虎山

Monday after work, after everyone bailed on us, a friend and I hiked up 虎山 in the pre-typhoon weather. Despite the dark clouds and occasional rains, we still went up to see the view of Taipei and the 101 building. It took about 30 minutes to hike midway to a scenic overlook, and maybe another 20 minutes up to the 9-5 peak, the tallest in the area. We only hiked midway because it was getting dark and we wouldn't be able to make it back down before the sun sets. The overlook was called 復興園, and it had an unobstructed view of 101. In the distant, we saw rain clouds moving across the city and covering up the faded sunset. As we were packing up, it started pouring, and the two of us only had my tiny umbrella barely enough for one person. We want to hike up to 9-5 peak some other day when the weather is nicer and get a better view of Taipei. One thing I love about Taiwan is that although I live in a major city like Taipei, it is so convenient and close for me to take a hike or do something outdoorsy. 

I really wish I met the new friends I made this weekend earlier in the program. The past few days have been much more exciting than the first four weeks of my internship. I only have three more weeks left here in Taiwan, so I gotta make the most out of it. 

Dark rain clouds hovering across Taipei.

Family Day

I had a really good time last night at Luxy clubbing with a bunch of people I just met. One of my favorite things about TTT is the opportunity to make new friends. It's harder to meet new people at school when everyone is already in tight-knit groups and hang out with the same people. I wish the freshman year introductions with strangers could be a norm throughout all of college. But anyways, I met a lot of cool people last night, some from TTT and others just friends of friends. It's great to start conversations with people you've just met and discover the differences and similarities you guys share. Finding out more about each other is definitely one of the most interesting parts about meeting new people, and it's a great feeling to stay in touch with them afterwards.

This morning I left my house at 9:00 to go to 三峽 with my grandparents, two uncles and aunt. I kind of felt bad for always going out with friends when I'm back in Taipei, so it was nice to spend a whole day with them. We went to 三峽 to visit the most famous temple in Taiwan, with more than 80 years of planning and construction. Sadly, I don't remember the name of the temple, but it had really detailed stone and wood carvings, the most detailed and culturally-infused in all Taiwan and China. Afterwards, we walked down 老街 in the scorching heat and saw the Japanese-styled and early-Taiwanese-styled houses. We got lunch at a famous 甕仔雞 restaurant. There was so much food we had to pack almost every dish back home. Next, we drove to 大溪 to visit Chiang Kai-Shek's summer vacation house and look at the view across some river. The view wasn't really breathtaking, but it was nice walking through the park and the pre-rain breeze felt comfortable. My uncle then drove to 石門水庫, but the dam wasn't releasing water and we didn't see the fancy water show. I asked him to let me drive, since I was getting bored sitting in the car; I ended up driving the rest of the night. We walked across the dam and the view from up top was pretty amazing. Beautiful skies, clear water below it, and mountains in the background. For a pit stop, we took a break at a coffee shop and had a mid-afternoon snack. Right after we just had our afternoon tea, we headed to Carrefour for dinner. I wasn't hungry at all, in fact, I was still pretty full. So at Carrefour I ate at a sushi place where you take plates off a conveyor belt, and they count how many plates you ate. I only ate four plates and I was stuffed. For the rest of the night, we shopped at Carrefour and another place similar to Carrefour. Ended up getting home at 10:00. It was an exhausting day, but had a great time hanging out with the family.

So my uncle said I can drive his car to go out and explore with friends. I don't have an international license, but the police doesn't do random checks during the day time. So maybe I'll take a day off this week and plan something. Before that, Bryan and I have to finish planning our trip to Kenting next weekend. It's definitely happening, and I'm SO excited!

Creme brulee from the coffee shop!

Fried platter.

Really needed coffee today.

Windsurfing

Today I tried windsurfing for the first time. It's a lot of fun, but also very tiring. It took us about 45 minutes just to assemble the sail, tie the appropriate knots, and get all the equipment ready. Then the grad student who has windsurfed before demonstrated to us while me and another grad student went out on kayaks. It didn't look so hard watching someone else windsurf, but it was really hard when I tried at first. There's an extra rudder added to the board so it was much steadier than a regular surf board. The sail rests on top of the water, and I had to pull on a string to lift the sail up. Once it's up, I had to maintain my balance and hold on the the sail, without being blown off the board. When a wind came and hit the sail, the sail either gets pushed away from me or towards me, and the pressure was really strong. I fell a lot just trying to get the sail up, and once it was up, I couldn't keep my balance for too long. After many attempts, I finally got a few successful runs. The direction of my sail was just right and the wind blew me forward. I was going so fast I saw the water splitting apart at the tip of the board. Felt so accomplished. Eventually I got the hang of it, but still couldn't figure out how to adjust the sail to control the board's direction. I'm going to windsurf again tomorrow afternoon, so maybe I can work on that.

Taken with my phone. Me trying hard to maintain my balance without the rudder.

Cliff Diving

Yesterday I met a pretty athletic grad student from the lab next door and he invited me to go 跳海, cliff diving, with him and his friends this morning. We left NTOU at 6 am and rode motorcycles to a rocky area in 潮境. First we had to climb down from the road area and trek through rocky areas to get to the edge near the water. The rocks weren't that high, and the cliff wasn't very tall either, probably 1 or 2 stories. But we were at the edge of the shoreline and there were big waves coming in from the sea. There was a stump piled up at the highest point, and we jumped off from there into the ocean. The water was deep enough and actually pretty clear. One of the jumps I tried head first, after seeing someone else jump first. Pretty scary. While swimming in the ocean, I saw a school of fish swimming and crabs crawling through the reefs. The grad student and I swam towards a rock about 50 meters away and looked at the sea creatures along the way. Then we decided to attempt a swim towards a building-like structure in the middle of the ocean further away. It didn't look that far from the cliff, but when we were actually in the water swimming, we realized how far it was. Halfway through our swim, we looked at each other, and decided to swim back. The waves got bigger and bigger the further out we swam and it also got windier. Better to swim back before it got too dangerous.

Now I'm so exhausted from swimming in the ocean. Takes a lot of effort and energy to swim in open water.

Stump we jumped off of. 

The structure we tried swimming towards. It's a tough journey. 

Sunset

As I was leaving work today to eat, I saw the sunset through the window and it was beautiful. Fortunately I had my camera with me and took a few shots.

I only have 4 more weekends left in Taiwan and I feel like I haven't done enough yet. I was talking with another TTT intern earlier today, and we both felt like we need to plan more trips and more events in the last four weeks in Taiwan. Right now, we're planning a small-scale trip to Peng Hu in two weeks. I also plan on traveling back to Taipei more often on a week night because there's more stuff to do there. Got to make the most of this summer in Taiwan.

Sunset from the window of my work building.

和平島

Last time I went to 和平島 with my uncle, my Nikon ran out of battery after a few shots. This time around, my camera was fully charged and the island wasn't as hot. Went there on my way back to NTOU from Taipei with Jennifer and Tammy. The rock formations there were very cool, shaped by the waves constantly crashing into them. The flat rocks where we walked on had very orderly perpendicular cracks through them - like a tofu. 和平島 offered very unique landscape scenes to photograph, with the yellow rocks, rocks by the sea, waves, mountains and clouds in the sky. Today's weather was also very unpredictable. It was sunny for the whole day, but there were periodic drizzles. The dark clouds were further away, but the wind was so strong that it brought the rain over to the sunny areas. I was also able to capture the sunset and the reflection off the water. One of the downside of 和平島 was the sea cockroaches crawling on the rocks. Nasty.

Shoreline with Keelung Island in the background. 

Felt great dipping my feet in the water. 

One of the many rainbows I saw today. 

Beautiful. 

Lots of people doing different activities on the island. 

Tofu-shaped rocks.

Caught the sunset. 

Clubbing and 烏來

Clubbing last night at Room 18 was really good. Met a lot of fellow TTT interns and counselors and had a great time with everyone there. I would say clubs in Taiwan are better than clubs in the U.S. The music and DJ were pretty good; it was actually a white person DJing. Everything in Room 18 looked very clean and neat, and the dance floor was big enough for everyone there. At one point, cops came in and checked everyone's ID and it took about half hour until they were done making sure everyone was at least 18 years old. Last night was the longest I've ever partied. We arrived at Room 18 at 10:30 and stayed until it closed at 4:30. By the time we left the club the sky was just beginning to get brighter. We had to take a cab because the MRT and buses don't run that early, and then I walked the rest of the way and got home at 5:30 in the morning.

I went to sleep at 6:00, and woke up at 9:30 to go to 烏來 with Jonathan. It was awful at first, because I was super tired from just three and half hours of sleep. At 烏來 we got lunch at a random restaurant and tried finding the waterfalls there, but failed. Ended up at a shoreline and took some photos there. The place is actually pretty small and there's not much to do there. Most people go there for hot springs, so there wasn't much left for us to do since we didn't want to go to hot springs. On the way back, we took the bus directly from 烏來 to Taipei Station, and I had a really satisfying nap on the hour-long bus ride. 

Pretty view from the shoreline. 

Really comfortable dipping my feet in the cold water.

Bridges were decorated with aboriginal people's designs.

Suspension bridge. 

Keelung Bar

Went out to the city area in Keelung today with Jennifer. We got some food for our stomach before getting beer at 7-11 and hitting up a bar in the area. We didn't know any drink names in Chinese, so we asked the bartender to recommend us something and then ordered something that sounded good. Ended up with Kahlua and a random grapefruit drink that didn't have any taste of alcohol in it at all. Oh wells... Tonight makes me kind of miss college life. I can't wait till tomorrow when I go clubbing in Taipei. Gonna be out till like 4 or 5 in the morning.

I need to take advantage of Taiwan in the few weeks I have left here.

Mango-flavored beer. Sweet taste, and then a weird bitter beer after taste. Not good.

Power hour for 20 minutes until we ran out. 

Music Pub.

Kahlua.

Kahlua and some grapefruit drink.

Random Observations

I've been living in Taiwan for a month now and I made some random observations:

• Jeremy Lin is huge in Taiwan. People here talk about him all the time. Bookstores sell books about him and have a big poster of him with some linsanity-related phrases such as 'Linpossible' or 'The Lincredible Journey.' There are NYK calendars, with Jeremy Lin as the center person. I saw a kid with a motorcycle helmet with 'New York' and '17' on it. So many people wear his basketball jersey. 
• Guys in Taiwan are whipped. Went out to dinner with the grad students from my lab, and almost all of them held their girlfriends' purses. It's ridiculous.
• People here have really high tolerances for heat. I would be dripping sweat and other people are just beginning to sweat a tiny bit. 
• People aren't scared of cops. Beer on the streets and at the beach. Driving down a one-way street is fine as long as there's no cops. 
• Non-Americans are very interested in American lifestyle/culture. Everyone I met who has never been to the U.S. asks me a bunch of question about what it's like living there. They ask me if college/high school parties actually do exist like depicted in movies, do Asians get bullied, what college is like, driving age, etc...
• A lot of Taiwanese people actually know English. They may not be fluent, but they can get their point across. This guy at 西門町 said 'Come inside,' 'Ice,' 'Good,' to my friends and me trying to get us to eat at his restaurant. This other lady at a tea-leaf place was able to explain how the machines work in fluent English. I was surprised she could speak English considering the tea place was so small.
• Short shorts are okay for guys. Some guys wear shorts as short as girl gym shorts to go jogging or go to the gym. Unacceptable.

That's it for now. Can't think of anything else at the moment. 

Fu Long Beach

One of the best days so far this summer. Bus D planned a trip to Fu Long Beach for the Rock Music Festival and to just hang out at the beach. We met up at Taipei Station and took the hour-and-half train to Fu Long. It took forever. Some of us ended up sitting on the floor of the train because no one was getting off. First thing we got to Fu Long Station was to get Fu Long 便當. After eating our meal in the scorching heat, we went to a 7-11 and bought 15 cans of beer and drank it on the way to the beach. It's so chill in Taiwan; no one cared if we showed beer and drank it in public. Everyone else was doing the same thing too. At the beach, we rented a beach umbrella and all hid under the shade because the parts of the sand that aren't in the shade were burning hot. A few of us went right into the water to cool down. The beach was actually really nice and the sand was really smooth - no broken seashells or disgusting seaweeds. And the water was pretty warm too so it wasn't cold staying in it for a long time. We pretty much stayed in the water all afternoon, with the exception of running back to the umbrella to get more beer. We took the beer cans into the water and drank it there. This only happens in Taiwan. Eventually, almost everyone joined us in the water and we tried flipping people, stacking people into a tower, building pyramids and doing random stuff. At around 4 pm we walked over to the music festival to check it out, but we didn't understand what the bands were singing and it wasn't that much fun. However, TTV, a news channel, asked us to say the Fu Long Festival is awesome to the camera, recorded us and it aired on the evening news. My grandma saw it and told me about it. I've been on TV in Taiwan! Wooh! We took a final dip in the water before changing and heading back to Taipei to eat dinner.

At Taipei we ate at an all-you-can-eat BBQ place. Got so many plates of meat and ate all of it. It was such a satisfying dinner after a whole day in the sun. We left the restaurant at 11:30 and now I'm still so bloated.

Today at the beach and hanging out with people from Bus D, and new friends, was one of the most exciting days yet this summer.

The photos aren't that high quality because they were taken from my phone. Didn't want to risk bringing my D40 to the beach.

Fu Long Beach.

Beach umbrellas for rent.

Just a small portion of our stash...

Music Festival.

Bridge leading into the beach area.

士林夜市

Had a super chill day at work today; half-day I should say. I went to the gym as usual, played basketball with two other interns and a few professors, and then swam. I don't feel so bad because no one from my lab went to work today.

I met up with Jason, Jennifer and Tammy at 士林夜市 and feasted there, since I didn't eat breakfast nor lunch. We were so thankful for the underground food court/night market because of the AC. We got 大腸包小腸, 蝦仁煎, stinky tofu, mango and chocolate/pudding ice, fried milk balls, and 冬瓜青. It was a very satisfying and filling meal. In the non-food section of the night market, we played a game where we bounced ping pong balls into cups. Those cups are so rigged; the ping pong balls kept bouncing out of the cups. Collectively, we earned about 90 points, and we needed 250 points to win a large stuffed animal. However, we still got a prize for participation; one prize for the four of us. We got this gun-looking thing with a boxing glove attached to the end, and when the trigger is pulled the glove punches, except it's super weak.

Afterwards, we took the MRT to 西門町. We walked around for a bit and saw a few street performances. It's hard to see/shop all of 西門町 in such a short time, so we plan on going back next weekend and spend more time there.

I'm so excited for tomorrow. A few other interns and I are going to 貢寮國際海洋音樂祭 (Ho-Hai-Yan Gong Liao Rock Music Festival). It's free music on the beach from a lot of Taiwan's popular bands. It's one of Taiwan's biggest music festivals and luckily this year I have a chance to go!

劍潭 (Jian Tan) MRT Station.

大腸包小腸

Interesting-shaped custard...

This is harder than it looks.

蝦仁煎.

Stinky tofu!

Delicious mango ice.

Chocolate ice with pudding.

Yay for group adventures!

Moleskine

I've been writing in my Moleskine more frequently lately. Or I just make lists when I don't feel like writing full sentences/paragraphs (happens pretty often actually...). Hopefully I can write in my Moleskine more often from now on. I've had it for about a year and a half now, but there's still a lot of empty pages. 

Same Place, Different Times

Created a new link to a mini project blog: Same Place, Different Times

I won't be updating that blog as frequent though, but it's there!

Port of Keelung Exploration

I decided to come back to NTOU earlier today for some exercise and a little bit of exploring. I managed to swim 1500 meters before heading towards the port of Keelung with my camera and tripod. Last weekend when I was there I thought the night view was really pretty, but my camera ran out of battery that day. Today I got to the 廟口 night market a bit early to beat the crowd so I can take photos when the sun sets. I first walked around the night market to see what kind of stores were there and see what I wanted to eat. Got takoyaki, squid, and 冬瓜茶. It was still bright out, so I walked along 愛河 for a bit and took some photos of the sun setting behind the mountains. When it was finally dark out, I walked to the center of the river leading into the Keelung port. There were fancy lights spelling out Keelung and a band was performing at the time. Afterwards, I went to the elevated platform, 和平廣場, and set up my tripod to take a photo of the red Keelung sign in the mountains. My photos today didn't come out as great as I had hoped, and a lot of them turned out to be blurry. I need to brush up my night photography skills. At least I got a few decent shots tonight.

愛河.

Fancy lights spelling Keelung

Performance on the docks.

Highway coming from Taipei.

Port of Keelung

五分埔 and Taipei 101

Today was a pretty exhausting day with a lot of walking. I met up with Jason, his sister, Michael and Wes at 2:00 and shopped at 五分埔. Taiwanese clothing are too decorated with so many different kinds of designs - not my style. This store owner was showing us how one article of clothing can be transformed into three different styles: a tshirt with a scarf-looking thing in the front, a tshirt with a cardigan, a tshirt with a blazer. Why can't they just keep things simple? I didn't get anything from 五分埔, but it was interesting seeing all the different styles they had. We met up with Tammy and Jennifer and went to Rao He night market to get dinner. Got the usual food at night markets: Taiwanese sausage, massive shaved ice with four different flavors, fried food and watermelon juice. Afterwards, we took the MRT to 市政府 in hopes of finding somewhere we can sit and chat. The mall there was crowded with people and we ended up walking around looking at toys. By then, our feet were exhausted and all we wanted to do was sit, but we still walked to Taipei 101 since it was still early in the night. I really liked the interior design of the mall across from Taipei 101. It was very different and had all sorts of cool designs on the ceilings, the walls, and along the escalators. By 10:00, we were all too tired to do anything else and took the MRT home. 

It has been a great weekend hanging out with these people and I look forward to future hangouts in Taipei! 

My attempting at panning...

MRT handle bars are so low.

Cool reflective ball in Taipei 101!

師大夜市

Finished the first week of internship at NTOU today. I spent most of my day today trying to figure out how to work the electronics kit I got, but still couldn't figure it out. It'll keep me busy next week and hopefully I can build something cool with it. 

I left early today to beat the traffic coming into Taipei. Met up with Tammy, Jennifer, Jason, Michael and Wes at 師大 area and walked around the night market there. We decided to eat at a store with air conditioning since it was pretty humid in the streets. Ended up at this 25-year-old 牛肉麵 store; I didn't think it was that special, just alright. Afterwards, we got icy from a street stand. Passion fruit syrup! So delicious. Next, we walked to 45 Pub to chill for a bit. The outside of the bar looked so sketched, with a steep staircase leading up to the second floor, but the inside was actually not that bad. Ordered a pitcher of Passion Fruit Daiquiri for $500 NT and split it among the six of us. Thank you Michael for treating us! We each just had a glass; there wasn't much alcohol in it so we were still all pretty okay, maybe except for Jason... Hung out around the night market area again and eventually made our way back to the MRT stop. Wes, Michael, Jason and I walked around 台北車站 area after the girls left, but all the stores were closed or getting ready to close. 

It was a nice reunion and end-of-week hang out. Looking forward to tomorrow's hang out at 五分埔. 

九份

Just as I was telling my friend that I want to take more photos for this blog, the grad students in my lab took me to 九份 today after work. Speaking of work, I actually got stuff to do today. The professor gave me an electronics kit where I can connect seven different boards to a main board and test communication related technology, such as RFID, LCD screen and bluetooth. I'm still trying to figure out how to download the programming software and get it to work on my computer, but at least its a start.

So at 4:30 three grad students and I left campus and rode motorcycles up to 九份. It's fun riding on the motorcycle and it feels good when a cold breeze comes by. The hills up to 九份 were so steep that the motorcycles were having trouble accelerating. There wasn't really much to do there actually. We walked up and down the main historic street and looked at shops along the way. Stopped by for some cold and yummy 'Oh Yee' (not sure how to say it in Chinese...) and sausage. The grad students knew that I like to take photos, so they took me to spots to see the view of the mountains and the ocean. We also stayed to watch the sunset. It was really pretty.

九份

Oh yee!

View of Keelung and the ocean. 

Pretty pretty.