Oogway Oogway Cha!

What an awesome Friday night!  You know those nights where you have no plans and then all of a sudden something cool and unexpected happens?  Well that was my night last night :)

The evening started with Johan and Jeff going to the 7-11 just to pick up a few beers for the regular sit-on-the-curb-in-kiddie-chairs-and-chat evening, though when they got back and we had only just opened our beers, Johan received a txt msg from a girl he's interested in so he said "ciaos!" to Jeff and I and he headed up to Taipei to hang out with her.

This left Jeff and I by ourselves.  We had never been by ourselves together and I had spoken almost nothing directly to him since I've known him.  I was afraid it was going to be awkward because his english is very limited.  However, about 30 seconds later, a scooter arrived with a girl and a guy on it.

Jeff is the guy on the left in the rockets jersey

The girl said "Ni hao!" and Jeff told them I didn't speak any chinese.  "OOoooo" was their response.  I asked them "Ni jiao sa ma?" which means "what is your name?".   And they responded just like in the chinese audio lesson!  Unfortunately I don't remember the girls name (because it was a chinese name) but the guy's name was Eric (I thought it weird he chose "Eric" for his english name because his chinese name sounded nearly identical to the name "Ian").  Anyways they sat down and we tried our our limited english and chinese words and phrases in an attempt to chit chat.  Fortunately Jeff and Eric's english was poor, but good enough to communicate so we were really able to have a great time!  I talked about my "Nu Ponyo"  eliza and how she was a halfer like me, and also talked about my family.

As always, drinking games can transcend any language barriers so that was the first thing we did after the initial introductions.  We played the 0,5,10,15 game which I knew well.  They wanted to practice their english so we played in english for most of it, and then I tried playing in chinese which was difficult, but I won a few rounds :P

Next was "Oogway Oogway cha", which means "Turtle Turtle Up" (as in lift your head up).  It's another game involving putting your own hands together and then lifting up different fingers to see if your opponent has also lifted their fingers.

Video of playing Oogway Oogway Cha:
http://picasaweb.google.com/justinliebregts/Taiwan2010Week4#5502504604718900194

We also played 2 other games of which I did not know the names, but they were variations on the 0,5,10,15,20 game and rock paper scissors.  I really sucked at the rock paper scissors games because they're so fast!  And I wasn't used to the additional rules that they have.  I think the most fun part for me was just hanging out with some locals with extremely limited language skills, but still being able to have a great time together.

It was getting late and the girl and Eric went back home.  Jeff and I were still game so we scootered a short distance to Jhong Li.  We stopped off at their local night market for some grub.  I told Jeff I liked everything and that he should order because he knows what's good.

Jeff ordering us food!

We ate this really yummy bowl of noodle soup in a chicken broth type flavour.  And we also ordered a bunch of BBQ stuff like Jee Pai (chicken steak) and chicken hearts, and some veggies and these bacon wrapped things and bbq "tempura" which I still don't know what it was (ps. - just found out it's a sort of fish cake with veggies mixed into it with a rice glutenish chewy texture).  We were also thirsty so Jeff ordered some Shi Gua Nai... Ja or Cha.  I don't remember.  I don't think it was Cha because it wasn't tea.  Anyways Shi Gua means watermelon, and Nai means milk.  So it was pretty much a freshly blended watermelon with milk.  It was so refreshing!  Loved it and I would order that one again :D

"tempura"

We took the food "Da bao" meaning to-go, and scootered off around the corner to Jeff's local pool hall.  The pool hall occupied the entire 17th floor of an apartment building.  We ate the food here and commenced to play some 8-ball, 9-ball, and this other game called "70", where it's basically a race to see who can sink 70 balls the fastest.  I got by butt kicked at 70, but in 8 and 9-ball I held my own :)

"Da bao"

By this time it was 2:30 am and we were getting sleepy!  We went back outside to ride home but it was pouring rain so we went to 7-11 and picked me up a rain poncho.  I love riding on scooters so even though it was raining I was having a blast despite the fact that a car passed us on the road and sent a big wall of water into our faces and down our ponchos. lol.

I thanked Jeff for the fun evening (of which he treated me to everything.  what genuine hospitality) and went home for a good sleep :)

ps - oh yah!  When we were walking through the night market, we passed several stalls that had big snakes in cages.  The snakes must have been 1-2 meters long and were night quite as thick as a pop can, but I think (from Jeff's rough english) that the stalls make snake soup, so you pick the snake and then... it turns into soup.  The thought of picking and killing one of the big snakes to eat was really not appealing to me at all, though it's kinda weird that this killing happens every day to our beef, chicken, and pigs except that we are so far removed from the process that I guess we don't feel any guilt or emotion.  We don't "pick" the animal who dies so it's not our "fault".  Not sure if this is a good thing or not (probably not a good thing actually) but it made me think about it.   I ordered extra veggies with the meal.

Another day of food

I didn't leave the house today.  It was super windy and I had bought groceries the previous day which I ate during the day.  When Ali came home he brought me bubble tea which was really nice :)  He also brought home diner for Nikki and himself (I already had leftover diner) which I could smell even before he walked into the room.  Stinky Tofu Soup!!   Wow this stuff was pungent!  And then when they opened up the soup bowl, I could see that in addition to the stinky tofu, there was also pieces of pigs blood.  Nikki asked if I had had this soup before and I said no.  She offered me some stinky tofu and since I haven't had any since I have been here, I tried some.  Definitely tastes better than it smells :P  Anyways here's some pics!

Passion Fruit with pearls, coconut jelly,
and passion fruit seeds for $1

Pigs blood on top.  Tofu is sunk to the bottom

And for breakfast this morning I had some taro cake hashbrows.  It tastes very similar to north american hashbrows in that it's crispy on the outside and moist in the center except it just has a slight taro sweet taste.  I dipped them in shoyu for a little extra kick.

R.I.P Pat

It's a sad day for the Liebregts family.  My cousin Pat Liebregts just passed away.  I didn't know him all that well because most of my dad's side of the family lives in Ontario and we're out in B.C, but I had a really great time when he came and visited us for the first time (since I can remember) last summer in 2009.  It was a real pleasure getting to know him better and I'm really happy we had the chance to hang out and converse as adults and learn about each other.  See you on the other side cuz :)

Internet Down

Well the internet was down for most of the day, so Johan and Nikki and I decided to run some errands.  We went to the Carrefour and bought some groceries.  I bought some Golden Bean soymilk which is really delicious (tastes mostly like regular soymilk and it's only a little sweet).  I also bought some Lays chips.  The chip flavours are Seaweed Sushi and Mala Spicy (hotpot flavoured).  I haven't opened them yet but looking forward to broadening my chip flavour horizon.

Next we went to Jhong Li to find some pet shops because Johan wanted to buy something for someone's cat.  In one of the pet stores we went into there was a little dog and 2 cute cats roaming free.  We must have visited with them for a good 15-20 min :)

After the visiting, we stopped by a bubble tea place for some refreshing Oolong green tea bubble tea, and I picked up a Gi Pai (fried and bbq'd breaded chicken cultlet).  This one had a sweet sesame glaze on top of it.  It was probably the best chicken pie I've had so far on the trip.  I even ordered it myself "Yi ge Gi Pai xia xia" :)

We also went to the "me-life" steak house to grab some steak to go.  The taiwanese steak here isn't really like north american.  Tastes quite different.  It was okay but I think I'll probably stick to asian food for the most part while I'm here because their steak can't compete with the Alberta AAA Beef.

When we arrived home, Jeff our neighbour invited us out onto the street curb for some beers.  We grabbed our usual green and red kiddie chairs and put them on the curb and cracked open some Taiwan Beer.  By this time it was around 9pm so it was dark out, and much cooler.  Ali and Nikki also joined us and Ali let me ride his scooter around the area! OMG so much fun :D hehe.  and our area is perfect to practice on because there's absolutely no traffic.  I was only a little nervous when I first sat down on it because I hadn't ridden a scooter since the last time I was in Taiwan, but it all came back to me within about 10 seconds :D  Ali said I could try riding it anytime so I think I'll take him up on that offer more often.  I said I'd pay for gas but he said it's so cheap I shouldn't worry.  He said he drives about 40km round-trip to work every day, and in a whole week, his gas bill is only $3.

Now you may be thinking "hey!  he was just drinking beers and then rode a scooter!"  Well no cause I cracked open the beer and had maybe 2 sips and that's when Ali said I could ride the scooter so I put the beer down and did my riding first before drinking any more :P  I'm responsible!

And that's it!  We came back inside and went to bed :P

Drivers License, GPS, and double win

Johan and I took the car to Jhong Li later in the afternoon.  Johan wants to get his international drivers license so we went to the DMV in Jhong Li.  While he was filling out paper work I walked around the area outside the building and took some pics.  It was really hot so half the time I was just trying to sit in the shade.

As I was walking around, I noticed a group of religious figures making their way towards me.  There were 2 costumed guys wearing some sort of warrior gear.  Then there were 2 other guys pushing/pulling a cart.  The cart had another man on it banging a taiko-like drum.  And then there was one more guy who looked like he was going door to door.  I thought maybe it was for donations but I could be wrong because I didn't see him actually get any money.

As one of the costumed man approached me I had a mini freak out because just as he was a few feet away I noticed he was holding a sword!  Definitely caught me off guard.  Not something I'm used to seeing.  Then just as he was passing me it appeared he was bowing to me.  I thought that was pretty cool, except as he passed me I realized he was just bending down to fit under the overhang because the costume has these big spears mounted on his back.  lol...

I followed these guys hoping to get a video of them playing their music and dancing, but as soon as they passed me, they basically just stopped and took a long break in the shade.  They had the right idea, it was really hot so I sat down close to them and had some photo ops with grimace

can you spot grimace?

After the DMV we went to the Double Win noodle place for lunch.  I tried their spicy version and it was really tasty.  We also passed a bubble tea place and picked up their house special tea.

Then Johan went to the Nova and purchased a GPS system for the vehicle.  He says he's not too good with directions, especially in Taiwan (an order of magnitude more difficult to navigate the streets here compared to north america.  plus it's really easy to make a wrong turn or get turned around because the roads are so tightly packed together and streets are not obvious).  The GPS unit was about $120 CAD and seemed to do the trick.  To test it out we used it to go back home.  It seemed to do the trick :D

Picassa Storage Increase screws up previous album syncs...

ya note to anyone using Picasa.  If you have a web album and then you purchase more storage, it will mess up your photo syncing with older albums.  Beware!

Biked to Jhong Li!

it's a scorcher!

I made it!  I had a personal goal to bike to Jhong Li and it was accomplished this morning :)  I was originally just going to bike part of the route but when I got to my initial turn-around point, I was feeling good and thought I'd just bike as far as I could until I got tired :)  It took me about 25 minutes of biking to get there and the only thing that made it difficult was the blistering heat (34 degrees that afternoon).  Here's some pictures of the ride :)  I had my t-shirt off for the first part of the ride in an attempt to start evening out my tan, but it got too burny after a while and I had to put my t-shirt back on.

I made it to Jhong Li!

Once I made it into town I took a break and emptied my water bottle and headed back after a 10 minute break and some pictures.  The ride back was faster because there was a bit more downhill riding.

ps - the ride is only about 10km round trip, but I haven't biked that far in a while so it felt like an accomplishment!

Breakfast Buddy

Well it's another scorcher here on the tropical island of Formosa!  Johan and I usually go for breakfast when he gets up (10:30-11:30am) but our favorite place is always closed by then.  I woke up starving beause I didn't eat a whole lot the previous day (heart burn) so I was famished and couldn't wait for him.

I left the house and was biking along a familiar main drag when I stopped to see what I thought I saw on the side of the road.  Yeap!  It was a little plumb figurine on the top of some regulator with a cup of what looked like dried plums.  He looked happy but probably could use a friend.  Maybe I'll introduce him to Grimace next time I go for breakfast :P

for scale, you can see him in the bottom right corner

Once I arrived at the restaurant it was a pleasure to see it was actually open instead of closed like the last 3 times we came by here.  I managed to order everything with no problems on my own :)  I ordered 2 boxes of their juicy beef juice filled dumplings with ginger and some other kind of sauce.  They were about $1.75 per box, but 1 box easily fills me up for breakfast.  I'm planning to give the second box to Johan once he wakes up.

Hsinchu for the day

It was so nice getting to talk to all of my family this morning.  I was a bit bummed I missed out on my grandparents 60th anniversary party that my parents were hosting at their house.  Though it was really nice that I had the chance to Skype with a whole bunch of party-goers when I woke up :)

Around 10:30am the 4 of us house-mates left for Hsinchu (Nikki's home town), to meet up with her high school friends Esther and Jeremy.  The drive was very scenic and took about 45 minutes.  During the drive we passed through an industrial area where a lot of the worlds CD's and DVD's are manufactured.  It was neat getting to see an epicenter of global technology.  We are inundated by this stuff and sometimes we don't really think of where it comes from.

Once we picked up Esther, we went to a pizzeria very close to her house.  The food here was delicious and it was a welcome change to eat something from western culture.  The meal was about $8 per person which is a bit steep compared to most meals we've been having, but for $8 the meal was fantastic!  I was skeptical about Taiwanese pizza but it was some of the best flat crust pizza I've ever had.  We also ordered a salad with smoked salmon, asparagus and arugula with a lemon yogurt dressing.  The dressing almost reminded me of ice cream (in a good way).  The first pizza was a spanish pepperoni with mushrooms and red onion
and the second pizza was pepperoni with artichoke hearts, capers, olives, and mushrooms.

After lunch we headed over to a very famous bubble tea restaurant.  They claim to be the first ever bubble tea place and that they invented it.  Ali says he doesn't know if it's true, but either way I'm sure they were one of the first.  This is where we met Nikki's other friend Jeremy, who might be helping Johan and I with some programming on our next project.

In addition to bubble tea, they also had these great Mochi Bread things with red bean in them.  They were a bit chewey and really did taste like a mix between mochi and bread.  Very yummy!  Oh yah, and I had Oolong Nai Cha (Oolong Milk Tea).  The glass that it came in was giant!  Which actually turned out to be a bad thing cause I think I got some heart burn from it and I'm still suffering now 4 hours later :P

After bubble tea we drove home through Jhong Li for some sushi and now it's now!  I think now I'm going to try out some StarCraft II to get my mind off of the heart burn ;)

ps - I love this dogs shoes

Hans Christian Anderson

Johan invited me to go up to Taipei with him and his two friends to check out this Hans Christian Anderson exhibit being displayed at the C.K.S Memorial Hall.  The Memorial Hall has a giant piazza in front of it, with two other large traditional style buildings that I believe are a concert hall and... something else. maybe another exhibit hall.

Here's me and Johan's friends in the exhibit.  The exhibit wasn't really all that interesting but it was mostly an excuse to just come up to Taipei and get out of the house on the weekend.

After the exhibit Johan and I headed back to Taoyuan HSR and Ali/Nikki picked us up to go for some Cash City Hotpot!  The place was excellent.  When you sit down, they put a giant plate of veggies and other misc. stuff (fish cakes, beef balls, etc.).  Then you pick what type of meat you want and they bring a plate of that over too.  Before you start cooking you go over to the sauce station and mix your sauces together.  We always go for the satay sauce mixed with garlic, shoyu, and some spices and green onions.

This place was a bit more pricey than other places, but for $7 for everything you can't argue!  Plus there's free all-you-can-drink iced tea and coffee plus slushies and an icecream bar.  This was my first do-it-urself hotpot I've had since I came here so I was really happy :D  After diner we were stuffed, but we went to Johan's cousins new bubble tea place that he just franchised and opened up a month ago.  I couldn't read the menu (as usual) so Ali recomended me this milk tea with a sort of herbed jelly in it.  It's really good!  I'm trying to think of the taste but it's really like nothing I've tasted before.  The flavour is really light and not too overpowering.  I'd order it again easily :)  Oh yah, and Johan's cousin's name is "Small me"