting big shots, just easy volleying) and she said I could actually play any time I wanted, but warned me that it would hurt a lot and I would be really weak if I insisted on starting so soon. In retrospect, this was probaby code for "no." But anyways, she was right. Several shots were really jarring and I could barely return one-handed backands. But WOW it was satisfying to be running around and playing a real sport again; I hate the treadmill and stationary bike so much at this point! In the end, I only managed to hit for about 20 minutes, but what a morale boost to work harder on my physical therapy.

Off to do more exercises and start packing!

Shoulder Finally Improving

When my doctor first told me that I needed to have a Bankart repair, I was disappointed that I couldn't find more information about the rehab process on the internet. There were plenty of articles making different recommendations on how soon to remove various restrictions (i.e. when to stop using the sling, what angle of rotation to aim for at what week), but not much information about what sort of pain was acceptable, and what pitfalls to watch out for when you're doing the exercises. Granted, this is all stuff you should hear from a physical therapist instead of the internet, but it still would have been nice to read someone else's account for reassurance.

So after my shoulder surgery in January, I meant to write regular blog posts about how my physical therapy was going. But there were a number of reasons why I didn't do it:

• Recovering from surgery made me much more tired than I expected, to the point where it took significant willpower just to go to work and then head home to do more exercises.
• Progress was very slow (much slower than my physical therapist expected), so I was often too worried or frustrated to think about improving the internet.

Twelve weeks after surgery, I was supposed to have regained full range of motion. That means I should have been able to lift my arm to 180 degrees (like raising your hand in class), and have 90 degrees of external rotation. Instead, at twelve weeks, I was struggling to lift my arm to 90 degrees, and get even 30 degrees of external rotation. Even worse was that I had stopped making weekly progress.

My doctor chalked it up to everyone reacting differently to surgery and taking different amounts of time to recover. My physical therapist wondered whether lifting my restrictions earlier would have prevented so much scar tissue from building up. There was so much stiffness that it was really hard for me to do exercises correctly without subconsciously "cheating".

The body is amazing in how many ways it can "cheat" to reach a goal. Each week, my physical therapist found a new dimension that I was cheating on without knowing it. For instance, on the arm-lifting exercise, I was rotating my shoulder blade out and around my body in order to lift my arm, instead of letting my arm rotate in the socket (the goal of the exercise). I can't even do this consciously with my good shoulder. Likewise, on the external rotation exercise, I was tilting back my shoulder blade, which made it look like I had a good angle without getting any real rotation in the socket.

Today, after lots of hard work with my physical therapist to get me to do the exercises RIGHT, I'm happy to report that I can lift my arm to ~150 degrees, and I can do external rotation to almost 90 degrees. The big turning point was a month ago, when my doctor told me to start taking LOTS more ibuprofen (3 a day, 3 times a day, instead of 2 a day total, which is what I had been doing before), and when I finally ran out of ways to cheat on the exercises. Apparently, doing exercises correctly - swelling and pain = goodness. (Go figure.) I also pay much more attention to what hurts. If I'm doing exercises correctly, I feel a deep ache in the back of my shoulder. If there's pain on the top or the front of the shoulder, it means I'm using the wrong muscles or letting the shoulder blade slip or tilt.

Hopefully, the next time I report back, I'll be on the courts again! I can't play tennis yet (obviously) but I can now do awesome things like driving, brushing my hair, holding doors open, and washing dishes. And I'm actually not being sarcastic about this -- it actually is quite awesome to be a normal person again!

Night Lanterns at Pingxi

The Chinese New Year celebrations officially end with the Lantern Festival, which occurs 15 days into the new year. It sounds really spectacular, we sadly wouldn't be staying long enough to see it, since this was our last full day in Taiwan.

The good news was that An An and Chian Chian took us to Pingxi, where impressive crowds of people were sending lanterns into the air daily for fun. It was a fantastic and poignant way to mark the end of our Chinese New Year celebrations.

At about noon, we took the MRT (again) to the end of the Muzha line, but this time, instead of riding gondolas, we hopped onto some buses. I've only gotten carsick once in my life, but this bus ride came close to being the second time. Pingxi is in a very mountainous area, and the roads were narrow, winding, and full of traffic. It was a good thing that we took a bus, because they were denying all car traffic (except residents of course) from driving up the mountain in an attempt to control the traffic.

Since it was still early to be lighting night lanterns, we wandered around the little village and took our time looking around. While looking for ways to burn time, we did the single Stupidest Scariest Thing we did all trip. My cousins were delighted that they finally found an activity to scare the shit out of Fearless Jenn. (Yes, apparently I have a reputation for being "fearless", not sure where that comes from...)

So there's an old suspended train track that runs through the village, and as we were strolling around around, we saw people occasionally walking on the tracks overhead with their little kids. Neat, my cousins thought. We should go walk on the train tracks too.

Me: But what if there's a train?
Them: Umm...there's probably no train.
Me: Probably?

Then I think, well those tracks do look pretty rusty and unmaintained. What kind of train could run on that? So we figure out how to get on the train tracks, and started walking along, being careful not to step on rotten wood planks and not to let our feet fall through the gaps.

At some point, we realize that we are really high up. Furthermore, there are people walking the opposite direction, so sometimes you have to stand on the very edge of these splintering planks so that two can people squeeze by each other. No guard rails or anything keeping us from falling. And...OF COURSE. We eventually heard a train clanging warning bells and roaring up behind us.

That was definitely a moment of despair. Apparently my cousins didn't know there was a train either. Somehow I managed to just keep putting one jello-y foot in front of another as quickly as I could and finally made it to someplace where we could jump off safely. (Plus in retrospect I think the train slowed down due to all the people on the tracks, thank goodness.)

Lesson that you could have learned from a cartoon: There's always a train.

Luckily, we found some longxutang (dragon whisker candy) to make me feel better. I ate like five packages.

Lighting the Night Lanterns

The night lanterns at Pingxi are like awesome little hot air balloons that you send into the air with your wishes for the new year. They're made out of colored paper, and people typically write a little message about their hopes for the year before lighting it and watching it fly out of sight. I saw some people who wrote long elaborate thoughtful paragraphs on all four faces of the lantern. I wasn't feeling quite so poetic, but I definitely did have a wish for the year!

There's a circular bamboo ring at the bottom of each lantern to help keep its shape, and there are wires crossing the center of the ring so that you can attach kerosene-soaked stacks of parchment for fuel.

It's a pretty amazing sight to see everyone releasing these lanterns into the air all at the same time, especially since they're representing everyone's hopes and dreams. Here's a video I found (lots more on YouTube):


The best part is how high they fly, because they become tinier and tinier in the sky, until they literally disappear from sight. We never saw one coming back down. (Well except for the ones that went down Hindenburg-style shortly after takeoff. Not sure what to make of the symbolism for those people's hopes and dreams.) My cousins say that eventually, when the fuel runs out, the lantern itself burns up, leaving only the metal wires to fall back to the ground. I was somewhat concerned about the environmental implications of this, but they seemed to think that they would land "in the forest" and not bother anyone. Hrrrm.

But ultimately, what a great way to spend our last evening!

Tea Time in Maokong

Chris and I both enjoy drinking tea, especially since Google has conditioned us to expect "tea time" every afternoon, where multiple flavors of tea and small pastries are served to us at our cubes, off cute little carts. (Sooo nice of them, I love tea time.)

Of course, it's not like we were starved for tea at this point, since tea is served with every meal in Taiwan, but we thought it would be fun to visit a "real" Asian tea house. I was afraid that we would have to venture too far outside of Taipei to find such a place, but it turned out that the nearby suburb of Maokong was well known both for growing tea and for having lots and lots of nice tea houses. Even more compelling was the way to get to Maokong; we definitely wanted to ride in the cool new Maokong Gondolas, which just opened to the public recently.

So Chris and I took the MRT down to the end of the brown (Muzha) line, where we caught a ride on the Maokong Gondolas for $50 TPE, which is like $1.50 US. This seems shockingly cheap for a 25-minute gondola ride over some beautiful mountains with gorgeous views of Taipei City below. I mean, consider what $1.50 buys you on Caltrain. (Answer: Nothing. The cheapest fare is $1.75.)

When we arrived at Maokong, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the number of busy teahouses, street vendors, tour buses, and restaurants immediately outside of the gondola station. So we started walking along the road to see what else was around. Here's Chris with what presumably are some tea bushes on a hillside:

We encountered many hiking trail entrances along the way, which would have been fun to try if we'd had more time. We also saw a temple and lots more tea houses, some of which had funny signs. I think these (ahem) well-meaning people had the "use 'well' instead of 'good'" rule drilled into them too hard:

We finally stopped at a quiet place called Shan Shui Ke (Mountain Water Guest?) where they recommended that we try the Oolong tea, a favorite in Taiwan. They also gifted us with a complimentary bag of tangy/sweet red pickled plums that went very nicely with the tea. We sat outside so we could get a good view of the mountains (though the fog obscured most of Taipei).

You'll note that this looks like a very complicated setup, but here's how it works:

1. First, the waitress brought out the hot pot (the black one in the picture) to get the water boiling.
   
2. Once the water started boiling, the waitress brought out the rest of the kit. She put the tea pot and tea cups into a wide bowl, and poured the steaming water over everything, to demonstrate that it was clean.
3. She then opened our pink cannister of Oolong tea (which we bought earlier at the counter) and scooped enough to fill a quarter of the small teapot-for-two.
4. She poured the hot water into the teapot and then, to our surprise, immediately poured out all the water from the teapot into the metal tray. Apparently the purpose of this is to "wash" the tea leaves, in case they have any residual pesticides or chemicals.
5. She then filled the teapot again. We were told to let it steep for 40 seconds. While it was steeping, she also poured hot water OVER the little teapot (which was still sitting in the bowl), and filled the bowl with hot water in order to keep the teapot (and its contents) warm.
6. At 40 seconds, we expected to finally have some tea poured into our cute tiny cups! But wait. First she poured all of the tea from the teapot into a small ceramic pitcher. She explained that this would prevent the extra tea from getting over-steeped while we drank the first cups. Smart! Plus, we could start steeping the next batch while we were drinking the current one.
   
7. At last, she pours us each some tea from the pitcher. Oolong tea has a very light and refreshing taste, and we were certainly thankful that it was so nice and warm!

Definitely a fun experience. But on the other hand, tea bags and a hot water dispenser are pretty clever too. :-)

Visiting a Starbucks Copycat

Having returned to Taipei, we started the day by grabbing a bite to eat at Dante Coffee Shop. Western-style coffee shops are abundant and in Taipei, but unlike in America, they're not all run by Starbucks. There were a surprising number of strong competing chains, one of which was Dante. My cousins explained that years ago, when Starbucks first entered the Taiwan market, they were the lone dominant coffee shop. But soon, local businessmen copied their successful business model and started offering more local tastes (for instance, bubble tea) at lower prices. (And I do mean "copy" since lots of these competing chains use some form of Starbucks-esque green circle or green lettering on their signs.) Today, it seems to be a point of national pride that Taiwan's local businesses have won back the lion's share of the market.

Not being a coffee drinker, I couldn't evaluate the quality of coffee at Dante, but we did immediately see the shop's appeal. Chris ordered a hot "quesadilla" of sorts, which was filled with delicious finely minced chicken, onions, peppers, cheese, and spices -- all very delicately put together. (As I write this, Chris is saying "I really want another one.") I ordered a curry chicken calzone-thing, which was also great. The bread was soft and fluffy and the filling warm and spicy. Plus we ordered two pots of tea. The best part: all of this cost just $6 (US).


Returning to Eggwater (Danshui)

Danshui is a port city to the north of Taipei. It's apparently a popular place for young people to visit, because of all the little traditional shops and carnival-style arcade games along the street. Couples also like it because it's a lovely place to watch the sunset. We actually visited on Valentine's Day, but there were no couples to be seen, probably due to the cold foggy weather.

My family calls the place "Eggwater" in English because that's how I translated "Danshui" when I was little. I actually got the "water" part right, but "dan" in this context means something like "light" or "dilute". This is where the river meets the ocean, so the water is "lighter" in the sense that it's less salty. Here, I bought a nifty box of wooden chopsticks, and we also tried out some interesting foods.

• Agei - A big fried tofu block served in a bowl. It was stuffed with rice noodles (iirc). Apparently one of my cousins got hooked on this stuff when she was in college.
• Fish ball soup.

There were also some "iron eggs" being sold on the street side, but we weren't brave enough to try them. They looked like small bird eggs of some sort, but Da Ayi explained that they're normal chicken eggs that have somehow been dehydrated to the point where there really tiny and hard. In retrospect, it might have been fun to eat one.

The one food I really wanted, however, was "longxutang" or "dragon whisker candy". It's a candy that you can usually watch them make on the spot, out of a brick of taffy-like sugar. The maker will stretch the brick into a long skinny rope, then fold it over and stretch again. They keep folding and stretching until the threads are so fine and wispy that they do seem like a fine dragon beard (if dragons do indeed have beards). Then they'll cut off little chunks and fold in some sesame powder in the middle, so the candy looks like fluffy white silk worm cocoons (yum). Longxutang are one of my favorite candies in Taiwan, so it was a bummer that the stand was closed.

Later in the evening, Gu Gu treated my entire mom's side of the family to dinner at a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in TianMu.

Hualien and the Taroko Gorge

Taiwan is sometimes been called Formosa, which means "beautiful island" in Portuguese. I'd been to Taiwan a half dozen times before this trip, and I must admit that I never thought it was beautiful. Full of fun sights, shops and food? Definitely. But "beautiful" was a word that I reserved for places like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, not a busy and often chaotic city.

Of course, I had never been to Hualien or the Taroko Gorge before. Unfortunately, my crummy pictures won't do it justice, because it's a gorge, and you have to be standing in it to get the full experience. But here's an example of what you'd see looking up versus looking down (imagine that the following two pictures are a slightly-mismatched vertical panorama):

Here's another attempt to show the height and narrowness of the gorge (I think this is at the Tunnel of Nine Turns):

To explain the geography a little bit, Hualien is located on the mountainous east coast of Taiwan, roughly a hundred or so miles south of Taipei. (Side note: The proper spelling in pinyin should be "Hualian" with an "a" but a quick search on Google reveals that there are 941,000 documents for [Hualien] versus 260,000 for [Hualian] so I'll go with the majority spelling.) There's a freeway that runs down the east coast of Taiwan, and it's very similar to California's Pacific Coast Highway in that it's very close to the coast and if there's been heavy rain, you should be pretty careful because the roads can be narrow and twisty. We took the safer route -- a three-hour train ride at 7 a.m. from the Songshan Train Station.

When I wrote earlier about planning the trip to Hualien, I described how we were terrified that we would end up destitute on the streets, but it all turned out very smoothly. We stayed at the Grand Taroko Formosa, which is the only hotel that's actually inside of Taroko National Park.

Other hotels were all about an hour's drive outside of the park, so we were in a pretty fantastic location. For the hotel itself, we were expecting a bit of a let-down, given the modest price and the fact that we'd been spoiled silly by the Grand Hyatt...but it turned out to be great. Very clean, English-friendly and full of good restaurants and little shops. The recreation area was fun too -- swimming pools, tennis courts, ping pong tables, and an extensive arcade complete with mini-bowling and whack-a-pup (yes, we spent one evening smashing puppy-heads with a mallet). The food was a bit less spectacular that what my relatives had been treating us to in Taipei, but perhaps that's not too surprising.

When we arrived at Hualien Train Station, a nice man from the hotel picked us up in a van and took us to the hotel. We had about an hour to settle in, and then we set off on our tour (also provided by the hotel for a small charge). The "hiking" was mostly on wide paved walkways that would probably mortify most hikers here, but the scenery was amazing.

The water was very clear and clean. Apparently the gorgeous turquoise color comes from the calcium carbonate in the marble that forms the gorge. Here's a picture from the Shakadang Trail:

The roads and trails along the gorge were also an amazing feat of engineering, as they were carved from a sheer cliff face by hand by Chiang Kai-Shek's army. At the hotel there were black-and-white pictures of guys standing precariously on wooden scaffolding poles jammed into the cliff-side, chipping away with their pickaxes. Hundreds of men died during the construction of the Taroko Highway, and the Eternal Spring Shrine was built to honor their memory.

The tour also took us to the beach.

This allowed me to back up enough to get a good picture of how tall and enormously steep mountains were. (That's Chris in blue, standing under the little roof, and I'm taking the picture with my back to the ocean, while trying not to let my shoes get wet.)

The last interesting observation about the tour was less about the scenery and more about our fellow tour-takers. There were six couples total on our tour (including ourselves), and three of these couples featured a Chinese chick with a white guy. None the other way around. I guess we really are a trend.

Finally, before we left for Taipei, I got calls from my dad insisting that we must remember to buy lots of HualienShu, which is a special treat from the area. They're like round, fat little cookies (maybe about the size of a plum in diameter, but flatter) where the inside is made from either mashed sweet potato or mashed taro, and the outside is sort of like the outsides of a Fig Newton. I thought they were pretty tasty, but perhaps six bags of them was overkill. :-)

We'd definitely recommend the Taroko Gorge to anyone who visits Taiwan, especially if you're looking for someplace to escape from the city. It was one of the best highlights of our trip!

Shopping at Ximending

Ximending is a trendy area in Taipei where lots of young people go to hang out and shop. My cousin Shuen Shuen took us around. It probably doesn't surprise you at this point that the main thing we did was eat tons and tons of food.

• Oamisua (oyster noodle soup) for lunch. We accidentally dumped too much spicy sauce into our soup and I was crying as I ate it because it was so spicy. Apparently the norm is to eat a bowl of this stuff standing up on the sidewalk, which was difficult with my bad arm. But it was ohhh so yummy and warm on a cold rainy day.
• Black herbal goo/jelly in warm milk tea. I think I liked this stuff even better than bubble tea! Too bad I can't remember what it was actually called.
• Green tea flavored muaji (mochi).
• Fried chicken nuggets.
• Mister Donut, the Japanese answer to awful Dunkin Donuts. Both these chains are popular in Taiwan, but most people seemed to prefer Mister Donut, because the pastries were much more pretty and delicate-tasting. I associate Dunkin Donuts with being stale, crusty, and having messy glaze globbed on unevenly. But maybe that's unfair of me, because I only ever went to the Dunkin Donuts underground at the Harvard T stop, where everything smelled like the T.

Longshan Temple

While we were in the area, we visited the famous Longshan Temple, where there were huge lines of people praying for a great new year.

Here's us with a rat statue, for the year of the rat:

7-Eleven Doesn't Have Drugs

Chris woke up the next day with a nasty cold, so my first objective of the day was to find some cold medicine for him. No problem, I thought. There are 7-Elevens on practically every block in the city. I walked to the one across the street from the Hyatt, fully expecting that household brands like Tylenol and Advil would be readily available. If not, there were two other convenience stores next to the 7-Eleven (funny how they cluster like that), and surely one of them would have something recognizable, right?

Wrong. Can has none.

Turns out that convenience stores in Taiwan do not carry any medicine. My cousin An An later explained this to us. The explanation went something like this:

Typically, educated people here don't buy themselves random medicines from stores. Some people still do it, but they are mostly uneducated countryside hicks who don't know better. I mean, what if you choose the wrong medicine? We think it's much better to see a doctor to get medicine. But in America, your health care is too expensive, so I guess I understand why you have to do it.

Ouch. So us high and mighty Americans are living like Taiwan's poor and uneducated because our health care system is so inferior.

It's not so bad, I said, trying to defend our system. Most of the time, you know when you have a minor head cold, so why waste the time and money to see a doctor? Oh that's true, my cousin replied, trying to agree with me. But after a few seconds, he added, it's not like it takes much time or money to see a doctor here. You can just walk into any doctor's office to be checked (no appointment necessary) and it's practically free. They only pay $5-10 US dollars per paycheck into the health care system too.

On the other hand, in separate conversation with my cousin, Shuen Shuen, I found that people in Taiwan don't necessarily trust their doctors to do more advanced procedures. Shuen Shuen actually has the same chronic arm-dislocation problem that I had before my Bankart repair. (Hm, this may be evidence that my family has genetically weak rotator cuffs.) She asked me about the surgery, and concluded that it sounded good, but that she was afraid the doctors and hospitals in Taiwan would mess it up.

Anyways, we eventually went to a special drugstore and found a box of pills for Chris. We couldn't read anything on the box, except for one word in the ingredients list: "acetaminophen". Thank goodness for medical words not being translatable into Chinese! I also found some ibuprofen for my shoulder, although those were sold as individual pills and were quite expensive.

Burned Cheese, Italian Food in Taipei

Since Chris was sick and craving some western food, we stopped by an "Italian" restaurant for lunch, called Burned Cheese.

We ordered spaghetti with beef and tomato sauce, a dish where we thought we knew exactly what we would get.

Wrong for the second time of the day.

It was indeed spaghetti with beef and tomato sauce, as marketed, but with a distinctly Chinese taste. Or maybe this is how it's actually served in Italy and we Americans are eating the wrong stuff. Anyways the beef wasn't ground beef. Instead, it was chunks of tender beef like you might get in a beef stew. And the tomato sauce wasn't thick and full of spices and tomato paste. Instead it was thin and watery and full of diced tomatoes. Of course, it was still very good -- we were just surprised that even spaghetti with meat sauce in Taiwan was different.

For dessert, we ordered the "Burned Cheese" on the menu, which turned out to be like cheesecake, but less sweet:


Big Dinner at Fang's Restaurant

Every time I have visit Taiwan, my grandfather treats us to dinner at Fang's Restaurant.

Lots and lots of tasty dumplings here! The main difference on this visit was that Chris and I got to sit at the grownups table. I guess we count as grownup now that we're married. :-)

Fun Day, West of Taipei

Xiao Jiu Jiu, An An, my dad, Chris, and I started the day intending to visit a place with amazing woodworking crafts, but by lunchtime, we conceded defeat to the heavy Chinese New Year's traffic and turned off the jammed freeway.

The Fish Beating

This was one of Chris's most memorable Taiwan moments. We had stopped at a town near the Shimen Dam, so naturally all the restaurants were serving the specialty of the area -- fish. Specifically, "huo yu" or "live fish".

So, what happens when you go to one of these restaurants is that they first show you to a table (yeah, normal so far), and then immediately lead you to a pool in the back, which is filled with long gray fishes. You're supposed to pick the fish you'd like to eat from the pool. Here's ours:

They then weigh the fish and tell you how many dishes they can make with it. In our case, they assured us that we could get five different dishes with our fish.

Chris remembers thinking about how unhappy the fish looked as it was scooped out of the water and put on the scale. But the fish was about to get even more unhappy. When the weighing was done, they dumped the it unceremoniously onto the floor, and beat it on the head with a small wooden club as it thrashed around.

Well, at least we know it's fresh right?

The five fish dishes were delicious however. The first four dishes were just chopped up fish with various degrees of frying or different sauces. The last dish was the soup, with the fish's big head floating in the middle. All very yummy, though I was too stuffed to have much room for the soup. :-)

Little Person's World (Xiao Ren Guo)

Next, we went to an amusement park called Little Person's World -- Window on China. The park featured miniature versions of beautiful and notable buildings from all over the world.

Here's a picture of Xiao Jiu Jiu with some mini boats, since he's a retired naval officer:

Here's a picture of the miniature Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. We were amused to note that:

• The name on the brown sign has not yet been changed to "Democracy Hall" yet.
• The door is open so you can see the statue inside.
• There's no green tarp over the area between the stairs, so you can see the symbol of the sun.

The displays were very ornate. Here's one of the impressive ones, the Forbidden Palace in China:

And here's the Fokung Pagoda! Impressive facts:

• It was completed in 1056 A.D. and is still standing today.
• It was built without a single metal nail.
• It is China's oldest existing wooden pagoda.
• It is the highest wooden structure in the world.

Someday, we'll have to see the real thing!

The park even had a section dedicated to western wonders, although for some reason, other visitors didn't seem very interested in these and the area was practically deserted. I guess in retrospect, a small Stonehenge is just...not that cool, right?

It was also the only structure in the park that was attributed to a wizard.


"Pottery Heaven" at Ying Ge

There's a street in Ying Ge that is filled with shop after shop selling lovely pottery. The first store we visited was run by a famous teapot artist, who made gorgeous tiny teapots with elegant swan necks or dragon heads as the handles and spouts. Each teapot was tiny -- about the size of your palm -- and all of the clay they use is special to that part of Taiwan. I absolutely fell in love with the swans and dragons, but felt a little silly buying a decorative teapot-for-one for $60-70 apiece. <sigh> Maybe next time.

They wouldn't let us take pictures for fear of plagiarism, but here's us in front of the shop: