National Geographic II

Since seeing the spider the other day, I now wear my glasses when taking out the garbage in case I run into something unusual.  Today was no exception!  I saw what I think is a praying mantis on the wall.  It was a good 5" long and just sat peacefully on the wall.  Unfortunately there were TONS of ants running around the ground by this guy so every time I tried to get close to take a picture my bare feet (sandals) would start to get ants crawling on them which wasn't really a good feeling.  Plus there's a light post above me and lots of bugs flying around/landing on my body (no shirt on) which is also a gross feeling.

what the heck kind of coconut juice is this...

As mentioned previously I bought some different juices from the store the other day.  I figured the pure coconut juice would probably be the easiest one to like and seemed the most "regular."  boy I was wrong!  This stuff tasted weird.  It does taste like coconut, but it's like... got this weird cane sugar taste to it.  It's not like horrible but it's an unusual taste and I don't think I'll buy it again.  It was nice knowin' ya Sanjo...

Liza and I nicknamed this guy "Sanjo"

I was trying to read the ingredients and noticed an unusual exporter company name...

Burrito Thursday

Niki was so helpful to me this morning with my Visa troubles and after a good hour of researching etc we found out some good news and that my traveling out of the country will reset my Visitor Visa, which will end up saving me ~$300 on a flight in November that I no longer have to take.  Thank you Niki!

And since Niki and Ali are always so good to me I wanted to do something back in return, so I cooked some mexican burritos for diner (credit to Niki for being my prep cook and cutting almost everything)!  The burrito's are fairly easy to make but omg I did not anticipate how difficult it would be getting the ingredients!

• Romain lettuce is rare
• Cilantro is a bit expensive
• Cumin was not easy to find
• I was not able to find Chili powder (though I did find a similar alternative)
• A block of regular cheddar cheese is rare (though I was able to find one).  99% of all cheese here is processed kraft singles style
• There are no tortilla chips here (very surprised about this)
• Tortilla shells are very rare and some how we fluked out on finding some frozen ones. (story below)
• There's basically no ground beef here (so I used chicken.  Also I'm more than ever against eating too much beef after watching HOME the documentary this afternoon, so this was an easy choice)

So ya the tortilla shell story.  After looking at our second store, tortilla shells could still not be found.  We did find some flat round egg/batter things that sorta looked like tortilla shells so we picked them up cause they were the only thing we could use since tortilla chips could not be found.  5 minutes later we passed another freezer and Niki saw some other different egg/batter things and wanted to compare them.  As she was comparing them I was standing there looking in the freezer, and low-and-behold right in front of me placed on top of some other frozen food, were 2 packages of "Mexico Tacos" (which were actually tortilla shells).  The strange part was it was like someone had placed them there for us!  Cause there were only 2 packages sitting on top of some other products, and we walked around and couldn't find where they came from.  So bizarre, but Niki and I agree'd that it was fate.

Anyways here's some pics!  The food turned out pretty good and I hope Niki and Ali enjoyed it :D  Thanks for everything so far guys!

Johan goes to Vancouver

Having sold his car, Johan needs to go back to Canada to finish the paper work, and also get his drivers license renewed so that he can drive over here in Taiwan with a proper international license.  All the flights for the next 2 weeks were booked solid so he was on standby with Chin Airlines.

We arrived at the airport 2 hours ahead of departure time but we had to wait until 10:30pm (the check-in cut-off time) until he could see if a seat was available.

While we waited I scouted out the airport so that when my parents come I know where to pick them up, and where the shuttle bus is.  I even found where to buy shuttle bus tickets and how much they cost to get into Taipei.  It seems the shuttle bus for 3 people is 375 NT, while a taxi is 1300 NT, so I think it's worth it to grab the shuttle.  While I was scouting out the place I began to get excited because I'll be back there again in 3 weeks seeing my family walk through the arrivals door :D  Exciting!

Arrivals Gate

When we went back to the check-in counter, Johan and I were skeptical and thought probably we would have to come back again every day for the next few days until a seat became available.  However, we were lucky and someone didn't show up!  We said goodbye for 2 weeks and he headed onto the plane.

Home-made Apple Curry and Asparagus Juice

Niki wanted curry for diner today so we went to one of the local grocery stores that we frequent.  We picked up all the ingredients for a delicious curry!  There's not really much of a "story" to this blog post like with the spider, but the curry was good and I thought I should note it on the blog :)  Thanks Niki!

All ingredients for the curry came to $6

ps - at the grocery store we were in the juice box aisle and I couldn't help but picking out some new flavour that I thought I should try.  Asparagus Juice looked like probably one of the more "out there" flavours so naturally I was drawn to it.  Haha.  now... the taste I wasn't sure what to expect and even when I took the juice box out of the fridge and took my first few sips I wasn't sure what to expect.  The taste .... does taste like asparagus with sugar, but... in a nice way.  Bottom line is that I would buy it again :)

pps - the Asparagus Juice may have some sort of hyper drug in it.  Shortly after I drank the juice box I was a motor mouth on the phone with Eliza which usually isn't how I am on the phone.

Time for another nature update!

It's been pretty quite on the blog lately because I really haven't gone out much.  Been working most of the time, and with the typhoon here the weather is mostly all rain and not pleasant to go out in.

Anyways the garbage truck music was playing this evening so I went to take out the garbage and this freakin guy was waiting for me just outside the garage door!!  I didn't have my glasses on so I had to get close to see what the heck it was and it definitely startled me.  He was about 3" in diameter or maybe slightly smaller than a tea cup dish.  So not like.. really big but big enough to freak me out.

At first I was cool and I thought that yah... we're just neighbours and it's raining so I should let the little guy have some shelter in our garage.  So I took the garbage to the curb while the spider stayed put.

Then when I got back I started crawling back underneath the garage door (I had only opened it half way).  Then the spider started moving! FRIIIICK those things move fast.  I banged my back on the garage door because it startled me.  Luckily the spider ran out into the rain.

I went upstairs to get my camera cause I wanted to have something to write about for my blog fans (yes all 3 of you).  The spider was no longer in the rainy spot where I had last seem him.  This was slightly unnerving because I had left the garage door open and thought maybe it had come back inside! craaaaaap.  I took a quick look around the garage but didn't see anything.  Then I looked back out into the rain and saw him scampering from the rain into a water grate.

I snapped some photos but I didn't think it was the greatest shot, so I banged on the grate and the guy ran out and up the neighbours garage door.  I tried putting a coin next to the spider for scale but everytime I got close the spider would bolt.  My heart couldn't take anymore so I called it quits and went back inside.

Anyways hope the pictures freak you out as much as they freak me out :P

Another nice day in Taoyuan with my adopted family

I had no plans for the day once again but Ali and Niki invited me out to Taoyuan to hang out with them for the day so I thought it'd be fun to get out of the house and enjoy some company.  It turned out to be quite a nice day!

First thing we went to Ali's parents house and chatted for a bit before Ali's mom took us out for some Taiwanese burrito lunch and a bit of shopping.  The burrito was really good and I found out it was inspired by the Dutch pannekoek when they had control of Taiwan back in the day.  Inside it had bean sprouts, some sort of asian sauce, and this crunchy stuff which I later found out was beaten egg that was dropped into hot oil until it was cooked to a crisp.  yum!

Apres the shopping we headed back to grandma's house for a home cooked meal of Mee Fuhn (rice noodles), bamboo wedges (really fat pieces of bamboo that were so tender and cooked in meat juices), fried fish, and Taiwanese sausage.  Everything was tasty as usual.  Oh yah and we had also bought bubble tea earlier.  I had a green milk tea (like matcha), with red beans in it.  Peggy, Joe, and their kids were there also which was a lot of fun because I ended up playing Play-Dough with Chloe for maybe half an hour.

After diner Ali, Niki and I headed to Ikea to get a rug for their room, then picked up some 30cent ice cream cones and headed to Metro Walk.  Ali ended up buying a Z-Brush book from the book store and we bought some pizza from a newly opened pizza place.  I think it's a re-branded Pizza Hut because they had Pizza Hut labelled chili flakes.  It's been a while since I had pizza and it hit the spot once again.

Thanks again Ali and Niki for entertaining me!  I always enjoy hanging out with you guys even if it's just doing every day stuff or chilling out :D

BBQ with billionaire's and triads

It was Saturday and not much was going on.  I stayed home all morning doing some work and planning the Japan trip when I found out that Peggy and Joe were having a BBQ at their apartment in Taipei and we were invited :)  After a quick lunch at the mall we got ready and headed up to Taipei on the bullet train.

Johan wanted to go workout so he went to Guting while I wanted to get my camera battery replaced so I went onto the Banan line to Zhongxiao Xinsheng.  After walking through the maze of stores I finally found the place where I bought my camera.  Swapping the battery was no problem, however after doing some testing with the battery in my charger, I'm still leery if the thing works properly.  We'll see.

Anyways around 6:40 Johan and I met at Peggy's appartment for the party.  Joe beeped us into the elevator and we headed up to the top floor (20th floor).  Upon exiting the elevator there is a cozy common room where a handful of Joe and Peggy's friends were already getting food ready.  We had brief introductions and then food started being served.  Most of the food was costco food but the beef was just delicous!  One of Peggy's friends Ben was cooking and he did a great job.  There was also a cesar salad.  I must have eaten so much of it because I haven't had a regular salad in so long and I was really missing it.

I explored the outdoor areas on the roof, took some pictures, and then hung out in the play area up top and watched chloe go up and down the slide about 30 times in a row. lol.

Around 11pm things started to wrap up so we went back down to the apartment and hung out there for the next few hours chatting and eating small snacks and drinking the rest of the wine.  Chloe kept us entertained doing funny cute things like spelling bad words with her alphabets by accident.

During the chit chat I found out that Ben (the guy cooking the food) was actually a billionare!  What the heck.  That was a big surprise.  And we also found out that one of the people who was at the party was also directly related to the leader of the Triad in Taiwan.  What the heck x2.  You could never tell from just talking to them about their different financial or personal situations.  Oh yah, and not to be-little this other guy that was there, but he started a venture capital firm in Switzerland a few years ago and now he's set for life financially and never has to work again.

I had had a fun night but it was close to 1am before we left.  I was tired and drowsy from the wine so I fell asleep in the back of the car as Ali drove home.  Thank you Joe and Peggy for the great times!