July 27th, 2005
8:15 am
Fantastic weekend with photos!
Last weekend has just been fantastic, I thought I needed to get out of Taipei for a change so after asking around I decided to go to 紅樹林 (Hongsulin = Red Tree Forest) on Saturday thanks to Grace's advice. 紅樹林 is just 30 minutes on the suburban train (MRT) from Taipei main station. As soon as I got out of the station I saw a lot of young people working for the local council giving out flyers with instructions on where to go in 紅樹林. A girl asked me whether I'm interested in following the walk, and I said yes, she than gave me a little booklet with a little map containing check points where you can get a stamp at each of the check points, “hey this is fun” I thought.
The map told me to follow the bank of the river, which is supposed to be a conservation area; although in Taiwan this doesn't mean much, there's still lots of houses and a dedicated foot path to make the place a lot more accessible to tourists. From the name of the place I thought there'd be many red threes around, but there's not a single red tree around, the place was mostly a mud plain! The biggest attraction there were the crabs, though I was supposed to be able to see some nice birds too, but well maybe I was just unlucky.
After about an hour and a half of walking I ended up at 淡水 (Tamsui = Fresh Water) to Grace's annoyance; since I said we would go together. Of course I couldn't help it; since 紅樹林 really wasn't that spectacular, and the place was small and it was next to 淡水.
淡水 by contrast was amazingly beautiful, it has a very cultural Chinese feel to the place with a great view out to the sea with many islands insight. Even the train station was a work of art built to look like an traditional Chinese building, this fusion of new and old was just brilliant!
On Sunday Grace, Annie, Johnson and I went to 烏來 (Wulai = Crow Come), 烏來 is a mountain where a tribe of aborigines settled in, although now it's totally commercialised for tourists with shops and restaurants. We took a very small and bumpy train (it used to be used for transporting coal) up the mountain first, then took a cable car across to the top of a bigger mountain. I thought that the place was supposed to be all natural and untouched, but I was wrong, it was developed into a aboriginal theme park with dangerous bridges, flying foxes and even bumper cars! However it was great fun nevertheless.
After lunch Annie suggested that we go to a hot spring. I've never been to a hot spring before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. We first went to an indoor place where we can hire a bath filled with natural hot spring, both Annie and Johnson had their swimsuit with them, but Grace and I didn't, but we didn't want to buy one there, so we ended up buying just a towel each to wrap around us, Grace got one with Hello Kitty design. We then entered the hot spring, and it was like being cooked in a hot soup, after 5 minutes my body started to feel all numb and I could hardly move, so I got out to cool for a while. After I went back in the bath Annie and Johnson decided to go out near the river, so Grace and I let in some cold water while they were away.
After Annie and Johnson came back, they told us that we should go out, so we followed them to the river and saw there were many little baths made by arranging rocks in a circle beside the bank of the river. We entered the bath where the water near the bank was boiling hot and towards the centre of the river was cold, we therefore could adjust the temperature by controlling the amount of cold water coming in. I was a bit worried about my towel coming loose; especially since there were quite a lot of people around, although I think Grace and Annie wished otherwise. The air was fresh, water clean and we were surrounded by mountains and trees, it was an amazing experience.
Anyway here are some photos!
Sorry for the rushed writing. Oh and I got a new haircut today, you'll find it on the first photo.
July 13th, 2005
8:54 am
Déja vu
It’s around 2am in the morning, but I just wanted to get this entry in before I go off to bed.
At around midnight I was getting a bit hungry, so i decided to go to Family Mart to get some snacks. As I stepped out of the house I heard a cat’s meow, I turned to look down and I saw a little black cat crouched beneath a motorcycle. I didn’t pay much attention to it and continued my journey, but for some reason the cat reminds me of Kumiko.
After I got some cold noodle I headed back towards the flat, and when I got to the door the cat was still there, and made some desperate sounding “meow meow” as if its hungry, I tried to ignore it since I thought its going to be OK, and I shouldn’t risk upsetting nature’s animal ecosystem (is that the way to say it?), but the cat kept going “meow meow meow” I could hear it even after I got in the door. After I had my noodle I just couldn’t bear thinking about the poor hungry cat outside, that I decided to put some milk in the plastic bow, and took it down to the cat, I placed the bowl down, and the cat gave it a weary look, it was really shy and wouldn’t come forward. Shy and small? This is Kumiko! I took a few steps back and eventually the cat came forward, it gave the milk a sniff but then settled back without even taking a sip! By now Neil came out; since he was also hungry too, so we both tried to convince it to drink the milk, but all we managed to do was scared it under a car. I place the bow under the car and thought it might be better if we leave it there for a while, so Neil and I went to 7-Eleven (I didn’t want to go back to Family Mart again). When we came back we found that the cat was still there, and the milk was not touched, so I said:
“Come on Kumiko, you have to drink it”
“Are we calling this cat Kumiko?” asked Neil
“Yup”
“OK Kumiko come on” said Neil
I decided that I’d offer Kumiko some Kyushu Seaweed Crisps that I’d just bought; since Kyushu is where she’s from, but she didn’t eat it. I got annoyed and tried to talk some sense into her using both Chinese and English, but she was a stubborn cat. So I took the milk back into the house and left it to its “meow meow meow” life outside.
July 8th, 2005
9:52 am
Television
I have to say what happened in London today seemed very surreal to me. It must have been about lunch time in Britain when I found out about it. Neil and I were just walking back from the uni, and we decided to pop into a shop, they had a really big TV near the entrance that I didn't pay any attention to, then I heard Neil said “oh my god!”. So I turned round and saw the TV relying live scenes from London, I had to say that it didn't feel real at all, I felt quite detached from it; London just seemed so far away.
I really don't understand why they have so much writing on news channels in Taiwan, it's pretty annoying, it gets worse when they have computer generated reconstruction.
Although I have to say that the presenter for this news channel will make you forget what's really happening.
While I'm on the subject of TV I might as well go on a bit further, Taiwan has three channels that's dedicated to all things Japanese, and one of my favourite show is “Go Go Japan” where the lovely Masami travels around Japan to various places, she gets excited by almost everything! I'm always a bit confused whether she's Japanese or Taiwanese; since her Mandarin sounds so Taiwanese, but at the same time her Japanese doesn't sound foreign to me, and she's got a name that's more common to a Japanese person. She makes a big deal about everything, like the big plasma TVs in shop and claimed that it's common for a Japanese family to have a plasma screen, I mean of course Japan is the place to buy the best TVs, but most Japanese people I know have really old TVs, in fact I think most people in Britain have better TVs at home, and I've seen more flat screen TVs in Taiwan than anywhere else. Anyway other from the big exaggerations, the show is really fun to watch.
Masami getting excited about the latest phones in Japan
Of course, Masami has a counter part in Taiwan called Yumi, Yumi's job is to travel around Taiwan and make big exaggerated comments for her viewers back in Japan. Yumi's also fluent in Mandarin, but with quite a strong Japanese accent (which is quite cute), I sometimes think Yumi's show is more about food than anything else, 'cos she always spends half the time talking and eating food while saying『美味しい〜』, and say that if she can eat it in Japan she'd eat it everyday!
Yumi enjoying her favourite cuisine
Both of these girls' shows are fun to watch, although I think Yumi probably has a bit more sense of humour while Masami prefers to just act cutely, but she does teach us how to read certain Japanese signs like『案内』which is very useful. It would be fun to see them two get together someday.
Perhaps the most annoying show for foreigners to watch in Taiwan and Japan has to be 英語１００スダート on NHK everyday at 11.50pm, Which is a ten minute lesson on English presented by a western guy and an cute innocent Japanese girl.
There's a mystery regarding where this guy's from; since he's English doesn't sound British nor does it sound American, it's just kind of weird. What would happen is he would make a sentence, and ask a question.
And then the cute girl beside him will pretend that she's thinking very hard, then repeat the sentence he just made.
Then it gets really weird when they show you a little video clip. Tonight it's set in London!
The scene opens with a young man walking next to the Thames towards a boat, but as usual the man in the film wasn't British and the people in the boat must have been Swedish or something, and then he started asking them how long they've been living on a boat.
Yes that's nice.