usually it ends in tears when a drunk relative comes into your bedroom uninvited wearing nothing but his underwear and reeking of booze, but this time it turned out alright. my cousin came barging into my room sometime after midnight. he'd just gotten home after entertaining some bigwigs and smelled of alcohol. being drunk made him all apologetic, said he hadn't been able to take me out and show me around shenyang. i knew all of this, but it wasn't a big deal, and besides, he'd be free later in the week. but turns out some higher ups from beijing wants to come liaoning for a few days to visit some farmers, so he needs to spend the next 2-3 days acting as the local liaison, including wrangling up some mosquito netting.

...

my nephew was gently knocking on my door around 7:30 to tell me we were getting an early start this morning. after a poo and a shower, i got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast, another banquet feast, this time with more leftovers. i was in no mood to eat and noticed my bowl of rice porridge with millets was twice the size of everyone else.

it was an overcast day, with a light morning drizzle. we went downstairs by 9:00, my nephew's father meeting us, driving my cousin's nissan xterra SUV.

there's a reason why blog updates have been spotty since i left shanghai. i can get wifi here at my shenyang's relatives' place just fine, with the exception of my upstairs bedroom, where the layers of concrete walls are enough to dampen the signal to nothing. so i'm hoping to write at night (china time) then post in the morning (where it's night time in the US).

originally i wanted to visit the chinese-korean outpost town of yanji in northern jilin province. and when i say korea i mean northern korea. but my relatives advised against it, said it wasn't safe, and that i didn't have enough time. little did they know that i enjoy doing dangerous things when i travel. besides, i didn't think it was dangerous at all, but it would require 2 days of my time here in shenyang, leaving just thursday to visit my ancestral family tomb in benxi and see my cousin's mother. so yanji will have to wait until my next visit to the northeast. maybe i could also work in a trip to heilongjiang province (the most northern point of china) and cross into the border of russia, with forest so remote there are still tigers.

so i decided today to go to beiling instead. the plan was to get dropped off at the nearest subway station (a 39 minute walk otherwise) where it was a simple ride north to the beiling park stop. my cousin's wife wanted to drive me there, but it was too far, better to get there by metro. she also didn't think it'd be safe and made my nephew go with me, stuffing cash into our hands the night before.

my cousin's wife cooked up another elaborate breakfast, more evening meal than morning meal. i'm not used to eating so much in the morning, especially not a plate of freshwater fish as the main entree. her cooking is also very salty, but i said nothing in order to be polite, realizing this wasn't helping my blood pressure.

after dinner (i mean breakfast) we went to the bank to open up an account so my company could have a place to deposit my salary. what happened next was kafkaesque. first we missed our number because my cousin's wife was arguing to see if we could get a better spot in line. then we rushed one of the tellers before the next number could be called. there was problem with the form because i didn't fill it out myself, mainly that my name isn't in my handwriting (not sure why it matters, since i'd sign the form later). we filled out a second form but they wouldn't accept it because i used traditional chinese characters to write my name instead of simplified characters. the third form finally passed the stringent criteria, but it still took a while for the clerk to figure out how to open a china checking account with a taiwan-china entry visa. finally i got a card; not a visa or mastercard, but some chinese credit agency i'd never seen before except here in china.

my cousin's wife dropped off my nephew and me at the olympics stadium station. the place got its name from the stadium that was constructed for the 2008 olympics. underground, the ceiling is decorated with neon olympics rings. we took the train to beiling (RMB$3 for the ride). shenyang subway is very similar to the shanghai subway, which in turn is similar to the taiwan subways. shenyang only recently got their metro (just a few years ago), so there's currently only 2 lines crisscrossing the city north-south and east-west. however, in a few more years more lines will be constructed, for as many as 10. the subway is a great place to people watch, and the people of dongbei are pretty fascinating. maybe it's because of manchu blood, but a typical person from dongbei is taller than the average chinese, and they have very anglo-saxon noses (not the stereotypical flat chinese nose).

we picked a good day to go to beiling because it wasn't rainy (and beiling is mostly outdoors) but that also meant we'd get bombarded from the summer sun, this season particularly hot globally. the sky was also blue, a rarity even in a less polluted place like shenyang. my nephew went to pay admission and came back with 4 different tickets at a cost of RMB$95 (US$16) for each set.

walking across vast stretches of flat plaza space was like an endurance challenge. we learned to walk in the shade. we started on the eastern side near tree-lined man-made lakes. we saw what was to be numerous magpies. my nephew said they were an auspicious sign in chinese symbology, unlike crows, which bring bad luck. watercrafts in the shapes of birds were available to rent. elsewhere, children were playing in floating water balloons. it all seemed a little gimmicky, designed to further earn tourist dollars.

we wandered onto the main north-south drag, attracted by the large warrior statue of hong taiji, the second emperor of the qing dynasty (although some say the first, since his father nurhaci was awarded the title of first emperor posthumously). (later we'd see an imperial painting of hong taiji, who seemed to look less heroic in the portrait, more like a pudgy mandarin with sleepy eyes). from there we walked north to the site of the mausoleum.

once we passed the initial gates, we entered a long pathway flanked by various stone carvings of animals, both real and mythical. it's hard to tell whether something is authentic or reproduction. the stonework on these beasts seemed a little too new, the material possibly cement instead of some precious stone. historical preservation seems like a recent innovation in china, after milleniums of warfare and sacking and looting and civil strife. despite the place being a top attraction in shenyang, it's not very well maintained, with grass growing on the old roofs.

there wasn't many visitors as we walked around admiring the qing era architecture. the actual mausoleum lies buried underneath an artificial hill. after so many centuries, i can't believe it hasn't been looted already. using modern archaeological technology, they should be able to scan below the dirt to figure out if there's actually anything buried underneath.

...

my alarm clock didn't go off this morning. it seems like this has happened before, the night before i was scheduled to leave hong kong back home to the US when i went to china back in 2006. it was the exact same travel alarm clock, and i think an evil spirit is haunting it because apparently it wants to ruin me. it worked just fine when i was in taiwan, rang without any problems. but now when i needed it most, it surprisingly stopped working. maybe it was because i dropped it on the floor earlier, causing everything to reset. but once an alarm clock fails in a critical situation not once but twice, i have no choice but to retire it. it's a great alarm clock, has a bioluminescent light, date, and temperature. i love the temperature the most. i'll keep the alarm clock in my repertoire just because it can tell me how hot and cold it is.

i woke up at 7:20 when i was supposed to wake up at 7:00. actually, i was thinking about waking up even earlier, since my flight was at 9:55, and i wanted to leave the hotel by 7:30, not knowing how long it'd take me to get to the airport. waking up earlier would give me more time to take a relaxing shower, maybe go online a little bit, have some breakfast. waking up at 7:20 gave me just 10 minutes to do all those things. fortunately i packed the night before.

pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong today, but at least i bought a new pair of pants.

i woke up at 7:00 to meet mr.wu at 8:00 so we could go get my china work visa. initially i waited in my room, but decided to go downstairs and wait in the lobby because i realized you can't come upstairs without a door key (the elevator is door card activated). i wait for almost an hour, and tried to get breakfast when they told me breakfast wasn't included in my room price. i didn't even bother asking how much more it'd cost, figured i'd forgo breakfast and just have lunch somewhere in shanghai.

afterwards i went back upstairs, figured wu might try to call me through my room phone or perhaps send an e-mail. i called him and he told me he was almost at the hotel, so i went back downstairs. he went through a checklist of things i needed for my work visa, and one of the items was a recent resume. that was news to me, but fortunately i had one saved in my computer so i went back upstairs to copy it onto a thumb drive.

back downstairs i had one of the receptionists make copies of my health exam certificate. i asked her if they could also print files from a thumb drive and she said no. we were all set to go when wu asked me if the resume was in chinese. "no, it's an american resume," i told him. so we went back upstairs so he could quickly translate the resume into chinese. not all of it, just enough to show i'm not completely devoid of work experience. wu had a better sense of what i did for a living, and said i'd be perfect for shanghai, since there's also exhibits going on that need that sort of interactive programming.

with newly translated resume done (it took at least half an hour on my miniature keyboard and trackpad, he was impressed and confused that i had OS X running on a PC), we finally left the hotel to look for a printing place. the first one we stopped at was a photo printing store. the woman wanted RMB$4 (70¢) for a printout. i was ready to pay, but when wu heard how much, he said it was unnecessarily expensive and left in a huff. i shrugged and followed him. we drove a little further up the street and found a legitimate copy shop. the guy only asked for RMB$0.50 and we made 2 copies of my resume.

originally we were going to take the metro into the city, but wu decided to drive in order to save time. what he failed to forget is highway driving in shanghai and saving time are not synonymous. it felt like we were congested traffic for nearly an hour. on top of that, it was a hot day, with the car thermometer reading 44°C, 45°C at its highest (that's 113°F).

we finally made it to the foreign work visa office around 11:30. we went upstairs to get the necessary paper work and started filling it out. wu asked if my taiwanese health exam certificate was okay and the clerk told us no, that i'd need to get examined at a special clinic for foreigners. that got me sort of annoyed. that meant i did all that work in taiwan for nothing, going to the hospital and spending half a day getting my tests, and later returning to pick it up. that's also when i began noticing all the employees disappearing. apparently all government workers take an hour and a half break for lunch starting at noontime. to further drive home the point that they were closed, they turned off most of the lights, leaving wu and i filling out forms in the near dark.

i eyeballed a muslim noodle soup restaurant across the street as we got back into the car. if i really did need an exam, i probably shouldn't eat in order to get a proper cholesterol test. i figured the clinic would be close by, but it was all the way on the other side of shanghai, which meant additional congestion traffic in the blistering heat. i didn't mind; despite my hunger, we were cutting across the city and i was admiring all the myriads of skyscrapers.

when we finally got to the clinic, it was full of foreigners looking to get their health exam certificate as well. i figured we'd be able to get seen today, but the young woman behind the counter told us 8/3. i blinked, my mind suddenly crashing. that's next friday. that means i have to stay in shanghai at least another week, probably longer since it takes time to get back the results. if i was annoyed about them not accepting my health certificate earlier, i was livid now. wu asked the young woman if she could take a look at my form and see if it was okay for a work visa. without even looking at us, she said she wasn't a doctor and couldn't say. i wanted to see if i could be on standby, just hang out in the waiting room for a free appointment so i could quickly consult with the resident doctor. but wu seemed resigned to the fact that i wouldn't be able to be seen until next friday, and told me in a cheerful fashion, "now you have time to play in shanghai!"

thing is i have no intentions of playing in shanghai, or elsewhere in china for that matter. wu also suggested i could go to chongqing. when i asked him wouldn't i need to be here for my exam, he said very matter of factly that i could just fly back. i figured that's a roundtrip ticket of US$600, i don't have that sort of luxury money. what i really want to do is start working, and not have to jump through this chinese bureaucratic nightmare. if you told anybody else they'd spend a week in shanghai, they'd jump at the opportunity. but shanghai for me is disgustingly hot and humid, plus it's expensive and such a large city it takes forever to get to anywhere (especially like me you live 30 minutes away).

then i thought instead of shanghai or chongqing, maybe i could visit shenyang in northeastern china (binbin's parents, her mother most recently having visited boston), where i have relatives who've been asking me to visit. so maybe i could spin this negative into a positive. it'd mean not having to live in a hotel and being with people who will take good care of me. what's not to love? the price is just a plane ticket, but i was already kind of thinking about visiting anyway, just at the end of my 2 month contract. now i'm just doing it backwards.

mr.wu fits everyone of your classic chinese stereotypes. he's loud (his cellphone voice volume is set to high as a default), he's rude, but he's a good person to have in your corner to take care of business. sure, we failed today at everything we tried to achieve, but it wasn't for lack of trying, as he banged on countertops, cut lines, and basically fought every step of the way. alas, no one can win against chinese bureaucracy.

at least now it meant we could go have a late lunch now, with the time being almost 3:00. so we proceeded to drive back across shanghai, back to pudong in the east. that's when the car started to act funny. it was kind of stuttering, then i heard wu mutter, "oh no, there's something wrong with the car," as the engine simply died. wu managed to restart the car, but it had no speed, coasting along like a turtle. so we're in the middle of the shanghai elevated highway, no breakdown lane, with cars honking behind us and going around us. i was afraid to look back, i'd die from the embarrassment. i suggested we turn off the air conditioning, which seemed to help, at the expense that we were both sweating like a pig in 100+ degrees humid shanghai heat. wu turned on his hazard lights and we sort of cruised to a lane divider for an exit ramp. we let the engine rest a bit, which seemed to help some more, and we managed to drive a few more miles before the car started acting funny again. it wasn't as bad as before, but we drove the hazards on, and wu asked if it was okay if we visited the car repair shop before eating. i said sure.

authorized manufacturer car repair shops in china (at least in shanghai) are like nothing back home in the US. repairs are done immediately while you wait in a swanky lounge area with soft leather sofas, massaging chairs, foosball table, HDTVs, and complimentary snacks and all-you-can-drink tea. it's more like a clubhouse than the mechanics. while the car (a ford, but a model i didn't recognize) was getting serviced, we walked around a bit, hoping to find a nearby restaurant, but the nearby area was pretty desolate. besides, the sky was rumbling and the temperature began to drop, signs that a storm was coming.

so we waited in the lounge, wu reading a newspaper, me perusing my china guidebook, figuring out what to do in shenyang. there was a leftover pasty that looked like a twinkie that i quickly devoured (it was just a deceptive tasteless bun). there were also a dish of candy which i finished. when wu left to hear the mechanic's explanation, i fell asleep for a few minutes, i was still very tired from my multi-day sleep deficit. after about half an hour we were done. turns out the only thing wrong with the car was the searing heat. the owner of the shop said he had at least 40 cars come in today with the same problem. he gave the car a tuneup nevertheless, free of charge, because wu is apparently a VIP return customer.

leaving the repair shop, i told wu that we didn't have to have dinner, that he already spent the whole day with me, and he probably wanted to get back to his family. i said i'd be fine getting simply dropped off at the hotel. wu agreed (i was hoping he didn't, and he'd treat me to a lavish meal), and got me back to my hotel sometime around 5:30.

after a quick shower, i went back outside in search of food, my first meal of the day now approaching 6:00. there is no chance in hell i will be gaining any weight if this is how my china stay is going to be like. before eating though, i wanted to see what time the bank opened tomorrow. i then went to a nearby china unicom store and bought a SIM card for my cellphone. i'd been using my cousin betty's spare SIM card while i was in taiwan, but the same card doesn't work in china (there isn't even any roaming privileges). it's really inconvenient to do anything without a cellphone, and they're not that expensive either. the service plan i got is a no-contract pay-as-you-talk plan. RMB$60 for RMB$50 worth of talk minutes, at RMB$0.2/minute for in country long distance, free for in-city shanghai calls. at the end of every month RMB$17 is deducted (it's actually deducted a little bit per day, adding up to RMB$17 over a month). i don't intend to stay in shanghai that long, and once my minutes are gone, i'll just simply abandon the card and get a new one in chongqing. chinese numbers are long, 11 digits, i don't know how anyone can memorize so long a number. chinese are also very picky about their numbers, and the clerk showed me a book full of available numbers arranged in a catalog. i didn't care, picked the first one on the list.

now finally i could eat. one thing about restaurants in lesser urban areas of china is there really isn't any menu, you pick the ingredients you want to eat, and tell the chef how you want it cooked. but what if you just want to pick to something on a menu? then this isn't for you. i did find one restaurant that seemed promising, once again eating what i can read in chinese, in this case spicy beef. i thought it was a noodle dish until the owner told me it was just an entree. he suggested another dish that had noodles and was spicy. i sat next to a pretty girl who was fishing around for napkins. i saw the big stack of packaged napkins and pulled one out for her. she must've though i was just grabbing one for myself, and was genuinely surprised and touched when she noticed i'd already put the napkins on her table. i didn't really mean anything by it, just trying to be nice, but i could see she wanted to talk to me, but neither of us had anything to say, so we just sat their awkwardly, eyeballing each other through the periphery. my noodle dish itself was nothing to write home about. it tasted okay, but the presentation was lacking, with shredded carrots and tofu (i'd never seen the two ingredients paired together before). it was only RMB$12 (US$2), cheap by US standard, but awful and expensive compared to anything else in taiwan. the more i eat in china, the more i miss eating in taiwan.

i left and walked down a side street wu suggested i visit to find pants. it was kind of like a night market, except mostly clothes, and a few fruit vendors. i bought a bubble milk tea (RMB$7) which tasted a little off. i found a place that had a 30-40% off sale on pants and bought a pair of tailored black pants for RMB$143. at US424 it's a little more than i'm willing to spend on cheap pants, but they look good and feel good. as tradition, they hemmed the pants as soon as i bought them, no additional tailoring needed. (i think i dropped my 4gb thumb drive in the changing room though; i hope some lucky chinese person will enjoy copies of my passport photos and resume, both english and chinese).

returning home, that's when i saw the supermarket. i'm used to supermarkets being brightly lit with glass walls so people can look inside. this was the complete opposite, dar, dingy, with dirty glass walls that looked like the place was closed or undergoing renovations. the selection was also lacking, which is a surprised since we're talking a shanghai (pudong) supermarket. i didn't even see any weird-flavored broad beans (something i remember eating in china 7 years ago, hopefully to find again even though i can find them in chinese supermarkets back at home). i bought a few snacks (sunflower seeds, chestnuts) as well as a small 100ml bottle of chinese vodka at 56% alcohol content for about 50¢. alcohol is really cheap here in china. if you're looking to get wasted, you don't even have to spend more than US$1.

back at the hotel, it was finally late enough that i could skype my parents. i told him how i was stuck in shanghai for at least another week, then suggested the idea that i could spend some time in shenyang. that quickly agreed it was a great idea, and told me to call my cousin immediately. i tried his personal cellphone but no one answered, then called his house where his wife picked up. i told her i wanted to come to shenyang and she called her sister-in-law who's a travel agent. just like that, i'm booked for a 9:55 morning flight to the great northeast, one of the places in china i'd never been before. whatever the case, i just hope it's cooler than shanghai!

with that, i will go drink my chinese vodka by myself and pass out in bed (not that i needed any help, i'm already sleepy).

as for photos, don't have time to post, hopefully tomorrow!

10:35am
I'm at gate 8 of the international departure wing of songshan airport, writing from my tablet PC. My flight is at 12:00 so I still have at least an hour before boarding. I ended up deciding to take a taxi here and it turned out to be a good decision because it saved me from arriving at the airport a sweaty exhausted mess. It was just nt$165, about us$5. to think, in a few hours I'll be in China. I haven't been back in 7 years, I'm not even sure what to expect. It's also weird because here in Taiwan, there's this sort of animosity towards mainland Chinese tourists, and here I am going to China no less. After so many weeks in China, maybe Taiwan will feel like just a dream.

Oh yeah, it goes without saying that there's free Wi-Fi at the airport. There's not even a portal page you have to jump through to get online, it's just there.

I went to bed last night again at 3:00, and woke up at 7:00. I alternate between turning on the AC and leaving it off, but at some point during the night it for so cold that I pulled down the comforter for the very first time. I woke up in embarrassing pools of sweat.I must've been so tired that I completely passed out and didn't even realize I was sweating to death.

9:30am
so this is it. my last 24 hours before i leave for china. i woke up at my usual time (7:00am), had my morning poo, then took a shower (spent a few minutes afterwards mopping up the wet bathroom floor). i left the office around 8:30am to go do some shopping (surprised nobody showed up yet, there's usually that one guy who comes in at 8:00am). i decided last night that i wanted to revisit my grandmother's grave, do some weeding (those jungle plants can easily get out of hand), burn some incense, and more importantly, take some 3D photos that were erased when i accidentally failed to import them onto my computer successfully. who knows when i'm coming back, and i know i'll kick myself for not getting some 3D shots especially since i got this fancy new 3D camera.

the question was where could i buy 1) incense and 2) gardening gloves? i went to matsusei, the underground supermarket next to where i live. that's one of my favorite places to go, i visit at least once a day to get some drinks. i could spend hours in there, just seeing all the different local foods, some familiar, some unique. it's also interesting to see some similar items we have back home in the US and prices here. chocolate is really expensive. a small package of dove chocolate is US$6 (a large bag, on sale, can go for $3 back at home). häagen-dazs ice cream is super expensive, US$10 a pint (or close to a pint, since häagen-dazs has reduced there package size to save money AKA trick the consumer into spending more for less). besides food, matsusei also carries toiletries, kitchen utensils, and various other household items. you can really get a sense of how taiwanese people live by visiting one of these supermarkets.

anyway, i found my incense (NT$10, about 30¢), which wasn't a surprise, because i remember when i was searching for candles, they carried those large ones used for ceremonies. they also carried chinese spirit money, which if you don't know, is this paper money people burn as an offering for their ancestors to spend in heaven. it's a uniquely chinese thing i believe, and most US chinese supermarkets will carry them as well. next were the gloves. would they carry gardening/work gloves? the closest thing i saw were a pair of dishwashing gloves (NT$100). i also saw a box of latex gloves (NT$32) but they'd rip easily. but then i found the gloves i was looking for, made from hemp fiber (but look like cotton) that costs just NT$15 (50¢).

i also bought some sanzapian and fishsnacks for snacking and a grass jelly drink. the cashier was the same woman i saw last night. apparently she has night and day shifts. i made a comment about how it must be hard pulling so many shifts, but she didn't seem to hear what i said. i think she has a touch of the asperger's, which now that i think about it, seems to be kind of common as one of the cashiers at my local star market has a similar weirdly computer-like personality.

next i went to the 7-11 a block away (can be seen from the 12th story office window). since it was right during the morning rush hour, the place was busy with people getting breakfast (tea eggs, anyone?), especially construction workers (not surprised they don't eat very healthy). i was there to find my mentholated gum drops (they only had one box, i'll have to visit another 7-11, which isn't very hard, since there's practically one every few blocks) and to pick up some pudding i forgot to get from mastusei. i also bought a sponge cake (my breakfast).

with that i returned to the office. all the employees were there. i got a few nods of recognition from one or two, but the rest ignored me. they're not especially the most welcoming group of people. i can't really blame them, i've been basically squatting in their office for almost 3 weeks now. there's this one person who gives me the indifferent stink eye every single time. every time i see her i feel bad and wish i'd just rented a place for a month instead, wouldn't have to deal with the awkwardness of running into these people. if i ever come back to taiwan, that's what i'm going to do. nobody really has room for me here. the fact that i'm living in an office sort of shows how extreme the situation is. the only good thing about living in this office is the location. it's close to the dongmen subway station and the view during the day and at night are pretty good from the 12th floor.

===

it's 1:19am and i'm finally done packing. not everything, i'm still waiting for some clothes to dry (otherwise i'll have to pack them wet, which i hope i won't have to do because then they smell). did i mention i only slept for 4 hours last night? went to bed at 3am, woke up at 7am. i think i'm going to take a taxi to the airport. it's not very far so it'll be a cheap ride, and will give me a chance to use up some loose change. as advertised, today i had lunch with my cousin eric, then went to my grandmother's grave, finally to maokong. i returned home around 9:30, hungry, exhausted, waiting for my cousin to come visit one last time.

sebastian chris

9:00am
i shaved this morning, in preparation for china, where i've been kindly told that the dress policy frowns upon anything other than a clean-shaven look. i didn't think much of it since i can easily grow back a goatee in a week, but it felt like i was losing my identity. i don't look good without a goatee (or at the very least i've grown used to having a beard of some kind), it makes my face look fat - which it is, according to the weight measurement on my health exam certificate, where i seemed to have tacked on 6 lbs. since leaving boston, and maybe even more since that was taken more than a week ago. but without a goatee i'm better able to blend into the crowd, and won't be mistaken for japanese anymore. but i don't really like blending in, i like standing out a bit, make people guess as to my true ethnicity.

there aren't a lot of taiwanese men with facial hair. maybe it's because it's so darn hot, it's cooler without a beard. when they do grow them, it's not often pretty. ethnically, chinese aren't particularly hairy, and facial hair tend to grow in wispy strands, the kind of intro mustachio some middle school boy might sport. all this goatee talk brings back memory of a recent encounter. i forgot where it happened, but i was admiring an old man with a long wispy goatee, walking up behind him, when all of a sudden he just lets one rip. he didn't he care that i was right behind him. i was so embarrassed for him and for himself that i pretended nothing happened and quickly walked ahead.

my contacts from china finally replied back. the person i'm meeting in shanghai doesn't seem to really know english so he basically stopped responding. his boss in chongqing actually wrote me back a more detailed message, said somebody would come pick me up at the airport and arrange a hotel that i would need to pay first (implying that i'd be reimbursed at some future date). he also told me not to worry about any additional paperwork issues. that made me feel a lot better, now i can truly relax and enjoy these last 48 hours here in taiwan.

today, i plan on going to yangmingshan, then heading in the opposite direction to muzha (taipei zoo stop) to ride the gondola up to maokong for a sunset view of city.

1:04am
i have a lowkey morning tomorrow followed by some high impact running around all over taipei beginning at noon. on schedule are having lunch with my cousin, revisiting my grandmother's grave, and finally trying to work some maokong action before coming back to the office to meet up with my cousin one last time. also tomorrow i have to work my way through a list of relatives to call to tell them good bye (who knows when i'll see them again).

my original plan was too ambitious, especially given the fact that i easily loose track of time when i'm out naturing. my guidebook told me to go to jiantan station (one stop before shilin) and take either the red 5 or the 260 bus to yangmingshan national park. it took me a little while to find the actual bus stop and i couldn't find red 5 so i took the 260. unfortunately i took it in the wrong direction (back to taipei), and a few stops into my trip i asked the driver to confirm what i already suspected and got off. i went across the street to wait for the 260 bus going in the proper direction.

hopefully i can elaborate more at some point, but i had a great time at yangmingshan (YMS). to think i was considering not visiting this time around! i discovered that in all the times i've been coming to YMS, i'd actually been going to just yangmingshan park, which is just a small fraction of the total YMS experience. i went to the visitor center from the YMS bus terminal (i should've gotten off one stop earlier, would've saved me the half mile of ascending stair trail to get to the visitor center). is this place new? because i don't remember it from my last visit. the park rangers were super helpful, and knew right away i was a foreigner because i was looking at the english map. they offered some helpful pointers, and made sure i had enough water and snacks. i didn't leave right away, spending some time in the visitor center, checking out all the educational displays, including a very helpful panel of indigenous butterflies (apparently it's butterfly appreciation month) and a photo contest of YMS wildlife (there were some amazing photos).

from the visitor center i began my ascent to the summit of qixing (seven star) mountain, the highest peak in the taipei area with an elevation of 1120 meters (3675 ft). the ranger told me it was a 2.8 km hike, one way. i was relieved to hear that; that's about 1.7 miles, much lower than my estimate of 5-7 miles. the trail was paved with stone too, more like a series of seemingly infinite stairs. i figured this would be an easy outing, i could be in and out in 2-3 hours, and that's a conservative estimate with plenty of time to take photos and including xiaoyoukeng, an area dotted with sulfurous steam vents from a dead volcano. hiking up the mountain seems to be a popular past time with taiwanese seniors; it's its own form of kungfu because i was panting for air and sweating like i fell into the sea while they seemed totally fine and cool. and those stone stairs that i thought would be a leisurely walk became progressively more difficult as i began to grow tired, dehydrated, and hungry. i brought 2 bottled drinks (one purchased from the souvenir shop at a slightly elevated price of NT$30) and tried to ration my fluids, but it grew pointless once my drinks became warm.

i didn't see any birds but saw the silhouette of something large gliding above the tree canopy. later on i found a long blue feather. i did occasional hear birds, just couldn't see them. what i thought were birds singing this ringing call turned out to be cicadas. it's indescribable, but once i realized it was bugs and not birds, it was kind of scary, because there must've been millions of them hidden in the trees, all singing and (the strangest thing) stopping in unison. the sound was something you'd find on the soundtrack of a 70's giallo horror movie.

it grew cooler the higher i climbed, which gave me a second wind to carry on. the cooler temperature was refreshing, but i was worried it might get too cold, but then i realize even at its coldest, it'd still be nothing compared to new england cold. i'd meet other hikers (mostly seniors) but unlike back in the states, they weren't very friendly, and only about a quarter said hello, while the rest pretended not to see me and kept on walking. it grew hot again once i went above tree line and the tropical sun was beating down on me. in my haste to leave the office unnoticed (i didn't want anyone to see me without my goatee), i forgot a bunch of stuff, like my tablet PC GPS, my umbrella, my hat, even my deodorant. the one thing i did remember was bug repellent, but there was surprisingly few mosquitoes so i didn't even bother spraying. at least it wasn't raining, which would've made the ascent too slippery and dangerous on wet stones, plus the added threat of mud slides.

no birds but plenty of that other flying creature - butterflies! the searing heat actually made butterfly photography a lot easier, as they stopped to beat their wings to cool off. not only did i get a bunch of butterfly photos, i also shot a lot of HD movieclips, enough to make a butterfly of yangmingshan video when i get back home (US).

i also occasionally saw some stray lizards, similar to the 2 variety i saw in kenting - skinks and these other ones that had horny projections on their heads.

bilingual educational plaques kept reminding visitors that the southern side (the side of my ascent) of the mountain has more jungle vegetation and biodiversity, while the northern side - buffeted by constant monsoons - is more grassland (short bamboo groves). sure enough, once i reached the summit, the change in scenery was striking. mount qixing is high enough that clouds were scraping the edge of the mountain. there are actually two peaks (one looks north out to sea, one looks south towards the city) and i decided i'd only have time to see the taller one (southern peak).

===

while waiting for the 108 bus to take me back to the main yangmingshan bus station, several tour buses filled with chinese tourists pulled up in the empty parking lot. in case there was any confusion as to where they're from, one of the buses had "china tour" stamped on the side. and once they got off the bus, you could cut the china with a knife it was so thick, from their regional accents, to their demeanor (nouveau riche, you have to be pretty well off to travel abroad), to the way they dress (there was a 10 year old boy wearing pajamas, i wanted to take a photo but thought it was too cruel, even i have standards!). here in taiwan, chinese tourists are probably universally disliked (unless you're in the china tourism business, then business is booming). the problem is you hardly ever find individual chinese travelers; you always find them in a large tour group, and when the arrive, it's often not just one bus, but several buses, and they quickly outnumber the place. it's also their attitude. there's a lot let pretense of manners and courtesy in china, which can come off as rude (having spent time in china, i actually don't mind, but it's jarring when you're not used to it). and prices are always negotiable in china, but they're not the case in taiwan. even things with clearly marked price tags are open to haggling from a chinese perspective, which drives taiwanese vendors crazy (i have a kenting information center story i hope to share one of these days when i can find time to update my kenting entries). this influx of china chinese tourists has done something particular to the taiwanese psyche: it's increased a sense of taiwanese identity and nationality, and people here now see themselves more as taiwanese than chinese, or maybe at least taiwanese chinese as opposed to china chinese. if there was any hope of reunification, chinese tourists have pretty much ruined any chance of it.

9:10am
these are my final days in taipei. i leave for shanghai from the nearby songshan airport on thursday 12:00pm. i'm still trying to negotiate the details of entry. they want to see my college diploma for some reason. i figured a copy would suffice, and had my parents go to my place and scan it for me, but the contact person i communicated with said they want to see the original and told me i could mail it to shanghai (didn't give me an address though, i figured writing "shanghai" on the envelope will do, they must know me there right? population one billion people?). also the details of my shanghai stay hasn't been worked out. will somebody meet me at the airport or will i need to go to the company headquarter myself? what about hotel accommodations? are they paying or will i be paying? i don't like the fact that i leave in a few days and a lot of this stuff hasn't been worked out yet, makes me a little anxious. but worst case scenario is this whole deal falls apart and i take an extended vacation in asia, not bad (i just won't get paid for it).

my time here in taiwan is precious now that i don't have much of it anymore, but this morning i can't seem to decide what i want to do. there are some errands i still need to run, like pick up the card for my checking account at the main xintian post office (that requires a bus ride out of the city) or buy some socks from dongmen market.

i also need to get something to eat. i came to the realization today that street food is not very healthy. maybe that's why i've been getting these dizzy spells, either too much salt or too much oil. hopefully i'll eat better in china, which sounds funny just saying it because everyone knows taiwan has the best food.

i also have a few things i want to do and places i want to visit. i want to try out this taipei bikeshare i've been seeing around the city. it operates much like the system back in boston, free for the first 30 minutes, then NT$10 (30¢) for each additional 30 minutes afterwards. i've never tried hub bike (because i have my own bicycle thank you very much), but since i'm bikeless here, it's the perfect opportunity to try it. i also need to pick up my health exam certificate. they gave me a pick up date for tomorrow, but i'd like to see if i can get it today (it's also along the youbike route, so i'm can do both). as for destinations, there's the option of danshui which everyone tells me to go but i've been there 8 years ago and didn't think much of it. there's also yangmingshan national park, which i visit every time i come to taiwan, and feel like i have to go there to get one last bit of naturing before i leave. there's also maokong, which can be reached via a new flying gondola transit system that opened up a few years ago by the taipei zoo. unfortunately they're closed for maintenance today (which makes my decision process a little easier i guess, i could do zoo in the afternoon then gondola ride up to maokong summit to get a view of taipei).

anyway, the more i'm here in my office bedroom writing, the less of taipei i'm seeing, so i better head out, make the most of this monday.

continued exploring nantou before returning to taichung city. after resting in a french bistro in the late afternoon, we had dinner with jaxing's father again along with an assortment of uncles, aunts, and cousins. we drove back to the high speed rail station, returned the car, and adjusted our tickets so we could grab the next train. our original tickets were reserved seats for 5:00, but now we could only get unreserved seats for 8:10. it seems like all the weekend vacationers were leaving taichung at the same time so there was just standing aisle only. the crowd started to thin out as we approached taipei, and although the original estimated standing time was one hour, i managed to get a seat for the last 20 minutes. at the taipei train station, i hitched a taxi ride with my cousin and his family. i said good bye to jaxing since i wouldn't be seeing her next week before i leave on thursday. i quickly raced upstairs into the office to use the bathroom, must've had some bad sashimi.

(i also discovered tonight that all the 3D photos i'd been taking were never imported, just the jpeg thumbnails. this is a quirk of OS X 10.6.x, which doesn't recognize .mpo files. fortunately i didn't take a lot, but that includes photos from my grandmother's grave and my recent trip to the kenting national park. lesson learned, i'll need to remember to import 3D files manually on this dell mini hackintosh).

left taipei on a 10am high speed rail train with my cousin eric's family to taichung in central taiwan. this was my last weekend in taiwan and i would've preferred just staying in taipei, but agreed to the trip without thinking and was now reluctant to cancel. the train ride was an hour long endurance challenge as i somehow found myself crammed next to their son by the window seat since we only bought 3 tickets for 4 people. once we arrived in taichung, we rented a car, a compact mitsubishi colt. i sat in the front seat. my cousin drove in the same way he rides his scooter, weaving in and out of traffic at speed, tailgating scooters, and narrowing dodging collisions by mere inches. i had to use all my power not to scream as i clutches the overhead handgrip and even had to close my eyes a few times, certain we'd crash. we went to nantou to have lunch with jaxing's (cousin's wife) slightly estranged father (her parents divorced when she was young). he brought us to a japanese restaurant but the food was mostly taiwanese, including a mushroom i'd never had before cooked in some chinese medicine broth. afterwards we stayed a bit at her father's house, where he tried to give them a stack of cash but they refused, said they were doing well. her father arranged to have dinner with us again tomorrow night in the city (taichung), sushi this time. it was around 2pm when we finally left.

we drove around, not really sure where we wanted to go, and just stopped by a spot that looked interesting, some sort of monkey bridge. turns out it was a suspension bridge built across a jungle ravine with a view of the city between the valleys. the bridge was securely constructed but i overheard people saying how scary it was. trust me, driving in taiwan is 100x scarier. the price of seeing the bridge (besides general admission) was having to go through a gauntlet of vendors, probably 40-60, selling everything from local fruits, to specialty drinks, to souvenirs. in hindsight, it wasn't worth the time or money. we left by 3:30pm.

next stop was sun moon lake, which was something like 40km away which seemed like a lot but it's only 25 miles. there was a slight hiccup as the GPS took us in the wrong direction (actually, my cousin selected the wrong location, sun moon elementary school instead of sun moon scenic destination). i didn't mind, the drive was scenic enough provided i could get over the occasional close calls.

sun moon lake gets its name because the shape of the lake is like a combined round sun and crescent moon. but when i saw it on a map, it just looked like a big blob. its natural appeal weren't lost to early settlers, as aborigines used to live in area that's also ringed by picturesque green jungle mountains. the lake is surrounded by a boardwalk and we saw many people riding bikes, which seemed to be the thing to do there. (as a side note, where do people in the city learn to ride bikes? i never learned as a kid growing up in taipei but of course we didn't have a bike either. i didn't finally learn until i was 10 years old and living in an american suburb). we stopped briefly at the side of the road so i could take a few snapshots of the lake. the sky was overcast all day but my cousin the cloud whisperer said they weren't rain clouds. but it looked ominously dark, and sure enough, it began to rain, heavy drops at first, then sudden torrential downpour. i felt a little bad for all those cyclists, especially for the racing bikers that seemed to be having some sort of event ascending the highway road up to the lake.

due to the rain, we decided to forgo any additional time at sun moon lake, but instead try to find a good restaurant to have dinner.

after another futile attempt to do laundry, i suddenly felt very dizzy. this is the equivalent of the "check engine" light in a car, and likewise, it's similarly vague and unhelpful as to the cause. it couldn't be because i was hungry, because i ate a lot last night in shilin. i remembered to take my HBP medication, so that wasn't it yet. as it was still morning, it wasn't particularly hot, and anyway, i've since grown used to the temperature. could it be dehydration? whatever it was, it left me a little distressed. the world was still swirling a bit as i started walking home, but cleared up afterwards.

i wondered how the gugong museum workers there felt about all these chinese tours. they've probably been told to keep their mouths shut or risk losing their jobs. hate them or love them, these tour groups must provide a wealth of money for the museum. i wonder if their recent renovations was fueled by this money? because i don't recognize the place at all. outside, it kind of brings back some memories, but inside they've completely gutted the place.

my vacation within a vacation finally draws to a close. i woke up around 9:00, which is a luxury these days of waking up around 7:00. i packed the night before (hence the 3am sleep time), and even set out the clothes i'd wear - my final set of clean shorts and t-shirt. after one last shower, i went out to mail my postcards. the rain wasn't as bad as yesterday (downpours) but it was still drizzling intermittently. i bought a few more stamps (japan NT$13, norway NT$18) and gave the postcards directly to the lady clerk i saw yesterday (i hesitated at first, i don't want her reading my postcards!).

i then walked down to the beach, which was right across the street. naturally there was nobody around, with the rain and high surfs remnants of the passing filipino typhoon. there was a girl twirling along the edge of the beach, either taking pleasure in the foul weather or talking to somebody on a cellphone. i noticed 2 men walking down the beach, men who look like they might be coast guard police, so i stayed my ground, didn't wander too far towards the water.

once we exchanged pleasantries and they walked by, i advanced towards the water with the idea of at least dipping my toes into the ocean and collecting some fine kenting beach sand as a souvenir. i picked up a piece of brain coral. that's when i heard a whistle. i dropped the coral, fearing it was somehow illegal to pick it up, and i saw the coast guard police gesturing at me. but they were only telling me to get back from the water. they were talking to the girl i saw earlier, either warning her as well or actually giving her a ticket. i took their advice and went back inland. i still collected some sand, but not the fine sand closer to the water, a little bit courser. and it was wet sand too, i'll need to dry it at some point.

no wonder my stomach was feeling a little weird: i didn't have any breakfast other than that little seaweed rice wrap i purchased from a convenience store in the morning. then for lunch, a box of mentholated gum drops, a slightly raw taiwanese sausage from an old vendor in an alleyway missing an eye, and washed down with a rose tea (rose yes, but also salty and just weird).

is it possible to take a vacation within a vacation? that's apparently what i was trying to find out for myself when i woke up at 5:00 this morning to get ready to go to kenting, the southernmost taiwanese town, known locally for its beaches and national parks. i took the 7:30 high speed rail to kaohsiung (NT$1350, tried to pay with my credit card via vending machine, wouldn't accept the card), arriving there sometime after 9:00 (that's approximately the distance between boston and new york). from there i got on a bus to kenting (NT$650 round trip ticket). apparently kenting express is supposed to be ironic because it actually took longer to get from kaohsiung to kenting than it did from taipei to kaohsiung. along the way we passed through some sad looking towns, made me wonder why anyone would choose to live there if they could leave instead.

when we set foot in kenting, i immediately hated the place. it was a tourist trap catering to local taiwanese vacationers. first order of business was to find a hotel room. the first place i visited - joe's place - price for an average room was a shocking NT$8000. i calmly left without screaming. walking up the main drag, a woman sitting on a scooter asked if i needed a place to stay. she led me down a side street to the DV motel. when i asked for the price on a room, they had go in back and ask, meaning there was an adjustment based on my projected social economic class. they asked for NT$1200 (US$40) which i accepted because 1) i was tired from traveling and wanted to drop off my things, and 2) i was expecting NT$2000-3000 so it was cheaper than my expectation.

the room wouldn't be ready until 1:30 so i left to go have lunch, having not eaten anything all day (which in itself is nearly unheard of in taiwan, where food is always available). i basically eat what i can read, and a saw a restaurant with "beef noodle" so i went there. i bought a bowl of NT$100, an edible and forgettable affair, with a strangely sweet broth which i didn't bother finishing.

with still some time to kill, i walked down to the nearby beach, which was pretty much empty. most people go to the white sand beach a few miles away, i saw on when our bus passed by, crowded with people, with so many umbrellas you can hardly see the beach. it was hot on the beach, as i played around with my tablet PC getting a GPS fix on my location. i walked around a bit more, surprised that it suddenly started showering a little bit. i finally returned to the motel where my room was ready.

the room was already depressing upon initial inspection, and how that i was living in it, it was even more so. the biggest problem is the lack of a window, unless you count the window that points into the hallway. the walls are a little thin and living on the second floor i can hear everything out on the first floor foyer as well as any noises from hallway traffic. the lighting in the room is also awful, a recessed ceiling with blue and pink fluorescent illumination (maybe this is the honeymoon suite? although i pity the couple who stays here). a queen size bed, but a stiff mattress that i'm suspecting is just a panel of padded plywood. as far as other amenities, it looked good on paper: cable television (surprised to get chinese subtitled HBO and cinemax, although the TV looked used, like it was dragged by its screen at some point),l air-conditioning, refrigerator (old as well, with a little bit of rust inside), bathroom, and some complimentary toiletries (soap, shampoo). 3 outlets, none grounded, all on the other side of the room across the bed. i was happy to see the tub, figuring i'd be able to take an american style shower for a change, but that was before i stepped inside and saw that there was no shower curtain, and the tub was very shallow, less than a third of the depth of an american tub, with no stopper. the tub itself is also tiled using cement and small pebbles, so it actually hurts to step inside. it strange being used to a certain level of comfort living in taiwan - even my office cave seems like a palace compared to this - to be now living in a 3rd world hotel room.

after a shower, i laid in bed watching television, and promptly fell asleep. so much for making the most of my time in kenting. to be honest, the moment i arrived, i was already thinking about leaving.

i woke up at 6:00 to visit the night market i heard about that happens here in the evenings. sidewalks don't exist on the main drag, and now with the addition of food vendors, pedestrians were squeezed out into the streets with the cars and scooters. i'm really surprised there aren't nightly casualties. although the night market doesn't make up for what a horrible time i've had at kenting so far, it did offer some good photo opps as well as food choices. i had some fried chicken nuggets (NT$65), a taiwanese sausage (NT$30), skewered smelly tofu ($NT50), preserved prune juice (NT$35), and barbecued corn (NT$50).

after 2 hours of wandering, i returned to the motel, where i took another shower and got ready for bed watching ms.congeniality on HBO. i think i came to kenting ill-prepared, and only now having arrived did i read up on the kenting chapter in my tour guide. apparently the nature preserve is close by, but requires transportation to get to. i'll rent a scooter tomorrow which will allow me to explore the area a bit more. i should make the best use of my time since apparently another typhoon is about to hit taiwan within the next few days (according to my cousin eric at least).

8:10am
feels forever since i've blogged. i simply don't have the time. i don't usually get back to my office hideaway until 9-10pm, and after a shower and getting ready for bed, it's almost 11pm, and since i have to wake up around 7am (to beat the influx of office employees arriving to work), i have no choice but to sleep early, trying for a midnight bedtime. i could work on my blog during the daytime, but then it takes away from precious hours i could be spending exploring taiwan. rest assured, i'm taking plenty of photos, documenting everything i see, but just haven't had the chance to write everything down yet. many days feel like two days in one, which when you're traveling is a good thing, it means you're cramming as much into a day as possible. but it's pretty exhausting. i find myself moving slowly, partly because it's hot, but partly because i'm too tired. i can't believe i haven't been here in taipei a week yet; although if you count the day i left boston (monday morning), and factor in the weird timeshift traveling east to west, i guess right now marks the first full week of travel.

12:26pm
i'm back from getting my physical exam at the ren ai taipei city hospital. they drew 4 vials of blood, shot an x-ray of my chest, and i left a test tube of urine. the price for this once-in-a-lifetime experience? NT$2135, or US$71. not too bad, especially compared to how much medical services cost back in the US. when the doctor (whom i'll get to later) told me it might be expensive to run all these tests, i was bracing myself for the worst. "about NT$1000-2000," he told me. i almost laughed. but i put on a stoic face and said i was willing to eat the cost, since i was in a hurry to get this done.

so this all started because i received an e-mail last thursday saying one of required documentations when i arrive in shanghai is a health exam certificate. i wish they could've told me that earlier, back in the US, when i could've easily had this done. but here in taiwan, without local taiwanese health insurance (i can't get it until january 2014), i'd have to pay out of pocket. and the audacity! if anything, they should be the ones giving me a health certificate, so i can be sure i won't catch any weird diseases while i'm in china! it's all bureaucracy, but if want a certificate, i have no choice but to get one if i want a smooth transition.

the news also came right when typhoon soulik was approaching the island, so offices were closing early (friday). i asked my big aunt for help, and my parents remember a few clinics around xindian (where my big aunt lives) that might do a basic physical exam and draw some blood to get a few tests done. my parents estimated it'd cost NT$2000-3000 (US$67-100) and would take around 3 days to get the results back. my big aunt didn't think there were any such places in xindian, and wanted to take me to the hospital instead. the only problem was it might cost more at the hospital, and i wanted to keep the price down. hospitals might also only do exams by appointment, and i was in time crunch, planning on leaving mid-next week for china.

i don't know why i didn't think of it earlier, but i should've checked online first. maybe i got complacent in relying on the assistance of my extended family, and stopped thinking up a solution for myself. but i did some online research and discovered that ren ai taipei city hospital offers walk-in health certificate service for foreign travelers. the original posting was from back in 2007, but comments on the traveler's blog showed that as of february 2013, they were still offering this service. and the price? around NT$1000, not bad for a hospital.

so instead of going to xindian this morning to rendezvous with my big aunt to find a place to get a physical, i left for ren ai hospital on my own. another bonus: it was within walking distance from my office home, about 20 minutes away. this would give me another opportunity to explore the city. by 8am i was already dressed and ready to go, waiting to leave at 8:30am. my cousin betty showed up for work, which was a surprise, because i rarely see her here, and never this early. she told me normally she's here pretty early, especially if she has to drop off her daughter at school (but not so much now with school summer vacation in effect).

i was going to call my big aunt at 9am to let her know i wouldn't be coming to xindian today, but she beat me to it, called me at around 7:30am to remind me not to eat anything before the exam. i told her of my plan to visit ren ai hospital.

the walk was pretty straight-forward, east along xinyi road, then north along fuxing road until i hit ren ai road. along the 4th section of xinyi road i saw a lot of sports stores, selling all forms of hiking gear. some were brands i've never heard of before, but there were also many name brands (columbia, merell). i remember reading something about it online. it was still early and most hadn't opened yet, but i made a note to visit when i come back. i needed to buy another ultra-absorbent hiking towel.

the lady at the info table pointed me in the direction of the health certificate office on the first floor almost right next to the hospital entrance. there's a bit of bureaucracy involved, but overall things ran smoothly. i went into an office where i was given 2 identical forms to fill out. both required a photo, which i read about earlier so i brought some. at the filling station, i told one of the assistant ladies that i can't read chinese, and she said that wasn't a problem, she would help me out. i got as far as name and birthdate (using the taiwanese republic of china calendar system, which requires subtracting 11 to get the ming guo year) but i couldn't read anymore. one box required a phone number. i have a cell phone but i don't know my own number, so i did the next best thing by writing down my big aunt and cousin eric's phone numbers. another box was the address. taiwanese street addresses have things like lane and alley numbers. the lady filled this part out for me, using my big aunt's address (which is the address on my residency card). and finally i glued on the photos. it's been a while since i've done all collage work and i used way too much glue that squeezed out from the edges when i pressed down the photos.

i was then told to take my 2 forms to the check-in counter outside in the main room off the hospital. this is also where you pay for the services, but the girl clerk told me i pay after seeing the doctor first. she stamped a bunch of different badges onto my forms and gave them back to me.

i returned to the health certification room, where this time i was given a number (19) and told to sit in the waiting area. on the board the next number was 10. when i saw the number at the EKG room was 19, i went over to wait there. minutes later an attendant told me i was in the wrong place so i returned to my previous seat. there was a television screen broadcasting some local taiwanese news. in terms of awfulness and sensationalism, nothing can compare to taiwanese news. they were doing a story on school bullying, showing a group of school children beating up another kid on the slide, and stories about the typhoon aftermath, repeatedly showing disaster reels on a neverending loop.

the primary function of this room was to fill out the necessary paperwork, consult with a doctor, and then get your weight/height/blood pressure/eyesight checked before paying and then getting the fun stuff done like blood and urine samples. it wasn't all foreigners, and the only foreigners i saw were an inter-racial couple of indiscriminate nationalities (british?) and an older caucasian man reading a book. i wanted to chat with them, but kept my distance. for some reason i'm just drawn to caucasians, or anyone who's non-chinese (like all those filipino and indonesian women at the taipei train station yesterday). i identify with those foreigners more than i do the natives. there might also be foreign asians in the waiting room but i can't tell them apart from the locals. but most of the people there were taiwanese, and skewed mostly senior citizens in various states of health, from seemingly normal, to wheelchair-bounded pushed by a filipina caretaker.

when my number was called, i went into a private room to met with the doctor, a young man wearing a surgical face mask which made it hard to talk to him. he seemed annoyed that i didn't know what tests i wanted done. he also warned me that requirements for health certificates can be fairly strict, and i might run the risk of arriving with my certificate and having it denied because i forgot to get a particular test. i asked him what were the common tests people usually get done when they go to china, and he said he couldn't answer that because every situation is different. i wanted to just tell him to run everything, but i didn't know how much it'd cost, and how long it'd take (i was in a time crunch after all). he told me to get in touch with my china contact person, but i told him that was very difficult. exasperated, he said he'd just run a suite of tests including an HIV test, but warned me i might have to come back because the certificate could get denied, and he wouldn't be responsible. he told me it'd take 7-8 business days before i could get the results. i told him i was in a hurry and if there was any way i get it earlier, or maybe just check on it a few days in advance. he looked at me like we were about to tussle and said there was no way to get it any faster, and if i didn't want to wait, i could go try a different hospital, and he could rip up my forms. how rude! but i was afraid that going to someplace else would take just as long, so i told him i'd get my exam done here. he printed out a stack of paperwork for the various tests and told me to go outside and get my preliminary tests done.

the pickup date the doctor wrote down was 7/23 (tuesday), which is actually earlier than 7-8 business days, but only because he was counting today and saturday as well. originally i was thinking about leaving for shanghai next wednesday or thursday, so everything is still according to schedule. it makes purchasing a ticket still a little risky though, because in the off chance i don't get my results on he date specified, i'll be a little screwed if i already leave for china beforehand.

the nurse took my weight and height. i asked for the weight, but was given two different numbers, and promptly forgot both because they were both in unintelligible metric. my blood pressure was a little high, 146/84, and my eyesight is a little blurry in one eye. so far nothing that would disqualify me from service. i was told to take my forms and go back to the registry counter and pay the bill before getting my lab work done.

back at counter 11, the girl clerk (wearing a surgical mask as well, but with pretty eyes) asked for my national health insurance card. i told her i didn't have one. the final price came out to NT$2135 (US$71). that's amazingly cheap for out-of-pocket expenses. at that rate, i could afford to go see a regular taiwanese doctor without health insurance and not go bankrupt trying to pay the bill like i would in the US. why is the health care so crazy expensive in america? it's not like it's VIP treatment, where's the markup coming from?

i went upstairs to get my lab work done. the hospital administration is runned like the DMV, and i was given a number and asked to wait. there was a semi-circle blood drawing station, where half a dozen nurses drew blood from patients almost like a blood work factory. my number was 235, the current number was 203, but the wait was fairly quick. i saw those same foreigners from downstairs earlier. because of all the tests i was doing, i had to get 4 vials taken instead of just 1. the nurse also gave me a cup and a small plastic tube and told me to leave a urine sample afterwards. i figured they'd have a special room but it was just the bathroom. the 2 stalled were occupied, so i had no choice but to use the urinal, fumbling with the cup and test tube like an amateur chemist.

the last thing i needed to do was to get an x-ray taken. once again, it was runned like a factory. patients changed out of their clothes into a hospital gown (more like a dress, it didn't open in the front or back, no embarrassing exposure, i only had to remove my t-shirt). there were shopping baskets in the changing room to carry your street clothes but i just threw my shirt into my bag. there was 3 x-ray rooms (with imposing radiation symbol lead doors) but only one was in use. people were called by name, unless you were a true foreigner, and then you were just assigned a number. health certificate x-rays went the fastest, just a chest x-ray, and they were done so fast the exam room door was already sliding seconds after the x-ray was taken.

returning home, i visited a few hiking stores looking for super absorbent traveling towels. the first place i went to didn't have any and told me to try the store next door, which may or may not be columbia, but i tried them anyway, and they didn't carry anything like that either. finally in the 3rd store i found what i was looking for. it cost NT$350 (US$11.67), which about the price of what it'd cost in the US, maybe even a little more. the girl there gave me a 10% discount though, with a final cost of NT$315 (US$10.50). she asked me where i was going, whether it was for pleasure or work or both, and i explained i'm only visiting taiwan for a few weeks then going to china. she pointed to some place down the road but i didn't understand her until i left the store and saw what appeared to be an american embassy, but called the american institute in taiwan.

at the daan MRT station, i had some yiou-yu-gen for lunch (NT$60). it was a little pricey for that kind of taiwanese food but still US$2. after paying, i left and returned to the office. my cousin betty wasn't there anymore, i retreated to the privacy of the office bedroom. the sky had turned grey and soon after coming back it started raining steadily. i waited for the rain to stop before going back outside again.

4:25pm
i'm back in the air-conditioned comforts of the office hideaway. i went out around 2:30pm after it looked like it stopped raining. with 2 bundles of dirty clothes in my bag, i went off looking for a laundromat. passing by the matsusei supermarket, i remember seeing an offer for NT$100 haircuts, and decided to visit for a quick trim. haircuts are so devalued here that you can essentially get one for around US$3 (and there's no tipping either). you don't need a lot of space to open up a simple haircut place either, so the overhead is low. a woman was already getting her haircut inside (the place is unisex). outside were a couple of stools but a chinese lady sitting on one had her bags on the other. she was talking with a young woman with long eyelashes. they directed me to the vending machine to buy a haircut ticket. i slipped in an NT$100 bill (about US$3) and out came a credit card with a number. it seems a lot of work that could've been simplified by having people wait in line, but i guess the idea is you can buy your haircut ticket, and go do some shopping, and have your name be called when it's your turn.

i browsed the store a bit, but returned to the haircut stall. i found another stool and sat down. the lady smiled at me and said in chinese, "your chinese is very good." i told her, "it ought to be, i was born in taiwan." that set the confusion wheels spinning in her head. she had already sized me up and thought for sure i was japanese. i gave her a quick synopsis of how i immigrated to the US when i was 6 years old. "people must get you confused with japanese all the time," she said. i agreed with her. with that my number was called.

i think my hair is already short enough, but it'd be nice to get a trim before i leave for china. there wasn't much for the lady barber to do, other than shorten the sides and back with a pair of electric clippers and then blend in the hair on top of my head. i told her the top was fine, and she just gave it a light trim. afterwards she used some sort of hanging vacuum to suck up the hair clippings on my neck. it went back pretty quickly, i wished it was longer because there's something soothing about getting a haircut.

after that i continued on way to the "automatic wash" place i saw friday morning. i wasn't exactly sure where it was and i found it by feel and recalling landmarks. i was wearing my khaki pants today (wosley brand i purchased in shanghai 7 years go) and was afraid of what happened to me one rainy night in hanoi where i got splattered in dirty water. miraculously, i surprised unscathed, despite the light drizzle. i found the shop but right away it didn't look promising, too small to be a real laundromat. it was a dry cleaning store, and the "automatic wash" meant they'd wash your clothes for you. the minimum load size of 3kg, so even if you have less, you still need to pay NT$150, which is US$5, too expensive to wash a few underwears and t-shirts (that i could do on my own in the sink and hang them up to dry on the upstairs balcony). even the lady agreed with me that it wasn't a good deal with a small load. i had nothing to lose, so i asked her if she knew of any real laudromats in the area. she said no.

slightly dejected but already doing the calculus in my head (i still have plenty of underwear, clean t-shirt just one, and a bunch of sleeveless undershirts that could serve as hot weather t-shirts in a pinch), i moved on to my next objective, which was to buy a pair of flip flops. i should've gotten a pair days ago, would make taking a shower much easier. also i could go out in wet weather and not have to worry about soaking my shoes.

this being taiwan, it wasn't hard to be distracted by food, and when i saw the mango shaved ice place, i knew i had to stop and treat myself to some mango shaved ice. in the middle of the afternoon, the place wasn't crowded. i picked no.1, fresh mango ice with milk. at NT$140 it was kind of pricey, nearly the price of the "automatic wash" that i was too cheap to pay for (but apparently i have no qualms about spending that money on food). it was pretty good: shaved ice covered in fresh mango, drizzled with some sort of milky syrup, topped with a ball of mango ice cream. it was as mango as you can get, the only other way to eat more mango would be to just inject it directly into your vein. i saw by the window, looking out at some scooters getting soaked in the light drizzle.

continuing onwards, i found a "living supply" store on the other side of the street near the dongmen MRT station. this was a great place, 3 floors of useful everyday items, from bike lights, to kitchenware, to toiletries, to washing supplies, and finally flip flops of all shapes, sizes, and colors. they even had the traditional taiwanese flip flops that i'm tempted to get as souvenirs before i go home. i found a pair that me perfectly but they didn't have a price. turns out they're just NT$35, little more than US$1. score one for bargain shopping!

i then tried to find dongmen market, to return to that smelly tofu place. finding the market itself was a challenge. i walked right by one of the entrances the first time, distracted by a shattered tree (aftermath of the typhoon). i also failed to see it initially because so late in the afternoon, all the stalls were closed and it looked nothing more than a dark alleyway. then we i snaked through the maze of the shuttered market, it took a while to find the smelly tofu place. i was happy when i finally found it, but sad when the owner told me they were closed (they're only opened until 2:30). an old lady across the street was laughing at my predicament. i smiled back to show her it wasn't a big deal but i really wanted my smelly tofu fix! so far i've only eaten it twice, which is just not enough, because i have to eat so much that i'll last me until the next time i can come back to taiwan.

with that my adventuring was over, at least the afternoon portion of this program. i returned home, wary of getting splashed on my pants, but the sun was starting to peek out a bit from the rain clouds. outside of matsusei there was a little shop selling soft sponge cakes stuffed with an assortment of edible goodies. i bought 2 red bean filled sponge cakes and ate them outside the office building, too early to go back.

2 caucasian girls riding bikes were waiting for the light to change. i asked them if they spoke english, they spoke brilliant americanese (although they could be canadians). i asked them if they knew of any laundromats in the area. they said they'd never seen one before in taipei. they were wearing name tags but i didn't want to be rude to stop and stare. one of the girls was super pretty until they told me they were missionaries (mormons?) and i saw the "sister" designation on their name tags. they're probably going to convert a lot of young taiwanese men while they're here. the other girl had been in taipei for almost 7 months, with another year and a half to go. the pretty one had only been here for a month. i think they were caught off guard that i spoke fluent english, until i explained i was born in taiwan but immigrated to boston when i was young (i pretty much have to tell this same story a few times everyday when i meet anyone here).

before heading upstairs i even asked the doorman if he knew of any laundromats. he knew what they were but never seen them before in taipei. back in the office, there were only a few employees. it's so quiet, i tiptoed back into my hidden bedroom. my beard was getting a little unruly so i decided to shave the sides to better match my new haircut. i then retreated to my room to work on my blog. current time is 5:40pm. later i might head out to ximending to do some browsing, at the very least get some smelly tofu! my cousin eric may or may not contact me to go to shilin night market.

they're like that couple, loud, fighting constantly, with a kid who's fast becoming history's greatest monster.

6am calm, 7:30 starts up agaun, heaviest 4:30am

typhoon soulik was worst last night at 4:30. the winds were howling and depending on the velocity, it could sound like shrieking ghosts, rumbling trains, or screaming cats. the window panes were thumping from the winds. the rains came in bands that i could see spraying the streets. winds had to be more than 100 mph because it toppled all scooters and motorcycles. when the sun finally came out and i could see the landscape, that's when i saw all the tree damage. given the amount of wind last night, it's not as worst as i thought, which is probably due to the fact that taiwan experiences strong typhoons annually and delicate trees have long since been replaced through the process of eliminiation.

(sichuan hot pot with my cousin eric and his family, went to yonghe to see his house, visited my small uncle, went to my big aunt's house, went to have dinner with my small uncle, grabbed the 634 bus to the office building)

left the house early to go wander the neighborhood a few hours. most places were still closed, but i found the location of a laundromat, a pizza joint, and a place to get a haircut for just NT$100 (about US$3). i also discovered dong men market. i then returned to the office and spent the rest of the day waiting the arrival of typhoon soulik.

i'm operating under a sleep deficit. even if i slept now, close to midnight, i can only get 7 hours of sleep before i have to wake up and get all my bathroom business done before the first employee arrives at 8:00. i spoke with the guy this morning, made some comment about how he was at work so early. he told me he had to drop off his kid at the kindergarten nearby. "you have a kid? i thought you were a college student!" i told him. "no, i'm really old, i'm 34," he says to somebody who's 5 years older (he probably didn't think i was older than him, otherwise he wouldn't have said that). anyway, i'm tired, but nowhere as tired as last night, but if i were to lie down with my eyes closed, i'd be asleep in a minute. don't. close. my. eyes.

thing is i don't know how to fix this deficit. since i have to wake up by 7:00, the only thing i can do is go to sleep earlier. but to really get a solid good 10 hours of sleep and fully recharge my body battery, i'd have to go to bed at 9:00pm. that's just not going to happen with my nightly blog work. besides, not sure if it's the heat or just have a full day from morning until night, but even though i've only been in taipei for 2 full days, it feels much longer than that. if there's nobody working on the weekend, i can sleep later, but then i'd feel guilty wasting my time with what little i have here in taiwan. it's ironic, but i don't think i'll be getting a good night sleep until i start working in china. with nothing to do but work and no place to go, there's nothing to do at nights besides sleep.

sorry, i doze off there for a second. i told myself i was just resting my eyes and fell asleep for a few seconds. i know all the tricks. don't. close. my. eyes.

continuing my streak of getting the important obligations out of the way first, i decided to visit my paternal grandmother's grave in jingmei (she passed away in 1979) and then visit my dagougou (my father's cousin on his mother's side) who lives nearby there. but first i worked on the weblog until 10am, since i figured i could spare a few hours. i sat outside in a corner of the long conference table adjoining the kitchen area. every time somebody came in, there was an awkward exchange of morning pleasantries.

i took the taiwanese metro train for the first time since i've been here, from dongmen station. i took that to only one stop - guting - and switched train for one xindian bound, getting off at wanlong. i navigated the rest of the way with the GPS function of my tablet PC. i had nothing to go on but a GPS coordinate of the grave site. the road can only go so far up the mountain and the rest of the way is a steep hike uphill.

from wanlong station i headed northeast, in the direction of a road that on google map seemed like it would direction connect to some sort of path that would take me up the mountain. there was no path though, and the closest thing was an overgrown trail that looked dangerously impossible to traverse. further down, the main road ends at a park/wannabe nature preserve. since we were at the base of the mountain, on the left were overgrown jungle plants, with that earthy jungle aroma and the sound of a cicadas buzzing. butterflies of various colors were flittering about. i tried to photograph some, but butterfly photography requires patience, something i had short supply of since i was on a mission.

(to be continued)

buzzing of cicadas, hot and humid jungle plant smell, orange clay dirt

frustrated, defeated

it's well past 1:00am and the interweb is down. i tried to fix the router by unplugging it, but that made it worse because it reset the damn thing and sends every webpage i attempt to visit to a portal asking for the username and password. i have no choice but to wait until tomorrow morning and hope one of the employees know how to unlock the router. i don't think it's my fault but not even 24 hours living here and i've managed to take down the internet (at least i'll be blamed).

so i'm kind of writing this half asleep already, because i'm tired. i don't believe in jetlag, but i was pretty sleepy all day. i could've blamed it on a bunch of other factors: walking around in this tropical heat, not getting enough sleep last night (went to bed around 1:00am, woke up before 7:00am), eating too much (3 whole meals by the afternoon). but jetlag is probably a major contributing factor. my body is still sync'ed to boston time, and nothing more evident than the fact that i now take a dump at night instead of my daily morning ritual.

i've got the AC on tonight. i slept with the windows open last night which was fine. there was a cool breeze, and the little bit of traffic noise was kind of soothing, reminded me in a nice way that i was living in the heart of the city. the only thing i was worried about was rats scurrying up the pipes and into the room. i'm not even sure that can happen but i was worried nonetheless. i woke up in the middle of the night in a few seconds of panic attack, completely obviously to where i was. i felt like i was back in boston, but the noises were different and i couldn't understand why. but however fine sleeping with the windows open was, i did sweat a little bit overnight and wanted to take a morning shower.

but here's the thing: any attempts at taking a shower would drench the bathroom floor in water. and no way would it dry up before the employees started showing up. so i was reluctant to shower pending further clarifications about morning shower etiquettes. but i just had to take a shower otherwise i wouldn't be able to function, so i kind of crawled underneath the sink and pointed the shower head in the corner to minimize the splashing. it was the best i could do, but there was a puddle underneath the sink. so much for low impact swatting.

continued after the next morning, when the interweb magically restored itself

i was scheduled to leave at 8:00 with an expectation to arrive at 9:00 in xindian, but i couldn't wait so i left early. stepping out in taipei for the first time in 8 years, i felt both excited and scared. it was warm outside, and ladies were already carrying umbrellas to shield themselves from the heat. it wasn't too bad, plus i was already expecting the heat anyway, so the reality met my expectation. i crossed the street onto the island and caught a 642 bus. since it was going outbound, it was pretty much empty. the public transportation card my aunt gave me didn't seem to work and i ended up paying in coins (NT$30, equivalent to US$1). i turned on the gps map feature on my tablet PC but it couldn't find any satellites yet from a cold start, but the route was straightforward enough that i could follow along on the offline map without gps. i didn't recognize anything i saw outside, until we arrived at gongguan, the station around taiwan university, sort of the unofficial midway point between xindian suburb and taipei city. things had changed here too, but there were enough landmarks that i could still recognize the place. the next area i recognized was the bridge following jimgmei, the town i used to call home before immigrating to the US more than 3 decades ago.

i got off at quizhang station. although the station had changed, i recognized the place from the nearby mcdonald's restaurant (a multi-floored structure, once perhaps a prestigious establishment, but now probably viewed the same way fast food is seen back at home). there was still a bit of a walk to my big aunt's place (i call her my big aunt because she's the oldest of my mother's sisters), but i was there early and i didn't mind the walk, a chance to soak in the scenery i hadn't seen for almost a decade. i went into the station briefly to check the balance on the transportation card (NT$325, plenty of money). i also picked up an english version of the taipei metro map (i got one from the airport last night, but it was in japanese).

when i arrived at the intersection of my big aunt's house, i went in the opposite direction to explore further. that's when i saw a sign for "beef noodle soup." it seemed a little early (8:30), but they were surprisingly opened, and since i had time, i decided to start my taiwanese eating tour early, kicking it off with some traditional beef noodle. the proprietors of the establishment warmly welcomed me into their restaurant. besides a small bowl of "beef noodle soup" (牛肉湯麵, NT$50), i also got some sliced cuts of pork sprinkled with garlic chives and ginger slices, and a can of carambola juice (NT$120 total). the side dish was better than the main dish. i also slightly ordered the wrong thing: "beef noodle" is what i really wanted (牛肉麵), but i ordered "beef noodle soup" (牛肉湯麵) instead. both comes in a natural beef broth, but "beef noodle soup" doesn't contain any meat while "beef noodle" has chunks of it. that would explain the price difference (which i later discovered), although i still wasn't quite sure what the taiwanese-to-dollar exchange rate was (i was guessing 30:1). the noodle portion was pretty good, and i wondered if it was handmade. the broth was dark and so-so, made better by a dollop of hot sauce. i drank the bowl of broth afterwards, since leaving any would be a sign of displeasure on my part, even though i didn't really want to drink it (especially on a hot day).

i still had some time and wanted to find a convenience store to stock up on my favorite taiwanese snacks. there was a 7-11 just a block away, and i bought a can of hey-song sarsaparilla soda (NT$20), 2 bags of beihai fish snacks (NT$50 each bag, but a sale reduced them to NT$40 each), and a box of milk caramel candy (NT$12). i didn't see any apple "sidre" soda but i would've bought a can if i did.

with items purchased, i left for my big aunt's place. now i'd been there enough times that i had sort of an idea where it was, but this was a good opportunity to bust out the GPS-enabled tablet PC to play around with. while standing on the sidewalk looking to acquire enough satellites, by coincidence my big aunt was also out on the streets. she came out to buy some breakfast for her husband. i followed along, and went back to their place.

my big uncle at age 80 has sort of mellowed out, but still prickly as ever. his hair had turned completely white since i last saw him, including a little goatee action (i figured it wasn't on purpose, just too old to care about shaving). he'd gotten fatter, and sat directly in front of the large HDTV because of his bad eye-sight, in nothing more than a white tank top and a pair of red bikini briefs. he was holding out a needle for my aunt, asking her to administer his insulin shot.

we stayed briefly before my cousin betty called us from downstairs from her car. she gave us a ride to the rice noodle shop so we could all have some breakfast. maybe it was because i already had breakfast, but the rice noodles didn't taste as delicious as i'd remembered it in my mind. perhaps it really wasn't that good anymore, because my cousin said the broth wasn't thick enough and stopped eating halfway, told us she'd wait in the car. didn't want any of that food to go to waste, i finished her share as well, plus all the side dishes. meal 2 of the day in less than 30 minutes! this food odyssey is on!

before driving off to work, my cousin gave us a ride to the place where my aunt (now retired) was helping me to get a taiwanese residency card. i didn't know what to expect but the place was a lot like the DMV in many ways. here in america, a driver license is sort of the standard form of identification. in taiwan, the residency card is the standard id. everyone has one, and when you move to a different town, you have to register yourself in your new home, and have them update the old one. you do this so the government can track you, whether it's for tax reasons or to collect government benefits. a residency card is required as a form of id for most transactions here and without one i can't do a lot of my paperwork.

just like the DMV, you pick up a number when you arrive and wait to be called. we were lucky and got seated right away, but our luck quickly ran out because it then took more than an hour before i could get my residency card. the problem was i was born before the advent of computers, so my birth certificate records hadn't even been recorded into their database yet. they had to track down a hard copy and then manually enter the data, but first they had to verify the information was correct. our agent was also a young guy who wasn't sure about the details and kept asking various supervisors, all sporting purple vests with "xindian" blazen on them. they were all young, and most of them wore jeans.

once the paperwork was finished, we waited a little bit more for them to print out my laminated id card. the actual paper documentation of my updated residency change (i was using my aunt's address) wouldn't be ready until later in the afternoon, because they needed to verify my last official permanent place of residence (jingmei, the place i passed by earlier on the bus).

next stop was the post office. it was already noontime by that point. there was a smaller one nearby, but we took the bus just a few stops to one of the bigger ones for speedier service (actually across the street from the qizhang train station). we stopped briefly at a below ground supermarket to get some drinks (my aunt told me it was cheaper here than at 7-11).

at the post office i was opening up a checking account. i needed one to get national taiwanese health insurance (yeah, even taiwan has universal health care), where they'd draw from the account to pay the monthly premium (at this time, something like NT$600, which is just US$20, a good bargain). i didn't really need it because i have health insurance back at home, but my father thought it'd be a good idea if i was seriously ill or injured in china and needed to go to taiwan to get better medical attention. anyway, besides delivering mail, apparently in taiwan you can also open up a checking account at a post office, just like at a bank. it kind of makes sense that a simple form of money service would be nationalized, but it still seems strange from an american standpoint where we go to banks for our money business. once again, this took a bit of time, but not as long as getting a residency card. it was a lot of waiting around watching the clerk sift through paperwork, writing and stamping things, occasionally as me (or in my case my aunt, since i can't really read or write chinese) to fill out certain forms. i ended up depositing NT$2000 into my new bank checking account (about US$67).

it was already 1:00 by that point, and my aunt still needed to go to the outdoor market. not to get any produce, but to look for protective arm sleeves that people here wear to shield themselves from the sun's rays when they ride a scooter (mostly women wear this, since it's a mark of chinese beauty to have pale skin). we got there too late (outdoor markets are morning events) and a lot of vendors were already closing up their stands. i did buy some sanzapian, a much beloved confection i share with my aunt lili (NT$50 a bag, i got 2 bags) and more than a kilo of wax apples (NT$80/kg). both instances, my aunt tried to haggle the price for me, even though i was already willing to pay the asking price. haggling is a way of life at these outdoor markets, but as a foreigner, the things i was buying were so rare or virtually impossible to get back at home, i would've been willing to pay pretty much anything.

we walked back home, but stopped at a little shop for a late lunch of "rice noodle threads" (a thick broth of thin rice noodles with bits of fish balls and oysters) and smelly tofu. the noodles was just something extra; what i really wanted was the smelly tofu, which i'd been dreaming about for the past 8 years. it was good, but maybe i built it up too much in my head, because it was this mind-exploding experience i'd imagined. or maybe because this was my 3rd meal of the day in less than 4 hours. i was starting to hit my eating wall.

we then returned home. my uncle was sleeping, but came out to have some noodle threads my aunt got for him (not before urinating with the bathroom door open in full view of the living room, his house, his rules). i knew i wouldn't be able to leave taiwan without him saying a few mean things and sure enough, he made some cracks at my family (questioned my parentage, said my father wasn't filial piteous enough, and made some disparaging remarks about my sister). i said nothing, best not to get too worked up over someone who has a known history of nastiness.

my aunt has a new aquarium hobby and we shared notes. not sure if it has something to do with the fact that taiwan is an island, but buying fish here is supercheap. you could easily buy a dozen fancy guppies for only a dollar (price back home in the US, $3-4 a guppy if there's a sale). she had a bunch of a 5 gallon tank, and a smaller thank that held some fries she managed to raise. they were super pretty and the tank was immaculate (her secret: she empties the tank when she cleans it, you can do that if you have a small tank, a pain if you have a bigger tank).

we rested at the house until 4:00. i managed to take a shower (borrowed a towel, changed back into my dirty clothes) and watch some taiwanese news. the big story: a typhoon is heading our way this weekend! the edge of the system is expected to make landfall tomorrow, and the eye will pass over northern taiwan (where i am!) saturday. so much for the nice weather. my uncle went back to bed, while my aunt slept on the leather sofa chair. at one point she began snoring so loud i got confused for a few seconds as to where the sound was coming from.

we returned to the residency administration building, going by a backway i never knew existed. there was a little bit of wait to get the paperwork, but much faster than this morning. with documents in hand, we went around the corner to the health insurance administration building (it's nice that all the various services are located in the same area). we were afraid they'd be closed but they're opened until 6:00 on weekdays. the clerk told us that my taiwanese health insurance won't kick in until 6 months later. this is pretty standard practice with a lot of health insurances, a waiting period to weed out any preexisting conditions that you needed treated right away. i think the wait period used to be only 4 months, but i guess it's changed. so she said to come back in january to fill out the paperwork and i could have insurance immediately. it wasn't too big a deal because this was more of a secondary insurance anyway, but it's nice to know the details.

the only thing left to do was to get my taiwanese-china visa. for that, we needed to visit my cousin eric in the city, where he works at a travel agency. we grabbed a 642 bus. once again my metro card didn't work when i swiped it. this driver was a bit nicer, and told me that sometimes if i have multiple RFID cards stacked together, it causes interference on the metro card. sure enough, when i swiped just the metro card, it worked.

in the city, we got off at the closest stop and started walking. my aunt wasn't exactly sure where my cousin's office was, so we poked our heads into every foyer, reading the names of listed businesses. finally a doorman asked us if he could help, and he actually knew where spunk tour was and pointed us to the correct building.

it was 5:30 but upstairs in the office it was still super busy, everyone seemingly oblivious to the fact that it's already time to go home (or close to it). my cousin was on the phone, and a secretary led us into a conference room so we could wait for him to finish. when he finally came to see us, he looked pretty much the same as i'd remembered him from 8 years ago, except now he had a large gut which seemed to be almost bursting from his tight-fitting shirt. even his mother gasped, even though she'd seen him more recently than i have. he couldn't chat long because he had to go back to work (he actually fielded several phone calls while talking to us), but made copies of my taiwanese passport and taiwanese residency card, and asked one of his underlings to work on my visa (it costs NT$1400, US$47, better than the US$180 for a america-to-china visa).

my cousin walked us downstairs, lighting up a cigarette along the way. he also took out a betel nut to chew on, and when he mother saw this, she slapped him in the arm and got angry. betel nuts are considered bad in taiwan, like an indigenous form of chewing tobacco (it also causes the same frequency of oral malfeasances, like gum cancer). my cousin said he'd call me after work to take me out to dinner, around 8:30 or so.

i stayed with my aunt so she could catch her bus back to xindian (she had to take my niece tangtang to her art class at 7:00, it was already close to 6:00), and then proceded to walk back to my cousin betty's office since i was told it was pretty close. pretty close is all relative, and i guess if you were on a motorcycle it's take just a few minutes to get there, but in terms of walking distance, it took probably close to half an hour. i didn't mind, and i took some photos, but mostly of the convoy of scooters returning home during the rush hour.

it was close to 7:00 when i got back to my office residence. i was hoping the place would be empty so i wouldn't have to face the awkwardness of explaining myself to the employees there, but there were still a handful of workers there. i told them i was betty's cousin, staying here for a week or two. i think they all knew, but it was still awkward. i retreated to the adjoining room behind my cousin's office and stayed there, passing away the time with some web browsing and general relaxing.

i think by 8:00 all the workers had left. the last guy had the courtesy of asking me if i wanted the lights outside to be on or not before leaving. once they were gone, i could really relax, opening up a video chat with my parents back in cambridge. i used the bathroom (old dirty bastard) and took a soothing shower to wash away a day's worth of stickiness.

my cousin didn't end up calling until 9:00. i had my cellphone plugged in because this morning i realized the phone was dead because i didn't recharge it. and my cousin didn't just call, he came upstairs, knocking at the door instead, after charming the doorman to gain entry into the building. i gave him his david ortiz player jersey. he told me what he was really asking for was just t-shirts. if i'd known i would've bought him a bunch because they're much cheaper than jerseys (although i probably would've got the size wrong, now that i see him in person).

we left to go eat, me wearing an oversized plastic helmet riding in the back of his scooter. it was a new scooter, purchased less than a year ago, all suped up with lights and better suspension. saying my cousin is an aggressive rider would be an understatement. he was weaving in and out of traffic like he had a death wish. at certain points i was afraid of falling off the scooter (or loosing stuff from my pockets) or scratching up my knees from being within inches of cars traveling at high speed. the documentarian in me wanted to somehow film this horrifying but thrilling experience, but i need both arms to hold on tight to the backrest and didn't want to drop my camera accidentally.

we went to a cantonese place in east taipei. i thought it was dim sum, but it was just greasy cantonese meals. i had the pan-fried beef noodles, which was kind of awful, but i enjoyed it anyway just to hang out with my cousin and listen to his stories. they closed at 10:00 and were already stacking up chairs, so we quickly finished and left. my cousin suggested we buy some beers and hang out at the roof of the office building so we could chat some more. we returned to the office, where they were a hidden below ground supermarket next door. we bought an assortment of beers, including classic taiwan beer and a pear cider. i thought maybe the doorman would hassle us but he let us inside without any problems.

before we even went into the office i noticed something was amiss. i'd closed all the lights when i left, but now there were several opened. from the glass door i could see what appeared to be a meeting, a group of guys at the conference room table. we went inside and found my cousin betty with his husband a few of her friends having a drink party. we brought beers, but they were soaking in the hard stuff, 59% alcohol content taiwanese moutai. they'd been drinking for nearly 2 hours and all in various stages of drunkenness. one particular loud and obnoxious guy wanted me to do shots with him, but i only took a few sips, coughing each time. he was the kind of drunk that was all happy and loud, but then obnoxious and loud, and said he hated me for not joining in the fun and didn't talk to me the rest of the night (which was a very good thing). they had another friend who was back in taiwan from america. he was an environmental scientist, and kept speaking to me in english, like he was trying too hard to show off to his friends that he was bilingual. he made some comment about not being able to find any samuel adams here.

my cousin betty and the gang left about half an hour later. my cousin eric stayed behind, and we went up to the room to drink beers and so he could smoke. we chatted a bit before he said he had to go home. he'd leave the scooter behind because he was a little drunk, taking the taxi instead.

my cousin betty left a mess in the conference area. i decided to clean up, washing all the glasses and throwing away any leftover liquor and snacks. it was the least i could do for squatting in her office. i used the bathroom one more time (action jackson) and took another shower to get ready for bed. then the internet went down.

it's almost 1:00 and everything is all set. i just need to go to sleep for a few hours and then wake up at 5:30 to get ready for my parents who are coming to pick me up to take me to the airport around 6:30. it's been a busy (and hot) day to say the least. i don't even have time to sit back and reflect on what i'm about to do, which is to spend nearly 3 months in asia. i'm anxious, but i'm actually looking forward to the 24 hour plane ride, because at least that'll give me some time to catch my breath.

so today there was more cleaning of the house and packing of the backpack. i've discovered that my backpack is actually too small for all the things i'll be carrying. everything fits, but i shouldn't think about souvenirs because there just isn't any room left. my mother and sister came in the afternoon to assess my weak packing job and repacked everything for me while i continued to clean the house and eat lunch. the pack felt heavy, but we weighed it on the scale and it wasn't even 30 lbs.

i've planned it so today i was eating the last of my perishables. for some reason i was eating a lot of good stuff for digestion, a combination of fibers and probiotics: granola + blueberry + yogurt for breakfast, whole wheat bread ham & cheese sandwich washed down with a cold glass of tangy sweet kombucha, and a yogurt and banana smoothie.

a few things i ended up not bringing, just to make more space: my electric shaver (settling for just a disposable razor; i do use the shaver to trim my goatee, but i won't be allowed to keep it in china anyway); half a dozen thick cotton socks (will need to buy lighter socks in taiwan); surplus of cotton boxers (i don't need that many underwear); 2 boxes of shandong-imported "donkey skin" chinese medicine for my dagougou (the boxes they came in had sharp corners that threatened to tear holes in my backpack); and my kindle (if i'm spending my free time in taiwan/china reading, i'm doing it wrong).

i went with my mother and sister back to belmont. along with the backpack (to show my father), i also brought along the disassembled fish tank. i sat in the backseat holding the cardinal tetra in a small glass bowl, making sure it didn't spill during the jostling ride. my aquarium will spend the next 3 months being tended by my parents.

after dinner, i took one last look at the backyard garden before getting a ride back to cambridge. i do some more cleaning, stuffing both the guest bedroom closet and hallway closet, and doing a small load of laundry so i wouldn't have dirty clothes lying around in the house for 3 months.

now there's nothing to do but wait. if there's wifi at the airports i may try to blog, but otherwise the next time you'll hear from me will be from taiwan tuesday morning (tuesday night taiwan time).

(i took photos but too lazy to add them to the posting; i'll try to find some time when i get the chance).

with less than 48 hours to go before i leave, i picked off the few remaining items from my to-do list. i finally went ahead and covered up my travel guides (china and taiwan). it's just a little something i do so i don't look like a tourist when i'm browsing the guide out in public.

i checked out the wireless webcam i installed at the cafe. despite the glitches i found yesterday, it seemed to be doing pretty well and i didn't see any additional crashes. so looks like this is a keeper.

after that i started collecting the things i'd pack. my parents came in the afternoon to help out. they were shocked by hot it was inside my house, even though i didn't think it was that bad, but it did feel cooler outside than inside, so i must've been doing something wrong. it was just too hot to get anything constructive done so i gave up and figured i could work on my packing later in the evening, when it was cooler (hopefully).

i went to belmont with my parents. after some garlic chive rice noodle soup for a late lunch, my father and i went to the fresh pond t-mobile store to get a pay-as-you-go account. the wait was long and they almost skipped us before we complained. $10 for 30 minutes of talk (expires in 90 days) but with an additional $10 one-time installation fee. all this so i wouldn't have to bring my cellphone with me (just a SIM card).

next we went to home depot so i could buy some smoke detectors. i ended up buying just one, which not only was the cheapest ($5) but also the smallest.

working in the heat made me tired, and i fell asleep on the couch with the air conditioner on, watching live coverage of the asiana flight 214 plane crash in san francisco. we had some risotto that my sister made.

my father gave me a ride back to cambridge. i opened up the windows and put into the fan as soon as i got back to cool the place down. i gathered up my empty seltzer cans and biked to market basket to return them and use the deposit to buy a quart of yogurt. coming back home, there was a pretty sunset in the sky, made me already miss the place before i even left.

i put my bike away in the basement for the last time this summer. i thought i heard the chirping of a smoke detector with a bad battery but i couldn't find it. i made a mango lassi with the yogurt and some leftover frozen mango in the freezer. i installed the new smoke detector in the kitchen using some blue sticky tack, underneath the cabinet above the fridge. i organized some more travel items, packaging them into large and small ziploc bags. i did a load of laundry. i backed up some photos and copied my music files. i tested a cold storage solution for my vivotif vaccine using ice cubes and my insulated tumbler.

despite all that, i haven't packed yet. it's basically a matter of just stuffing everything into my backpack. hopefully it won't take too long and i spend the rest of tomorrow relaxing.

it's too hot to blog. i just want to lie down and die so i don't have to suffer this heat anymore. of course the heat wave here in boston isn't as severe as elsewhere in the country, but still, with no air conditioning in my house, it's pretty unbearable. i can't even count on the temperature dropping at nights, since the past few consecutive hot days have heated up the ground enough that it's only marginally cooler at nights. and it's a humid heat too, everything feels sticky.

i can't let the heat stop me from completing my errands with just a weekend before i leave. i went to CVS to see if they had any vivotif, the typhoid vaccine. sure enough, they carried it, but the prescription rite aid faxed over wasn't legible so the CVS pharmacist told me to come back later in the afternoon.

while taking the ladder down into the basement, i took the opportunity to adjust the motion-sensing lights. they were angled too high up so they shone right into the eyes; i turned them down a bit so they're not as blinding.

next up was taking a photo for my china visa and taiwanese residency card. i already had a good set of passport photos, but they're from 2 years. i wanted one more recent. with my camera, flash, tripod, and a white poster board, i proceded to take a new photo. it wasn't easy and i ended up taking several dozens, even moving into the bathroom because there was better light there. and even after i got a photo i liked, i still had to adjust it in photoshop to get the proper color balance and white background. i was also in a race against time, as my grandmother was set to due around 1:30. i quickly through the passport photo file on a USB thumb drive and went to the cafe to see my grandmother off.

my grandmother's jetblue flight was at 4:40, so she didn't have to leave until 2:00. my sister volunteered to drive to the airport, but she's reliably unreliable, so i was on standby just in case. my mother and 2nd aunt went as well, along with my 2nd uncle (the one banned from future family dinners at my parents' house). my grandmother didn't want to take my sister's SUV because she has a hard time climbing onboard (it's not exactly the most senior citizen friendly ride) but she didn't anyway. then mysterious my sister disappeared. at first we thought she was in the bathroom, but there was nobody there, and everyone began to get a bit frantic, fearing that she flaked out again. turns out she went to the nearby florist to buy some flowers. this was a totally unnecessary gesture as my grandmother was already carrying a lot of things and didn't need the additional burden of a bouquet. my sister could feel me glaring at her and defensively told me to STFU. and with that they went to the airport. i don't know when i'll see my grandmother again.

i biked to the fresh pond staples to recycle a used laser printer toner and to get $2 off on a future store purchase. i then went to the copy center to get my visa photo printed out. working behind the counter were 3 of the laziest print shop employees. when i asked one of them about printing, she pointed to the self-serve copy/printing machine. when i told the machine couldn't read my USB drive, they asked if i used a mac and deduced i'd formatted the drive incorrectly (it was formatted in exFAT, which is a PC format, but apparently their machines can't read it, i didn't bother trying to explain the difference).

so i had no choice but to bike back home in the blistering heat, passing by a pair of portapotties ripening in the sun (i can't even begin to describe the unholy smell). i took a quick shower - not exactly to get clean but rather just to cool down. i reformatted an USB thumb drive, copied over the photos once more, and then biked back to fresh pond, this time cutting across danehy park as a shortcut.

this time the copy/printing machine recognized my files, but it only printed out on matte paper and i wanted glossy, so i had to wait until the 3 employees were done talking before one of them "noticed" me and asked if she could help (even though i was there 20 minutes ago). i paid for my printout ($1) and left.

CVS pharmacy called me earlier, said my prescription was ready, but there was something wrong with my insurance. so next stop was back to the porter square CVS. they must've copied my insurance policy number wrong because when i gave it to them again, it went through this time. i was told there'd be a 15 minute wait. i feel like they only say that to force you to browse the rest of the store. i ended up buying a can of mango ice tea (99¢). once my name was called, i paid for my prescription and left. the cashier recognized me from earlier and asked me about my trip (it's not everyday you get vaccinated for typhoid).

back at home, i took another shower before heading over to bruce's place to see him one last time before i leave. there was AC in his house and for the next hour i didn't have to suffer the indignities of the heat wave.

once more at home, i took my first dosage of the typhoid vaccine, which is basically weakened live salmonella bacteria. one thing i noticed was the instructions to keep the capsules refrigerated. woops. at room temperature (and beyond) they lose their effectiveness. my next dosage is sunday night, but i still need to take 2 more doses but those will happen after i arrive in taiwan. how will i keep these capsules cool? maybe i can keep them in an insulated tumbler filled with cold water. i hope it won't look too suspicious going through the x-ray machine. i'm still wondering if i really need to be vaccinated against typhoid. i don't think i ever was in my previous outings, and nothing bad ever happened other than the occasional very mild traveler's diarrhea (which i remedied via loperamide).

the replacement foscam webcam arrived today. i quickly set it up and discovered that this one was also broken. not as bad as the last one, but when i turn it pointing to something bright, it will crash the camera and on more than one occasion causing it to self reboot. i did find out from the foscam forum that many people are experiencing the same thing. apparently the cameras manufactured recently have some sort of defect in the sensor that's causing the crash issue.

nevertheless, i went down to the cafe around 7:00 to test the camera there. there wasn't as many crashes compared to the first camera, but it may be just because it wasn't as bright anymore. we did see it crash a few times, but it didn't freeze up or reboot and we were still able to control the camera and bring back the video with a refresh. my father said to test it out for one more day during daylight, and if it still crashes like before, he'd return it on monday after i leave.

later in the evening i remembered to call my credit card companies to let them know about leaving the country for a few months. i'm not sure if it's even necessary, because i didn't do it the few times i went to asia, and nothing more suspicious than an ATM charge somewhere in bangkok, and my credit card company never suspended my account. but better safe than sorry, and suddenly finding myself unable to access my money overseas.

for dinner i made myself another sandwich. in order to stay cool, i hopped into the shower whenever i could. there's still a lot of stuff to do in the house but it's just too hot to move around, maybe the weather will improve by tomorrow, but i believe the heat wave is upon us for the entire weekend. i'm tempted to install the AC just for a day, and then move it back down to the basement when i'm done packing. i can't work under these conditions!

in order to get used to this dell mini hackintosh, starting today i'm going to blog exclusively from this machine. the hardest thing to get used to is the screen size. my macbook pro has a 15.4" 1440x900 screen compared to the dell mini 10.1" 1024x600 screen. that's less than 50% of what i'm normally used to seeing. i didn't think it was a big deal but a smaller screen definitely cuts into productivity. on the other hand, a bigger screen means a heavier laptop, so that's the trade-off. the 2nd thing i'm still getting used to is the keyboard. i think the smaller functions on the left side of the keyboard (tab/cap locks/shift) is throwing off my balance and i find myself typing one letter row skewed. the slower CPU speed doesn't really bother me. it's not noticeable when performing common tasks like surfing the web or typing. it takes just a little longer to create thumbnails for my photo catalog, and when i tried to play back a 1080p video i shot with my canon 60D, the playback was very stuttered.

making the dell mini work-able also meant copying over my preference files for my usual apps (bbedit, transmit). i also imported my photoshop actions (they still work, even though i'm going from CS6 to CS4), i've got one for fast saving a batch of thumbnails and another one to create wiggle gifs.

i went to rite aid to check the status of my prescriptions. it didn't feel right that i couldn't pick them up until saturday, and i think they only meant the typhoid vaccine, which they have to special order. the pharmacist told me to check again tomorrow, but the rest of my prescriptions were ready to go. i was confused at first when i only had to pay $10 for 2 antibiotics (250 mg azithromycin and 500 mg levofloxacin) and a dermatitis ointment (0.05% betamethasone dipropionate), but a check of the receipt showed that each item cost only about $3. i think when i switched over to neighborhood health plan - which has a higher monthly premium - i also got a reduction in my drug co-payments.

one of the things on my to-do list is to recaulk the bathtub. it's something i have to do every 6 months because i keep on getting penetrating mildew that can't just be washed off. i'm only doing it for my spanish tenants arriving sometime in september. so after a shower, i dried the walls and edges along the bathtub, then pulled out the old caulk with an awl and a razor blade. i've been using silicone caulk just because it's better for waterproofing, but i don't think it makes any difference in keep away the mildew, it comes back right on schedule in approximately 6 months. i had an old tube of caulk that i wasn't sure if it had solidified on the inside, but that was the least of my problems as i couldn't find my caulking gun. i will have to caulk later tonight, so it can dry overnight and be ready by morning. stripping out the old caulk in a warm bathroom made me all sweaty, so i ended up taking another shower.

i've been trying to get my parents to have a barbecue during june with no success. now with my grandmother returning home to san jose california tomorrow afternoon and this being the 4th of july - a traditional barbecue holiday - it was the perfect time to finally have a barbecue.

since i only have the bicycle now, i tried to go as slow as possible to my parents' place. but it's impossible to climb hills on a hot day (the heat index was over 100°) without breaking into a sweat.

my happy arrival in belmont quickly turned sour as i butt heads with my sister. she likes to keep the house as dark as possible. during the summer the excuse is to prevent the hot sunlight from penetrating into the house; while in the winter the excuse is to prevent heat from escaping through the windows. while there is some validity, you can't keep the house pitch dark like a troll's cave throughout the year. so i opened the blinds on the northern facing side of the living room, and pulled the curtains on the southern window, while leaving the blinds closed. my sister came in and went crazy. i tried to reason with her but she wouldn't compromise. so i told her she could have her damn windows and that i was going back home and slammed the door as i left the house. i was a quarter of the way home when i realized i forgot to grab the caulking gun so i went back. by that point something must've happened because my father was in the living room with all the blinds wide opened. and my sister - as vindictive as ever - decided not to join us for barbecue and celebrate our grandmother's last day in town. at least she didn't take the dog this time, but i think her decreasing circle of friends are sick and tired of her running off to their place whenever she ends up on the losing side of an argument. i just hope that when i'm not here that she doesn't drive my parents to a premature death with her nagging and uncompromising ways.

rite aid pharmacy called me again, said the typhoid fever vaccine would take at least another week to arrive. i told the pharmacist i was leaving on monday. i said i would try cvs and walgreens to see if they have any vivotif in stock, and if yes, i could transfer over the prescription.

i like barbecues but don't like them when it feels like 100° outside. i figured we'd cook the food outdoors, but eat indoors with the air conditioner on. however, everyone decided to brave the hot weather and eat outside. it wasn't bad in the shade, although the late afternoon sun shining on my back didn't help me cool off, and i was constantly afraid of mosquitoes (got a few bites anyway, smacked one as it was drawing blood).

after we finished eating we finally retreated to the cool comforts of the living room. my 2nd uncle was dropping hints that he wanted to leave, despite everyone else wanting to savor the last remaining moments with my grandmother. finally my father drove them home, but my mother was so angry with my 2nd uncle's behavior she said she'll never invite him over ever again.

returning home covered in sweat, i took a quick shower and changed into some clean clothes (actually just my underwear, too hot to wear anything else). i then dried the walls and bathtub edges, and then around 11:00 i began caulking. the old tube of caulk was stuffed up, and it took me 10 minutes of working with an awl to finally get it to eject its silicone plug. the actual caulking went pretty quickly, and i wore glaves this time, having learned my lesson that silicone caulk is a skin irritant. i did get a little sweaty, but unable to use the shower, i just took a sink bath with a wash cloth.

i thought about heading down to the MIT bridge to see the fireworks, but decided against it. the nocturnal heat and humidity, the crush of humanity, all contributing factors for me to stay home and watch it on tv instead, with the delayed sounds of explosions coming in from the open window.

the only things i accomplished from my to-do list today was go to my morning doctor's appointment, buy a kychain thermometer, and put away my motorcycle for the summer. smoke detectors and caulking will have to wait until tomorrow.

i woke up at 7:30 for my 8:30 doctor's appointment. i took half an hour to get ready (most of that time spent on the toilet) then left by around 8:00. temperature was in the 70's so it wasn't too warm, and i didn't try to push myself unless i wanted to arrive in a puddle of sweat. that early in the morning the commuting convoy of cyclists isn't at rush hour volume yet but i still followed a group of bikers, everyone vying for positioning. i kept my eyes open for speed traps, and when there weren't any cars at red lights, i ran them.

when the nurse took my blood pressure reading shortly after i arrived, i was surprised how normal it was, 117/78. back at the end of may when i was at MGH for my physical, i biked here as well but my BP was much higher. when i spoke with my doctor, i already had a pretty good idea what the crunching sound was (TMJ) but i just wanted confirmation and assurance that it wasn't anything too serious. doctor lester was more concerned about the rash on my hands, and prescribed a strong medication, this time in a cream form. hearing about my china travel plans (he's done a lot of asia traveling as well), he prescribed 3 more prescriptions: an oral typhoid vaccination, azithromycin (antibiotic), and another antibiotic.

with that i left the hospital. i planned on riding back home via the charles river bike path, but a group of police behind a barricade turned me away. that area around the esplanade is closed to pedestrian traffic in preparation for the july 4th celebration tomorrow night. i made a wide detour around the foot of the longfellow and returned to cambridge across the bridge.

after a quick shower, i left the house for the somerville avenue rite aid, where my prescriptions were being filled. i had to intercept the orders before they went through because i hadn't updated my health insurance information yet. once that was cleared up (it'd take at least an hour for the orders to go through), i bought some generic brand afrin nasal spray and a bottle of 91% isopropyl alcohol. the nasal spray was a doctor's recommendation because i'd also complained about a stuffed up left sinus. i was that guy in the parking lot doing shots of nasal spray.

i went to harvard square next, to EMS to see if they had any keychain thermometers i can attach to my everyday bag while i'm in asia. they tell me how hot it is over there, so i'd like to know for myself. initially the only ones i could find was a $10 version that had thermometer/compass/magnifying glass, but then i spotted the $5 EMS-brand version that just had thermometer.

after returning home and taking yet another shower (biking in hot weather is sweaty business), i tested out the EMS thermometer in a glass of ice water. i used my digital thermometer as a control. once the EMS thermometer stabilized, it was close to the digital thermometer reading, off by a few degrees higher.

around noontime i went to the cafe. my grandmother - who's leaving on friday - has been asking for me to pay a visit so i can eat some beef noodle soup. i think she just enjoys seeing me eat in a grandmotherly sort of way. my grand uncle was there as well, he already knew i was going to china but i told him in person as a courtesy. as for classic chinese beef noodle soup, i'm sure i'll eat plenty of it when i'm in asia.

after lunch i motorcycled to belmont to prepare the bike for storage. a few days ago i already filled the tank and added the fuel stabilizer. now it was time to wash the bike and then wax it. by that point the temperature was in the upper 80's with a 70° dewpoint that made it feel like 90+. since i arrived via motorcycle, i had on my black jeans which made it even hotter. i then spent the next 2 hours cleaning the bike.

while my mother stayed behind at the cafe to chat with my grandmother, my father came home to help me put away the motorcycle. for we had to adjust the chain, which i discovered while riding that it's a little loose. this involved raising the bike on a jack so the back wheel is off the ground and then adjusting some screws. once that was done, we wheeled the bike into place and i let the engine run until exhaustion to burn off any remaining fuel in the carburetor. with that my summer riding season comes to a close at 10,243 miles.

my father asked for my help in mounting 2 ceiling/hanging bike racks. i believe i got these last year at $8-10/piece but we never had time to install them. the tricky part was attaching them to the ceiling of our garage which is a combination of wire mesh and plastic so hard to locate the actual studs. my father figured out a way where he basically attached a piece of 2x4 onto the ceiling with about a dozen screws as a mounting base for the hoist components. a dozen screws is probably more than we needed, but better safe than sorry. with the 2 racks mounted and with bicycles hanging from them, the garage feels even more cluttered, but at least we're making use of the space. also we tested to make sure cars in the garage won't hit the bikes.

nobody wanted to cook on such a hot day so my mother suggested we get burger king as an easy dinner solution. but we couldn't decide who would go to actually make the orders (everyone was too lazy to go), so we ended up eating some leftover beef and pasta thing my sister made.

with no motorcycle that meant i had to get a ride back to cambridge. my parents drove me but we first made a stop at market basket to pick up some barbecue items. a lot of people had the same idea and the place was pretty crowded (although not bad enough that we weren't able to quickly find a parking spot). later we went to the newly-revised star market. we bought watermelons for $3.99 a piece, as well sodas on sale (5 12-packs for $10). we were actually surprised that some of the sales items were cheaper than at market basket (for instance, 10 ears of corn for just $2). back at my place, my parents took my large jars of kombucha, including the smaller jars of 2nd-ferment kombucha tea.

i finally lost my HBO tonight, although i still have STARZ. sometime during the day the pharmacy called me to let me know my prescriptions would be ready by tomorrow, but then they called back again and said it'd be saturday. i think the sticking point is the self-administered typhoid vaccination, which they have to special order from a different pharmacy since it's not something they normally carry. elsewhere, next step living got in touch with me, said i had no choice but to replace my furnace, but i would get the $99 i paid for the non-service deducted from the eventual installation bill, plus i'd qualify for the 7-years 0% interest energy loan (my mother did the math, that comes out to be something like $42/month which isn't bad for a more efficient furnace and better insulated walls).

i'm continuing my mission to pick off items from my long to-do list. the bulk of the day was spent tending to my community garden plot. i've asked julie to water my plants (in return she can have whatever vegetables she wants) while i'm gone, but i wanted to tidy up the place before i hand it over. i hadn't been there in almost 2 weeks; not that anyone can blame me, with the combination of incessant rain and the falling mulberries. what i found today was just a thick mat of rotting squishy mulberries, kicking up a dust of fruit flies where ever i walked, under a stench of putrefaction. actually, the smell wasn't that bad, but everything else was. it was hard to doing any sort of weeding, pulled up clumps of crabgrass and whatnot along with lumps of decaying mulberries.

that was only the first half of the garden beautification project. i came home, took a shower, then headed right back out, taking the motorcycle to the cafe so i could borrow the car and pick up a barrel of leftover salt marsh grass from my parents' backyard. i then drove back to the community garden and put down a layer of grassy mulch.

driving back to the cafe to return the car, i actually saw my mother driving to my house with grandmother and 2nd aunt, so my grandmother could take a bath. when i returned home they were already inside, waiting for the tub to fill. i asked if i could take a quick shower first because i was covered in sweat and dirt and grass mulch. fortunately there wasn't that much water in the tub yet.

my mother and company didn't leave until almost 5:00. with them here, there was a temporary halt in my errand running. earlier i called comcast to asked about the cable and why i still had premium channels even though i cancelled them yesterday. the guy i talked to said according to their records those channels are already gone from my account, and if i'm still getting them, i'm not being billed. or maybe it takes a day or two for the system to catch up. in any case, as long as i've confirmed i cancelled those premium channels, i'm okay. i did discover that starz is included in my basic HD package.

once they left, it was back to work. i moved my bicycles out from the porch. the jetter frame i put back in the basement while i left out the ross and schwinn. i had a prospective buyer coming to see the ross around 7:00, rasmus from denmark, so i pumped up the tires.

i then cleaned the fish tank. originally i was going to move the aquarium to my parents' place so they can look after my lone cardinal tetra, but even a 7 gallon tank is a hassle to move, and i don't know if my parents have the space for it in their house. so i'm now toying with the idea of an automatic fish feeder. petsmart sells an eheim feeder for $46; amazon.com has the same one for $26, but an additional $11 in fast shipping so i can get it on friday before i leave. i ended up inquiring on craig's list, somebody in cambridge is selling a whole aquarium kit, but i asked him if i could just buy the feeder for $20 (hasn't written back yet).

my kombucha has finally finished fermenting. i decided to get rid of the scoby hotel, and just have 2 jars of kombucha, throwing away the old scobies. it's kind of pointless to keep them anyway, since the old ones deteriorate over time, and they're not as good a fresh scoby. i brewed 2 gallon worth of sweet black tea. my kombucha is going to belmont as well, probably tomorrow night when my father gives me a ride home after i put my motorcycle away for when i'm gone.

i almost bailed on rasmus because it was starting to get late and he hadn't shown up yet. but he got here right around 7:25. he was a tall skinny fellow, young, an MIT graduate student here in the US for a year. he was tall enough that he could ride either the schwinn or the ross, but the ross had 2 good wheels while the schwinn had the busted rear wheel. i told him if he liked the schwinn i'd be more than happy to swap the rear wheel for him, but he didn't mind the ross, despite the fact that he was surprised how heavy it was (steel lug frame). i asked him if he was bike savvy and he said yes, so he'll probably change the tubes (and maybe the tires) on his own. the rear wheel sort of shifted when he tried to take it on a test ride, but i came back out with my tools and we tightened the bolts. he said pretty happy with the bike, and thought $50 was cheap enough that he didn't bother haggling over the price. before he left, he asked me if it was illegal to ride without lights; i said no, but apparently in denmark you can get a $200 for riding without illumination. rasmus also said he has a friend who's interested in a bike, and said he'd sent him my way to check out the schwinn within the next few days.

after rasmus left, i biked down to meet julie at her community garden. we rendezvous back at my house. i almost beat her back (because i ran red lights and took a short cut), but she still got there a few seconds ahead of me. she said she purposely went the longer way to give me more time. i barely heard her because my pounding heart was still trying to catch up. we drove to my community garden and i showed her my plot and gave her some instructions. she dropped me off back at my place.

dinner came in the form of a simple ham sandwich with mayonnaise, the last few perishable food items in the house. it seemed a little plain, so i ran across the street to star market to get some swiss cheese. shopping is a lot easier now they got rid of those loyalty cards, but star/shaws is still more expensive than market basket. waiting behind me in line were 2 taiwanese girls trading in their shaws card for a 12-pack of soda (like what i did on sunday). they seemed afraid to put down their purchases because they thought the conveyer belt would keep on rolling, until i told them in chinese that it stops automatically. besides cheese, i also bought some ice cream sandwich, friendly brand with real vanilla (after a taste test, i couldn't really tell the difference).

flickr contacted me on behalf of getty images (through an invitation-only service) to license 14 of my photos for commercial use. most of them were from the boston pride march this year, a few blizzard of 2013 photos, a double rainbow pic, and (somewhat random) the photo i took of vietnamese girls biking in the rain wearing colorful ponchos in the city of hue. the hard part was finding the original source files because getty wanted higher resolution that what i normally put up on flickr. i'm not sure how much i can make (these photos are for editorial purposes), but it's pretty by-the-book as i also had to fill out some tax information.

by 11:00 the sweet black tea (which i'd already divided into the 2 jars) was cool enough to the touch that i added the scobies. i picked out the newest ones and threw away the others.

this morning i saw the specs for the canon 70D, the newer version of the 60D camera that i use. it's got a bunch of new features like dual pixel CMOS autofocus, touchscreen, and wifi, but the thing that makes me covet this new model is the 7 fps shooting rate. i also like the 360° dial (unlike the current 60D dial, which can't do a full rotation).

just 12 items on my to-do list! hopefully tomorrow i can cut that list in half. highlights include getting new smoke detectors for the house, recaulking the bathroom, and putting my motorcycle away for the summer.

alex called me (on my phone) from japan around 2:00, trapped in a server closet somewhere. not to be all future snob, but i have an easier time talking via videochat than i do just on the phone when i can't see the person.

by this time next week i will be on a plane flying towards asia. this is it, this is my last week. what i originally planned to be a low key 7 days is looking like it's going to be pretty hectic. i started making a list of things i still have to do, and ended up with nearly 2 dozen items. some as simple as "call to cancel HBO" (which still took me 15 minutes) to more complicated "clean panasonic ZS20 sensor" (which involves disassembling the camera).

so besides canceling HBO, i also called jetblue to request a wheelchair service for my grandmother's departure this friday afternoon. i found my quick drying towel as well as my chinese chops (i'll need them in taiwan if i do anything official, it's like a signature). as a bonus to-do item, i called my new health insurance to get my policy number before making an appointment to see my doctor wednesday morning about the weird crunching sound in my left ear.

my father stopped by this morning to help me install the new motion sensor light in my alleyway. the one that i had previously has a busted sensor and won't cycle off anymore. it was something i could've done on my own, but i ended up assisting, turning off the electricity, flipping the light switch indoors, and holding the ladder (my father brought a taller ladder). it was actually pretty easy to install, the only annoyance were the hungry mosquitoes (after spraying some bug repellent they stayed away but not before i got a few bites).

it wasn't particularly hot (temperature in the 80's) but it was an oppressively humid day (70% humidity). i took the motorcycle to belmont (filling the tank first at the nearby hess gas station on mass ave) because i didn't want to arrive all sweaty. my compact 3-cell dell mini battery arrived; now my hackintosh is even smaller than before. a week ago my mother gave me her taiwanese dollars and chinese yuans. today, my godmother dropped her some of her asian currency as well. added to the pot was some money jack gave my father to give me.

we went to binbin's lexington place for chinese dumpling dinner at 6:00. my sister didn't bother coming (she was busy installing an air conditioner in her small bedroom) but my aunt and uncle were already there when we arrived. the place is a rental, but the owners are away, although at one point her other housemate came into the kitchen without saying hi to anybody to make some dinner before disappearing again.

there was 2 variety of dumplings, either garlic chives or dill, with a stuffing of combination pork and beef plus assorted spices. i preferred the dill, only because it's different than regular dumplings. i still like my mother's dumplings, with just cabbage and pork, and with thick skins.

binbin didn't get home from work until almost 7:30, commuting back from boston via car. my aunt wanted to treat everyone to one last dinner before binbin's aunt and mother leave on saturday, but their china flight departs from new york city so they're driving down to manhattan a day or two early to see the big apple before returning home.

i left for cambridge soon after we returned to belmont. with so much moisture in the air, it'd been raining intermittently, quick bursts of showers. my motorcycle was parked underneath a tree so it was relatively dry. humidity was still high and my windshield fogged up, with me craning my head so i could see the road. i made it home without incident. the inside of my house was stuffy and about 8° warmer than outside. after a shower, i put the window fan on the sill to blow some cooler air into the living room. i watched the 2nd episode of under the dome.