Jangmi... not Jumanji

We're celebrating TYPHOON DAY here in Taiwan. We were hit Sunday by Typhoon Jangmi (yes, I know if looks a lot like Jumanji which was the horrible Robin Williams movie from 1995. Also known as "the first time around for Zenthura") but Jangmi was MUCH more of a Typhoon than the one we saw a few weeks ago. Lots of heavy winds, rain, and of course closing of stores and restaurants. Saturday was actually ok to walk around, just a little misting, but Sunday was a "stay inside" day. I did brave the one block walk to 7-11 (they stay open for EVERYTHING) during the middle of the Typhoon. Good time to go pay bills and pick up some junk food for watching movies. Then just like we're little kids, we huddled around the laptops and pray for the glorious words "NO WORK AND NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY"!!!!! Just like a Snow Day. No, I don't have to make this one up;)

Saturday was also the Taipei Gay Pride Parade that Sarah and caught about 2 blocks from our house. It was MUCH bigger than I would have imagined for Taiwan, but there were lots of folks marching with signs, free condoms, free brochures, and of course, lots of unusual dress by some of the members. At points, it looked like an audition line for The Rocky Horror Picture Show! But tolerance was also shown by the people lining the streets to watch. A fun experience, one to add to my list of "Things you won't see in Rochester". Yeah, that list seems to grow everyday....

I'm finally getting over a cold. It's that "late summer" cold season around here and yes, it's just as annoying in Taiwan as it is in the US. Funny part is instead of wasting my time by going to a doctor and getting a prescription just for a cold, I can head to a pharmacy here and just tell them what's wrong - then they hook you up. I'm on some "over the counter stuff" that seemed to do the trick, but even anti-biotics are available without a prescription. People don't seem to abuse it here... that whole "responsibility" concept comes into play that I think limits us a lot in the US.

Twins blew an easy chance to get into the playoffs - now they have to hope for the White Sox to lose tonight. Otherwise they play Tuesday night in Chicago:( At least the NY Mets missed the playoffs AGAIN thanks to yet another late season slump. Maybe they should spend more money on their team (same for the Yankees).

Iowa State did NOT lose this weekend. Granted they didn't play, but a "no-loss" weekend is a win in some of our minds. Lots of upsets in NCAA football though, but the Big12 seemed to benefit out of it.

$700 Billion is a lot of money.... not sure how much I agree with it, but I do think there needs to be a large effort on "financial responsibility" which includes banks, businesses, corporations, AND people. We'll see where this "buyout" gets us.

Have a good week - hopefully I have more energy to blog this week now that I can breathe through my nose once again!

Salsa

This is post #666.... so I guess I should make it EVIL or something. We'll see what I come up with.

It's outrageously hot still. 95 something on Saturday with a LOT of humidity. Heat index hit 107 that day. Sarah and I walked around for a couple of hours and about died. Funny thing is that after the sun goes down, it's absolutely beautiful! So we're altering our schedules to go out after dark more. Yeah, kind of like vampires. That's the norm though here in Taiwan. Hopefully the 90+ degree days are still limited.

We had a great Saturday evening doing some Salsa dancing. A large group of us went early for the "free" lesson. The lessons went pretty quickly, but was enough to realize it's just like doing the polka:) Right-left-right, left-right-left..... repeat. Kind of like doing the Bunny Hop dance as well. We had a great time though, amazing to watch everyone Salsa dance here - they're actually really good! It was warm and a late night, but we're looking into some more opportunities to salsa sa'more.

I'm back on the winning track with Fantasy Football (I'm 2-1). Plus with my Slingbox, I was able to catch up on some football highlights, as well as watch most of the Packer's loss to the Cowboys. Vikings pull one out under Gus Frerotte (coming from behind in a much needed way). Good bye to Jackson and hopefully the losing part of the Vikings season. I also got to see some highlights from the US victory over Europe in Ryder Cup - pretty impressive considering that Tiger is out and he pretty much is the greatest player in the Universe. Now for some baseball watching as the playoffs start very soon. Yankees will not make the playoffs (a win for everyone except for the networks) and no more Yankee Stadium, the Mets are fading (a win for Braves fans), and the Twins are pissing away yet another opportunity to make the post season. Oh yeah, the NHL pre-season just started! Good time of year for sports fans!!!!

Have a great Monday. Enjoy the political advertising that looks to only be getting worse by the day for those of you in "swing" states!

US TV - AT LAST!!!

So the Slingbox is all connected and works very well actually. Having some "remote" issues - as in trouble getting the remote control to correctly tell the Moxi what to do. It's close and I was able to watch Baseball Tonight and Sportscenter in English with NO subtitles. It's a beautiful thing.

So for those who are wondering what I'm talking about - basically there's a cable box setup in Rochester that connects to a "Slingbox" which translates the signal into something to boradcast over the internet. Connect that to a router (thanks Mike!) and then I can point my computer from Taiwan to the cable box in Rochester!!! The quality is actually really good here at work when I set it up. I'll try from home tonight to check the connection speed but it seriously is good! The program also allows me to control the DVR from Taiwan using an IR cable connection back in Rochester, but that's the part that isn't working so hot. Minor problem at this point that we will figure out how to work around! It's pretty sweet! And only one person at a time can connect which preserves the bandwidth. Next task is to build a PC for our apartment that I can have always connected, run that to our TV, and PRESTO - US TV in the apartment.

Yeah, I'm a nerd but since we have 1 year left here, it's a necessity!

An interesting article about Obama's BIGGEST supporter (Rochester folks make sure you read). I may be the biggest man in all of Taiwan, but I have nothing on Igor!!

We decided to go to Vietnam next month. So plans are underway to get reservations, visa, things to do, etc. We should have 3 full days to enjoy what the 2008 version of Vietnam has to offer. We are also planning on a trip to Kenting in south Taiwan at the end of October. Mountains, beaches, coastline over looking the Ocean, blue water, sunny weather... yeah, basically just like Hawaii!!




Jealous yet?

We are going salsa dancing this weekend with a bunch of people. There are lessons and a free drink with an advanced purchase of a ticket ($10 US) so we're in. I'm sure there will be lots of pictures from that experience. I left my salsa dancing clothes back in the US, so I have to come up with a plan B of what to wear:)

Have a great Wednesday - my week is over half way complete!!

Typhoon 1 - Cyclones 0

After 4 days of HEAVY rain, and some winds, I'm out looking for the olive branch. So far I haven't found one and even though the rain seems to have stopped for longer than 10 seconds for the first time since Sept 11th, I'm still thinking I should be building an Ark right about now.

Our first major Typhoon is over! Granted we didn't see the severity of the Hurricane Ike as they did in Texas, but we did get a full hit from Typhoon Sinlaku. What did we do during the Typhoon? Well since pretty much everything closes (few places to eat which saved us), we played a lot of video games (Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3... Mario Kart Wii which Sarah is NOT a fan of yet) and watched a lot of movies. Day 1 was kind of fun sleeping in knowing there was no reason to get up. When we did walk around a little outside, most places have put tape on the windows (in case something comes crashing into it) and the wind gusts at time were kind of nasty. Pretty much like an Iowa Thunderstorm, but lasts for 3 days or more. It did kill the plans for the Moon Festival which was this weekend. Supposedly it's a big weekend for grilling out but that was pretty much dropped by most people.

This weekend was the Mid-Autumn Festival, otherwise known as "Moon Festival". It's a Chinese holiday celebrated for over 3000 years by worshiping the Moon. There are celebrations (when there aren't Typhoons going on around you) and some of the other traditions include eating Moon cakes, lighting laterns, burning incense (as they seem to do every day around here), planting trees, and doing funny dances. We saw lots of "burning" things in the street as they do on every holiday, but wasn't really a weekend to enjoy the other things. Here's what moon cakes look like:



I think they float... which was important this past weekend. I've never seen so much rain in 4 days. Surprisingly Taipei is built well enough to not experience any flooding.

This past weekend was also the ISU/Iowa game. I think Iowa won since my girlfriend hasn't stopped singing Iowa fight songs for the past 2 days. I told her I told my boys to go easy this year so she could have her victory for once. Looks like ISU played a decent game but couldn't get in the endzone when it mattered. Did we try the "Draw up the middle" play????

We have a 3 day weekend coming up in October. Debating between going to Beijing or Vietnam. We should probably make up our mind this week and start making plans. Any suggestions???

Typhoon Time!!

Hurricane Ike might be on it's way to Texas, but in Taiwan, we're preparing for Typhoon Sinlaku!!! Sinlaku means "goddess" in Micronesia. Here's the current radar:



So what things are needed to prepare for a Typhoon? Here's what Sarah and I got:

2 jugs of water - each one is 2 gallons. In case 7-11 actually does close for once.
chips - Doritos are standard for any "event"
Flashlight and D batteries. No, I will not be bringing home the $1.50 flashlight
Downloaded movies - we're stocking up
Milk - you know, more things to spoil if the electricity goes out
3 bottles of wine.... in case the electricity goes out... or doesn't
beer, vodka, tonic....
Each Other.... haha:)
Internet connection to watch Iowa State beat Iowa!!!! GO CLONES!!!!

Big weekend with the game - here's to hoping I can brag for yet another year.

Have a good weekend - stay dry!

Weekend in the Sun

Never fun when you work for a company that has "Quarter End" every 3 months. It's been consuming my "free" time lately.

But we still had a wonderful weekend going to central Taiwan and then to North of Taipei. You can see the pictures on the right. I have switched to Picasa to house my photos, let me know if any of you have viewing issues. There were some changes at shutterfly recently that prevented a fan from saving the picture locally. Well, it can be done, but not easily. So Picasa should allow my viewers to do this. I don't care if people download and do whatever to my photos. I'll let you know if I start charging;)

As for this past weekend. We took the early high speed train to the south and then went on a tour bus up to Sun Moon Lake. It was a beautiful morning for such a tour. Only problem is that a bus going up into the mountains takes a very long time. Next time, we will just rent a car. Don't get me wrong, our tour guide was extremely nice and great. His English was very good in fact! I can't remember his Chinese name, but he had an American name (Peter), a Spanish name (Fernando), an Italian name (Valentino), and an English name (Dalton). I only have American and Chinese names.... I'll work on my other names. There were about 20 of us in the overall tour - some from Singapore and a lady from Chili. So we were not the only ones that required English to be spoken.

Sun Moon Lake is very beautiful. Someone compared it to Lake Tahoe how the big lake is in the middle of the mountains and of course the hotels on the lake are overly priced ($750 US per night). We took a boat trip out on the lake, stopping at the man made island in the middle that floats and has wonderful wildlife. If you get seasick, you don't want to go out to the island. Then we took the boat over to a Temple that's on one side of the Lake. Nice area with some nice big views of the entire lake. Then back on the boat, and finished the boat tour by being dropped off for our lunch at the culture village that's on the edge of the lake.

Lunch was interesting - I didn't take any photos, but might have some from Sarah or Meredith's camera later this week. We were entertained with a dancing show (think Adventureland in the summer) and lunch (think a very cheap Chinese place in the US... but didn't taste that good). Then we had tea (common for people after lunch), and I even tried deer wine. Too bad I tried the wine before I found out how it was made. It was actually really shitty to tell you the truth. They take some basic water, and let it sit over night in slices cut from a deer's horns. Didn't realize there was so much blood in deer's horns. It was pretty disgusting!! Both to taste and to watch.

For the rest of the afternoon we avoided the rain, toured Wunwu Temple (which is shared by both Buddhists and Confucious religions.... proof that conflicting religions CAN get along....), then headed to a paper making factory. This was part of the tour, wasn't our choice. We had the opportunity to make a fan (luckily was included in the price of the tour... would not have paid extra for it) and now have a souvenir from our paper factory;) By this time we were ready for a nap! We took the high speed train back to Taipei, ordered some pizza (Taiwan style) and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

As I'm typing this, there was just an earthquake. MY FIRST EARTHQUAKE. I felt a little up and down motion, then some side to side. Here are the details. A 6.1 about 100km off the coast of Taiwan, about a 2.0 by the time it hit Taiwan. No damage that I see, just two Americans who felt their first earthquake!!

Sunday we headed to Danshui which is about a 30 minute train ride North of Taipei. I was picturing a calm coastal community, instead I found a lively walk along the Danshui river which leads into the Taipei Sea. It's one of the better places in town to see the sunset (which we documented on "film") and then took a ferry ride up to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. That's where the big bridge and night pictures are from. And like any good Wharf, there was a video arcade to enjoy:)

Hope you enjoy the pictures. Hope you didn't feel the earthquake!

Cyclones are 2-0!!! GO CLONES!!! Let's hope for one more victory on Saturday against the Squawkeyes! And Vikings lost at Green Bay thanks to our shitty quarterback.... Ahhhh - football season has begun. Isn't it fun?????

Back at it... Finally!

Sarah and I welcome our 2nd guest to Taiwan tonight. Her sister Meredith will arrive in about an hour and we are READY for her! House is clean, weather is.... ok for now.... but we always love having company!

We have big plans for this weekend. Going to Sun Moon Lake (for more than a 20 minute stop like last time) and through Central Taiwan. Should have lots of pictures to share. And on Sunday we head North to the beaches and coastal town that is supposedly pretty beautiful.

I blinked and all of a sudden it's football season. College football is already hearing useless sports casters that were good players in college but since they never got a degree (despite the full ride scholarship), they go act like they know how to analyze football. I would be more thankful if they could just form complete sentences. They are discussing Heisman Finalists??!?!? Didn't we just start? But Iowa State is off to a 1-0 start which I'll take for now. Our bid to the National Championship BCS game is still alive!! If you think about it, we're already 1/13th of the way there! Only 12 more wins (includes Big 12 title win) and we are in the final game!!

I don't make fun of your dream, so please don't make fun of mine!

And Pro football is finally here. Most of the sports fans can quit acting like they care about baseball (even though I'm still hoping both Boston and NY Yankees miss the playoffs... it could happen!!) and focus on "America's Sport". I was "thrown" into a fantasy football league last second. Looked at my team today and it's not great, not bad. I should have more time next week to look at making some improvements to my team.

Note that I haven't commented on Palin's selection as GOP VP candidate. Figure most of my readers are Republican (I'm not proud of this btw) so I might as well not try to piss off my audience. I'm sure you can guess my view. If you really want to know, send me an email. I think Sarah's tired of hearing my analysis. Lucky for me, she's in agreement.

I still think I would be an excellent political strategist. It's just a game and I can master that game.

Sorry for the few postings this week - it's been extremely busy at work and trying to stay on top of everything at home too. Good news is that Sarah has her ARC card as of this morning - so she's EXTREMELY official now. Plus she can go in and out of the country now. Thanks for all the prayers in getting her to this point!

My cousin Lindsay gets married this weekend. Hope everyone has fun without us, sorry we can't be there! You know I would if I wasn't half way around the world!

Hey Yaaa!

In celebration of Iowa State's victory last week.... Outkast was in Taiwan singing - I was amazed to see him and I was able to get so close.



Have a good Labor Day!!!