megaman rock opera

hoooly shit, this is awesome. part 1

hong kong and macau pictures

late but...

orchestral final countdown

differences

in taipei, people have a higher level of common courtesy and are generally non-confrontational. they'll say excuse me, sorry, etc. in manhattan/philadelphia, people will do that most of the time or sometimes. in hong kong, they'll throw you an elbow, keep going, hock a loogie and spit, and then kick your dog.

jumbo kingdom

we ate dim sum on a floating restaurant boat. we had to take a boat to get to the boat. for reals.

final taiwan youtube blowout

• SYS Memorial Hall Honor Guard Change Ceremony: the two honor guards that are stationed in front of the sun yat-sen statue remain absolutely still for an entire hour. they get relieved every hour by two fresh honor guards in a very elaborate military drill ceremony.
• Classical Chinese Music Played in SYS Memorial Hall's Upper Art Gallery
• Louise is sassy and tells it like it is

taiwan photoset is now complete

oh yeah

the wedding on saturday was fine too. it was held in the international ballroom in the taipei 101 (5th floor).

what happened

on our last day in taipei, we went to brunch at a japanese buffet at the taipei 101 called wasabi. before that actually, we passed by city hall again where the 2007 ing taipei international marathon was in its 4th hour. i stood about 40 meters from the finish line on the side cheering on runners for about 20 minutes. a few of the runners were jarred to hear english words of encouragement being shouted at them.

after brunch, we went down to the taipei zoo to ride the maokong gondola. if i had known that waiting to get on the gondola would take an hour and a half, i wouldn't have gone. if you would've told me that you have to line up again for another hour to return after you get off in maokong, i definitely would've done something else. but hey, you know because of my suffering. and there is really nothing in maokong to see.

this morning, we jumped on an early flight to hong kong and landed after about an hour and a half in the air. the airplane had personal headrest entertainment units where you can watch a movie, select music, or tool around on the gps map. i watched the first half of superbad. after clearing customs and etc, we took the airport express into hong kong station. like taipei, it was really clean, fast, and efficient.

initial impressions: it's very much like manhattan. it's way more western than taipei.

here in hong kong

it's like manhattan but with chinese people. also i'm sitting here watching a show on tv called "quake republic." a show about quake 3. for reals.

subway

oh boy it is clean over here. the subway doesn't smell like urine either. according to the billboards, the taipei mrt is the most reliable in the world, 3 years running.

you can read more about it at the wiki page. all you really have to know that it is super-modern, clean, reliable, and well designed and laid out. i have to wonder if philadelphia had the same hardware, what would we do with it? can we actually have nice things and not ruin them?

danshui, for reals this time

so the day before, i thought i was in danshui but i was really in taichung. and i'm not so sure i was really in taichung anyway.

anyway, i checked the map and i really did go to danshui today. it was a 40 minute subway train ride down the ride line or something. we took a bus down to fisherman's wharf which was closed and empty because they don't really open during the work week. oh well. we saw some fantastic scenery though.

after that we got back into danshui's night/day market where wares were sampled and consumed. i tried this ginger tea that opened up my sinuses. we got back to the danshui train station and rode back into town.

pretty quiet day, relatively.

it's pretty scary at first

getting swarmed by turning mopeds while crossing. the below is taipei, a few hours past rush hour.

patrick danshui-zy

UPDATE: i wasn't in danshui afterall. i think i was in taichung and whereabouts.

i went running around the park this morning. i think one lap is close to a mile and i did about 5 laps i think. i'll be sure to take some video of what a taiwanese park looks like in the morning.

we went up to taichung today. it's nice and very touristy. we went to the national palace museum which was almost just as good as the nyc met. one of its most well known exhibits is the jade cabbage. the garden also had some of the biggest koy that i've ever seen. you can feed them too.

after that, we went into taichung proper to the shin kong mitsukoshi department store for lunch (fried breaded pork with cheese inside?). the weather started turning hostile then, so we caught a bus back. the bus we ended up taking however was a department store sponsored bus that would ferry people between the subway transfer station and the department store area. i also spotted my second chili's.

we ventured back out later to the cks memorial hall which was super huge. also nearby was taiwan's presidential office building, like the white house but red. we went a little bit into the night market-ish area and got dinner.

mayo

today, we started the day with a common local breakfast: coffee and bread. of which yonghe city is apparently known for.

we went down the northern coast of taiwan to see the coast on our way to the gold ecological park in jinguashi. the coast is quite magnificent and an imposing defensive predicament for any attacking force (i'm looking at you china!). a small force can execute holding actions in the mountains until reinforcements arrive, but i digress.

we also visited the night market in keelung where i ate and sampled a lot of weird food that i had no idea what it was. we also visited another night market but i don't think it was a night market because we were all up in there around noon (updated: actually, it was jioufen).

we also visited a fish market that was pretty neat. there's a row of restaurants adjacent to the fish market that has solicitors out front trying to get you to patronize their establishment. they're rather persistent in an annoying way.

i'm working on getting pictures uploaded... my upload rate is slow over the hspda connection that i have. tomorrow, we're supposed to be going to danshui.

here

i survived the 20+ hour flight. it helps when you break it into two halves and it becomes more manageable. i didn't have a watch on me so i lived in a realm outside of time and space for a while. fading in and out of consciousness and getting fed every x hours. that sony portable dvd player that i picked up on a whim the day before i flew out was a godsend. so far i watched the new futurama movie, and the british office seasons 1 and some of 2. anyway, i got to go up to the observatory deck in the taipei 101 building. the lower level is a shopping mall that is nearly unrivaled in the high-endedness that they are offering. and the elevator gets you 90 stories up and down within 32 seconds.

itinerary

• SUNDAY (12/9) 9:55PM @ JFK TO TPE @ 6:30AM TUESDAY
• MONDAY (12/17) 10:00AM @ TPE TO HKG @ 11:45AM MONDAY
• SUNDAY (12/23) 1:35PM @ HKG TO TPE @ 3:10PM SUNDAY
• SUNDAY (12/23) 4:25PM @ TPE TO JFK @ 8:30PM SUNDAY