It's hard enough to fight the stereotype of the stupid, fat, ugly American. It's nice to see that Miss Teen South Caroline decided to join the battle...
...she just chose the wrong side...
Seriously, WTF is she saying?
Friday, August 31, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Songs from the 90s
Actually, this is more wacky stuff spotted here in Taiwan, but I've managed to observe a theme on this one, so here goes:
- Found this one in one of the local stores that carries pet goods.
- You can...
...in the morning, you can...
...in the night, you can...
...when you want to...
...
- I was kind of thinking about the theme from "The Love Boat", but somehow cheezy 70s disco music rings more true...
I'm not sure what they are implying here, but I do know that there's know way I'm drinking this...
Are You Ready For Prayer Time?
Many (if not most) companies in Taiwan will engage in a semi-monthly "bai bai" ceremony, wherein they sacrifice food, incense and money (actually just paper) to their ancestors to bring fortune and luck. I have yet to really figure out the exact significance of this rite (and admittedly, I haven't really tried), but I think that the ancestor worship is some sort of a cross between Taoism and Confucianist beliefs.
Our office typically does not show many signs of having these sorts of religious/spiritual beliefs, so it was interesting when I noticed my coworkers preparing for this particular holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival. I consider it a privelege to have been able to witness one of these ceremonies first-hand outside of the usual temple environs.Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Mexican Food in Taiwan
Bean-o-rama's recent post on Mexican food has inspired me to put on this ol' blog with regards to Mexican food in Taiwan.I'm not sure how to start this, so let's start with a silly scenario.
Let's say that you come to Taiwan and decide that rather than partaking of any of the local cuisines (spanning all of Asia with admirable verisimilitude), you instead opt for getting some Mexican food to avoid the dysentery. You might be curious about how they interpret a burrito. You might be wondering how a culture that only peripherally socializes with cheese would go about making an enchilada plate. You might just hate Asian food.
Regardless of your reasons, I am here today to tell you that you should not under any circumstances follow this urge to try Mexican food here in Taiwan. I am sure there are exceptions to this rule (i.e. you have a friend that makes it at home), but I have yet to actually encounter any. Here are some examples of experiences that I have had:
- There is a very nice restaurant that also doubles as a jazz club here in Taipei called Brown Sugar. It is very snazzy, the jazz is actually pretty darn good, and the drink menu is downright spectacular. The food menu is also pretty interesting, and they somehow manage to do a great job on their Western fare. In spite of all of these things that they have going for them, their version of Nachos (which costs about US$7~8) was a basket of Nacho Cheese Doritos served with a little bowl filled with crappy picante sauce. Seriously.
- I can't recall the place where I had this, but at one point I ended up seeing somebody order a taco that consisted of a fried shell, corn, mayonnaise, and what appeared to be Campbell's Chunky Beef Stew. Not a single shred of lettuce, tomato, pineapple, or salsa in sight...
- This isn't really an example of issues with Mexican cuisine, but I also once received a Mojito that consisted of nothing but rum, peppermint schnapps and ice cubes.
There are other examples, but suffice it to say that I have completely given up. Now and then, I might run across a Churro that's probably safe, but I'm even a bit scared to try those out.
I used to complain a bit about the fact that there was no good Mexican food in central Texas - only Tex-Mex. Now that I've had Tai-Mex, I have learned that there are far worse things in this world than black beans served with my fajitas.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Talk About an Understatement
A China Airlines flight exploded on the tarmac today, with no injuries or fatalities. Here is the article from Yahoo! News.
While this in and of itself is not particularly exceptional, the statement from the President of China Airlines (a Taiwanese company) was just a little bit unsettling:
"We are prepared to do its best to get to the bottom of this incident," China Airlines president Zhao Guoshi told reporters at a press conference at Naha airport late Monday. "I apologize for the trouble we have caused our passengers."
For those of you that have wondered why I am so adamant about not flying China Airlines for my various Asian business trips, hopefully the stats towards the bottom of the above article will shed some light on my position...
While this in and of itself is not particularly exceptional, the statement from the President of China Airlines (a Taiwanese company) was just a little bit unsettling:
"We are prepared to do its best to get to the bottom of this incident," China Airlines president Zhao Guoshi told reporters at a press conference at Naha airport late Monday. "I apologize for the trouble we have caused our passengers."
For those of you that have wondered why I am so adamant about not flying China Airlines for my various Asian business trips, hopefully the stats towards the bottom of the above article will shed some light on my position...
Monday, August 20, 2007
Greece 2007
Monday
Arrived in Athens at 4pm, took the Metro from the train over to our hotel (Evangelismos), walked 3 blocks over and checked into the Athens Hilton (thank you Hilton Honors Points!), where we had a direct view of the Parthenon from our balcony.
After freshening up, we headed up via funicular to the restaurant with the coolest view in Athens, perched atop Lycabettus hill. The restaurant’s food was pretty good (this is where we first discovered Greek wine – their whites are lovely!), but the view was outstanding! Take a thin sweater if you go in the evening (better view then) because it does get drafty.
Tuesday
Woke up early and started walking eastward towards the Acropolis. We just wandered without paying too much attention to the map, so we ended up in a couple cool neighborhoods (Syntagma, Kolonaki, etc.) that had charming tabernas (restaurants) and coffee shops and wine bars.
We eventually figured out that we were going SW, which was cool because we ended up right next to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which is a major attraction. It’s a little worse for wear, but you can still imagine what it must have looked like thousands of years ago. TIP: Buy the all-inclusive entrance ticket, which is good for a week, and will get you into all the major attractions.
We ended up walking in to the Plaka pedestrian area, which is cool for souvenir shopping (at tourist prices, of course) and eating and we decided to have lunch here (gyro…mmmmm). With our bellies full and our fluids replenished, we made our way to the Acropolis.
Plan to spend about 3-4 hours wandering around here if you’re a culture/history buff. Also do your best to get here earlier in the day than we did, since it gets pretty full with tourists over the course of the day, and it gets pretty hot around mid-day. Also, bring good walking shoes as you’ll do quite a bit of climbing up steep walkways to get up to the top of the hill.
We started out at the Temple of Dionysus, wandered through it all up to the Parthenon proper, and then came back down through Ancient Agora, stopping for pictures at the Temple of Hephaestus. TIP: Don’t wander alone through the trees in the Areopagus area – we did and accidentally interrupted a pot deal…cannabis baggie exposed, replete in all its glory.
Afterward, we were all cultured out, so we made a half-hearted attempt at walking through the Roman Agora before giving up and heading off to dinner in Monastiraki. We ended our day wandering back through the shops in Plaka before heading over to the Metro station and going home around 11pm.
Wednesday
We woke up fairly late (and dehydrated), so we headed straight for the National Archeological Museum and had breakfast around there.
Sadly, we only had about 2-3 hours there since we’re both museum buffs and there was SOOOOOOO much to see. If you’re into lots of artifacts from the ancient world, and enjoy reading the placards, then I suggest planning a full day here…otherwise, it is possible to rush through in 2~3 hours, although I would not recommend it. High points here were…well…legion. Seriously, you NEED to go here.
We unfortunately ran out of time, and had to run back to our hotel to get our bags so that we could take the Metro over to the Piraeus pier to grab our boat. We upgraded to business class (cuz I felt like it, darn it) and enjoyed the 5 hour ride out to Santorini. You can get there a lot quicker by plane, but I’ve always wanted to take a boat through the Aegean, so we went for it. The boat left on time, but somehow arrived a couple hours late. Also, the Aegean is named after the waves propensity to jump like goats, so that should give you an idea of what to expect of the ride. We arrived at the pier in Fira (AKA Thira), where our pre-arranged ride for the cave hotel was waiting for us.
Not sure if you’ve ever been to Santorini before, but the cave hotels are basically hotels that are built into the sides of the cliffs overlooking the relatively inactive volcano crater (caldera). The views are spectacular, and the sunsets will stay with you forever.
They’re a little on the pricey side, but I think they’re totally worth it. Our hotel was the Regina Mare, which was pretty decent and had great service. I wouldn’t expect more than 3.5 stars at any of these caldera hotels, but they nearly get by on charm alone.
We ended up going with Imerovigli, which is half way between the two major towns on the island (Fira and Oia). We chose it because it is fairly close to both, but not nearly as touristy and much quieter – you can actually hear the waves at night as opposed to the various boatloads (literally) of people coming and going from the major cities.
If you’re looking for nightlife, then you might want to stay at Fira. If you’re looking for more rustic charm and more restaurants, stay at Oia. If you’re looking for peace and beauty, stay at Imerovigli.
For dinner, we headed over to a local restaurant (take that with a grain of salt) that was pretty close to the hotel. The food was great and the local Santorini wine was fantastic.
Thursday
We just basically wandered around Fira and enjoyed the general ambience of the place. We enjoyed various meals at various places (can’t recall them off the top of my head) and then went home and called it a night.
Friday
We decided to rent a car and head out to explore the beaches. Renting the car was a good move since the bus and taxi systems are unreliable and sporadic at best (apparently pretty typical for Greece). Looking for the beaches…well…let’s put it this way. If you’re expecting broad sandy beaches with warm waves of blue water washing over you, at least you’ll be happy that it’s blue. Santorini was formed through volcanic activity, and its original round shape was devastated a long, long time ago, resulting in its current crescent + point shape today.
This resulted in the formation of spectacular landscapes and beautiful cliffs, coastlines, and beaches. The bad news is that the beaches are all made of stone. The Black Beach has scorching hot black stones. The Red Beach requires navigation across the cliffs of insanity, and the White Beach requires an off-roading experience to reach. The waters are all crystal clear since there is no sand to be seen anywhere. The waters are also very, very cold for some inexplicable reason.
I got a kick out of the drive and the adventure of getting around. It was cool passing through the vineyards full of lazy grapevines (they sprawl on the ground, vines akimbo vs. having posts to follow) – try to make some time for a winery if time permits. We also accidentally ended up driving up an insane mountain towards a place called Ancient Thira – the roads are 1 to 1.5 lanes wide, which makes it extra fun when you’re trying to get around the vans containing tourists. I’d advise against going here unless you like literally living on the edge.
After spending the day in search of and ultimately hanging out at a beach, we headed home to watch an amazing sunset from our terrace, freshen up, drop off the rental car, and then we headed up to Oia for dinner at what is purported to be the best restaurant on the island. This was GLORIOUS – words cannot describe how good this was. It was pretty darn expensive, but it was also our last night in Greece, so we just went for it. You also NEED to go here if you visit. Afterward, we staggered back home (after waiting 45 minutes for a taxi to show up) and finished packing before we crashed for the night.
Saturday
Woke up at around 4:30am and had a tiny little bit of breakfast on our terrace (we were too full to eat it all, but the hotel had packed us a nice breakfast the night before and left it in our room). We cleared out of the hotel and headed to the airport and managed to catch the sunrise over the east coast. Our flight took off at 6:30am, and thus ended a great (albeit far too short) vacation in Greece.
Arrived in Athens at 4pm, took the Metro from the train over to our hotel (Evangelismos), walked 3 blocks over and checked into the Athens Hilton (thank you Hilton Honors Points!), where we had a direct view of the Parthenon from our balcony.
After freshening up, we headed up via funicular to the restaurant with the coolest view in Athens, perched atop Lycabettus hill. The restaurant’s food was pretty good (this is where we first discovered Greek wine – their whites are lovely!), but the view was outstanding! Take a thin sweater if you go in the evening (better view then) because it does get drafty.
Tuesday
Woke up early and started walking eastward towards the Acropolis. We just wandered without paying too much attention to the map, so we ended up in a couple cool neighborhoods (Syntagma, Kolonaki, etc.) that had charming tabernas (restaurants) and coffee shops and wine bars.
We eventually figured out that we were going SW, which was cool because we ended up right next to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which is a major attraction. It’s a little worse for wear, but you can still imagine what it must have looked like thousands of years ago. TIP: Buy the all-inclusive entrance ticket, which is good for a week, and will get you into all the major attractions.
We ended up walking in to the Plaka pedestrian area, which is cool for souvenir shopping (at tourist prices, of course) and eating and we decided to have lunch here (gyro…mmmmm). With our bellies full and our fluids replenished, we made our way to the Acropolis.
Plan to spend about 3-4 hours wandering around here if you’re a culture/history buff. Also do your best to get here earlier in the day than we did, since it gets pretty full with tourists over the course of the day, and it gets pretty hot around mid-day. Also, bring good walking shoes as you’ll do quite a bit of climbing up steep walkways to get up to the top of the hill.
We started out at the Temple of Dionysus, wandered through it all up to the Parthenon proper, and then came back down through Ancient Agora, stopping for pictures at the Temple of Hephaestus. TIP: Don’t wander alone through the trees in the Areopagus area – we did and accidentally interrupted a pot deal…cannabis baggie exposed, replete in all its glory.
Afterward, we were all cultured out, so we made a half-hearted attempt at walking through the Roman Agora before giving up and heading off to dinner in Monastiraki. We ended our day wandering back through the shops in Plaka before heading over to the Metro station and going home around 11pm.
Wednesday
We woke up fairly late (and dehydrated), so we headed straight for the National Archeological Museum and had breakfast around there.
Sadly, we only had about 2-3 hours there since we’re both museum buffs and there was SOOOOOOO much to see. If you’re into lots of artifacts from the ancient world, and enjoy reading the placards, then I suggest planning a full day here…otherwise, it is possible to rush through in 2~3 hours, although I would not recommend it. High points here were…well…legion. Seriously, you NEED to go here.
We unfortunately ran out of time, and had to run back to our hotel to get our bags so that we could take the Metro over to the Piraeus pier to grab our boat. We upgraded to business class (cuz I felt like it, darn it) and enjoyed the 5 hour ride out to Santorini. You can get there a lot quicker by plane, but I’ve always wanted to take a boat through the Aegean, so we went for it. The boat left on time, but somehow arrived a couple hours late. Also, the Aegean is named after the waves propensity to jump like goats, so that should give you an idea of what to expect of the ride. We arrived at the pier in Fira (AKA Thira), where our pre-arranged ride for the cave hotel was waiting for us.
Not sure if you’ve ever been to Santorini before, but the cave hotels are basically hotels that are built into the sides of the cliffs overlooking the relatively inactive volcano crater (caldera). The views are spectacular, and the sunsets will stay with you forever.
They’re a little on the pricey side, but I think they’re totally worth it. Our hotel was the Regina Mare, which was pretty decent and had great service. I wouldn’t expect more than 3.5 stars at any of these caldera hotels, but they nearly get by on charm alone.
We ended up going with Imerovigli, which is half way between the two major towns on the island (Fira and Oia). We chose it because it is fairly close to both, but not nearly as touristy and much quieter – you can actually hear the waves at night as opposed to the various boatloads (literally) of people coming and going from the major cities.
If you’re looking for nightlife, then you might want to stay at Fira. If you’re looking for more rustic charm and more restaurants, stay at Oia. If you’re looking for peace and beauty, stay at Imerovigli.
For dinner, we headed over to a local restaurant (take that with a grain of salt) that was pretty close to the hotel. The food was great and the local Santorini wine was fantastic.
Thursday
We just basically wandered around Fira and enjoyed the general ambience of the place. We enjoyed various meals at various places (can’t recall them off the top of my head) and then went home and called it a night.
Friday
We decided to rent a car and head out to explore the beaches. Renting the car was a good move since the bus and taxi systems are unreliable and sporadic at best (apparently pretty typical for Greece). Looking for the beaches…well…let’s put it this way. If you’re expecting broad sandy beaches with warm waves of blue water washing over you, at least you’ll be happy that it’s blue. Santorini was formed through volcanic activity, and its original round shape was devastated a long, long time ago, resulting in its current crescent + point shape today.
This resulted in the formation of spectacular landscapes and beautiful cliffs, coastlines, and beaches. The bad news is that the beaches are all made of stone. The Black Beach has scorching hot black stones. The Red Beach requires navigation across the cliffs of insanity, and the White Beach requires an off-roading experience to reach. The waters are all crystal clear since there is no sand to be seen anywhere. The waters are also very, very cold for some inexplicable reason.
I got a kick out of the drive and the adventure of getting around. It was cool passing through the vineyards full of lazy grapevines (they sprawl on the ground, vines akimbo vs. having posts to follow) – try to make some time for a winery if time permits. We also accidentally ended up driving up an insane mountain towards a place called Ancient Thira – the roads are 1 to 1.5 lanes wide, which makes it extra fun when you’re trying to get around the vans containing tourists. I’d advise against going here unless you like literally living on the edge.
After spending the day in search of and ultimately hanging out at a beach, we headed home to watch an amazing sunset from our terrace, freshen up, drop off the rental car, and then we headed up to Oia for dinner at what is purported to be the best restaurant on the island. This was GLORIOUS – words cannot describe how good this was. It was pretty darn expensive, but it was also our last night in Greece, so we just went for it. You also NEED to go here if you visit. Afterward, we staggered back home (after waiting 45 minutes for a taxi to show up) and finished packing before we crashed for the night.
Saturday
Woke up at around 4:30am and had a tiny little bit of breakfast on our terrace (we were too full to eat it all, but the hotel had packed us a nice breakfast the night before and left it in our room). We cleared out of the hotel and headed to the airport and managed to catch the sunrise over the east coast. Our flight took off at 6:30am, and thus ended a great (albeit far too short) vacation in Greece.
Typhoon Sepat Hits Taiwan
Melanie was treated to her very first typhoon (also known as hurricane or cyclone) last weekend when Sepat slammed Taiwan with 100+ MPH winds and rain. This is the third such typhoon to hit Taiwan in the last month, but thankfully Taiwan is well equipped to handle these sorts of events, as you can see in this article on Yahoo.
I went downstairs to the front of our building and managed to capture a short video showing the winds and rain hammering our neighborhood. Note that this was during a relatively quiet time during the storm...
I went downstairs to the front of our building and managed to capture a short video showing the winds and rain hammering our neighborhood. Note that this was during a relatively quiet time during the storm...
The picture above is taken in front of my office on the following Monday - as you can see, aside from the fallen palm, there really wasn't a whole lot of damage.
Thankfully, the storm only lingered for about a day. We had plenty of warning so we rented a bunch of videos, stocked up our pantry with water and instant noodles, and settled down for a weekend at home. In the end, we didn't even lose power, so it was hardly very exciting at all. The worst we experienced was that the windows creaked a bit as they withstood the tempest, and a little bit of water leaked into the ceiling of our little terrace. All in all, considering the recent news of the conditions in India, we got off extremely easy.
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