11Apr/100

Taiwan Twenty Ten

Phew. What a trip.

I'm home from my two week excursion with Dad to Taiwan to take care of some business, have some fun, and generally enjoy being somewhere else. I've been asked how my trip was, and my answer has always been as such: "Tiring, filling, exasperating, fun, but I'm glad to be home."

And so it is all of those.

The trip in fast forward
Leave Austin at 8am on the 25 Mar, arrive in Dallas at 9 and meet up with Dad at Gate D30. Sit around for a bit, and leave for Tokyo Narita at 10:30. 13 hours later, arrive in Tokyo. Sit around for another three hours, then arrive in Taipei Taoyuan at 7:30p, 26 Mar. Picked up by a few of Dad's college friends, and immediately go to a small dumpling restaurant, which was delicious. All a blur.

Fall asleep almost immediately around 11 when we settle in at Dad's friend's house. Awake at 3am due to Dad snoring. This is a theme that carries on most of the trip.

Hop a cab in the morning to Taipei Rail Station for bus trip with Dad and his college class down to Kaohsiung for tour of the town and surrounding countryside. More food. Delicious. Stay the night in a hotel in Kaohsiung, which isn't bad. A few more sightseeing trips. Return trip to Taipei in tour bus takes six hours due to traffic jams on every highway heading towards Taipei. Immediately fall asleep again when we arrived back at house.

Next day, Dad and I took our own little tour around Taipei. Everywhere from Danshui where Dad went to school, to Longshan Temple, to Taipei 101 (where it is now heavily toured by loud, Chinese tour groups that come in the many dozens). Meet up with some other of Dad's friends for dinner. Sleep. Lunch with some of the line dancing folk Dad will be video'ing in a few days time. Many comments on how quiet I am, because I don't understand most of what they say because they speak mostly Mandarin. High Speed Rail trip down to Taichung takes a scant 30 minutes with a few stops (that's fast!). Dinner with Mom's side of family in Taichung at nice hotel restaurant that Mom found last time. More snoring, less sleep.

Walk around Taichung with Dad, including trip to Science Museum. Japanese lunch with Aunt who looks exactly like Mom (though not twins). Trip to wholesale shop to pick up supplies for The Store. Trip to supermarket for some supplies. Dinner at an international German foods restaurant with Uncle, because he thought it was whimsical. Overly loud music at the place, they turn it down for us.

Hang out in Taichung for another 3/4 day before getting ride from Dad's cab-driver friend down to Chingshui. Hang out with Abon for an hour before Grandpa/Grandma/Aunt Pei-hwa arrive at house in Chingshui. I look on in wonder at a house I barely remember on my first trip to Taiwan in 1986. Enjoy a couple days in Chingshui, including very important trip to local graveyard up in the mountains to pay respects and clean up grave sites for family. Grandpa's younger brother, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents. Almost impossible to find way around graveyard - have to walk through other people's gravesites to get to the ones you need. Not a sign of disrespect, just necessary to get around. More hanging out in Chingshui with trips to Dad's elementary school, Alice's pre-school, and local bakery.

Quick trip up to Taipei to film/photograph embarrassing (imo) line dancing. Not my bag of tea, but Dad is getting paid, and they liked my photographs, so I shan't complain about that. Back to Chingshui.

Another day in Chingshui, then off to Taichung, then HSR to Taipei for final night in Taiwan.

Up at 5 to get to Taoyuan airport for 8:55a, 8 Apr, flight to Tokyo Narita. Sit around for five hours upon landing for 6p flight to DFW. Ten hours. Arrive in Dallas at 3:35p 8 Apr. Pass through Customs after an hour. Say bye to Dad, and sit around for two hours for 6:30p flight to Austin. Or not. Flight delayed twice due to First Officer not showing up for work. Two more hours. 8:45p flight and finally land in Austin at 9:40p. Home at 10:30. I've been recovering ever since.

Here are some pictures:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Tagged as: , , , , , No Comments
29Nov/091

Thanksgiving, oh nine.

Where to begin. At the beginning, I guess.

This year's Thanksgiving festivities are one for the record books. For the first time, our parents decided to come down to Austin for dinner and company, rather than the lot of us going up to Dallas. It was also one of the smallest Thanksgiving congregations yet. And my University of Texas football team beat those Sheep-lovers of College Station in the annual game.

Julia requested that I make a green bean casserole, which to be honest, is one of maybe five dishes I can actually make that ends up tasting anything like what it is supposed to, so I obliged, making it a seven bacon affair. You can never have too much bacon, especially when complementing the taste of green beans and fried onions. We also "only" had a 12.5-pound turkey this year, rather than the Chernobyl-churned behemoths that we usually have to get to feed the mob. Oh my, but it was tasty. I believe George Foreman would have called it "mwast." Very good. Come to think of it, we all made our ways home pretty early. Early enough for me to catch the brand spanking new series of QI on Youtube.

Here are the pics from Thanksgiving.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Friday started really early. 9am early at Terri's. Somewhere in the course of the planning, Terri, Joe, Michael and Tommy decided they wanted to go to Enchanted Rock near Fredericksburg. I had never been, so decided to hop along. We got there around 10:30 in the morning and went out on the 4-mile Loop Trail which turned out a lot of walking, some climbing, some cactus, and some really sore feet. And then we decided to go up to the top of Enchanted Rock itself. Note to folks who have not gone there, plan to go there, or are in the process of going there. Do one or the other, or if insistent on doing both, climb the Rock first before the Loop Trail. Having been already pretty tired after the long hike, what looks like a small mound of rock from ground level is actually a really steep hike up. And the complete and utter idiots that we are, we decided to run up part of it thinking the top that we saw was the top, but instead was just one level where the rock evens out - indeed, there were probably three more levels of climbing more to go. I had to stop and rest at each one because my legs were already feeling about the consistency of a bad flan. After finally reaching the top, I collapsed and took a good nap. It's really nice up there! Very quiet, a bit windy, and a bit chilly. Perfect sleeping conditions.

After Enchanted Rock, we stopped in Fredericksburg for some ice cream. It turns out, the town was having a sort of walk-the-shops fete on their Main St. I had myself a Nathan's Hot Dog, which was very, very good.  We walked around a bit before heading back to Austin so that Terri, Joe, and I could head up to Cedar Park to catch the Stars game. It was a very entertaining game, save for one point because the Stars forgot to score.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Saturday, I called Terri and Joe up to go test drive a VW GTI with the DSG transmission. That little bit of science experiment found in the transmission is absolutely sublime. I still think the manual I test drove a couple months ago was a bit faster. Maybe it's the gearing, but the actual shifting from the DSG is so fast, and so smooth. I do very much like it. They didn't have any 4-doors for Terri to poke around in, but it is a pretty nice car.

That's it, really. Too much exciting for one holiday weekend, that's for sure. And the best part, there was no illness begotten from standing out in the cold for some stupid sales, and no crowd-pushing to get that last bit of merchandise. A holiday weekend as it was meant to be had, and all I had to give was the use of my legs.

Tagged as: , , , , 1 Comment

Blogroll

Piffle Archives

About/Contact