the new itinerary is even longer, 7 weeks in taiwan, from march 22nd to may 10th. this time the carrier was delta, and with only a single stop in san francisco before directly fly to taipei. the departure trip takes 22-1/2 hours, the return trip only 19-1/2 hours. we even selected the seats my mother wanted, who's strategy was to sit at either end of a row of middle aisle seats, with the hopes that nobody would want to sit in between them so they could then have the whole row to themselves. that's assuming the plane doesn't fill it, which it might, since taiwan has loosen quarantine restrictions. cost of 2 round-trip tickets combined is $2209.
i went out into the backyard to refill the squirrel buster feeder. i also left some peanuts scattered around the backyard. it was so windy last night, both of our backyard ladders were toppled.
after almost 2 months, one of my mother's birthday helium balloons (the number zero) has drooped to the ground. it's still floating, but not to the ceiling anymore.
i showed my father an early stage more responsive version of the cafe website using the w3.css framework. one problem i have with w3.css is there aren't too many examples online, to showcase what it can do. also have worked with it a little bit more, i'm starting to see the limitations. it's a simple framework, it can't cover everything.
with nothing to do, crawled into bed around 4:30pm to browse reddit a bit before taking a short nap, waking up at 5:30pm, to prepare for dinner. i was cold and put on my winter jacket (i couldn't also put on my socks but i didn't, my toenails looked a little bluish from the cold).
my mother cooked up some old fermented long beans with ground beef for dinner. i was afraid the long beans would taste bad because it's been fermented for nearly 5 months, but thankfully it was still good, unlike the ones we ate back in january. those went bad because they were taken out of the jar and refrigerated in a ziploc bag.
after dinner i biked home. there were intermittent snow flurries throughout the day, and at one point in the early evening there was an intense squall that whitened the landscape with a quick dusting of snow. i'd put a plastic bag over my bike seat but the wind must've taken it. temperature was in the lower 30's going home, not too bad, but i rode carefully, didn't want to slip on any snow or ice. there was a foul smell on the road, the city must've sprayed some brine earlier.
i went to star market briefly to pick up boneless chicken thighs on sale. they were all sold out, so instead i got some hagen-dazs ice cream on sale ($2 carton).
the highlight of the evening was the olympic ice skating gala. NBC and it's affiliate channels weren't broadcasting it at all, saving it to rebroadcast tomorrow so they can rake in the ad revenue. instead i hopped onto a canadian VPN and watched the CBC livestream of the event starting at 11pm. the CBC broadcast was relatively commercial free, but when it did have commercials, it'd just break in at the most inopportune time, and last for 30 seconds before returning to the broadcast. the spanish dancers danced a funny 80's themed aerobic number. morisi kvitelashvili of georgia dances as a blue genie, blue body paint and all. russian alexandra trusova danced with the genie but then had her own performance as wonder woman; she has amazingly long natural hair tied in several braids. all the chinese skaters had their gala spotlight, but i was more excited to see hanyu in his last olympic skate and gold medal winner nathan chen. anna shcherbakova did a number wearing a swan costume that had embedded led lights that made it look like she was billowing in smoke. the ending is always the best, when all the skaters come out on the ice at the same time, cheering on the crowd. a lot of skaters had translucent flashing visors, never seen those before. bing dwen dwen came out, hanyu gave it a big hug, while one of the female chinese skaters body slammed the olympic mascot, toppling dwen dwen to the ice.
all that's left is the closing ceremony, which will be tomorrow morning, but i'll just rewatch the rebroadcast later in the evening. china ended up in 3rd play overall with 9 gold medals with the US in 4th with 8, but in terms of total medals, the US is in 5th place, behind norway, russia, germany, and canada. china is done at 11th place. the saddest country has to be great britain, with only 2 medals total, gold and silver, both in curling. do the brits just not do winter sports?