Xinyi Din Tai Fung

So, I had a few friends (about 25) from my church in California visit me here in Taipei for a few days. The first thing on they're agenda, as with most ABC foreigners, was Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐). They made reservations at the Xinyi location (信義區). Restaurant-wise, everything's the same, so I'll keep this short. I'm only going to comment on the environment of the Xinyi 101 location as I heard concerns from other people about the mall location of Din Tai Fung. Yes, it's true, the front of the Xinyi location looks like another cheap restaurant in a mall. But some of the dining areas sit deep enough into the restaurant that you can't see the front entrance. So once seated, it feels like a normal restaurant outside of a mall. In contrary, I think it has the advantage of being more roomy. Definitely more roomy than the original location and the Zhongxiao Dunhua location. So definitely don't be turned off by the mall location, it's still worth it. And some pre/post dinner shopping is very convenient.

Eslite mall

Today, Yuki and I headed over to the 101 area to take some pictures for her work article. We stopped by the Eslite shopping mall. I found out that I have never visited this area. How did I miss this? It's not that big, but it's still adds another shopping area to the many shopping possibilities of the 101 area. Not to mention another food court to choose from.

MiaoLi grave sweeping & Luminaries 2011

Today I went with my parents and other relatives to my grandfathers home in MiaoLi for grave sweeping day. It's a chinese tradition to come and clean the grave site of our ancestors. We then prayed for them and did the ritual "wish" to our ancestors as well as burning of money for the afterlife. Afterwards, we headed in to town and had a traditional Hakka lunch. This was my first time to have a Hakka only meal. It's hard to differentiate the different between Hakka cuisine and chinese cuisine, but being that MiaoLi is full of Hakka people, this was definitely the real deal. That and of course I trust my dad's opinion on the matter. So it was a real treat and now I can better recognize Hakka cuisine when I see and taste it. After coming back and doing some laundry, it was already time for dinner. So Yuki and I headed over for some cheap sushi at Sushi Express near the Zhongxiao Dunhua MRT station. I must say, it's mediocre at best. But at least it's not making me sick. I still give it a good review though. Why? because it's $30 NT a dish. At two pieces of sushi per dish, that's $.50 cents each piece. I can't get a can of Coke for that cheap in the states. So if you need to satisfy your craving for Sushi on a budget without getting stomach sickness, try out Sushi Express. But if your craving the quality stuff, this is not the place. After wards we made a quick run through the Taipei Luminaries 2011 festival at Chang-Kai Shek memorial hall. Then onwards to the Eslite mega bookstore at Xin Yi district (next to 101). I ended up purchasing a Taiwanese cook book. It was cheap, simple, in English and a good start to chinese style cuisine. So expect some of my culinary creations soon.

Happy (Gregorian calendar) New Year!

I spent new years eve with Yoh-Yi's family. They have a great view of the 101 and the Flower Expo fireworks from the rooftop of their building. Today I'm just going to make it simple and short. The fireworks were amazing! Two big shows next to each other and the beginning sequence was coordinated with several buildings all setting off in a big bang. It seemed like WW2 and the city was being bombed. I couldn't take that great of a picture of the 101 fireworks as there was too much smoke. But I did capture the 101 building at midnight with the '53 Rollei III. Displayed in all it's glory for the 100th anniversary of Taiwan and 2011 New Year! The walk back home was super crowded even at 2 AM in the morning. It took approximately 1 hour to walk from the top of the stairs of the subway to the gate of the train. distance..100 yards. Soo crazy! I wasn't even at the New Year's party down at Taipei City Hall. I heard it was much worse there! I haven't yet experienced a new year in New York city, but the celebrations must be similar in the madness! Happy New Year my readers! {This post predated after the events of course.}

Language partner

The school finally assigned me a language partner. And today I met meeting her for the first time. We hung out for lunch and met up with her other friend afterwards. We talked for hours while walking around the 101 Xinyi district. I was afraid my chinese wouldn't be good enough or I'd run out of things to talk about. My other classmates experiences have been on the negative side. They only spend an hour or two and usually part ways when they run out of things to say. So I guess I lucked out and found a new taiwanese friend that I can really get along with. This is a huge plus. She's pretty good at english too. So I can really practice my chinese out of the classroom in a real world situation. Afterwards, I invited my two new friends to my classmates Christmas party. We chatted and drank into the night. She was a little shy with all the english foreigners around, but she handled herself quite fine alone. She also got to get reacquainted with her previous language partner (one of my friends) which was also at the party. Small world! I ended up staying till 1AM. I had to end it early to get some sleep. Due to being an early riser this morning, I didn't get much sleep. So it's been a 28+ hour shindig/drinking/party for me! I still had my book bag from friday and wearing the same clothes because I haven't gone home yet. Exhausted... need rest!

btw this is obviously pre-dated so the blog is on the correct day. :)

4 Gorillas climbing 101

I spent the day with Lucy, HaTwin and Kurt. We visited the Chiang Kai-shek memorial and the museum along with it. There was much to see in the museum, including a creepy wax figure of him, his Cadillac limo, several pictures and books and uniforms. Next we took the MRT to Sun Yat-sen memorial. Despite being the "Father of Taiwan", it doesn't look as nice as Chiang Kai-shek's memorial. By this time, it was getting late so we walked over to the 101 and decided to eat in the basement level. The funniest moment was when HaTwin carved Lucy's face into her Yakult/Passion fruit gelato. You must look through the photos here. After lunch, we headed up to the 101 viewing balcony. I must say, viewing from inside through the large windows is much better than outside. The vertical metal barriers and protruding guard rails really block the view outside. Being the funny group we were, we all combined our money to be Enlarged. Think Honey I Shrunk the Kids. We then went outside and hung off the 101 building like giant King Kong gorillas. Kurt fell. Butterfingers!

When we were shrunk back to our original sizes, we headed over to the Ximending night market for dinner at the famous Modern Toilet. Delicious bubbling curry in a toilet shaped bowl, drinks in a urinal cup and choco-poop desert in a squat hole. What more needs to be said? MMmmmmmmm! In a restaurant like this, dirty toilet jokes were inevitable. It was a FUN day!

Oh and I almost forgot. We had Taipei 101 Beer Floats too. Yes, it's vanilla ice cream floating in Taiwan beer. It's like a root beer float, but with real beer. Kurt believes it's going to be the next food evolution. Just you watch, beer floats are going to spread world-wide and be a Taiwan originated phenomenon. Haha. It was kind of disgusting.

Bellavita department store

I had a busy day today. For lunch my Taiwan family went to Koshiya for lunch. We had curry filled Tonkatsu, japanese plum Tonkatsu and Karage to name a few. They had a unique dipping sauce. You ground your own sesame seeds to mix with the Tonkatsu sauce. For desert it was yogurt drink and black sesame ice cream. After lunch, I made sure to purchase some japanese breakfast pastries :). Next we went to Bellavita which is a beautiful and very high end department store that just opened up next to Taipei 101. Philips had a show there to promote their new shaver, which companies do often. For dinner, i had Oyster noodles and "car wheel" (direct translation)cakes again. Going into a coma, good night!