I'm Back HOME

Feels funny to say "I'm back home in Taipei" but that's the truth. Never thought I'd be so glad to be back where the humidity is far less!

First off - thanks to the cards from Sarah and Mom/Dad! Not sure how long they took to get here, but I actually had mail waiting for me when I came home tonight! I also had junk mail from Citibank (they send junk mail EVERYWHERE.... but it wasn't addressed to me so I just threw it out) and some other bank junk mail. It's all in chinese so as long as it's not from my bank, I'm not interested.

Few things I learned while I traveled to Thailand and back:

• On the flight home today (3.5 hour flight), I realized that 1 year old kids scream in the SAME LANGUAGE around the world! This kid was not American, but he sounded exactly the same as the screaming crying kids do on my US flights! It's amazing isn't it? He was crying during pre-board, during take off, 30 minutes after take off.... fell asleep for about 30 minutes so he stopped.... woke up for his bottle then cried some more... then back to sleep for 30 minutes - then back to crying for the final 45 minutes or so until we landed. Saw him in customs and he was STILL crying! Talk about a flight ruiner:( I was about 3 feet away from the action and my nice headphones are not THAT powerful unfortunately.
• I regret not trying more seafood in the US where it is cleared of things like fins, tails, eyeballs, antennas... in fact, most of the time it's done moving before it gets to the table in the US.... not always the case here in Asia.
• My throat's been hurting the past few days due to the extreme weather change (or at least that's what I'm blaming. Hopefully a couple of days in "Spring" Taiwan and I'll be back to normal.

I have my cell phone finally!! It's pretty cool (and in ENGLISH) but I'm still trying to get the thing setup tonight. The manuals they sent are all in Chinese - doesn't really matter since I haven't read an instruction manual for a technical gadget in probably 10 years;) Worst case, I can find the instructions for the phone (English version) online somewhere.

My clothes washer is supposedly "fixed" now. The guy came in and realized he installed it incorrectly (remember - someone forgot to connect the return tube, thus the flooding of my apartment on day 1... I could have told him it was "installed incorrectly"!!!). But I will give it a "spin" in the morning to see if me sitting on top of it is no longer required.

I also got my first visit from the cleaning lady while I was gone. This place looks great!!! She even wrapped up all my loose cables for my computer (USB/power/etc) and made everything look nice and organized! I may have to enjoy this while I'm here, things don't look this organized by my ability for sure.

I'm going to a pop concert tomorrow night. One of the girls at work has a cousin who is a pop singer in Taiwan. She and her boyfriend have an extra free ticket since they have the "in" with the singer and decided to invite me along:) I found a video of his on youtube (the greatest webpage EVER) that is actually a song I know and can understand (plus it was just sung on American Idol this week... how ironic). He's not too bad - but I was assured that all of his albums are in Chinese so don't expect a lot of English sung at the concert!

Hope all's well back in the US! Have a good weekend!