Category Archives: food

A Series of Unfortunate Events

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I was just washing the frying pan because I cooked dinner tonight. It was even my first time cooking seafood: clams with basil and red chili peppers, and it was delicious. Unfortunately, I sliced my pinky finger on the apparently razor-sharp edge of the pan.

During tutoring today, I had a sudden craving for Taco Bell and Mountain Dew. Jud would be proud. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no ways of satisfying these said cravings.

I have already sent in my absentee ballot. Riley asked me today if I knew if Obama or McCain won. I was so proud that he was even asking about US politics as a second-grader, much less remembered who was running. Unfortunately, I had to tell him that we had to wait another month to find out.

There’s this amazing bookstore a couple blocks away. The bookstores here are so much cooler than the ones in the US. The ones here have everything you can ever think of in the categories of office supplies with cute animal faces on them. And the endless choices of the different types of pens and pencils, it’s like heaven on earth for me. Unfortunately, it’s closing its doors on October 20.

I hear the Vanderbilt Commodores are doing well in football for a change. 5-0, I believe, and 13th in the nation? I do miss college football. Unfortunately, they don’t show the games on the ESPN we get here.

Like I said before, we have Friday off, which we will be utilizing to do some touristy stuff in Danshui. Unfortunately, I have to work on Saturday as usual, but Jen & I will be attending an engagement party in Taichung on Sunday.

Short Week

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Jen & I have been watching Amazing Race Asia, and they’re doing an episode in Taipei. One of the tasks the contestants have to do is eat a giant bowl of stinky tofu, and they had a very hard time keeping it down. Jen & I did that sometime last week, eating stinky tofu that is. We walked by a street vendor, and I decided that we had to try it, at least once. It tastes exactly like it smells, not pleasant. I remembered eating it and not hating it before when I visited Taiwan a few years ago, but I did not remember how bad it was. I thought it tasted different than the way it smelled, but no not really. At least now I know for sure.

There was no typhoon this weekend, thank goodness, otherwise we would be home all day for the fourth straight weekend in a row.

Saturday: I had to work from 10am to 4pm, and then afterwards, we went to Ying-ge to eat dinner with my grandparents who flew in from the States. They’ll be here in Taiwan for about six months. The entire meal was a bit awkward because it was with another side of the family that I don’t know that well, and Jen & I got to sit at the table with the elders and the male sons. Jim’s grandfather also kept pouring shots of Johnny Walker whiskey for us, as everyone went around toasting our table. Jen was a trooper and did a fabulous job, getting along with everyone but unfortunately the entire meal was seafood, so she pretty much had only soup for dinner.

We left Ying-ge and made it back to Taipei around 11pm and decided to go out for a bit. We ended up at Luxy for a few hours before crashing into bed.

Sunday: Fabulous night market shopping and came back with a ton of stuff. Why would anyone need to buy anything anywhere else?

Thursday, the House Bunny finally comes out here, and since we have Friday off, I’m dragging Jen to go see it with me.

Friday is Double Ten Day which is similar to our Independence Day, so we get a day off. I would like to know if I get Saturday off too, or else it would be kind of pointless.

Mmm.. Ikea

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And we are furnished!

On the way to work yesterday morning, I passed by a store like two blocks away that sells second-hand TVs. After work, Jen and I walked down there and bought a 20inch old-school TV for $2000NT ($63USD) and taxi-ed it home. And the driver helped carry it to the elevator for us.

Then we had dinner at this buffet place a couple of blocks away. It’s a road-side buffet with a spread of about 30 different dishes and you get to pick whatever you want and then pay according to how much you get. Mine was $80NT ($2.51USD) for a plateful and rice. I think it’s the closest thing to a home-cooked meal for us.

The internet called me fat, right? So Jen and I walked to AsiaWorld, a mall, where the Ikea is. Ok, it was like a 30-minute walk and easily remedied by taking a bus. Anyways, we got a coffee table, pillows, toolkit, and some other things to make this place a little bit more homey.

We finally figured out the trash schedule. The garbage truck comes up to the alley at 6:03-6:08pm everyday except on Wednesdays and Sundays. There are recycling trucks that follow the garbage trucks, but you can only recycle certain things on certain days i.e. paper on mondays, plastics on tuesdays, etc. There are government-sanctioned trash bags that you have to buy at convenience stores where you can put anything in them and not have to sort it. Recycling stuff can go in any kind of bags and are a lot cheaper, therefore it kind of encourages you to recycle.

But there’s a problem.

Jen & I will never get home in time to meet the garbage truck. You have to take the trash to them because they don’t collect it. So as of right now, it looks like we have to be home at 6pm every Saturday night to be able to throw our trash away. Yuck.

Update: Jen ordered a bed base for her mattress from a furniture store across the street, so I took the opportunity to ask the salesman if he knew of the trash schedule around here. He told me there was another stop after 9pm which is perfect. So last night, we got to meet the garbage truck! It’s good to know that we won’t have piles of garbage laying around our apartment.

Home Sweet Home

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We are officially moved into our new apartment, and after some cleaning, it is sparkling and beautiful. We also have cable and fast internet, so all we need is a TV.. Once we get a little bit more furniture, I’ll take some pictures and share them with you. We also just discovered an adorable little wonton restaurant right next door to us, and it’s delicious. Guess who’s going to be regulars soon?

We live about a 10-minute walk from the closest subway stop, and about a 20-minute walk from Taipei 101. You can actually see 101 pretty well from the front of our building, so when New Year’s rolls around, and everyone is trying to get there to see the fireworks, we can set up camp right on the sidewalk or just walk there and not have to deal with the transportation madness.

I got to write in communication books today about my students to send home to the parents. I also had to write a letter introducing myself as a new teacher and explaining that I am “really excited!” to be teaching their children. Who would’ve thought that the little girl who got “talks too much in class” in her kindergarten communication book would one day get to rate her students and write their parents letters?

Fun Fact: McDonald’s delivers here! We’re so hitting that up. It really is a good thing we walk a lot here, or else I would be paying some serious overweight fees on the flight home.

(I finally have a facebook album up of some random pictures from the past few weeks.)

Two Weeks

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We have an apartment! It’s about halfway between Jen’s and my work. It’s also across the street from a Carrefour and a block away from the Living Mall, which has a movie theater too. Prime location, indeed.

We’re paying $18000NT a month, not counting utilities, which translates to $575USD a month so that equals about $300 apiece with utilities. As you can tell, Taiwan is very affordable. You can get a meal for about $30-50NT, which is about $1-2USD. A can of coke is $15NT, which is 50cents. And to put it into perspective, as of now, I work 13.5 hours a week and I get paid $620NT ($20USD) an hour.

We’ve found a couple of furniture/house sales online where some English teachers are moving back home. Our apartment already comes with a sofa, TV cabinet, full size bed, desk, fridge, air conditioning, and a washing machine. (Fridges, AC, and washing machines do not usually come with places, and dryers do not even exist. You hang clothes up to dry.) There are two bedrooms: one’s a regular size bedroom, and the other is probably half the size of that and does not quite fit in. I’m taking the big one for now, and Jen and I will switch halfway through the year. Anyways, we’re trying to sparsely furnish our place since we’re not staying long anyway. Jen needs a bed, and we need a TV.

We’ve met tons of Americans/non-Taiwanese people who’ve been here for 3, 4, 8, 12 and such years. The interesting thing is that most of them intended to come and teach English for a year and ended up staying for much longer. They say that life is too comfortable here, which we can see why, since everything is so much more affordable and teaching English is quite a lucrative job. Jen and I are a bit scared that that may happen to us. What if we never want to leave?

My older cousin, Maggie, tried to take us to the Millet exhibition, but when we got there, the line was down about three blocks and looped back around. I wasn’t that excited about seeing paintings on a wall to wait that long; besides Jen had already seen them in France, which is probably the real deal. That’s definitely one thing I’ve noticed about the people here: they like to wait in lines for pretty much everything. And they’re so patient about it too. The last time I saw a line like this back in the States was when the Apple iPhone first came out or something.

We’ve been to two night markets thus far, which are amazing, since you can buy pretty much anything and everything there for cheap. The food is amazing, of course. I’ve eaten so much fruit since I’ve been here. Every day, I’ve had at least a cup of fresh-squeezed of something, mostly mangoes and guavas.

(Jen has pictures up, so go see them for a bit of satisfaction. I promise, promise, I’ll put more up when I don’t have to share the internet cable every 10 minutes.)