Meh

I haven't posted for a while. That's not an accident. I don't want to post about boring daily life. I did however upload a ton of pictures to flickr recently, check those out at the flickr link.

I might post about my visit to Tokyo and Senday in Japan I took in May and how I got radiation poisoning and lost 2 toes.














No, not really.

A real estate gig

So my brother recently moved to San Diego and has just setup a company that creates floor plans of homes to help them reach their "peak potential" in marketing. The name is Summit Floorplans and if you happen to know someone in the San Diego real estate business who needs a high-quality proof, then there you go.

Spring screamin'

pictures are up on flickr, blog post to come and some indeterminate point in the future

The Resurrection

Howdy there. You still read this? Can’t say I know why as I haven’t given you much (any) reason to even check lately. I thought about pounding out another wall of cultural commentary and teaching trials but then thought back to English class. How does a student get out of a creative writing assignment? Poetry of course, and especially haiku! The 17 magic syllables give a veneer of erudition, yet are the effluence of indolence. So shamelessly, knowing full well I take the easy way out, here are my last several weekends.

Weekend of 2/12

Pingxi with Irene;

Lantern Festival was fun.

A packed train station.

2/19

Overrated club,

But good DJs and dancers.

Where’d my money go?

2/26

A three day weekend!

Many possibilities.

Some good and some bad.

Sun Moon Lake I heard

Would be fun, I have to go!

Sadly mistaken.

An attic to sleep,

Our mattress was three blankets.

Ouch, ow, @#%^! Cheap place.

The mountaintop farm

Qingjing’s quite cool sheepdog show

Did not disappoint.

3/5

Two days to payday,

So a pretty tame weekend.

Uh oh, rent is due?

3/12

Friends to visit us;

Simultaneously sick.

See you next weekend.

3/19

A house party here.

Flip cup, beer pong, both fun games.

Floor smells like college.

3/26

Have no big plans yet;

My friend has a new girlfriend.

You’re welcome, C*******

4/2

Spring Scream Spring Scream Spring

Scream Spring Scream Spring Scream Spring Scream

Spring Scream Spring Scream YEAHHHHHHHHH

So there you go, a quick look at the past, present and future. Some interesting teaching related things: I was doing an oral test which is just a 1-on-1 Q & A session with students. This was quite a low level, and I asked “What’s your favorite color?” Although the finer meaning of ‘favorite’ is lost on them, they (should) know the pattern and say “My favorite color is ___.” Not this all-star. His response? “MONKEY!” Yes. For real.

On one quiz the students were filling in charts of verb, verb past tense, and verb past participle like drink/drank/drunk throw/threw/thrown, etc… For fly, one student wrote fly/fland/flet. I don’t know why. Still, I rank this student far smarter than the few whom left the boxes blank even after I said not to and it would cost points.

Overall though teaching is going quite well. I can tell I’m developing as not only are my classes responding better to me, but when I sub a class or otherwise go in cold, they are still better. Is it going well enough for me to want to stay another year? I don’t know yet. I’m still quite interested in improving my Chinese and see myself landing a job denominated in American dollars. That said I also find it hard to believe I wouldn’t come back out here again for some reason or another.

The Chinese is getting much better. Irene is helping me dramatically; I think we’ve reached a point where we speak more Chinese than English. Speaking at length can be quite a pain but responding to a pointed question is not difficult, and my listening has improved the most out of the 4 facets from being in Taiwan. This is no shock since it’s Chinese is literally unavoidable here, I hope I can translate it (pun intended) into speaking improvement.

A milestone: I am now able to drive legally in Taiwan, for both scooters and cars. Whoop! I extended my International Driving Permit which expires in Taiwan when you become a permanent resident. Why is this relevant? Doesn’t every foreigner and even some Chinese drive their scooters unlicensed? Yes. But for Spring Scream, my roommates, Irene, and another training friend will take Irene’s parents’ car to Kending for the 4-day weekend. Have I met them? No. Do they even know about me and Irene? I don’t think so. Am I surprised? Yes. Will I commit vehicular manslaughter when some aggressive scooter zips in front of me? Sweet lord I hope not.

As far as money goes, March has plenty of hours so after we get paid for it I should be on fine fiscal footing from there on. February was short and we lost a week with Chinese New Year so everybody was hurting a little. Hourly work isn’t fun that way. The receipt lottery drawing is tomorrow so that always provides a little excitement, even if I’ve been stiffed both times so far.

There have been a few other things I have since forgotten to blog about that I thought might have provided an entertaining anecdote. Oh well. Now that I’m working full time and have become acclimated my desire to blog has decreased. I’m sorry if that means drier entries for you, I know exactly how it feels to read something that you don’t necessarily have to but feel a loose obligation to do so. I did go to college after all.

Go Badgers, congratulations Tubs, and good luck Japan!

pictures, again

Pictures up on flickr from Chinese New Year zoo trip, and this past weekend's trip to Pingxi for a lantern festival. Going to try to get a post about that up within 24 hours to avoid the backlog problem I've been creating for myself the past couple months.

新竹站到了

Well time keeps on slippin’ while I stay right here. It’s been a month since updates, and why you ask? First of all, the daily grind is quite pedestrian. I get up, do nothing significant, go to work, come back and do more nothing, then sleep. Second the weekends can be quite fun, but then when there’s something to write about, I either don’t have the time, or have the time but want to spend it doing something that isn’t so laborious.

I’m going to cover a whole lot as quick as I can so stay with me. New Year’s has been discussed, then the next week was my birthday. I’m still the youngest at my branch, hooray! My actual birthday wasn’t on a weekend, so instead we waited until Saturday to go out. First people gathered at our apartment for just a few drinks, then off to local American restaurant #1, Squares. I had a quite nice burger there though I have since found better. After that, we went to a (pretty crappy) nightclub called Goethburg. It has really tacky décor and a subpar sound system, with a meh DJ. I didn’t really mind however; since clubs in general aren’t my thing I spent the vast majority of my time playing foosball outside the main bar area. I already won a couple games during training and I fancy myself pretty good, so I challenged my friends first and then some strangers. I won more than I lost but still came out with a disappointing record around ~.667 but I guess that’s what happens when you’re out of practice. After everyone else got tired of the club we called it a night.

This party pretty much just consisted of people in my extended network of work friends. We got a new roommate that Friday however and she joined us too. Hailing from New York, there are now 3 of us in the apartment, making rent much lower but also just adding another person to talk to, so really everyone is a winner in the arrangement. In an example of mind-numbing bureaucracy, she needed an original lease in order to apply for the Alien Resident Card, not a copy. Sounds normal, right? Well, her name isn’t anywhere on it. In fact there’s nothing to indicate she didn’t steal it or outright invent some fictional property, but the office needs a piece of paper and the gears of government must turn.

The weekend after amounted to nothing much. During the week I went to a meeting about teaching at an elementary school. This is a unique program to this elementary school, apparently because some rich sponsor went there decades ago and now wants to fund English classes for the whole school or something, complete with real live foreigners. It will add an extra 4 hours a week to my pay so that will be nice, and will also serve to get me up in the morning instead of being so lazy.

On the 22^nd/23^rd, my roommates went to Taipei to see LMFAO do a show at a high-end club called Luxy. Since I was not as enthralled with this group, I went to Taichung. Met up with Yvonne, went to a housewarming party, went to another club, and watched a bunch of movies. One of them was Deliverance which is a mightily messed up movie, but truly excellent in every way. I came back Sunday night and graded a bunch of homework.

A week after that, it was almost Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is the only extended vacation time I get. There are a couple random national holidays we get off, but CNY is 6 days, Feb 2-7. Before that though, was the weekend then a couple days. The work was easy; the weekend was a little more eventful. Yvonne came up, and on Saturday we two and my roommates went for hot pot with about a dozen friends. That went well, then the guys split up and we went to a bar while the girls went to a club. We talked, they danced, and both got back late. To make a long story short, Yvonne and I had something of a falling out. She left on Sunday, for good.

Having a two-day workweek was nice, getting paid early was nicer, and actual CNY was the nicest. At first it was weird; every non-chain shop was abandoned all day for several days. Tuesday was the last day of work, Wednesday was CNY eve which we spent in Hsinchu lighting off bottle rockets (I’m sort of a pro at lighting 4 at a time, arcing, and the simultaneous cross-direction light) on top of our building’s roof. Thursday we went to Taipei, dropped our stuff at the Happy Family Hostel, got food and then waited for a training friend to come up from Taichung. Did that hostel sound familiar? Before you go looking, yes it was the one I stayed at prior to training and yes, I remembered the way back perfectly without having to wander aimlessly for kilometers.

We retrieved our friend at the train station, dropped off his stuff, and made our way to the zoo. It was actually quite cool. We only got there at 2:30 or so but spent all 2.5 hours we could there until it closed and still didn’t see it all. The highlights were the huge nocturnal house which was the largest I’ve ever been in by far and of course the giant pandas. They are named Tuantuan and Yuanyuan which if put together i.e. tuanyuan or 團圓 as it would be written in characters, means “reunion.” It’s the same word used for what families do during Chinese New Year when they all gather together back at their parents’ home. Why name a pair of pandas after something so silly? Do you name your dogs Thanks and Giving?

The pandas, like every giant panda everywhere in the world, are actually on a loan from China. And seeing as how “reunification” is a top priority for the glorious people’s republic across the strait, the names were chosen with obvious intent. Still, the pandas draw huge crowds and at least when you’re at the zoo, nobody seems to mind what the cute and fuzzy bamboo-munchers are called. Random side note: one of the bathrooms at the zoo was covered in fecal matter. Paintings, photos, and diagrams of how they harvest poop and what it’s used for adorn the outside of this bathroom. I didn’t use it and see the inside, though now I’m wishing I had.

The zoo closing, we took the MRT back downtown. After changing we went to the Brass Monkey, the most popular foreigner bar in Taipei. It’s really nothing that special and the beer is overpriced, but they had Eric’s favorite, foosball. I played against the friends I was with and for the most part crushed them. Then I played the locals, who were another beast entirely. As I said I think I’m pretty good at the game. I always did well in Thanksgiving tournaments. I played against an Italian and a local, and the games were razor-thin. Both I had to come back from; one I won 10-9 after being down 3-6, the other I won 5-4 after being down 1-3. Yet despite those wins, I don’t honestly think I was the superior player. I got the lucky bounces and amazing saves I needed. Still, it was a rush just to play. Then I ran into Tom.

Tom is an ace. He’s could be a better hustler than Terrence Howard. He had every facet of the game refined to diamantine perfection. The through passes from defense, quick goalie moves, and best of all, the quick-strike offense were all a clinic. He knew how to place the ball absolutely perfectly, and most impressively, he was just so fast. I knew what was happening. By the time it was 1-3 (my determination not to get skunked paid off) I already knew the drill, but I was helpless against the next two goals. He placed the ball so immaculately I couldn’t help but stand amused. After such a shellacking I walked off head held high, albeit in defeat.

From the Brass Monkey we went to Room 18, yet another club. After paying for cover and a drink, I opened my red envelope to discover three casino chips. They had a blackjack table as part of their CNY festivities. I played pretty close to optimum play, or at least as close as I could for having three drinks in me, no recollection of the blackjack card, and a burning desire to win. I didn’t do anything super stupid like splitting tens, and tried to hold off when the dealer had a low up-card. It didn’t help, and I never got higher than 5 chips before busting out. I honestly didn’t ever care however, since I still have no clue what the chips were even good for. All I know is they didn’t exchange them for drinks, so how useful could they be?

Three hours burned away pretty quickly at Room 18. Before long we were outside and on the way to Family Mart. Why pay a 5-10x premium in a club when there’s a perfectly good convenience store nearby? Around 3:30AM someone had the idea we should get bagels. I wasn’t about to disagree so I got in the cab. We got out at a KTV parlor. In the middle of the trip, I overheard a phone conversation that they were closed. I don’t know why this then meant we had to go to a KTV place, but 6 of us did anyway, and we stayed until past 7:00 AM. Truly, this was not my idea. It was made even more difficult by the fact that there were 3 Taiwanese, 3 foreigners, and one of the foreigners simply didn’t sing; he took the mic, danced, but made no audible sound. Now I swear to you I like KTV when of a sufficient BAC, but even this was a bit much for me. Thankfully as my voice died and the night turned to morning more and more Chinese songs were added to the playlist. I wasn’t complaining.

We exited KTV and immediately noticed Taipei was saturated by the glow of natural vitamin D. Not having slept yet, this was quite odd. My roommate and I flagged a taxi (new roommate and friend had retired at various points already) and shuffled over to our hostel rooms. Three and a half hours later, there was a knock on the door saying we had to get out. We did, moseyed over to the train station across the street, and bought our tickets. My heart sank as the ticket lady informed us “沒有位子。” No seats. Well damn, normally I can take a standing ride with the best of them, but I was not feeling at the top of my game. No one was. We boarded the train with dread in our eyes. Thankfully, Taipei was the first stop for this train. We got on and commandeered some still-empty seats, dreading the time they would be claimed by their rightful owners.

Miraculously, it never happened. I don’t know how no one badgered us, but all four of us rode on in tranquility to Hsinchu. It might be because we were foreign. Or maybe the people who had our seats took other seats and were never evicted themselves – I certainly noticed people checking tickets and looking at us. Whatever it was, it was heavenly. Ninety minutes later the loudspeaker announced some of the most comforting words ever: “新竹站到了。” or “We have arrived at Hsinchu Station.” We left, ate, and slept.

This was not the end of CNY, indeed it was only the beginning. The rest was less frenetic though, and while we went to a club in Hsinchu for a psy-trance party another friend had been dying to go to, everyone was very chill and it wasn’t a comparatively late night.

That’s where I stand. Short week this week since we started on Tuesday, but otherwise back to normalcy. I’ll try to get back to weekly updates, or at least every two weeks since I know these long posts are a lot to digest. But really if you think it takes a long time to read, remember how much longer the creation process is. I know pretty pictures break up the monotony and I do have a few pictures to upload, but I can’t be bothered to do that at 2:30AM. I’ll get some of my scooter up too at some point.

PS The scooter tow story is unremarkable, I just got the borrowed scooter towed then had to get a coworker to help me find it and pay the fine. Nothing special there other than my advice to not park in the handicap spot in front of the train station. Not a good idea, even if it did work once before.

下次！

new stuff

coming in <26 hours! Yes, I said 26.

photos!

Additions to flickr. Hess Banquet and my birthday party in two separate blocs

Christmas Past

December got busy in a hurry, and as things tend to do with my blog it got shoved to the back burner. I’d be lying if I said I never had a single free moment to update, but time has been scarce. Let’s power on.

So what’s happened in a month?

First there was Christmas. Or at least another Christmas party. I went to Taichung again (this will become a theme) for another holiday party, this time hosted by a different English teacher. We met at the bottom of her apartment building and were ushered into an empty karaoke room. Amazingly, she cooked a complete Christmas meal and had been at it all day. We also had a round of Yankee Secret Santa, complete with the necessary stealing. My turn came up pretty late; there was a snowglobe and mug set I desperately wanted. The only problem was that the person who had it was the 12-year-old child of a security guard at the apartment. He was so pumped when he opened it, I couldn’t bear to take it from him. When my name was picked I faked as if to take his stuff. He was confused, then saddened, but I quickly made for the present pile and let him keep his loot. My reward: a bottle of Tunnel 88, only the finest in blinding alcohol. After the Christmas party we adjourned to a bar called FM that was on a rooftop over a Starbucks. It was actually pretty cool, though the Hoegaarden was awfully expensive coming in at $340 a pop. I didn’t order one that particular night. At said bar I had a lively discussion with some of the guests of the previous parties. One guy who was a little bit older was perfectly nice but perhaps hadn’t taken his meds regularly. If you’ve ever played Civilization IV, he looked exactly like the Montezuma character. If you haven’t, here you go:

He had a headdress. I don’t know why. I never got around to asking about it. Instead he went on about Sodium Fluoride and how it’s used as both rat poison (true) and fluoridation for the water supply (true) while I tried in vain to demonstrate how our body needs lots of things in little quantities. You need iron, but do you go around eating nails from Ace Hardware? He had none of it. We also talked about vaccines (they’re killing you, and not just by the one in a million averse reaction) chem trails, (killing you too) and other inane subjects. I thought for sure he was going to bring up fan death next. He was a really nice guy though and had some really lucid things to say about religion though, so it was still a good talk.

That night, at 4am, I went to eat Hot Pot. Hot Pot is not a proper noun, and I don’t capitalize dumplings, fried rice, or even pizza puffs for that matter. I capitalize it because it really is That Damn Good. It’s my favorite Chinese food, bar none. I wish dumplings were more available in the states. I wish beef noodles didn’t actually mean ramen in the US. I wish I owned a Hot Pot restaurant. Yvonne woke me up and insisted we go. Who is Yvonne? Yvonne is the girl I had met the week before when we discussed the future of Taiwan. Yvonne loves Hot Pot, probably more than life itself. At 4am she demanded we go. I resisted – beds and comforters are warm and soft, night scooter rides are cold and bumpy. Then I decided that I didn’t fly 14,000 miles to a semi-tropical rogue province just to bitch out because it was ‘late’ or ‘cold.’ No, it was time for the game face.

So on with the jacket, the scooter helmet, and the yawns. Yvonne tore through Taichung, and red lights served no obstacle. It was obvious she was on a mission. As we flew through the night I wondered to myself what on earth kind of establishment is open until 6:30AM?

The establishment god himself would dine at every night, if he’s Asian and likes spicy food.

We entered and Yvonne started regaling me with the lore about the place. Getting in is not sort of impossible during non-nocturnal business hours, you have to book ahead a week and know the maître’d on shift. I took this with a grain of salt, but then when we went my second time (I’ll get to that later) we actually had to wait for a table at 5 AM. We were seated quickly this time though, and the place had a sort of class to it. To start with, all the waitresses are super formal, using all the right honorifics and performing the low bow whenever they come by to refill tea or broth, take orders, or the like. The main attraction though is clearly the food. Fundamentally it’s like any other hot pot place. For the uninitiated, hot pot is basically a pot stuck over a massive flame in the middle of your table. The good places will have a partition for two different broths, both of which should be at a rolling boil. You have several trays of raw food at your table and you simply drop them into the oily broth and let physics do work. Thin beef strips cook in seconds, solid meatballs can be several minutes.

This place, 鼎王/dingwang/Tripod King, just does everything in a superb fashion. There is sauce available for after the broth, and that is delicious. The beer is cold, the rice is sticky, and the meat is marvelous. We also ordered fishballs, mushrooms, greens, and god knows what else. A thousand and many dollars later, I was nearly unable to move. It was the most full I have ever felt from a place that was not all-you-can-eat. (I refer not to the glorious Old Country Buffet but rather to the Bellagio dinner buffet at which I literally ate so much that for 15 minutes I could not walk without a bodily function.) I did not want to move, so I didn’t. And that was Hot Pot and Taichung II.

All that occurred over the weekend of Dec 18-19. On December 21^st, I went to you guessed it, Taichung! This time, for training. Hess does follow-up trainings at 1, 3, 6 and 9 month intervals ostensibly to teach you more about teaching. I think it’s an ingenius way to increase retention rates by getting people back together with friends forged during training, showing corporate is there for support, and giving a day off in the middle of the week. Ours was on Tuesday, so I went to Taichung Monday night. Yvonne met me at the train station and we drove off to eat. I forget where. After that we went to an indoor sports facility/arcade that had bowling, ping pong, batting cages, pool, whack-a-mole, DDR, and more. We bowled. After a few warm-up frames that saw 4 or 5 consecutive goose eggs on the scoreboard for me, I dropped the first game but won the next 4 convincingly and delivered a richly deserved beatdown in a “sport” I know nothing about but like to pretend Americans invented anyway. Sufficiently humiliated, Yvonne committed ritual suicide in the lanes while still in her bowling shoes to regain her family’s honor. Not really. She just felt silly after maybe a bit too much trash talk.

Training itself was nothing special. We reviewed culture shock and grammar. In tangentially related culture shock news, I saw a family of 5 lined up on a scooter in the past month. I’ve seen 6 riders in images online, but seeing 5 in the flesh and blood made me feel pretty proud. We learned more about obscure tenses mostly involving the word ‘perfect,’ and other stuff useless outside of my current profession. The training ended at 6 and we walked to dinner together, where we found a surprisingly good restaurant called Tapa Tapa. It wasn’t just passable, it was genuinely tasty. Taichung III was short but sweet.

From training the week passed and soon it was Christmas Eve, a Friday. Native Speaking Teachers (NSTs) are exempt from teaching Christmas if they so choose, and I chose so another NST friend and I went out to our regular neighborhood bar for a couple hours and ordered pitchers. It was a really weird Christmas Eve. Not a weird night, it was about as typical as typical nights get: going out for drinks after work then hitting up fast food (Mos Burger, google it) but it was the weirdest Christmas Eve ever for me. Not leaving work until 10pm, then doing nothing Christmas related. The next day brought Christmas, and that afternoon I went to a braai. A braai is a South African barbeque. True to the name, there were 3 Americans and about two dozen South Africans present at this shindig. I learned how to make braai brickies, which are sandwiches that are bread, chutney, tomatoes, salt, onion, cheese, bread in that bottom to top order. They were awesome, and apparently they weren’t even done properly. I also ate grilled mushrooms and grilled chicken, and it was nice to get away from something that wasn’t fried.

The braai lasted the rest of the day and then on Sunday my friend Ed came. Ed went to high school with me and is a Taiwanese-American so he was over here for a couple weeks. We went to another Christmas lunch at my boss’ apartment then played a little basketball. With work resuming on Monday though and Hsinchu not being the throbbing metropolis one might hope, he was only in town for two days and a night. The following week passed without event, and midway through I confirmed my plans. You have one guess as to my destination.

If you said anything other than Taichung, your reading comprehension may be worse than my students’, or I’ve been boring you enough to make you feel this blog is more of an obligation than anything. I hope this isn’t the case, and that’s what the comment section is for. Heck you can even post anonymously. But back to the story.

I knew I was to be in Taichung on New Year’s Eve. I knew my work ended at 9pm and if I could get out at 9:05 it would be a blessing. This was all moot however as the normal train tickets were sold out way in advance. High Speed Rail tickets were only available for the 10:27, and the HSR station is on the opposite end of town, about 30 minutes away. So I dropped off a coworker at the train station trying to make a 9:20 for Taipei (she made it) and zoomed off to the HSR station. I arrived, scanned for parking, and didn’t see any. So doing what any self-respecting Taiwanese person would do, I created some. Rather than move another scooter and risk damage, I simply moved a traffic cone. First I parked up against the street, picked up the cone on the left side of my scooter, and moved it to the right. It was precisely as easy as it sounds. I made my train with time to spare and 27 minute later arrived at the Taichung HSR station. I followed the signs to the taxi area. On my left was the normal taxi queue. On my right were two guys yelling for me to get in their taxis that were in the dropoff/kiss’n’ride area, quite illegally. I decided to go with the first guy I encountered.

Best decision ever.

This man was simply the most insane driver I have ever had the pleasure of riding with. I don’t claim to be the guru of taxis, but this man was missing something in his brain that should have been shouting “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” First, he was a pure speed junky. My train arrived at 10:52. I was at my destination at 11:03. I beat Yvonne by 30 minutes. He was always punching the accelerator. His only brake was the friction between the tires and road, with one exception. The brake was for running red lights.

We went 0 for 2 on actually stopping at red lights. This wasn’t 4am on a random night, this was 11pm on New Year’s Eve. Thankfully we never got downtown and went basically outskirt to outskirt, but there were many people on the road. The first one I didn’t think much of; it was a T intersection and we were in the right lane on the ‘safe’ side, far away from the bisecting road. He didn’t even actually brake for that one. Then the next one blew me away. We were still on the major road we had turned onto off the highway. Getting closer to the bar though, we needed to go left. There were 4 lanes: a left turn lane, car lane, car lane, and scooter/right turn lane. The left turn lane was backed up, as were the car lanes. So my guy cruised to the empty right lane, then cut across the front cars to the front of the left turn lane and in the intersection. I liked this but didn’t think too much of it. What qualifies as a first-class moving violation in America is standard taxi school in some places. But then this guy kept going. But I shouldn’t say kept going as that implies a sense of stability and continuity. He eased into the left turn lane then put his foot on the ground.

A yellow bat out of hell, the taxi roared forward. I think I only regained consciousness when we reached the destination, the awesomeness blew me away so hard. I praised his driving abilities and paid the fare. I got out and immediately met several middle-aged women whom were looking for the same bar I was. This surprised me. We walked around, up a street, back down it, asking everyone, no one seemed to know where this phantasmal “89k” bar was which didn’t bode well. I called Yvonne who was of limited use. I convinced the women to ask a patrolling cop for directions. They balked, but I said if anyone knew where the foreigner bar was it would definitely be the police. Relenting, the leader asked the cops who kindly pointed us in the right direction. On seeing that it was more of a traditional bar and not a club (both are usually translated as bar into Chinese) they decided instead to go to one of the nearby clubs. We parted and they told me they opened up this new restaurant. 

“Cool” I said, “Where?”

“Datong street” I was told. Hmmm I didn’t know it, but might they have a business card? Searching, searching…

“No I can’t find it but it’s a tapas restau-“

“You mean Tapa Tapa!?” I interrupted.

“Yes!”

“Yeah, I’ve already been there. It was great.”

“Good! I’m Jennifer. If you go there, free coffee, whatever. Bye!”

So I’ve been promised free coffee by the owner of a sweet restaurant that I have previously visited. Nice.

Yvonne arrived at half past and we got drinks. The year came and went, as we popped the streamer things and listened to a nice cover band. Not sure why, but they covered Flight of the Concords among others. From there we just stayed at the bar for hours. Toward the end we left and made my second trip to 鼎王 heavenliness.

I’ll stop there, as I need to sleep. My next post will cover a birthday party, new roommate, homework, elementary school, and a scooter towing that actually happened in December but needs due justice. Pictures as I have time Woohooo!

soon!

New post coming in <24 hours! Of this I swear!