1000 year old egg congee

I think the word "yum" will be a re-occurring theme daily while I'm here. For breakfast I had 1000 year old egg with pork congee. I had bought it from 7-11 the other day but did not eat it yet. It's really tasty and again, only $1 and has hit the spot.

While I was heating up the congee in the microwave Ali pointed out an interesting historical fact about the 1000 year old egg (also called century egg). I guess back in the day, it was actually marinated in horse pee. Not really what I was hoping to hear about my breakfast before eating it but Ali assured me that it's no longer prepared that way.

ps - I just grabbed that picture from the internet cause it resembles what I'm eating, but looks much nicer.

Jhong Li

We went to Jhong Li (neighbouring town) for sushi diner tonight! The restaurant was called "I <3 Sushi" and it was sort of a bar-style seating with a conveyor belt bringing plates of sushi around the room. There were many types of sushi and rolls I'd never seen so I mostly ate things that I had never had. They had this tasty salmon nigiri sushi that was slightly grilled, and also this "tube" of nori that was filled with mashed avocado topped with a few of those fat tobiko eggs. Yum! And to top it off, my long lost Taiwanese brother was working there (see pic). hahaha.




Oh yah! and on the way to Jhong Li, right by our house there was a little tinker dog standing happily on the side of the road by a house. It's probably the closest looking dog I've seen compared to Tinker in a long time.

When we arrived back at the house from diner we went out to feed the dogs again. We thought they should be named so we named them: Ciao ciao, Jacob, Bella, and Beef. I didn't get a picture of a cockroach from last night so I started looking around and ended up finding one in a little drainage hole in the floor. I got really close to it and used the flash and it produced a really weird looking pic as you can see. I also saw a huge spider! Reminded me of a spider crab. Well huge is relative. In reality the circumference of it's legs were probably a bit larger than an average coffee mug. The picture here doesn't really do justice because unfortunately my battery was out, and the spider was hiding against the garage door. Enjoy :P

fried fish delivered bento box

There's a 24/7 security guard here at the appartment and if you ask them, they'll order food in for you. We ordered this fried fish bento box (pictured above), which also came with this tasty simple soup-in-a-bag. yum!

cockroaches, bats, and beers!

It's getting quite late and I'm feeling sleepy but I wanted to post a bit about my day today :)

Johan and I spent a good 8 hours in the coffee shop today discussing business stuff. It's nicely air conditioned and the food there is not too expensive so it was our "base" for the day.


Before leaving to come home around 8:30pm we went to the 7-11 in the station and bought some diner and beers. Johan had been meaning to meet up with his neighbour "Jeff" for some beers so we met up and sat on the curb on these red and blue plastic kiddie chairs chatting. Jeff didn't speak any english but we were able to "gambuy" (cheers!) our drinks. Jeff also brought out his small little white terrier dog for a few minutes. really cute! Maybe only a little bit larger than Keri (Pearl & Rich's dog). When Johan wasn't looking he did a small pee on the side of johan's bag of beer. For some reason I didn't tell him. lol. shhhhh

While sitting on the curb I saw my first cockroach (first one outside of a zoo that I I can remember). It wasn't as freaky as I thought. It was maybe a bit less than 2" long and .5" wide. Had a really small head, and it couldn't fly, so that automatically makes it a bit less freaky. I only saw one for the longest time, but once I started walking around slowly I saw maybe 4 of them. Most of the time they're sitting still just moving their antenna's around, but once in a while it would scurry around (actually they are pretty quick). I also saw a dead one on it's back. There were a ton of ants slowly moving it into a crack in the ground. I'm sure this is what inspired Elton John when he wrote the lyrics to "The Circle of Life."

In addition to the cockroaches there were several bats flying around the street lights above our heads. They seemed friendly and were fun to watch while I listened to the mandarin conversation going on around me.

That's it for tonight! Wan An ("good night"! I learned this phrase tonight)

feeding the locals

Today was probably the opposite of the previous day. I went almost nowhere. I stayed in the house for the remainder of the day setting up the laptop and researching more Android development.

In the evening Ali brought home some Taiwanese Pasta which tasted different. When Nikki was reading over the menu she said that one flavour of pasta was "spicy garlic" so I ordered that one thinking that it was a spicy garlic tomatoe sauce. BUT nope it wasn't a sauce, it was just garlic (a ton of it) with some red chillies in a light oil sauce. It was okay but it can't really be compared to the real thing :)

After diner Ali and Nikki went out for their evening ritual of feeding the local stray dogs (and I joined them). As we exited the garage we could see them standing maybe 50 yards away. They were waiting :) And were very happy to see Ali and Nikki. They happily ran towards us wagging their tails and Ali put down a bowl of water and some leftovers from the day (Burger King french fries, and dog food mixed with some of the remaining pasta sauce).

Uneventful day, but I think I needed it to help my body adjust.

Google Street View

Here's a link to the Google Street View of our apartment! What you are looking at in the link is our garage entrance which is where we come and go from (we rarely use the front door). Feel free to look around :) If you look straight out from our garage across the field you might be able to see the High Speed Rail Station. It's about a 15 min walk or 5min bike ride.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=taiwan&sll=50.625073,-97.119141&sspn=42.038859,80.507812&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Taiwan&ll=25.007528,121.220527&spn=0.013573,0.03931&z=15&layer=c&cbll=25.007513,121.220521&panoid=0hpFNJEsBbiNglV-0b-ALw&cbp=13,154.93,,0,-0.4

Egg Pancakes

Biked this morning to a small stand selling egg pancakes. It's sort of like an omelette's, but there's this sauce spread onto the top of it, and then it's folded in on itself. The egg pancake + some black tea was $1. I felt a bit embarrassed to pull out my camera for a photo (didn't want to feel like a tourist), but I'm regretting it now so I'll snap one the next time we go ;)

The first 44 hours...

Wow! I'm exhaused. The last 44 hours have been jammed packed. Hard to believe that this morning I was playing cards outside with Eliza, then had diner with my parents, then went to the airport, then flew to Taiwan (having both diner and breakfast), then arriving in Taiwan, having another breakfast, then another lunch, and now about to have another diner. (no sleep!)

Here's a bit of a summary of the day:

Upon my arrival at the airport I was happily greeted by Johan and Ali waiting for me in the arrivals area :) They drove us back to our apartment in Chingli which must have been less than 20 min away, but not before stopping off at a small breakfast cafe for some breakfast gyoza's and steamed buns ($1.50 yum!)

After eating breakfast and unpacking my computer I quickly made some calls to parents and Eliza (neither were home). Next Johan took me for a walking tour around the area. We walked around the block and up to the High Speed Rail Station (HSR). His neighborhood feels like the wild wild west. Lots of grass overgrowing parts of the road, and sparsely placed buildings.

After taking out some money from the ATM and waiting for Nikki to wake up (Ali's girlfriend), she took Johan and I to Jongli, which is a larger neighbouring city full of stereotypical asian streets lined with hundreds of colourfull billboards and signs. We parked on the side of a road and walked into one of the Telecom buildings to get my Sim card. note to self: my cell number is 0975 574 599.

After this we went further into the city and stopped off at this little cafe that makes a great cold yakisoba noodle dish (sort of a peanuty/sesame/garlic sauce). Delicous and only $1.50.

Next we went off to Nova to get me a laptop. Nova is a big 4 story building full of small technology related merchants all selling their wares. After speaking to several different vendors, Johan was able to sneak out this great deal of a laptop so I ended up buying it.

After Nova we headed back home and not after 10 minutes I was already back on the streets riding on the back of Johan's bike (standing on the rear wheel posts). He rode me to the "Metro Walk" mall which is about a 5-10 min bike ride away. The main purpose was to buy me a bike, which we found a decent one for about $60 Canadian. We also bought a manly black basket to fit on the front so that I can carry extra grocery's if I need to. After purchasing the bike Johan and I were just ready to ride back home when it started to pour with thunder and lighting. We waited undercover for about 30 min, hoping the rain would cease but it kept pouring down so we just biked back in the pouring rain. It was boiling hot still so the rain wasn't really as bad as I thought. Halfway through our ride home the rain actually stopped briefly enough for us to dry off, but then started up again about a minute away from the apartment so we got soaked as we entered the garage.

Okay! What a long post. Jam packed day and I plan on taking it much easier tomorrow now that everything is pretty much set up.

The adventure begins!

the day has arrived and I'm sitting at the airport clumsily typing on my iPod. It was more difficult leaving friends and family than I thought but here I am on the doorstep to what I anticipate to be a trip of a lifetime. My intention for this blog is to keep a record of my experiences for myself and my friends and family. Stay tuned for updates and I will see some of you on the flip side!