A Quotable Week And A Trip To Tian Mu

On Sunday, like everybody else on the planet, we went to see Avatar in IMAX 3D with Kris and Christine. The place was packed so we appreciated the reserved seating!

One thing that was kind of funny about watching the movie here, was that when the alien characters spoke in their language, what they were saying was translated into Chinese at the bottom of the screen. Anybody know if it was it translated into English at home? The movie was pretty easy to follow, regardless- we all really liked it.

On Monday our boss showed up with a new hairstyle- she'd dyed her hair red. She said she had gotten highlights. Remember this for later.

In the afternoon, Melodie was given her National Health Insurance card by the school and her birth date was listed as 70/10/08. 70? Taiwan, stubbornly, has it's own calendar in which year 1 was the year that the Japanese occupation of Taiwan ended. So, 1981=year 70 but that doesn't make it any less shocking to see on an official ID card when you are already a little sensitive of your ages' proximity to the big three-oh.

Monday night we went to the Longshan Temple night market to eat. Samuel and Christine promised to take us for a delicious "cake". When I think of cakes I think of sweet, chocolaty birthday cakes, when they think of cakes they apparently think of hamburgers, because that's what we got. The beef was spicy and delicious. Totally going back for more soon!

We're told that the "cake" store is very famous, even though it's located in a dark alley at the back corner of Longshan Temple. There were lots of people waiting for their cakes, though- proof that word of mouth really works.

We went for pho and then bought some other snacks from the market. Christine got a jelly drink which was conveniently served in a plastic bag.

It had been a moderately nice day out, so luckily the ice cream wrap cart was open for business. As the weather has gotten colder it's been hard to buy our favorite dessert.

On Tuesday, Nareesa and I went to Zhinan Temple, and we went out to our favorite Thai place, Andy Thai, on Wednesday night. On Thursday, our boss approached Christine and said that she didn't really like her new hairstyle. It wasn't the cut that she had asked for. When Christine asked about the change in color from jet black to red our boss acted confused. She hadn't dyed her hair- "poof"- it had just changed color. Friday it was black and *poof* Monday it was red. Yep, we were all born yesterday.

Thursday night was cold and it was pouring. We had planned to go back to Longshan for more "cakes" but Mel and I decided to stay home, order Dominos and watch "Up In The Air". It was a good decision.

On Friday I only had one class in the morning so I was done at 10am. Our boss was taking Nareesa's family to buy pineapple cakes at a bakery she knew in Shulin so I went along with them. En route she was asking about Canada and asked the strangest question: "is Vancouver safe from global warming?" Um, I don't know... is it? I kind of thought that global warming was a whole-world kind of problem. We sampled every type of pineapple cake at the bakery and I decided I would buy a few cakes for Mel to try since she didn't get to come along. Later in the day our boss would announce to Melodie that she could see the "fire in my eyes" for Melodie when I announced that I would buy her a pineapple cake. WTF!! Mel didn't like the pineapple cakes, by the way.

Friday at 4 I went to Sanchong for my last class with the grade seven Ming Chi kids for the semester. They're an advanced English class so it's really easy to have fun with them- I like that class a lot.

After my class, all of the teachers, Nareesa's mom and brother and Samuel and Christine went to Modern Toilet for supper. Samuel sat on a barbed wire toilet, which was pretty awesome. This was the FIFTH time I've been to this toilet restaurant!! I don't think I've even gone to McDonalds that much! (lie)

We went shopping in Ximending after supper and came across a crafty market area. For sale: t-shirts featuring Hello Kitty choking Mickey's bishop!!

After all bishops were choked we went back to our place for karaoke. Mel forced me to sing my famous "What A Wonderful World" and I was heckled all through my usually-popular "A Whole New World", but the high score went to Nareesa's "Zombie".

Samuel and Christine brought their roof-dogs Happy and Lucky over. They're such nice dogs!! Petting fuzzy puppies and singing karaoke=a good night. Oh, also, I should mention that this was supposed to be Nareesa's mom and Ryan's last night in Taiwan BUT they got the dates wrong and were actually scheduled to leave a full day later. I'm not sure if they got all the way to the airport or not before figuring this out, but that's a pretty big oversight.

On Saturday, after avoiding a La Rouge breakfast (*barf* heehehhee) I met Mel in Xinpu and we traveled to the Tian Mu area of Taipei. Tian Mu is supposed to be a foreigners district of the city, and it did seem a little different. Maybe it was the trees or the wider streets, but it did feel like we had gone somewhere different. I like the area in the picture above- the trees were so overgrown that it looked like they were holding hands.

Mel connects her Avatar to one of the trees.

A nice, stinky stream we found in Tian Mu.

There was a big second-hand market in the middle of town. Vendors were just sitting on the ground with a bunch of stuff laid out in front of them. It just looked like a lot of crap to me, but there were hundreds of people there looking for a bargain.

Make-your-own Domo kit on sale at a bookstore.

Guess what kind of store "Mamaway" is?

Tian Mu doesn't really have any major sights to see, it's just a lot of shopping and restaurants. It's a nice place to spend a day walking around but the shopping wasn't too different from what you could find anywhere else in Taipei- except there were quite a few factory outlet stores, though I thought the prices were too expensive to bother with. Something funny that I noticed in one of the stores was that all of the brand names had some tape over them. For example, there was a Ralph Lauren shirt that had black tape over the "R". I'm assuming these were rip-off products and they were trying to prevent any fines that might come from selling such products. But I'm not sure who the tape would fool. There were also a lot of foreign food restaurants to choose from, but that didn't stop us from wandering around aimlessly forever trying to decide on a place. We sat down in a restaurant called PS BuBu which was filled with old fashioned cars that you could dine in. The idea was cool but the menu was overpriced ($3 Canadian for a glass of coke?) and there wasn't even anything on the menu that sounded good so we left without ordering.

Instead, we went to a Mexican restaurant called El Gallo, which was in a completely different league from PS BuBu. Although maybe any restaurant called "PS BuBu" should be dined in without expectations. At El Gallo, I ordered the set meal, which came with a homemade chicken soup that tasted so good, though they could have taken out some of those carrots and replaced them with potato or anything else.

For my main I ordered enchiladas which were served with a sauce that was more spaghetti-saucish than I'm used to, though it still hit the spot. For dessert I got a flan with chocolate sauce and whip cream.

I really had fire in my eyes for the weather on Saturday. It seemed like it had been grey and rainy for at least a month and Saturday was finally sunny and clear. It's Sunday and we've just gotten back from a trip to Danshui and the weather was even better today, but as the night winds down before my last week of school before winter vacation I can't help but think that *poof* the weekend has just disappeared.