Another eventful weekend has slipped by. I remember friday as not being the greatest day of working. That night, though, the five of us room mates plus Hung-Miao went to KTV, karaoke. I had no idea what to expect so when we turned up at what seemed like a very fancy hotel I was suprised. We missed out reservation at this particular venue, however the karaoke consierge hailed us some cabs that took us to another KTV Party World in town (and paid for them!). The highlight by far was watching Luis and Meng-Yuan team up on My Humps.

Saturday afternoon I found myself wandering alone through Ximending, a popular area of town filled with cinemas, street shops and vendors, some street performers; not far from some very old temples. Inadvertendly found myself down by Longshan Temple before heading back. I stumbled upon a street parade (for lack of a better turn) blasting intensely loud music from the backs of automobiles. Live, though, not recordings. I came upon it right in front of a temple too, which was a plus because a brave man was lighting off firecrackers in front of the entrance.

That evening Luis, Kotaro and I made our way to Taipei 101. Currently the tallest building in the world, it's quite a marvelous structure. It houses the fastest personal elevator in the world, too; it takes 37 second to travel the 84 floors from the 5th floor to the 89th. My pictures from the "top" (we were still 20-something floors from the final floor!) suck so I urge anyone reading this to check out pictures of Taipei 101 yourself.

Yesterday the gang took the MRT to the last station on the route, Danshui. Nice historic and tourist town at the mouth of the Danshuei River. Ungodly hot but lots of sights and sounds and foods and peoples.
Come sunset we headed to XinBeitou, known for its hotsprings. Capitalist pigs have seized many of the the springs and built hotels on the land, so we had to enter one of them and sit in a tub inside. I was fully prepared for a total Goron experience; outside in the public with a friendly atmosphere calling eachother "Brothers!" This hotel was indeed public but I guess it was a slow night? Just us; total sausage fest if I've ever known one but thems the breaks.

Back to the grindstone again today. Hard to believe it's our fourth week already; I've so little work to show! Oh, I guess I'll try to get up some more pictures before the apathy establishes itself.

http://flickr.com/photos/28336996@N08/

SMA data was finally given to the three of us working on low-mass star formation yesterday. It should be very interesting to see how well I can reduce the data. Finally I ate something with which my stomach did not agree. Lunch yesterday was a big plate of god knows what; bubble-gum flavored tea (I thought, anyway), noodles that tasted like waffles, all covered in thick sauce, seafood (octopus, shrimp, some mystery white animal components), a little beef and pork, very interesting (and tasty). Later in the afternoon it gave me some pains that eventually subsided in my sleep.

After work some of us in the summer program hung around the office to watch Satoki-san (and some grad students?) do SMA remote-observations. The SMA antennas can be operated from the Hilo office, I think from California, and from Taipei. Somewhat interesting but it turned into a nice informal hang-out session for us.

Woke up at noon today, very strange. My plans changed through the course of the day; Luis and I eventually ended up walking from the MRT main station to the Confucius temple (which is closed for renovations). The temple across the street (I believe is Bao-an, not sure, though) was easily accessible. Very much like Longshan temple in architecture and layout, less crowded. Very good for the spirit. Lots of walking today, i'm quite tired.

I've come to realize bloggers can put pictures directly into their blog, though that would make things very ugly. With photobucket apparently you can make a slideshow of photos and put that into a blog on blogspot. I've put my pictures on Flickr, though, so I'm just gonna give you the URL hyperlink and tell you to go there and see my pictures. I'm not photographer, I just document things with my camera. I credit some photos to Meng-yuan.

http://flickr.com/photos/28336996@N08/

God I Love Food

Just wanted to relate the dish I had for dinner (before i forget completely). A few of us from the program went to World of Curry for dinner after work. We were the only people there. Whatever the name of the dish was, it was surely worldly. Spaghetti curry with some chinese style vegetables, french fries, and japanese style fried prawns. Mmmm.

I don't know if it's just because I'm in a big city or if it is Taiwan in particular but the plethora of food choices, availability, and affordability are impressive. Local food is a great way to experience a culture and eating is a wildly entertaining experience. I will enjoy returning to a diet of Safeway french loaves and tap water for school but until then I will eat like a king.

One Week

I must begin with the disclaimer that already I am growing weary of updating this blog. It can be rather time consuming, and my memory is so poor some things aren't worth writing because large chunks of information are missing. I've been meaning to add pictures for days now and I probably will not put any on this blog tonight, either.

Oh well, I'll write what I can. Yesterday (Saturday) after lunch i went off to experience some temples. Shandao Temple was stop one, however I did not access inside the buildings (which are huge, like ten or twelve stories), just took some crappy pictures from the street.

Stop two on the train route was far more fruitful. Longshan Temple is one of (if not the) oldest temples in the Taipei area. It is multi-religious, so to say; people pray to buddhas, deified teachers, and other gods. It is tough to take any artful pictures there as it is jam-packed with people praying, making offerings, sleeping (all outside). What floored me was the architecture. The roofs are excrutiatingly beautiful, sky blue and emerald green dragons, incredible red tiling and every beam on the inner roof told a story through imagery. At first I couldn't imagine how anyone could pray or have any spiritual concentration with so much action taking place but after making my own rounds of reverence and gratitude my attitude changed. A connection is made; connection with the fellow prayer-makers, a connection with the temple and the location, and a connection through time, with all the people and all the prayers, hopes, wishes and emotions that have passed through the gates. I hardly think anyone leaves dissatisfied from such a place. Oh, and who would have thought that a temple would house the largest concentration of beautiful girls? Everywhere, just everywhere!

Saturday night, after dinner, the five of us in the room went to a night market (I think). Maybe not, to be honest I can't remember. I'm beginning to think we didn't go to a night market. Who knows what we did? Not me.

Anyway today (Sunday) we met two other summer program students and headed to the National Palace Museum. It's supposedly the largest collection of ancient Chinese artifacts in the world, and I'd believe it. Everything from the early Neolithic Age to the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty in the early 20th century, all has it's place and description. Imperial funiture and curio boxes, neolithic pottery, bronze age pieces of literally all kinds, jade in almost every exhibit, seemingly a whole library of chinese books, documents, paintings, and calligraphy, stunning reliogious pieces, it was breathtaking. And all for only NT 80; that's under $3 US.

We made our way to a night market tonight. A large one, too. Carnival games, tons and tons of foods of all kinds (I had the pig heart soup), arcade games (I had to play some DDR), and a large avenue of shops full of useless materialism (but it's fun to see). Oh and the market cut right in front of an interesting temple. The main goddess is Ma-tsu, a goddess of the sea. Very lovely.

I'm feeling too enervated to go on. Maybe one of these days I'll actually discuss how I'm feeling or express some thoughts of mine. For now we may assume that no news is good news.

Oh yea, I think my parents with my aunts and uncles left yesterday for the West on a motorcycle adventure. May the skies smile upon them as the road befriends their bikes and leads them to happiness. The Buddha is attributed as saying 'It is better to travel well than to arrive.'

FRI-Day best day

Our fifth room mate arrived last night, Luis. Smart guy, from U of Kansas. He's also working on the low-mass star formation project with me (though we'll be using separate data). Special tea time today with lots of people and lots of food in the office area. After work some of us students took a bus to a relatively close and relatively small night market. It was really just a road/ large alley way full of stores, small businesses, street merchants, and tons of street food. I can't quite describe what I ate, other than the egg-batter pancake/waffle in the shape of a gun. Anyway we'll see what the weekend turns up.

oh before i forget, it was revealed to me that the trash cars here play Beethoven.

Belgium

Had the strangest hamburger for breakfast today. right near the ASIAA offices, a busy little street vendor made us hamburgers with eggs, canadian bacon, AMERICAN bacon, i think a meat patty, and some interesting vegetables with some sauce i can't remember. good, though. lunch today was at a Thai restaurant, though served in the seemingly typical asian manner; all the ingredients separately served on one platter. Had the chicken and yellow curry. And all for under 3 dollars! I'll take that over Ayuthaya's in Hilo anyday.
After work Dr. Sun-Kun King, Kotaro's supervisor on the TAOS project, invited the two of us and Yi-Hung out for some beers at a Belgium pub. Interesting guy, relaxed atmosphere, hearty beer.
On the way back to the dormitory Kotaro wanted to try some bubble tea. I don't know what that is but I grabbed some milk tea, tapioca pudding, and some other ingredient all mixed together. It's a wet, wild ride of a drink.
I've always been frugal with my money (some may call me a cheap bastard), but when it comes to food I can't help but try everything that comes my way, especially when I can convince myself everything is cheaper here.
Tomorrow marks the weekend so I'm sure we'll go out adventuring, I'll try to find some time to upload some pictures and stories on here.

Rejuvenation

The asians know how to travel. The ten hour flight between Honolulu and Taipei was bearable only through the service of the (rather cute) flight crew aboard China Airlines. Complementary breakfast, snacks/bevarages, and lunch were great, not to mention the free wine.
After landing, I had to find my way from the international airport to downtown(ish) Taipei some 25 miles away. A bus ride, taxi ride, and a walk through the rain found me my destination, the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA).
They've shacked me in a dormitory on a different campus location not far away from the offices. Four of us will share a six person room. I crashed hard last night, sleeping from probably around 7pm to 8am this morning.
Though I had the craziest dream last night. Two friends (whom now i realize I don't know) and I pissed off some guy with a cowboy hat because we were on his property. He captured one of my friends as me and the other guy took off running. I noticed that every step I took I was getting higher and higher off the ground. I was lucid dreaming! So I jumped into the air and took off flying, snagged my friend from the guy in the cowboy hat and took to the air.
The lucidity didn't last long as I found I awoke. But here's the twist; I rolled out of bed with some girl (again, whom I've never met in person) to find my friends chatting. I discovered later as I awoke in the dorm room that I had awoken from the lucid dream into another dream! So I was dreaming inside my dream if at all possible.
Anyway getting back into a science mindset will be nice. Only research this week, we start reducing data next week.