no stinky tofu

2009-05-15T04:46:00.000-07:00

Spring Scream (春吶) is an annual music festival with mostly underground bands and some mainstream ones held in Kending (墾丁), the southernmost point in Taiwan. I was itching to hear some Taiwanese indie music and there could not been a better introduction. The festival grounds were beautiful and open and all seven stages were uncrowded; you could stand upfront without any pushing or shoving. It felt like a dream... great music, relaxing atmosphere, cheap food and booze... This is what all music festivals should be like. Although, I heard the festival was not as packed this year because of the economy, so perhaps I just got lucky. Whatever. It rocked.

This pic is of Joanna, an ABC who grew up in Los Angeles. She sings jazzy/folky songs with a voice that reminds me a little of Norah Jones (sorta). I swooned a bit. She sings mostly in English and talks to the crowd in pretty good Chinese but intermittently injects words in English like "legitimate".

"Sun Rays of Morning". Dreamy, arena rock power ballads, reminded me of some Smashing Pumpkins material. The lead singer talked to the crowd before their last song about how it's tough making a living as a musician in Taiwan and asked them to support the music community as much as possible. During their last song, the lead singer suddenly started tearing up on stage. It sounds cheesy, but it worked on me, bought myself an EP for all of 50NT. ($1.25)

lighthouse(!) on the fair grounds.

can't think of a better venue for a music festival.

BEACH! the rainy weather cleared up long enough for a pretty enjoyable day at 白沙彎. The water was unbelievably warm. Probably because Spring Scream was going on, Kenting during this time turned into Spring Break Taiwan style. The beach (not this one, tho) was HOPPING at 4am on the last night. That was definitely a sight to see. All in all, a good time had by all.

it's time to break old habits

2009-04-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

gather round, 集合, hopefully it'll be a sight to see.

2009-03-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Danshui Night market.
Random turkish ice cream place at Danshui... the challenge is to actually get him to give you the ice cream cone. he'll act like he's gonna give it to you and then at the last moment he'll spin the cone around on his hand and make you look silly. he does this several times. endless entertainment, obviously.

candied tomatoes at the ShiLin night market... a little too sweet for my taste.

potato chips! how DO they make them like that...

蚵仔煎

taiwanese oyster omelet... yum.

taipei = night markets. it's that simple. everywhere you go, there's a night market. you shop, you eat, you go home happy (and sometimes bloated). there are a couple historic streets that i've visited in the area, one in Danshui and one in Daxi and they're basically night markets that operate during the day as well. my next goal is to find non-night market related activities to entertain myself. there are hot springs and some decent hiking in the area that i have yet to make it out to.

my carcass at Yuma, a southwestern restaurant opened by south africans. pretty good place for ribs and fajitas. good western food is hard to come by and after eating taiwanese food all day for a couple weeks you start to crave burgers, burritos, pasta and pizza. when i first got here, while i was looking to eat taiwanese food, my roommates and their friends were in western food mode so they were hitting up all these western restaurants. this dinner was a going away dinner for Andrew, an ABC who lives upstairs from me. he mentioned that his sister, Karen Wang, also went to Tufts and when i clicked on her facebook profile, although i didn't recognise her, i was surprised to find that she's dating Eric Richmond. remember him? small world...

taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world but soon to be eclipsed by the Burj Dubai when it's finished. i haven't been to the top but my classmate Vince is going today b/c he's collecting pics of the ~100 ox statues that they've got up in the taipei area in commemoration of the year of the ox and there's one on top of 101 that they are taking down this weekend.

vince's last name and his chinese AND astrological zodiac sign = OX. AND he's big and looks like an ox. makes perfect sense.

i attended a dinner in the 101 area last week for another student's birthday and met her classmates. i met two guys older than me (whoohoo!) and one of them went to bronx science. engine, do you remember Sam Lo? he says he bumped into you a year or so ago. the other day, he had an old Bronx Science frisbee with him, the one with Guile from Street Fighter as the logo. that really brought back memories when i saw that. man i'm old. ;)

guitar and others...

2009-02-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

吉他! decent guitar for 3000 NT (~93 US dollars). came with a bag, stand, capo, new strings, a strap that i don't know how to put on, a string cleaner (?) and a couple picks. sweet.

i never forget to drink my pro sweat before volleyball.

This pic pretty much sums up my roommate, Simon. ;)

this chick's got nothin on me.

went climbing at a really nice "YMCA" which had an olympic size pool. the climbing area wasn't huge but was sufficiently difficult enough to prevent me from finishing most of my climbs.

new beginnings...

2009-02-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

i nuked all my contacts... but my iphone now works in taipei. it's a fresh start.

must stop slacking on this blog

2009-02-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

is this guy 8 ft tall or is the ceiling just a bit low?

not your average American 7-Eleven...

say no to stinky tofu

2009-02-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

Nainai used to make 臭豆腐 ("cou doufu") when I was a kid. It literally means "stinky tofu". You could smell her cooking it from two floors up. The whole house reeked of it. I wouldn't touch the stuff, but apparently my parents and grandparents ate it with much delight. Wikipedia says "it's is the unofficial national snack food of Taiwan and is universally loved". Joanne says that after the tenth time I smell it in the night market, I'll start coming around to the idea of maybe not gagging when trying to eat it. We'll see about that.