fall in taipei

the days have really started to fly by. fall has arrived in taipei and it's been surprisingly lovely. a few days ago i went out sightseeing on a sunny afternoon to the confucius temple near yuanshan station. it was a quiet, green space and having gone on a weekday, there were only a few other people there.





a little way down the street was the livelier baoan temple. here there were many more people visiting the gods, carrying sticks of burning incense. i wish i knew more about the traditions in visiting these temples. i only know that you're supposed to enter from the right door and walk counterclockwise.

i've started to try more of the restaurants around my studio. i had my first slice of pizza in taipei yesterday at a restaurant nearby. not bad. better than the spaghetti i've had here. my appetite continues to get better, especially now that i've started to swim more. i'm happy that i've been able to resume some of the routine i had while still in houston.

there's one more month left of the fall term with a one week break before the winter term starts. i'm pretty satisfied with how my chinese is going. i've noticed within the last two weeks or so that things are just starting to click. yesterday i was in a taxi and after going the wrong way a bit, i explained to the driver that we wanted to go in the other direction. speaking was the easy part and i did it without hesitation, but when he replied, i didn't really catch it all. luckily amanda was able to figure out what he was trying to say. listening and understanding are the slowest things in coming, but i can definitely tell that i've made some progress. kung fu club has been pretty good too. i've learned how to say a few useful words related to body parts, but haven't learned the characters for them.

this week has been pretty good for firsts. tomorrow i'll be going to my first club in taipei for a halloween party being thrown by the ntu school of management. i still haven't bought a costume, but neither have my friends. i'm not sure how late i'll stay as the last mrt train leaves at midnight, but in any case, it ought to be a fun night out. i missed out on halloween last year, so maybe i ought to make up for it tomorrow...

feeling better

i've had a much better time this week after getting over my chest cold. i've started to pick up my routine of swimming again. my appetite has also started to come back so that my lunch at the cafeteria is about $45NT instead of $29NT. i didn't notice it at the time, but i'm really surprised at how little i was eating.

last weekend i took a day trip with amanda to beitou to check out some hot springs. it was really nice and relaxing. we found a hot spring where you could stay as long as you wanted for $40NT. they had several pools of different temperatures with the hottest being 45C and the coldest being 20C i think. after that, we went to xindian to see a performance where her roommate/landlord issac was performing. it turns out that issac is the street performer i saw a while back who performs with the ring. the show also included a live band and a clown, who thought it would be funny to take some guy's big umbrella (it was drizzling that night), give him a tiny umbrella, and hand me the big umbrella to hold (although i had a raincoat on) until he was done with his performance. the show ended with three performers dancing and doing some stunts with fire.



afterwards, issac and his wife magda invited us to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant with many of the performers from the show. i don't remember all the dishes, but one that i really enjoyed was called 三杯素肉 (sanbei surou). i also sat next to the clown who had given me the big umbrella to hold, hahaha.

this week we had our midterm for chinese class. i half-heartedly studied for a day and a half before concluding that i was already well prepared for the test. i spent most of the night before the midterm making my first mashup with the lite version of ableton live i have, doing grizzly bear vs. cypress hill. i also made a cheap video with a picture of gizmo so that i could upload it to youtube. after finishing it, i was laughing so much that i thought i had lost my mind.

the midterm was okay and there weren't any surprises on it. i think many of my classmates were also a bit worried at first before realizing that it wouldn't be so hard.

the next day, our class had a day trip to 華陶窯 (huataoyao), a garden and ceramic studio, and 北埔 (beipu), a hakka village. it was my first time getting out of taipei since i've been here. i brought a book thinking i'd read to pass the time on the bus trip, but instead we had a tour guide who talked pretty much the whole way, keeping us entertained by playing bingo. i won a little key chain in the shape of taiwan with a map of all the counties on it. the bus ride was nice. looking out at all the green hills along the way, i couldn't help but miss my car a little bit. i would love to take a springtime road trip here.



華陶窯 was such a beautiful place. we learned a little bit about how they make their ceramics and were able to play with some clay ourselves. i was surprised when they told us that they would fire our clay pieces and mail them to us. a lot of the students made some really creative pieces. i saw a piece shaped like a toilet. i'm not sure if he intends to use it as a cup...

after 華陶窯, we went to a place in 北埔 to make our own 擂茶 (leicha), a traditional hakka tea. we were given a big bowl with sesame seeds and some other nuts to grind as part of making our tea. we had no idea about this at first, so we started to eat the nuts, thinking they were snacks to go with the tea. after eating some, we learned what the bowl was for and that there was a contest amongst all the students to see who could grind the bowl the fastest. our table tried very hard but somehow it didn't really work out for us. still, the tea we made was drinkable. later on, i was able to taste a properly prepared 擂茶 from a vendor on the street.

what a nice day. it was good to get out of taipei and even better to get out of class.

getting lost

the weather was very nice today for the first time in about a week. instead of eating the cafeteria food, my classmates and i bought some lunch boxes and sat at the field behind the main library to enjoy the weather.

following that, i went home for a little rest and then took a nice walk this afternoon. when i say walk, maybe trek might be more accurate, at least by my standards. i made my way to daan park for the first time today. it's a very nice place, reminding me of hermann park back home, in that it's this big quiet place in the middle of the busy city. some people were playing croquet, others were just out for a stroll. it would have been a nice day to fly a kite. there's a little pond and an amphitheatre with a view of taipei 101 from the top of a small hill. the walk from the south end to the north end was probably around twenty minutes.

after leaving the park, i headed west down xinyi rd. towards yongkang st., where both din tai fung and the lamian place are at. i got there a little early, around 4:30, so i bummed around the small park there and took some time to write a postcard. i had my dinner at the lamian place. the food is delicious and i thought i would treat myself after being sick all week.

after that, i started walking back through daan park towards school for my kung fu class this evening. i came out of daan park at a different spot and ended up going the wrong way. i walked all the way to national taiwan normal university, before realizing my mistake. fortunately, mrt guting station was close by and i was able to get to taida from there. in all, i think i walked close to 6km this afternoon. not too bad i guess.

our kung fu club is pretty small, with maybe 5-7 people showing up at any particular meeting. i did the best i could although i'm not completely over my cold yet. i learned another stance, two new sets, and another section for the liu he quan set. i wish i could remember all the names in chinese, but it's slow going. the sounds don't map to anything i can see in my head. i know 馬步 is the horse stance, simply because i know the word for horse. 弓步 is the bow stance, and then the other two i don't remember the names yet.

i've also found out that the club isn't free but has a very affordable fee. $300 for the club, plus $250 for pants, and $300 for shoes, for a grand total of $850NT (about $26USD). pretty good i think.

it's been a long day. time to get some rest.

mid-autumn festival

it's been two weeks since my last post. in the meantime, school is going along pretty nicely. we're about halfway through the quarter and starting to do more conversation in class. we're also starting to learn more interesting sentence patterns besides "i am..." and "i like..." and "i want...". as we learn these new patterns, i'm tempted to think of how i would say something in english and then try to do a direct mapping into chinese with the usual result being that the way i'm saying something is entirely too complex. the pattern seems to be omission where possible.

the rock band club has kind of been a bust. they seem more focused on guitar lessons than getting bands together. besides that, i found out that they don't have any dedicated practice rooms available, at least for new members. instead, i've been playing drums in one of two practice rooms which are open to all students. the first time i played, the drumset i sat at was the most pitiful one i've ever seen. the next week, the staff put new heads on and replaced the crumbling cymbals with new ones. i played on them for about an hour last week while someone in the next room was practicing their flute. hope i'm not making enemies...

i've also joined one of several kung fu clubs here with my classmate amanda. the style we're learning is northern shaolin long fist (長拳) which includes qin na (擒拿). we meet on monday and friday from 6:30pm to 9:30pm. we do a lot of good stretches for maybe 30 mins before we get into the main session. the main session so far seems to be sets of punches, kicks, then learning a section of a long set of movements named liu he quan (六合拳). when i showed up on monday, the class started doing some of this set and i couldn't really keep up. however, on friday, we were given more detailed instruction on the first movements for the set. finally, at the end of class, we learn some 擒拿 techniques or some two person fight drills. i've learned two ways for taking someone's wrist and putting them on the ground. i've also learned three two-person block and attack sets. i'm really enjoying the meetings. it's a lot of fun, good exercise, and a nice way to make new friends. many of the members are electrical engineering students, so at least i can chat with them a little bit about that.

besides clubs and school, the mid-autumn festival (中秋節) was yesterday. i spent yesterday and today staying home, trying not to aggravate the chest cold i have. the weather is starting to cool off and it's been raining lightly for the last two days. i also experienced a minor tremor last night. i was sitting at my desk when i felt the building start to swing around. the best way i can describe it would be like being on a small boat in light chop. at first i couldn't tell if the building was moving or if i was just going to collapse suddenly.

what else? that's been about all the excitement i've had so far. i've done the first extension of my visitor visa so that i'm good until the end of the quarter. after that, i'll need to extend it again until the end of the winter quarter. i'm still looking to take a trip outside of taipei one of these weekends. my language school is having a field trip in two weeks, although i don't remember where to.

that's it for now. until next time.