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 ...

Apologies to Cindy for the violation of the cuteness of her stuffed bears when we went over to her place the other night.

Hahah okay fine, I'm not THAT sorry. :) Click through for the more "risqué" pics. Disclaimer: by clicking through, you certify that you are over 18. May not be work safe ...

Oh, and I just had to pose with Crystal's cool new camera. It's PINK!

Click through to lastminute.com and click on the link in the upper right-hand corner where it says, "The boss is watching - look busy". Pure evil genius!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

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. :)

Merhaba everyone!
my apologies for not getting in touch sooner...man this place is crazy! i tried writing an email earlýer but ýt was erased and ý was gettýng frustrated wýth thýs freakýn turkýsh keyboard. 

I'm confused by how there are intermittent "i"s throughout the e-mail, though they have mostly been replaced by "ý"s (I would imagine because of the keyboard layout).

I tried looking up the Turkish keyboard layout and couldn't really find much - there's this on the Microsoft website - must use IE to view - looked at both the Turkish F and Turkish Q layouts. Still confused as to why the "ý"s kept showing up.

The rest of the e-mail is funny to read, just because it's like going through someone's poorly typed message and your eyes are coping with the massive bludgeoning of the language. (You know it's hard to read something that has tiepose evvry uther werd or was typed in l337-ShOrThAnD-TeEn-ChAt-SpEakzZz? Sorta like that.)

Love ya, E. :)

2 projects this time. One full-on slideshow, and one mini slideshow in karaoke "MV" style (in Taiwan, they call music videos "MVs"). (Well, they didn't ask for it, but I thought it would be SO cool to do it that way. Besides, both the bride and groom and karaoke fanatics.)

Here are a few excerpts from the wedding slideshow:

Splash screen for the karaoke MV:

Snippet of the karaoke MV:

The groom's mods to the lyrics were actually pretty sweet. The original song is called "Man Slave". If you watch the original MV, it looks as though Nokia perhaps played a big part in financing the video. Ah, blatant product placement. [ original MV @ YouTube ]

Some stats regarding the slideshow and beyond

Programs used: Adobe Premiere 6.5, Windows Movie Maker, Sonic MyDVD 4.5 (authoring)

Songs used:
1. Bride's section: 一起開始的旅程 (Our Journey Together) by S.H.E [ YouTube ]
2. Groom's section: custom mix of Good Times by Chic and Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang [ mp3 download ] (they have the same bassline - never noticed / knew until I watched this)
3. Friends' section: Everything by Michael Bublé [ YouTube ]
4. Couple's section: When God Made You by Newsong [ sing along @ YouTube ]

Karaoke-making tutorial was provided here. I used Premiere 6.5 but only used Premiere's native titler, as mine did not seem to come with TitleDeko. It's simple enough but tedious. I wonder how the professional [English] karaoke bars get their karaoke songs ... ?

Challenges: working with Chinese input in Premiere and MyDVD; understanding the meaning of the Chinese song for the bride's section to better match photos with lyrics; audio editing / mixing right within Premiere to make songs shorter / longer.

All-nighters pulled: one

Warm Fuzzies:

The videographer complimented me, asked me for a copy to include in his final wedding video, and said that I'd saved the couple around $1000, since that's how much he charges for a slideshow like this one! Wow. Yay! 

It seemed to be a crowd-pleaser, and the parents of the bride thanked me profusely.

Thanks to the bride and groom for trusting my judgement. They never saw the final product until their big day! :)

Bridesmaids coordination: Thanks to a post at echeng.com, I decided to try Basecamp. It was probably a little too technodweeby at first, but everyone adapted quickly. I thought the to-do lists were really helpful, I liked the centralized messaging with e-mail notifications and personalized avatars beside comments, and the whiteboards were great brainstorming centers. After the wedding, I added the bride so she could see everything that went on behind the scenes for her wedding and for her bacheloretty party. :)

Number of pictures I took at the wedding: ZERO. Now THAT'S a new record!!!!!