Sing for the Moment

The Mandarin Training Center is holding a KTV contest tomorrow. It’s pretty cool that they have events like this. There are even cash prizes for the top three performers. Gotta be in it to win it, eh?

Actually I’m only half-thinking about the prize. It’s kind of more about the song itself, which seemed perfect for me to sing when I got here. I’ll write about the song later, it’s all under wraps until the actual performance. Can’t have anyone stealing my thunder. You know, cuz everyone reads this blog.

Read Full Post »

Two Months

Last couple of days (couple of weeks really) have been rainy, and all of a sudden it’s felt rather cold outside. FYI: Cold in Taipei = brisk in NYC. Nonetheless, it still doesn’t seem right when I’m forced to don a hoody in Taipei like I did today. It was a warning that autumn, the one I’m accustomed to, has finally arrived.

I’m glad the heat and humidity are gone but the sudden approach of cold is sometimes an unwelcoming feeling as well. Maybe because the fall always reminds me of going back to school, or more recently the end of half-day Fridays at work. It reminds me of the daily grind of life- there’s no avoiding it, the best I could do was come here and delay it. And despite my best efforts, I still fall in that “routine” trap from time to time: I have classes every day and then I study for a couple hours at least. From there I’m free to do whatever but keep in mind that the last bus to my place is at 9:40pm. If I rode my bike out, my “curfew” is extended but with the rain we’ve been getting, I haven’t been willing to bike it. Although I’ve been used to commuting since high school, it still gets weary at times.

With that said, maybe I just need a moment to reset myself. Perhaps it’s just the lack of sunlight that’s been getting to me. I’ll be picking up my mom from the airport tomorrow morning, so…that oughtta liven things up. We’ll see. At the very least I’ll have home-cooked meals for the first time in ages.

It’s been two months already. Feels like just the other day when I was saying bye to my fam at the airport. It’s probably too early to reflect on stuff but I’ll do it anyway. After class, if I have nothing to do and end up going home before 6pm- that’s a perfect example of when I miss my homies the most. One of my friends works in the city but lives in the middle of Long Island. After working the morning shift he always looks for shit to do, people to hang out with, otherwise going home too early would feel like somewhat of a fail. Now I understand much better what he meant. I can also appreciate to a greater extent the value of having good friends who are always down to chill.

<goes to flatten a mosquito against the wall>

Maybe it’s just because it started to rain again outside and I just came back from smacking to little pieces this POS mosquito flying around that I felt like writing this. Well, this exercise has been therapeutic (the writing, not the smacking. Actually, the smacking too.), but I best get back to preparing for my singing contest on Friday. Yes, singing contest. More on that later.

Read Full Post »

Visitors

Looks like my first official visitor will be none other than…mom?

Yup, my mom’s gonna be heading back to visit the motherland (heh). She actually has to come here in order to be eligible for some government thing, but I’d think of it as a vacation as well especially with all the madness in NYC in recent times.

This is pretty exciting news since I always came to Taiwan by myself and never shared the experience with a family member. She’ll be staying at my place – sooo looking forward to home-cooked meals.

Can’t wait for our first argument so I can brandish the Mandarin skillz I’ve been honing.

來吧!

Read Full Post »

The Early Years 2

Due to overwhelming response from my adoring fans…

Yeah, I was a lil' chubster back in the day...

I’ll have a more substantial post soon…hopefully.

Read Full Post »

The Early Years

Digging through my Aunt’s stuff, I found a few gems. This is the first part of what shall be named The Can’t-Think-of-Anything-To-Write-About Series.

Even at this early age, Greg could not be contained

Read Full Post »

Chiayi and Tainan County

Part II of the Chiayi trip:

We reached this place in Da Pu (大埔) called Lover’s Park. After riding on the scooter the whole night, it felt good to sleep on the bench like bums.

Entrance

情人碼頭

I should have taken a pic of me standing in the back behind that thing. Damnit.

After napping for about an hour, we hopped back on our scooters and hit the road (again). At this point we were feeling dead tired so we had to eventually get a coffee break.

Coffee break up in the mountains

The next destination was the Chiang (江) Family Ancestral Temple. It’s basically a small community of really old-style houses, and it was made a historic spot by the government. Random, but I bought a pack of dried mango slices there and it was excellent. We happened to be fairly close to 玉井 (Yujing), which is known for their mangoes. I know because on the main road I saw a sign that said “Home of the Mango” and was obviously very disappointed to learn that it was not on our itinerary.

Chiang family houses

In front of Chiang Family Temple

Our last major destination for that day was this fake village used as a backdrop for some TV series. We didn’t stay too long because it looked like it was about to rain, but we got some funny shots.

Entering the fake town. Gratuitous haircut pic.

Some carriage

Doll Theater?

Catch me in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2, straight to DVD

Fake town has a nice fake restaurant and nice fake lake backdrop

The rest of that trip was mostly a blur because I was so damn tired. I think we had some food at some points. And then we found a motel for $800 NT, about $25 split between 3 of us… amazing.

Read Full Post »

Weekend in and around Chiayi

My cousins showed me around Chiayi this past weekend, the first real traveling I’ve done outside of Taipei. Chiayi is towards the southern end of Taiwan, so it was quite the bus ride. Of course, this is all relative. A four-hour bus ride here can get me past Taichung. A four-hour bus ride in New York can get me to… Binghamton. I think the former wins.

Chiayi City in red. We explored around that area

We took the U-bus (統聯客運) from Taipei Bus Station around 11pm. I’m not much of a sleeper in plane/bus seats so I had little choice but to break night. When we got to Chiayi City my cousins rented out scooters to travel around. Yours truly got to ride the scooter for the first time. It was quite pimp.

To be honest, there’s not much to do. But it was definitely a scenic ride. And riding the scooter throughout the night until the sun came up was awesome as hell.

Pit Stop: By the Ren-Yi-Tan Reservoir

After stopping by the Ren-Yi-Tan Reservoir to rest for a bit, we hit the road again. It was around this time that the sun started to come up, welcoming that Saturday in.

As you will see, many times we stopped by the roadside just to snap some pics:

Random Scenic View 1

Sweet shot

And another one

After what seemed like an eternity on the road, we reached the park we were looking for:

The Aviators couldn't have been more perfect.

Part 2 to come.

Read Full Post »

The Cut

Finally, the much anticipated chapter in the Chronicles: The Long Overdue Haircut

The before:

Can't believe I let the back grow that long...

I need to buy a second mirror from now on

The after:

Aerodynamic

Feeling 5 lbs lighter

The guy took forever to cut it. I thought he was just being thorough, but my friend told me he had his hair cut by him last time and he’s just slow as hell.  The shop was supposed to close at 9pm. We were probably out by 9:30. Poor co-workers. One girl just started playing with the make-up she just bought. And then the guy that washes people’s hair must have gotten pretty bored too, because he asked the girl to darken his eyebrows…  ayo.

 

Read Full Post »

Bing Alums Reunite

Glad to say after a month and half here, I finally met up with one of my inspirations for this trip: my old college friend, Cory.

We both took Chinese in Binghamton for two years. We both withstood the b.s. of Elementary Chinese (although with my background I had it much easier). We had a much better time in Intermediate Chinese; we both even became TA’s for that class. From there, our paths diverged. He continued his studies, taking another year of Chinese, while my dumb ass had to catch up in Econ classes or I’d never have graduated on time. He then took his studies abroad, wisely coming to Taiwan to learn for a while.

When I heard from my professors the progress he made, I couldn’t help but be impressed and somewhat envious.  Needless to say his Mandarin is vastly superior and he’s currently getting his degree to teach Chinese. I guess I couldn’t let the gap in our Chinese abilities widen any further.

It was through his recommendation that I bothered to look into the Mandarin Training Center at NTNU. The other school I was heavily considering was the one he studied at before he started grad school, NCKU. The school is in Tainan which is way down south, so it would have been a much different experience. I’m not able to see which one I would enjoy more, but I think either choice would have been fine. Surely my Taiwanese would have become much better living down there. I would probably be 10 pounds heavier too, since the food is a lot cheaper (and a lot of Taiwan’s famous delicacies are from Tainan).

It’s funny how our paths converged, considering that only a few months ago I would be taking the shitty MTA subway to work at about this time. Life’s funny like that.

 

Sitting with Mr. Moy

 

He might not know it, but I owe him one. Or if this trip ends in failure, I’ll know who to hunt down.

Note: that pic is of me pre-haircut. Yes, there will be a haircut post. How did it turn out!? Stay tuned.

Read Full Post »

At the clinic…

American healthcare sucks.

My neck’s still been giving me issues, so my friends brought me to this clinic they recommended. Since I didn’t have health insurance, I was prepared to pay an arm and a leg (to fix my neck…equivalent trade?). After filling out some forms, I was asked for the cash up front. I paid the lady a whopping $300 NT ( about $10 bucks).

At the clinic

I had acupuncture done, I got hooked up to the electric stimulation machine thing, got some Chinese cupping therapy, and finally some tui-na for good measure. Oh yeah there was this strange contraption:

This thing is supposed to lift your neck straight. I'm just glad I'm still alive..

It continually lifts up your neck for a few seconds then releases. My jaw started to ache after a while. I’m just glad the tui-na massage came right after that.

Not sure how much it helped but I did feel ultra-relaxed afterwards.

Cup therapy. The spot on my neck that's been bothering me was clearly darker than the rest.

Read Full Post »