Travel Journal: Taiwan 2009

July 2, 2009 at 3:27 am (Family, Posted by Cindy, Public Transportation, Travels, food)
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June 28, 2009

2009 is shaping up to be a year of many flights.  1/2 of the flight to Paris, the ones coming back from Paris, to and fro Columbus, and now, Taiwan.  Today’s estimated flight time is 12 hours 28 min; we are supposed to arrive in Taiwan at 9:55PM.  The plan: stay up the entire time, eat everything, drink everything, watch thought-provoking films, world movies, and trashy pleasures.  This should render me physically and mentally exhausted so that I can rest soundly upon arrival.

Now watching: The Watchmen

Followed by Two Lovers

–> bathroom break

~7 hours left

crossword interlude

And now, no video is showing.  might I have broken the feed?  Fail.  Aha.  There is a problem with the system, which they just announced.  At first, I was worried, because in Chinese, they said wo men shu yiao tsong shin chi dong, which i thought meant something was seriously amiss with the plane.  Luckily, the next announcement was in English: We need to reboot.

I’ll jot down some of the highlights of the day, and if the movies don’t start back up when I’m done, I’ll commence with the Oscar Wilde.  (I missed Pride, so it’s the next best thing.)

  • Jon giving me advice
    • Try not to make people hate you
    • You’ll be living with 4 other girls.  Your cycles will sync. So I’ve been told.
    • Watch out for a guy called Louis.  He’s perverted…and smelly…
  • Running into family friends we’ve known since Cleveland who now live in the Bay Area.  Same flight.
  • Man starts talking to us in the waiting area.  Asked how many children Lee Papa and I had.  (Fail.)
  • Man next to me on the plane got moved to better seats (three to himself) so Lee Papa and I get to spread out.  (Win.)
  • The Watchmen-is superhero sex more super?  What’s the back story?
  • Two Lovers-Why settle?  Didn’t Joaquin Phoenix go wonky?

Thoughts on the trip…

  • Not yet packed for Ohio.  Fail.
  • Lee Mama is neurotic.  Clearly, I’m her daughter…

Alright, time for some Wildeing…

July 1, 2009

I read “The Importance of Being Earnest,” (or should plays be underlined?) but then my eyes got really dry, so I thought I’d better take a nap.  I never did get any more movies to play.

-> baggage claim took forever!
-> American lady asked how to call home; she had lived in Taiwan 15 years ago
-> My name is listed wrong in the Taiwanese computers

We finally got back around 11PM and went to sleep.  The room i got seems cleaner than it was last year.  Hm.  I woke up around 8:30 and spent the day watching TV, with interludees helping out with the store and selling peaches.

-> something to look up: movie in French, took place in Japan.  Frenchman and his Japanese daughter.  Male lead looked familiar.

[I did look this up.  It's a movie called Wasabi.]

I wonder if I should read A Picture of Dorian Grey today.  It seems pretty creepy…

Now writing on THSR.  I ended up reading a book on mythology entitled…wait for it…Mythology.  Its author, Edith Hamilton, was apparently a renowned classicist.  This is yet to be confirmed by my classicist friends.

Between yesterday and today, I must have become much tastier, as I now have a multitude of bites and am oddly swollen.  Gross.  (Hand, finger, arms, possibly panty-line, face, feet, ankles…ô, my poor delicate ankles…)

Wow, HSR is freaking fast.  Well, duh, that’s the point.  It’ll take only half an hour to travel from Taoyuan to Taichung.  i feel pretty out of sorts.  First off, I ate too much for breakfast.  In the past, when I felt full, I could soldier on for another 10 minutes.  Now, if I fell full, I fell like throwing up.  Then, i twas hot.  Then, there were all the mosquito bites.  Then, there was the car ride down the mountain.  My intestinal fortitude is lacking these days, so the twists and turns began getting to me, at which point I took a nap.  Now, my eyes are dry, I’m swollen and itchy, and…I cannot go to school today, said little Peggy Ann McKay…

Let’s talk a bit about Asian guilt.  From a young age, I was taught that the home of my father’s childhood is my home.  These are my people, but they don’t know me.  Fewer and fewer in the village recognize my dad each time we go (it’s still a small town, though; many still know him); there is nothing in my visage to mark me as his or my grandmother’s.  Filial loyalty instills love and respect, but going to the mountains makes me uncomfortable.  Then, I am guilty, for I am uncomfortable.

Also up for disucssion- temple.  I’m never quite sure who hears my prayers, and my dad doesn’t really know, either.  I don’t know if he’s paid much attention to these things.  I should ask Lee Mama.

–

So, that’s all transcribed from my travel journal.  I’m now in central Taiwan with my mom’s family.  Perhaps there will be more later, but now, it’s time to eat :D

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One-liner

February 18, 2009 at 10:59 pm (Posted by Cindy, food)

Pasta will do you in. Absinthe is your friend.

~Mikaela, 2009

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Should be writing

February 13, 2009 at 2:26 am (Picture, Posted by Cindy, Travels, food)
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As always, I turn to blogging when I should be working.  Don’t worry; it’s all to your benefit.  I bring you…more travel tales!  Youki, I’ll do you one better and include pictures when I post to FIT.  I promise.  Onto Day 3:

We had originally planned to go to Rouen on January 3, but rearranged our itinerary and decided to go to the Picasso Museum instead.  (Oh yes, there was quite a bit of itinerary-changing!)  Not so much French this time around.  I think I was too tired/cold when I was writing!

samedi 3 janvier 2009

Tiff needed a hat, so we started at the mall next door.  Auchan opens at 8h30, but the shops don’t open until 10.  Uhh…H&M finally rolled up the gate at 10h07.  Good job, guys.  Off we went…

We wandered around for awhile, searching for the museum.  Because we got off at Châtelet, we passed by Pompidou, so we went in.  There was a HUGE line in the back…for the bathroom.  (That was originally mis-written, and then crossed out.  That’s how tired I was when I wrote this.  I meant the library!)  Right.  We didn’t have museum passes yet, so we browsed a bit and headed out.  Actually, that’s not completely true.  We had just gotten the passes, an adventure in and of itself.  I knew we could go somewhere in Les Halles, possibly at a store?  The information guy [by the way, my handwriting got very sloppy here; I was definitely nodding off as I wrote!] said no, no passes here, but gave us a couple maps.  (Which I used for the rest of the trip, by the way.  Very handy…and slightly ragged by the end!)  I asked at a telephone store.  “Maybe FNCP???”  Turns out, I was close.  FNAC.  It’s a Virgin-like store.

We walked through the free part of Pompidou, then checked out a blindfolded painter in the courtyard.  Across from this glass monstrosity is an ancient cathedral/cloister; the juxtaposition seems so Paris.

Pompidou

Che

Cloitre

I spotted a crêperie en route to the Musée (ok, that’s not hard to do), so I picked up a Nutella one and finished its gooey awesome-ness just as we arrived.  Both the museum and the artwork were pretty cool; in fact, there was a temporary exhibit going on, and when we asked about it at the end, we found out we had been walking through it the whole time.  A contemporary artist had erected huge mirrors and replaced some of the windows with colored panes.  (Other observations previously noted.)

***

[I interrupt myself to note that no, I have not noted my other observations here for the blog.  So, I will delineate my scribbles and perhaps find supporting Internet evidence for some of my favorite pieces...]

  • pic of Diego Giacometti in Musée Picasso
  • Picasso and ace of clubs-why?
  • <<Le Baiser>> 12 janvier 1931
  • <<La Suplicante>> 18 décembre 1937-wardrobe malfunction, missing shoe
  • retrato = portrait (Sp.)
  • I like <<Retrato de Dora Maar>>

Musee Picasso

***

We then met up with Joyce’s friend David underneath a statue of Danton at a Mètro station.  I think we saw a movie about Danton starring Gérard Depardieu in Barnett’s class.  David took us around the Latin Quarter.  We stopped in at a café whose doors, like many French doors, do not swing shut.  You must push them shut.  Later, Tiff and I had Cuban food.  I think I’m bad at picking cocktails–they’re always too sweet.

Latin Quarter

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Day Two

February 7, 2009 at 1:13 pm (Picture, Posted by Cindy, Travels, food)
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As Tiffany mentioned, we stayed at her mom’s friend’s ex-husband’s place right outside of Paris.  So, for future reference, Shu Shu = uncle and Ah Yi = auntie.  For about the first week, I have actual travel journal stories, so I’m just typing out what I wrote in the lovely journal Michelle gave me for Christmas :)

vendredi 2 janvier 2009

Aujourd’hui, nous nous reveillons à 9h45.  Pour le petit-déjeuner, nos hôtes nous offrent du pain, de la confiture des fraises, et 雞肉醬.  [Today, we awoke at 9:45.  For breakfast, our hosts offered us bread, strawberry jam, and "chicken paste."]  The jar wouldn’t open, though, and when I looked at it, I noticed it was <<de grenouilles.>>  That’s not 雞.  That’s 田雞!  (雞=chicken.  田雞=farm chicken=frog!)

Plus important, il neigeait!  [More important, it snowed!]  As we finished eating, the snow stopped falling, and the sun came out.  Before we left, we saw the snow start to melt.

Neige

Nous partons pour le gare.  Aujourd’hui, c’était un voyage plus facile que lequel d’hier, car nous n’avons pas eu nos bagages aujourd’hui.  Nous avons pris le RER C à Champs de Mars pour rendre visite à la  Tour Eiffel.  À midi, la tour était fermée car il faisait trop froid et, comme un officiel nous dit: <<It’s too icy.>>  Tout de même, il y avait un queue long ne bougeant pas.  [We leave for the station.  Today, it was an easier trip than yesterday's, because we didn't have our luggage today.  We took the RER C to Champs de Mars to visit the Eiffel Tower.  At noon, the tower was closed because it was too cold, and, like an official told us, "It's too icy."  All the same, there was a long line, not moving at all.]

Ainsi, nous nous sommes promenées au parc.  Une femme avec hijab nous a approché: <<Do you speak English?>>  Elle voulait de l’argent.  Nous avons pris de photos, de la tour et au mur de paix.  Nous avons marché plus, en passant l’École Militaire, un chocolatier, une libraire, des autres magasins, et beaucoup de cafés.  [And so, we walked around the park.  A woman in hijab approached us: "Do you speak English?"  She wanted money.  We took pictures--of the tower and of the Wall of Peace.  We walked some more, passing the Military School, a chocolatier, a bookstore, more shops, and many cafés.]

Paix

Les immeubles de la rue sont dans un style classique, avec des portes merveilleux.  J’aime bien ces portes.  [The apartment buildings in the street were in a classical style, with marvelous doors.  I really like those doors.]

Immeuble

En retournant à la tour, nous l’avons découverte ouverte, avec des queues tellement longs!  [On returning to the tower, we found it open, with so very long lines!]  There was a pair of girls in front of us around our age from some sort of place with white people that did not speak English, Spanish, or Italian.  They didn’t talk enough for me to figure out what language they were using.  In front of them was an American family; behind us were 3 Midwestern college students, possibly?  (Definitely American, maybe Midwestern.  Sidebar: while in the park, there were 2 little British girls “cantering” around yelling, “Giddy-up!”  Also, many cute little doggies.  Adorable.)

To climb the tower, it costs 3,10 € and many steps.  With the wind blowing, it was quite easy to become short of breath, although the stairs were pretty manageable in height-length ratio.

Gorgeous views of course.  Upon descent, we headed south and walked along Avenue de Suffren, which was mostly residential.  In search of lunch and the métro, we turned onto Motte-Picquet.

Pain au chocolat. Win.  Public telephone.  Lose.  We peered into the booth (3 stuck together in a triangle) and spied no coinslots; only a card slot.  I tried inserting my ATM card, to no avail.

We had to ask the lady at a desk of a hotel for help twice.  The calling card didn’t work.  The guys at a phone shop told us to buy a carte téléphonique at le tabac, which we hadn’t been able to find, but it was INSIDE the café!

Finally, we could call David, but he was on his way to his uncle’s for tea, so we decided to just stick around the area and browse.

Monoprix- amazing!  First floor: clothing, household items, boulanger, pâtisserie.  2nd: grocery store.  Coke is made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup.

McDonald’s- really popular!?  Many kinds of coffee, breakfast sandwich: bacon & egg sandwich.

We meandered down the street (Commerce), which had many cute shops, at least three Asian buffets, and lights arching over the street.  There was a church at the end.

Eglise

Asian Buffet

We headed back to the métro stop and got home just in time for dinner at 7h30.

*Random observation of the day: Placard on side of l’École Militaire in memory of 743 Jews sent to Auschwitz was rather non-descript.

***

Alright, now for some meta-commentary.  Here are some “dumb American” things on my part: the lady in a hijab?  All the ladies in hijab that I thought were Muslim?  Were probably gypsies.  I never did end up trying the frog paste, even after it was opened (but Tiffany did, so maybe she’ll tell you about it), but I did have snails, ok?

Oh, and David is Joyce’s friend from Princeton who is parisien and was nice enough to show us around (later in the trip).

I’ll post pictures of things at some point.  They have been uploaded to the Internet, but I’m not sure if I want to insert them in blog posts or not.  Anyway, Ashley had greatly recommended Monoprix to me, so I was super excited to check it out (continuously throughout the trip), and since it was across from McDonald’s, we looked at its menu, too.  Also, I believe buffet in the French sense is like “smorgasbord,” or “spread,” rather than “all-you-can-eat.”

I’m visiting Davis this weekend, though, and Allie is lying in bed yelling at me/talking to Sichen, so I should excuse myself.  À bientôt!

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Briefly Back

December 28, 2008 at 1:43 am (College, Posted by Cindy, Science, Travels, food, sports)
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Hello, my loves! It’s been awhile, has it not? Quick re-cap of the goings-on that have made my life quite hectic, albeit rather boring:

  • Finals.  Yeah, it happened.  I studied hard for the microbiology class that had so discouraged me and actually walked out of the exam smiling!  It was great!  Then, I wrote the first paper of my college career.  That’s not completely true; I’ve written two-page French lit analysis assignments, but nothing serious like this.  Twenty-two pages on message boards.  Wow.
  • Laura’s holiday party.  My linguistics professor has now had a holiday party three years in a row, and there’s always something fun.  This year, I think the Steven Chu stories will hold the most memorable spot, and I will surely share…sometime soon.
  • Lounging around.  I may have lied.  It might not have been completely hectic.  But, I had to plan things.  You see, I’m dashing off to France!  I’ll (not) do the New Year’s countdown on the plane, after a small layover in Detroit.  I hear tell there’s a brand-new (ish) Northwest terminal.  Exciting!  (But, they lack Dunkin Donuts.)

In the spirit of planning, I offer here a blogging to-do list:

  • Steven Chu stories
  • latkes with Stephen (my friend from high school)’s family, and revelations thereof
  • Emerald Bowl
  • cookies
  • France!  Activities!

That about does it.  I need to sleep now, because I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to do two things to become Super Cindy: get enough sleep and only focus on the things for which I have some sort of talent.  Ha.  Right.  We’ll see how that goes.

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Strange aroma

November 4, 2008 at 10:47 am (College, Inappropriate, Posted by Cindy, food)
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Ok, this is post number 98.  I didn’t mean for such a spate of posts to go up in one morning, but as I’m sitting here on my duffer, a lot of thoughts are coming to me!  Anyway, I’ve been sitting on the couch in my living room this whole time.  When I was calling the professor earlier, I smelled soap.  When I clicked “New Post,” I smelled coffee.  (I love the smell of coffee…just not the taste.)  But now, I’m smelling scrambled eggs.

Huh?  The only thing I can think of is pregnancy, but pregnant women have very sensitive olfactory glands, not schizophrenic, right?  Besides, Mik and I crack too many jokes about pregnancy as it is.  NB: It’s not that we make fun of pregnant women (or man, as the case may be).  We just have to pee a lot, that’s all.  Incidentally, if you click on that YouTube link, please disregard all the hateful comments.  It saddens me that all these people are devaluing a married couple’s relationship and their love of their child simply because one of them underwent a sex-change operation.

I don’t pretend to know much about “transgendered culture,” and I put it in quotation marks because I doubt that a bunch of people can all be lumped together that way.  Someone queried why any woman would want to marry a man who was once a woman.  Well, whenever you enter a new relationship, do you sort through all their baggage?  Or do you accept that you have a past, the other person has a past, and that together, you’ll create a future?

Perhaps more infertile women should consider marrying men who were born with female anatomy.  Sorry, that was flippant.  Incidentally, in my genetics class, we’ve been learning about the different permutations of sex chromosomes as well as the phenotypes that arise when you have an XX male (the paternal X carries SRY, or sex-determining region of Y) or XY female (the Y is SRY-).  There is so much biochemistry that already guides what we are that I don’t begrudge people their socio-anthropological differences, either.  I’m not sure if that last sentence made sense.  I’ll have to think on this.

At any rate, I just turned on “Regis and Kelly,” so I promise I’ll stop posting this morning!

Dang it…soapy smell again!

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We share a last name

November 3, 2008 at 7:46 am (Posted by Cindy, food)
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I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but here goes…

Sometimes, I’m like Sandra Lee.  It’s a little uncouth to use someone’s techniques (just a little!  I swear!) while trashing her in the same post, but I guess I’m going to do it.  She’s very annoying.  I’m not quite as enchanted with the Food Network these days as I once was (for about 4 years, I didn’t really watch normal people TV), which I don’t think was really a conscious decision; it just fell out of habit.  Even in my heyday, though, Sandra Lee irked me.

Her show bothered me because she seemed like she was trying too hard (one of the ultimate “un-cool” things to do in a teenaged world, right?) to be SEMI-homemade.  I must admit, though, I combine her idea of using a packaged processed product with Alton Brown’s condoning of cake mix quite frequently.  In fact, the cocoa chai cake was one such example.

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

  • 1 box white cake mix [incidentally, I interchange white and yellow, because I always add things, anyway]
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/4 coup vodka
  • 3 tbs Chai Latte powder (I used Trader Joe’s)
  • 1 tbs cocoa powder

Protocol

  1. Whisk dry ingredients together
  2. Whisk in all the wet ingredients
  3. Pour into greased pan
  4. Bake at the proper temperature (according to the box and your vessel) for the indicated time (I used a 9″ x 13″ Pyrex, so about half an hour)

I should really use up my cake flour.  But this is so delicious!

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Are you a food person?

October 31, 2008 at 5:29 pm (Picture, Posted by Cindy, food)
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I’ve mentioned before that my motto in life is…Fattie: It’s not a size, it’s a lifestyle. (Subtext: It’s my lifestyle.) I see fattie-dom as embracing life (and food) with vigor, and I try to lead my life with as much vigor sans physical exertion as possible. (The one exception is that I’m a fast walker.) I love to eat. I’m not a gourmand and I don’t pretend to be a good cook (I’m a much better baker), but I do try to incorporate nice things into my diet and utilize the techniques I observed when I eschewed normal-people TV for three years and only watched Food Network. Nice? Read: fresh produce and potent spices.

Another mobile phone picture I wanted to share involved some not-so-fresh ingredients, though. (Don’t judge!) My former roommate, Christina, had some turkey dogs that were about to expire. Despite my assurances that they put so many nitrates in there it would be difficult for them to actually expire, she was worried (and much more conscious than I), so I agreed to help her use them up while she was busy writing a paper. Luckily, her housemate had some rice leftover from the day before. Let me tell you–slightly old (cooked) rice is spectacular for fried rice! I learned how to fry rice from my mother, although she is usually not in charge of this dish at home. My dad is, because they do share cooking duties, and fried rice is something he can handle. (Especially because Jon wouldn’t let them put anything besides eggs in there–not even green onion–so it was extra simple!)

Ingredients (for this particular iteration; this really is a kitchen sink dish)

  • Refrigerated cooked rice-break it up with a fork or a pair of chopsticks so that there are no clumps; good fresh rice is a little moist, whereas rice that’s prime for frying is a little bit drier
  • Cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered
  • Black bean in garlic chili paste
  • Turkey dogs, chopped up
  • Eggs

Protocol

  1. Drizzle some oil in the pan, then scoop about a tablespoon of the black bean paste; push it around a bit so that it’s runnier and less gooey.
  2. Saute the turkey dogs in the black bean paste; remove from pan and set aside.
  3. Scramble eggs in the now-seasoned pan, but leave them slightly wet; remove from pan and set aside.
  4. Add a bit more oil to the pan, then dump in the rice. Use a saute-ing motion with the spatula to make sure every rice kernel get heated up and coated in oil. Add the turkey dogs back in, fry a bit, and put in the eggs and tomatoes. Toss everything together a bit and serve.

I know you want a picture!

This is yet another photo taken with my camera phone.

Now, some explanation.  Usually, fried rice is made with soy sauce, but when there isn’t any available, you need another sodium source, which is why I used the black bean in garlic chili paste.  (There was some soy sauce in there.)  Here is my “usual” recipe, using ingredients I typically have at home.

Ingredients

  • 2-day old rice
  • eggs beaten with a dash of salt
  • chopped onion (and/or other aromatics, such as scallions, garlic, shallots, &c.)
  • protein (cubed ham, turkey dogs, I don’t put tofu in fried rice, but you can!)
  • frozen corn (and/or other veggies)
  • cooking oil (usually vegetable or olive oil)
  • sesame oil
  • soy sauce

Protocol

  1. Heat some oil in a wide-ish pan that’s at least 2 inches high (a wok is ideal)
  2. Throw in the onions; saute until just starting to caramelize (the done-ness is a matter of taste).  If you have meat (chopped deli meat is fine!), you can also cook it now.
  3. Remove the onions; then scramble the eggs in the same oil.  When still slightly moist, remove from pan.
  4. Add more oil to the pan and toss in the rice.  As it starts to fry, drizzle a bit of soy sauce around the edges, then push the rice around.  A splash of sesame oil goes a long way to add delicious aroma, too!  Then, throw in the eggs, onions, and veggies, make sure the veggies are cooked/warmed through, and serve.

I’m baking a cocoa chai cake right now, though, so I’ll just end here.  So.  Delicious.  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  (Pictures to come.)

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