Monday, we had the biggest snow storm this year. Five days later, the temperature is in the 70s. Nevertheless, we had fun both days. Today, we went to the Great Fall in Maryland. My friend told me that the view is better from the Maryland side of the Potomac river. It was great to be able to do some outdoor walking. I bet the scenery will be even better in Summer when the trees turn green and there's more water in the river. I'm definitely going back there sometime.

Monday and today.

The fall brought so much colour. A couple of weeks ago, we made a weekend day trip to Shenandoah National Park. Five-hour beautiful drive. You really have to see it to appreciate the beauty of nature. The pictures just can't capture it but I still took many. Here they are




More pictures here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chengdu_spicygirl/sets/72157608773766094/

I meant to post this funny clip long time ago and finally got around to do it. Back when my parents visited us in Taiwan a few months ago, one exciting event was going on - the Taiwan presidential election.

My parents got to see all the campaign on both sides. They watched TV everyday to follow the election progress. Although they didn't understand the Taiwanese dialect, they did pick up two words at the end - "Dang Xuan" (get elected). The pronunciation in Taiwanese sounds like "Dong Suan"冻蒜 （frozen garlic). It was pretty funny because the TV actually used the two characters for "frozen garlic" in the subtitle.

So when my parents went back home, they told my families the only Taiwanese words they learned. My nephew just turned two and was at the time when he picks up everything he hears immediately. So here he was showing me what he learned:



waving the campaign flag and chanting:"Ma Ying Jiu, Dong suan; Ma Ying Jiu, Dong suan; Dong suan, Dong suan, Dong suan!", Just like the way the Ma's supporters did in Taiwan. Of course, by then Ma had been elected and didn't need the support from this little fan of him any more. My mom was instructing him in the background: "say it loud, keep it up."

Just realized that it has been two months since last post. What did I do? A lot. We moved from Taipei to the U.S., spent a few weeks in the hill country in Texas, moved to Washington D.C., moved twice in two weeks in D.C., finally found an apartment that we'll move in next month. I also had many phone interviews, more interviews in person, landed a new job yesterday.

Now, I feel a little tired. I hate moving so much but just have to live with it. Good news is that I can sleep late for another two weeks before start working.

It has been over four years since I lived in the U.S. last time. To be honest, I didn't have any so called reverse cultural shock. Things are more expensive though, especially the gas. It cost around $1.49/gallon when I left and $4.19 now. I'm glad that I'll be able to work here again. It'll be good for my English.

Dear friends, thanks for thinking of my families in Chengdu. Everyone in my families are fine. I've been trying to reach them by phone since yesterday afternoon but couldn't get through. However, the text message on cell phone still works. So last night I received a text message from my brother telling me that everyone back home is fine. Of course, everyone was shocked by such strong earthquake. Luckily no building collapsed in my hometown as far as I know, at least in the city. The center is in Wenchuan, which is not far from Chengdu. I passed through that area a few weeks ago on my way to Jiuzhaigou.

My families haven't gone back to their home yet, worried about any aftershocks. Hopefully I'll be able to talk to them soon. Thanks everyone for your emails.

Update: I finally was able to talk to my brother and my mom last night. They are still staying outdoors and sleeping in the car. Luckily, water, gas, electricity are all fine, so they can cook meals. Only one building was severely damaged in our town and everyone was evacuated. My parents and my nephew were at home (5th floor) when it happened. My dad was on the balcony. The building swing so hard that he had hard time to stand even holding onto the handrail. They immediately left the apartment and haven't gone back since then. It is raining in Chengdu now and they may go back home soon.

Just came back from a trip to China. For the second time, I went to Jiu Zhai Gou. I didn't expect the scenery to be great since it's dry season and Jiu zhai is famous for its water. But I was so lucky to see Jiu Zhai in snow. Just this view is worth the trip.

First shot in Jiu Zhai

I'll write more about the trip but here are more pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chengdu_spicygirl/sets/72157604908328341/

We went to Zhu Zi Hu (Bamboo Lake) at Yang Ming Mountain today. It's the 3rd day of the 海芋 festival. I couldn't find the English name for this kind of flowers, but the Chinese name literaly means "ocean taro". The leaves do resemble those of regular taro, so I guess they belong to the same botanic family.

Local farms charges an entrance fee of NT$100 per person. Once in the farm, you could choose to redeem the NT$100 coupon for drinks, snacks or you can pick 10 flowers from the fields. Pretty good value. I was really surprised to see so many people on a Thursday afternoon.

All flowers in the fields are white/ivory color, however, you can find purple, pink, red and other colors of flowers sold in the street. Be careful, those are actually sprayed with vegetable dye. But some tourists like them. I personally prefer the original.

The weather was perfect too. However, only one mini-bus runs between Beitou MRT station to the Bamboo Lake (S 9) every 40 minutes and is really crowded. At the bus station, taxi would try to rip you off. they would refuse to take any group less than four people because they charge by headcount, so about NT$600 per trip. The festival will run until May. It's fun!

Our friend Tim and his families came to Taiwan for their spring break. I went to Dan Shui with them today. For the first time, I took the ferry to the other side of Dan Shui River - Bali (八里)。The river bank looked so different from its crowded weekend scene.
I hadn't ridden bicycle for over 15 years but gotten really interested in it since I rid it in Jinmen a few weeks ago. Today we rid along the Danshui river all the way to Guandu bridge. The weather was perfect with nice breeze.
In the afternoon, we went to Beitou for hot spring. It was perfect for our sore legs. We had the whole place to ourselves until a group of tourists from Hong Kong got in and ruined our peaceful moment.

It's truly a relaxing day. I need to take advantage of my free time now to go out more.

I'm back from our R&R trip to Australia a week ago. It was a lot of fun but now I'm paying for it. The work has piled up so much that I had to go through over 400 emails on my first day back. Finally, this weekend I got some sleep and was able to download my pictures. I have put up some of them online but will have to add more detail notes later.

We spent almost 10 days driving around Tasmania. It's a beautiful island with friendly people. The only drawback - EXPENSIVE, especially at a time like this when dollar is soooooo weak. I'm sure you'll hear more when PR comes back. Yes, he's still there, not Tasmania but driving in the outback Australia. He probably just finished his sunset tour at the big ROCK at this moment. I had to come back early to work, so we can pay the credit card bill from the trip :).

I'm having technical difficulties to insert pictures in my entry in livejournal as I always do, so you can look at the pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chengdu_spicygirl/sets/72157603286847258/

We have been searching for authentic Sichuan food ever since I moved to Taiwan last year and have been very disappointed about those we tried. one of the partner in our office always asks me how spicy can I eat exactly. I told him that there is no good Sichuan restaurant in Taiwan. He is so proud that Taiwan has everything that he could not accept that. So everytime he saw ads or articles in newspaper about Sichuan restaurants, he would bring them to the office and gave them to me. Unfortunately, none of the pictures he previous showed to me resembles anything similar to authentic Sichuan food.

Two days ago he bought me a China Times Weekend magazine, which introduced three Sichuan restaurants. Again, dishes from two of the restaurants don't look like Sichuan food at all. But the other one really caught my eyes. I know if they can really make the dishes like they appeared on the magazine, it got to be good. According to the article, the chef married a Taiwanese and just moved to Taiwan two years ago. So I couldn't wait until weekend, and immediately called up my gangs. Everybody was up for it. So tonight, after work, seven of us went to try it. Now I have a good news for those who like Sichuan food. This is definitely the most authentic Sichuan food I've had in Taiwan so far. The chef Mr. Chen is from Yi Bin, Sichuan 宜賓. In case you don't know where Yi Bin is, it's where the famous liquor (Wu Liang Ye) is produced. It's called 天府家常菜， 臺北縣永和市仁愛路五號 （捷運頂溪站）（02）8660-0190. It's open 11:30am-2pm for lunch and 5:30pm-8:30pm for dinner, closed on Monday.

The chef does tone down the flavor for locals but if you tell them that you want authentic Sichuan food when you order you food. They can do it. The chili and peppercorn are definitely from Sichuan, soooooo good.

We ordered seven dishes and one soup.夫妻肺片，口水雞，豆腐鰱魚，魚香茄子，辣子雞丁，水煮牛肉，蒜苗臘肉，酸菜粉絲湯。Every dish was good. I took some pictures with my friend's cell phone. I'll post them later if they come out well. If not, I'll took some next time. I'm taking PR there for sure. It's reasonably priced. We had a few bottle of beers too. It came out about NT$300 per person. If I have to use one word to describe the feeling after the meal - 爽！！！

I told you before that two things about Taiwan that every mainlander knows: Sun Moon Lake and A Li Mountain. A few weeks ago, I made it to the first one: Sun Moon Lake. Our division had the annual manager meeting there on a Friday(it's a perk for working hard for a year). Luckily, I was recently transferred to this division because my boss was, due to some internal organization changes. So, I got to go and stayed at THE LALU, the best hotel in the area.

Considering the US$500/night, the check in process was a little bit disappointing. 3pm was the check in time, so the spouses had to wait for over two hours before getting in the room while we had our meeting. Nevertheless, the hotel room was huge and the view was magnificent. It has a living room, bedroom and a huge balcony with a day bed.

The Chinese name of the hotel is "Han Bi Building". It started as a luxurious residence built by a Japanese in 1916. Later, because of the project of the hydraulic power generation in the Sun Moon Lake, Han-Bi Building had to be rebuilt on another place. Afterwards, Chiang Kaishek chose it as his temporary villa and spent a lot of time there.

I guess PR really liked the hotel because he spent the entire time in the room while I went out on a tour around the lake to see the Ci En Pagoda and Xuan Zhuang Temple.


A shot from the balcony before I began my day trip around the lake.


Although many people told me that Sun Moon Lake is really nothing compared to all the big lakes in Mainland China, I have to say that I really liked it. It's a very beautiful place.
More pictures http://www.flickr.com/photos/chengdu_spicygirl/sets/72157602293605826/

I finally did it, try something different. I had my hair cut today to the shortest in over 15 years.

I forgot to take a picture before I cut it, so here's one of the picture of me in long hair.


Here's me after the hair cut.


What's your vote?

It's almost three months that I haven't written anything. Excuses:
#1. At the end of the day, I'm too tired to sit in front of a computer after staring at another one at work for a whole day.
#2. The work is busy, when I have some free time, I'd rather sleep.
#3. My parents were here for two months that I'd rather watch TV with them at night. On the weekends, we traveled a lot.
#4. PR and I travel, eat out or have other fun together and he writes about them, which left me little to write about. And he is a better writer any way.
#5. I'm just too lazy.

But now I should start to write again. In fact, most of my travel for the past year were done in the past two months. We literally took my parents somewhere every weekend, Gaoxiong, Tainan, Hualian... I also had a chance to go on a company trip to Kending, where the best beach in Taiwan is (according to some people, not sure if it's true). One of the typical thing that companies in Taiwan do for their employees is annual trip. After the crazy tax seasons ended at the end of May, we headed to Kending for a overnight trip.

We took the high speed rail to Gaoxiong, where the tour bus picked us up. It was the first time for many of my colleagues to take the train (2nd time for me), so they were very excited.

I have to say, even though food is absolutely important in Chinese culture, people in Taiwan take it to a different level. In all the trips I've taken with locals, the itinerary was carefully planned so that we won't miss any famous local food on the way, sometimes even with a little bit detour. This time, we had Tuna meal on the way to Kending and Pork feet meal on the way back. Everyone was raving about it. The Pork feet restaurant even offer gift package to go. I wasn't impressed with either meal. For the first time, I tried a slice of raw Tuna. It probably will be my last piece too. Don't get me wrong. It was not bad but I really don't like to eat any raw meat/fish.

After about 10 courses of Tuna cooked in different way, I made a comment to my boss that I thought the sesame noodles was the best (the simplest food that you can get in the night market). It's definitely not the smartest comment. He probably thought that the company's big expenses on the meal was wasted.

Another vegetable dish called 山蘇, which I have never seen before was good too.
Result from the trip - Most of the pictures in my camera were for food.http://www.flickr.com/photos/chengdu_spicygirl/page2/

But the hotel we stayed in was wonderful. The Chateau Beach Resort, best hotel in Kending, with great private beach.

When we got there in the afternoon, it was very cloudy. Lying on the chair by the beach, I could see the thunderstorm moving in from the Ocean. But it was such a relaxing afternoon, with very few people around. I loved it.
The sun only came out for one hour before we checked out the next morning. We grabbed the chance to take some more pictures.

By the time we got on the bus, the rain was pouring down. The hotel is a little pricey. Our room with one big bed and two small beds cost around US$350. I'm sure we got some group discount with over 80 people but I had to share room with three other colleagues. Nevertheless, I had a great time. I hope I can go back there sometime.

View from our balcony

Nine years, almost a decade, when I put it this way, it sounds like such a long time. Actually it really doesn't feel that long. Last Wednesday was our 9th wedding anniversary. PR agrees. He told me that it felt more like three years. Maybe because we didn't properly celebrate for the past five years.

The day didn't start very well because I didn't sleep very well the night before. By the time I got off from work around 6pm, I was not in a very good mood. But when I got home, I found this
surprise gift from PR


It immediately changed my mood. Then PR poured me a glass of red wine that I brought back for him from France. After that, I started to feel a little bit spinning in the head. But I was VERY happy. Then we went to this Italian restaurant that he has been raving about. Very good food although PR thought we got sort of second class citizen treatment. See here (http://www.princeroy.org/?p=488#more-488) But it didn't bother us at all. It just gave us something to laugh at.

This is definitely best anniversary in recent years for us.
Looks like we'll still be here on our 10th anniversary. Will have to start to plan it now...

May 1 was international labour day, so I got a day off from work. My company organized a day trip to San Xia (literally means three gorges), which is about 45 minutes away from Taipei. I didn't see three gorges. The small town has a temple with history back to the 17th century and an "Old street". In 1916, a Japanese local official decided to promote business in this street and started to invite people who were driven away by the Japanese to come back. Nowdays the street is a popular weekend destination for people from Taipei. First floor of the houses on both side of the street are mostly stores, selling tea, snack food, Chinese traditional clothes, crafts, etc. We had a tour guide who grew up in the street. He told us the street meant a lot to him because when he was a little kid, his family was quite poor, the vendors in the street pretty much raised him. He used to go to the stores to get rice, oil and the store owner would write everything down in a little notebook. His mom would pay for them whenever she had enough money.

The Temple

祖師廟， 臺北縣三峽鎮

Kid checking out old lock in "old street"

老街

After a brief visit of the town, we headed to our next destination "Jean's Garden" to see lighting bugs. It's about a half hour bus ride and located in the hills. Although our tour guide told us we could see lighting bugs in many areas in San Xia, this garden is a good choice. It has a nice ground, with a creek running through it.

You can get curry rice or pasta for dinner although the portion got greatly reduced when there were too many visitors. We got there around 6 and was still too early for the lighting bugs but it was really nice to just sit and watch the flowers in the distance or walk around in the garden. I wish they serve teas. It's the season for the Tung tree blossom.

By 7pm, the lighting bugs began to come out. I've never seen so many of them, amazing. There were at least four different kinds that night, some with green light, the other with orange light. It's an interesting place but I would recommend going on a weekday because it tends to get crowded and kids could be loud and scare the bugs away. It was fun.

It's tomb sweeping day on Thursday, so we are having a four day weekend. It's very nice although we'll have to work next Saturday to make up one work day for this Friday. AIT was not closed on Friday, so I decided to go in to run some errands.

I hop in a taxi, the driver is quite talkative. When he found out that I was going to AIT, he began to tell me that he is very familiar with AIT. Apparently, he stays near our apartment building every morning at 6:30am, so he always took AIT people in our building to work. I looked at his license displayed in the car. His last name is Xiao. I was reminded of one morning when I took a taxi to work, the driver said to me "It's not very easy to catch a taxi here in the morning. Have you ever taken Mr. Xiao's taxi? He's alway here waiting in the morning." So it must be him.

Mr. Xiao claims that he knows pretty much everyone who works at AIT in our building. I don't know how he developed his theory about what kind of people join State Department. But he's convinced that most people who join State Dept. are 农家子弟 (nong jia zi di - sons of the soil) (in his words). Very few people are from city. In the first few years at State Dept., the salary is not very high, so these "nong jia zi di" are very frugal. After being with the State Dept. for over 10 years, people will have lots of money. This apparently has direct impact on Mr. Xiao's business. According to him, the previous batch of people assigned to here were mostly over 40s, so has more money and took his taxi everyday to work. But this year, a lot more new officers got assigned here, so his business is not as good.

I didn't want to put him in an awkward situation by pointing out that his whole theory is wrong. I just said "Maybe people just drive now instead of taking taxi." But he said "No, they walk." "One time someone took my taxi to AIT. He told me that he walks most of the time because that way he can get some exercise. They don't know I know their situations." I thought it's so funny and it's another example of how people develop some kind of perception about something with no logic whatsoever, but are convinced that it's the truth.

On a totally unrelated note, I watched a short report on CNN about people's opinion on homosexuals in China. During the report, they repeatedly showed some images they filmed in the street, where boys and girls playing with each other, walking hand in hand or arm in arm. I wonder if the person who put the report together has any idea that these kind of things he or she sees in the street has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuals. It's just different habit compared to what you see in western culture. When I grew up in China, everytime my close girlfriend and I hangout, either shopping or doing something else, we often walked arm in arm.
It's not such a big deal that regular people might not understand this but for CNN, if they would make something a topic of their report, I would assume they would put someone at least understand more about Chinese culture on the job. I just want to tell them that what they were showing to the world has nothing to do with what they were saying.

Consider how much time we spent in our life sleeping, bed should definitely the most important piece of furniture at home. One benefit in foreign service is the free furnished housing (for most posts).

However, I had always thought the mattress provided is not very comfortable to sleep on, too soft for me. Part of the reason might be that I grew up sleeping on hardwood platform bed with a few layers of cotton quilt, which is much harder than any mattress I had slept on. But recently I developed another explanations. The problem is not that the mattress itself is too soft. It's the lack of support underneath it. The only support it gets off the ground is a square metal frame with a cross in the center. So everytime one of us toss and turns, the whole bed will shake. We finally ordered a bed. It came today. Unfortunately, there is some marks on one side of the frame, so they 'll have to change it later. For now, the bed is not completely assembled (no screws in yet). When it is, I will be able to flip the top part of the platform up. There are lots of storage room underneath.

It's very practical design. Other than the storage room at the bottom, the headboard part also provides lots of small compartments. The part with glass is actually movable and could be pushed in. The two little lights have three bands that we could adjust by simply touching one button. Anyway, it's very nice, although it's not one of those fancy solid wood bed. I really like it so far. I hope it's comfortable too.

PR and I went to China for a two-week trip right after Chinese New Year. He has written about it on his blog. I started working the day after we came back, so haven't had any time to upload all the pictures until today. After staring at a computer during the day at work, I haven't had much motivation to sit in front of another one to update my blog either.

It was a fantastic trip. We saw some of our old friends in Beijing although there are still many others whom I didn't have time to contact. After a few days in Beijing, we went back to Chengdu. Everyone in my family was very happy to see PR. It was his second time back since we got married almost 9 years ago. So my parents often jokes that he disappeared since he got me. The day we arrived happened to be our nephew's one year birthday. Many of our relatives were there. When we got home from airport, everybody was having tea in the park. The weather was considered good in Chengdu since you could see a little bit sunshine. In a day like that, especially on the weekend, people would normally hang out in the teahouse, playing cards, majiang or simply chatting.

Even the babies joined the scene:
Two of my nephews (one year and two years old) playing with the majiang)

Since it's really hard to get everyone together, my mom wouldn't miss the chance to have a family picture taken

My brother, sister-in-law, mom, dad and nephew, me and PR

My brother's son apparently likes his uncle PR very much

Who are you?


In the following few days, we went to Qingcheng Mountain, Leshan and some other places. I'll write more later if I have more time, meanwhile, you can follow the link on the left to my pictures taken during the trip. As all the vacations, it always feels too short. Hopefully we could get back again soon.

It's my birthday today. Nothing special, I'm just older AGAIN! PR is still fighting the cold. We spent most of the day at home. It's cloudy most of the day and rained a little bit. I went to get two tickets for a concert which will be held in April. I noticed more grey hairs and wrinkles. Sigh! What can you do?

It's Chinese New Year eve tomorrow. I miss all my families and all the good food in Chengdu. Save some for me, please! I wish everyone a happy new year!