Presale tix at the Teahouse for $10! [ more info ]

Sweet. I think I discovered their "Dim Sum Girl" through Will. I can't find an original Dim Sum Girl video by the Notorious MSG; instead, here is a hilarious lip-synch done by some sisters in Hong Kong that had me roflmao for realz:

Had a good day at work, created my own camera bike mount (pics to come), had dinner with the parents, rode 15 miles with a friend, cooled off afterwards with her and her pug (more pics to come).

I felt really good after the 15 miles, but apparently my legs turned to rubber. Peep the video of what happened when we were riding home after the ride. Please excuse my deafening laugh (careful with the audio), I think I must have been in shock. OR maybe I just sound the dorky in real life and don't realize it ...

So every once in awhile I'll get on my bike and ride around and enjoy the sunshine while I run some errands at nearby locations.

I am thankful for the presence of REAL bike racks at Target! And of course for the fact that they sell toilet paper ...

I borrowed the handicapped parking marker at Unnamed Location 1:

I used the shopping cart corral thingy at Unnamed Location 2:

I think this was some sort of "no parking" sign at Unnamed Location 3:

Funny graffiti along the way:

And I'm so proud of myself! I didn't use a single plastic bag yesterday! I just put my goods straight into my backpack. This of course still gives the illusion of shoplifting, so I am thinking how to overcome this.

Jumpin' off swings,

Jumpin' off planes,

And jumpin' on bridges.

My legs sure were sore that weekend. :)

Peep the skydive pics, and the skydive vid, remixed by yours truly, and lemme know what you think. :)

Eda, Yusuke, Violeta and I (and little Sophie too!) went to check out Fotofest 2008 for one day, hoping to catch photography during the Cultural Revolution in China. Instead, it was a lecture on the history of Chinese photography in general, so we started meandering about the museum, and revisited the light tunnel, where I was almost exactly one year ago with Chi-Wei:

"Gimme!"

It was my first time meeting Sophie. Very cool. :)

Last weekend, Tree Frog invited us up to his family's ranch house in a little town between Houston and Austin. For a city girl like me, I was a bit apprehensive since I mean, c'mon, how do you live with ZERO internet?! :)

Well, I am proud to say that not only did I survive without internet, but I even had offline, real-life fun! :) The crisp air was refreshing. We were surrounded by green grass, blue sky, and clear water. The puppies that came along seemed to enjoy the large expanse of roamable land. I learned to ride a 4-wheeler with manual shift (I can't drive a manual car to save my life). I rode a tractor lawn mower. We ate Tree Frog's mom's freshly homemade brownies. We rode in the back of a pickup truck. We jumped around on bales of hay. We slept in tents with only thin layers of sleeping bag separating our bodies from the ground (and then there was the tent that had not one, but two Aerobeds? Heehee!). I'd forgotten what it felt like to not HAVE to be anywhere, and to kinda just do ... nothing in particular, except focus on chillin'. :)

 

Thanks to those who came out (especially those that battled severe disorientation in the dark to come join us)! Enjoy the pics. Lots of epic memories in this one. :)

... More like, "Wonderful Weekend". That's just the song I'm humming in my head at the moment while writing this here post.

Man, what a weekend! Played cards, ate at two restaurants I'd never been to before, got a deep tissue massage (by a man with strong hands and an exotic accent to boot, heh heh heh), watched Booty Call for the first time (LOVED IT), and shot fun pics at the "Seven Wonders" in the Houston theater district.

My legs are sore from running back and forth to set the timer on the camera and jumping as high as I could for multiple mid-air photo attempts. :)

[ more photos ]

The Anti-Valentine's gathering was a hit for the most part.

You know, I think I've only had ONE Valentine's Day date ever. As in, an actual outing ON February 14th. Here's how it went down:

It was a fine day back in the stone ages, er, I mean, college. A handsome younger lad that had started hanging out with our group of friends, I'll call him "J", had asked me out for Valentine's Day dinner. At 8:00am (!!!) he showed up at my dorm room door, with a stack of envelopes, and a single rose. Each envelope was labelled "9:00am", "10:00am", "11:00am", and so forth, for the whole day up until midnight. I was instructed to open them on the hour, each hour. Not wanting to ruin any surprises for myself, I did exactly as told. Romantic idea, no?

Well, 'twas not to be. The notes contained in the envelopes started off cute, slightly sweet, as would be fitting for our level of acquaintance. But then they started to become extremely random in nature: the one that still sticks in my head to this day is the note that read:

"Don't pick your nose too much,
it will cause nosebleeds."

This is a re-enactment of the accompanying illustration. I exaggerate not.

Dinner was lovely, with normal conversation. Only upon finishing did I realize that ALL OF OUR MUTUAL GUY FRIENDS, the losers (yeah PH, AL, JW, I'm talkin' to you guys), had been sitting there, a few tables over, spying on us the entire evening. Uh, I guess it was a good thing I hadn't felt the strong urge to jump J's bones in public? Any semblance of a date ended there as the whole gang headed to Einstein's and played video games. Which WAS pretty fun.

Anyway, fast forward to last night:

Thanks go out to Jon for picking a place with NO vegetarian choices except for bread, coleslaw, and french fries. :) Light flirting with the waiter had him asking me to come back Sunday where he would toast the bread in a special way, just for me ...

More light flirting again at Starbucks; I asked for the opposite of the fat free "skinny latte", and the cashier came up with the fattiest combination possible, labelling it as "Special Drank". Hee hee!

A happy group of Anti-Valentine-ians, camping outside Starbucks singing various Christmas carols and cartoon theme songs together. We definitely could have been mistaken for a bunch of drunks. :)

• Locations I was at: 4
• Distance Driven: 102 mi / 164 km / ~2.5 hrs
• Shoes destroyed: 1
• Pairs of shoes that happened to be in car so I could continue to get my dance on: 1
• Pictures taken: 254
• Drinks imbibed: 0
• Warm light 2650K-temp CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs) purchased: 4

Seriously - finding warm light CFLs (apparently anything below 2700K is considered "warm") has rocked my world. Environmentally friendly, economical, AND feels like warm incandescent lighting. AND ON SALE TOO ($3 ea, rather than $6+ elsewhere). [Insert exhale of contentedness] ... my living room finally feels warm at night. Suh-weeeet.

(I don't get why warm CFLs are anything BELOW 2700K to be considered warm ... shouldn't it be, the higher the temp, the warmer the feel?)

I need to stop scheduling so much in one day. I'm gettin' too old for this. ;)

Here's a pic of us girls surrounding Jon to make him feel special. I think the special treatment is putting him on the verge of passing out there. I promise it isn't because I passed gas. :)

That first post of 2008 was pretty drab. Thought I'd toss in the first pics of 2008. Here we are on a rooftop in downtown Austin:

A friend told me about high-dynamic range imaging (I haven't done any reading on it yet), but here are my preliminary experiments:

Ringin' in 2008 with both new and old (circa 1989!) friends in an amazing way.

I got a good start to the holiday season this weekend. As usual, click through for the complete set of pics and the hopefully witty comments.

Delicious-looking hotpot! I did not partake, but enjoyed a most excellent vegetarian pasta dish.

Decorating trees in the middle of the night on the side of 360. :)

In addition to making lots of new friends, I met up with Masako, whom I hadn't seen for at least five years!

Austin downtown on Congress at sunset, festively decorated for the holiday season.

Well, I loved trick or treating as a kid. I just recently saw Hallowe'en, the old movie, at Master Pancake Theater in Austin, which had me twitching with fear between laughing my head off. Yeah, if *that* freaks me out, then there's no way I'm will be able to stomach other more recent stuff. My most recent fond memory of watching a scary movie is with Fri, in the middle of the afternoon, sun pouring in, huddled together in Ed's bed, watching a Korean or Japanese version of The Ring ... and both of us still shivering with fear. Hahaha, we are so weak. :)

A dog dressed up as a mummy.

The people at the Scion Fright Fest were really getting into it.

Close-up of the hand and feet on the grill. I'm glad I'm a vegetarian ...

Hahahahahah. Nice.

My Corolla dressed up as a Matrix.

Me at my best.

So J.Ma and I headed out to Austin for a brief jaunt.

Note to self: never change drivers at Columbus because that is where you are supposed to get on the 71 from I-10. I is moran. Well, on the upside we discovered the cities(?) of "Swiss Alp" (yes, just one "alp") and "Schulenberg"(sp?).

Highlights (click through for the full set o' pics):

Me jumping for joy because we went to the WRONG PLACE for the Maker Faire!

Finally finding the Maker Faire, we found a van decorated entirely with ... cameras! Oh, and these convex mirrors.

We went to watch the Master Pancake Theater. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was showing at the same time. I got a pic with the best-dressed couple!

What is UP with all the pinkness! Notice that the number of ladies' port-o-potties WAY outnumbers the men's.

I met cute doggies ...

... and Ashley's kid for the first time. He let me hug him! Aww!

Much gratitude to the 2 strangers who pulled over and helped me put on my spare tire. I clearly did not possess the muscle (nor sheer body weight) to even make the screws budge.

Grr. Theoretically knowing how to change a flat isn't enough sometimes ...

I've finally found an internet cafe where I can relieve myself of my internet drought.

Let's see if I can do a brief recap of my days so far here ...

Day 1: arrived 5:30am. Performed a few karaoke songs at Grandpa's house as soon as we got there courtesy of Uncle 2's portable karaoke harddrive enclosure loaded with Chinese MVs. Forced myself to stay up until 10pm to get over jet lag quickly.

Day 2: travelled from Grandpa's (northern TW) to Grandma's (southern TW) via regular train (5 hrs). Had stinky tofu hotpot as soon as I got there. Booyah!

Day 3: more stinky tofu. Booyahhh!!!

Day 4: .. can't remember

Day 5: rode around on a bike and probably got heat stroke. Felt kinda sick.

Day 6: karaoke'd from 10a - 5:30p. NONSTOP. 200kuai a person, unlimited nonalcoholic beverages. My grandma even joined us for our karaoke madness. Holy crap. I won't be able to karaoke again for months, hahahahaha. Saw Die Hard 4 with cousin and friends. Awesome.

Day 7: acupunctured self. Felt somewhat better. Howard arrives. More stinky tofu hotpot. Felt lots better. :)

Day ZERO of travelling was already challenging. Flight from Houston to Los Angeles was delayed for 3 hours, causing us to miss our flight to Taiwan and wait at LAX for 7.5 hours.

And what a great 7.5 hours it turned out to be. Min and Peter brought Connor up to see us, and Lily Jr. came out bringing REAL MCDEAL Chinese food. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

I'm currently hanging out with Grandpa and relatives here. The dynamics are interesting, as we have my very young cousins all the way up to my grandpa who is 90 this year.

There are computers for every member of my uncle's family right down to the youngest:

We went shopping because although I brought my DSLR, I managed to forget ALL my memory cards (me = moron). We also browsed the 10 Yuan store ($10 NT = $0.33 USD).

Oh, and I was singing karaoke as soon as we got back to my grandpa's. My 2nd uncle and aunt are serious about their karaoke - it's an external HD enclosure built for just this purpose that they carry around with them everywhere. OMG OMG OMG, hahahah!

When I started my day, I had ten things on my to-do list. By the end of the day, I had proudly finished these first ten things, but ... in the process of finalizing things, another ten items have been added, to be finished within the next 7.5 hours. Whee.

I'm glad I had time to grab lunch with Esther. It was so good to see her. She laughed as she tried to navigate through my to-do list: "It's a jungle!" Compared to her careful handwriting and organized note-taking, yes, my wayward chickenscratch is indeed something to wade through. At least it's organized to me. :)

See you in oh, 31 hours or so. :)

The bro has left the mom and myself back at the studio while he's taken the dad out posing as his "intern" for a half hour or so, and wasn't able to take all of us. Thought I'd take the opportunity to post a few pics from the past few days:

I broke Crystal's camera and left Howard and Crystal to fix it. :P

Oh, they're back... I think we're about to head out... check the gallery for more pics!

Running across a bridge @ Toledo's Botanical Gardens: Mom's shoe got stuck, but what was hilarious was how she stopped and said, "Caroline, I know you want to take a picture of this!"

North of Detroit, Michigan, at the tip of Lake Huron.

Crossing over into Windsor, Ontario: Imitating Rose's imitation of inanimate objects.

On a hill @ Lake Erie: That's meeeeeeeeeeeee!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh (with random kid with afro)

Crunch-time at the studio before the newscast.

Howard demonstrates proper mic-holding technique to Dad before taking him out as his "intern" to some pre-game interviews. Yes, that is a stuffed beaver he's using as a mock microphone.

It's good to see extended family (we didn't get to see all of them, but I am grateful for the ones we could see). Four generations present here:

Proud grandparents:

First ever in-car diaper change (and fastest too!):

Wii sillyness!

*yawn* Off to the bride's house to get my makeup and hair done:

Video of me giving the groom a hard time (a Chinese custom):

My fave catch of the day:

Wedding paparazzi. The ringbearer (above) and the flower girl were excessively cute:

The newlyweds and me (like the color of my dress? hehe):

Beware the fake eyelashes that almost touch my eyebrows:

In the tunnel connecting the two buildings of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

After that last one where I stepped off the beaten path and into the warp zone, I got yelled at by security. Just can't take me anywhere! :)

We checked out the Masterpieces of French Painting 1800-1920 exhibit (the only American venue for this exhibit). I didn't think I would be cultured enough to enjoy it, but I really got into it. :) They have some of the images online, but there were many, many more there on display, and the accompanying audio gave a little more in-depth information about some of the paintings, such as how Van Gogh painted Cypresses whilst staying at a mental institute, and that he'd tried to commit suicide by eating his own paint, and thus was not allowed to paint for awhile. My fave was Joan of Arc, striking a deep chord of sadness within me. My least faves: some Modigliani pieces near the end of the exhibit (closer to the 1920s period) where the women looked distorted, one of them to the point of looking like she had a goiter growing on her neck ... ahem yes, anyways! Overall, it blew my mind to see the paintings up close and see the individual brush strokes of color that when viewed from afar came together as a coherent, realistic image. Man, if only I'd seen an exhibit like this during my art history class. I would have enjoyed that class a WHOLE lot more!

Oh, then I made Chi-Wei pose under this sign:

I wonder if the tiny chairs and tiny tables lend to the enjoyment of street food somehow? Maybe just brings you closer to the action?

Anyway, we're leaving in a couple hours. I will miss my relatives, my friends, the plentiful engrish, the ridiculous media, and most of all, the stinky tofu. (Above: me and my dad chowing down on the yummiest stinky tofu EVER in Kaohsiung. It was so nice and stinky, the sauce was pungent and spicy, and they piled on the marinated veggies. All for less than a buck apiece for each heaping serving. DUDE!!)

Scene: at an herbal shop here in Taiwan, telling the shop owner what herbs I wanted to make a formula for a friend. I was there with Annie, who translated for me the herbal shop owner's Taiwanese. (I only know Mandarin Chinese.)

Herbal Shop Owner (HSO) (looking over the list of herbs): OK. Please write down your name and number here for accounting purposes.
Me (a little hesitant): Uh, OK.
HSO (looking me over): I have a nephew who lives in Tennessee who is looking for a wife. You're speaking English with your friend here ... you're from the States, right? How old are you?
Me (shocked and unable to respond properly): Err ... I'm 28 ... and um ... well, I live in Texas, and Tennessee is rather far from Texas, sir.
HSO: But it's in the United States, and that's where he is.
Me: Well, the United States is pretty big, sir - see, if this is the U.S. (drawing a big circle in the air), then Tennessee is here, and Texas is here.
HSO: Ah ... so it's like mainland China?
Me: Yes, sort of like that, yes sir.
HSO: Well, he's looking for a girl who's tall and skinny like you.
Me: Uh, well, uh, haha, well sir, I know I'm kinda skinny, but I'm definitely not tall.
HSO: Sure you are! You're taller than I am! (He steps around the counter to stand beside me, and indeed I am taller than him by like 1 cm.) My nephew is like 10 cm taller than me. And he's a [insert profession here, I can't remember what it was]. He is having a hard time finding a girlfriend over there.
Me (just trying to think of things to say ... and just wanting my herbs so I can get out of here!): Oh well sir, um, I'm glad you think I'm worthy. (What the hell was I thinking?!)
HSO: You guys would be great together. I can give you his contact information, and you two can be friends.
Me: Oh, no thank you sir, that's okay. Well, thanks for the herbs (FINALLY!!), bye!
HSO (as we're literally running out the door, shouting after us): Hey!! He makes 400,000 a month!!!

Me (in English): Girl, I'm feeling weak. Can I get a warm drink somewhere?
Alex (also in English): Sure, um, hmm, they'll have 'em at a 7-11. But, I don't know where they are around here ...
Me (in Chinese to some random people): Excuse me, do you know if there's a 7-11 around here somewhere? (The key part of the blooper here is that I said "7-11" in Chinese as well, like pronouncing the individual numbers, "qi1 shi2 yi1")
Random people (in Chinese): What?
Me (louder, trying to pronounce more clearly, in Chinese): Is there a 7-11 around here? A 7-11? (How are they not understanding such simple Chinese?! My Chinese isn't THAT bad!!)
Random people (with totally confused looks on their faces): Hunh?
Alex (intervening): Oh, she means a Seven-Eleven (pronouncing 7-11 in English).
Random people: OHHHHHHH there's one right over there.

=====

Alex: They call them just Seven-Elevens here, or people even just call them "Seven"s. For example, "Where's the Seven?"
Me (stunned): OK. I feel stupid. There I was almost shouting "7-11" at them in Chinese like they were retards.

[ Chinese website (cuter) ] [ N. American website ]

=====

Onto my mission for today - I want to get my stuff all moved over to my uncle's place, somewhat slightly closer to the "action". My goal is to get there without fainting. Feeling much better though. Onwards with my strict Super Supau diet!