An interesting Super Bowl is set up. We'll be watching from here, on Monday morning..... 7 am kickoff!! The Cardinals made the Super Bowl with Iowa-Boy Kurt Warner???? Didn't they finish 2-14 a couple of years ago? Just shows what the Vikings could do with a real quarterback. Looked online and that leaves only 5 teams who have never made the Super Bowl - Houston Texans (new team), Jacksonville Jags, Nawlins Saints, Detroit Lions, and Cleveland Browns. Too bad the Browns don't get credit for the Ravens since that's where the team went after they left Cleveland. With Phoenix vs Pittsburgh, I'll be watching for the commercials!
A beautiful weekend for weather here in Taiwan. In the 80s, and VERY clear skies. I did some exploring on Saturday with Alex. We went camera shopping (long story) and some other tech gadgets that he was shopping for. Afterwards, he had some time to kill so we went to Longshan Temple which is the largest temple in Taipei. It's part of the "old city" that is close to the river and basically the starting point to grow from for this now very modern city. The temple was packed in anticipation of Chinese New Years - a lot of people praying for a prosperous new year. We start out with some incense sticks for praying. There are three main gods to pray to, so we took three sticks each. You light them (you can see the picture of me lighting the sticks), then you go in front of one of the buddhist gods to pray with the sticks held straight up. When you get done praying, you bow, shake them twice, then throw them into the big tank with the rest of the incense... and lots of smoke! It was interesting - one of the buddha gods was for good grades. They have buddha gods for everything. Since I'm Alex's manager, you'll see him in one picture praying for a good appraisal this year in our PBCs. The temple itself was very neat, old, but still very ornate just the same. I took some pictures of the man made waterfall inside. I even played with the "panoramic" function on my phone.
So the "long story" is that I cannot find my OLD digital camera. I have looked everywhere I can in Taiwan, we were sure we didn't take it home to the US. It's nowhere to be found at this point, so I had to take pictures from my cell phone. They get the job done, but nothing spectacular. I'm camera shopping (again) because I do not want to haul my new SLR everywhere....
After the temple, we went to the Snake Alley Night Market area. It was daytime, so the snakes were put away, but you can still see them. This is a very tourist area, and most Taiwanese will typically pass on attending the shows. You will see some of the big pythons in their glass cage in the pictures at the right. Can you guess what the rabbits are for? They also had mice above the rabbits.... There are also many cages that are for smaller, yet still ugly, snakes. These snakes are part of the menu for eating if you want.
While this snake behavior is more common in main land China, please realize that it is not normal in Taiwan. This area represents a unique tourist attraction area. Think of it like Disneyworld in the US. It's very touristy and most of us that live there don't want outsiders associating the entire US population as walking around in costumes singing "It's a Small World" all the time.
It's MLK Jr. Day in the US, but we don't observe that here in Taiwan. They do understand who and what he contributed to the US culture, just not a lot of "minority" people here... other than me of course.
New President tomorrow.... I'll be watching (and enjoying) this one!!!
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