Tuesday, September 11, 2012

what a long wait. this deserves a post to capture my emotions.

In January 2010, I was at Ben's house. I think I was watching one of the early stages of the Australian Open. I almost never watched any sports prior to that. Even for tennis, I probably only caught a few glimpses of it previously at my friends' houses. Somehow I was quite drawn to the match that was shown at Ben's house. Specifically, one of the players caught my eye.

I was wondering who that guy with the curly and unkempt hair was. His style of play kind of appealed to me. After finding out more about him online, that was when I started watching tennis. And that was when I started supporting Andy Murray.

That year, I watched the finals. Learning how to use Sopcast to stream sports matches online for the first time ever for the semi-finals I think. The finals was quite agonising to watch. Federer practically thrashed Murray to take the match in straight sets. It was tough to watch as Murray looked like he lost even before the match went halfway. His body language and performance just was not there.

After that, I started to watch the Grand Slam tournaments, getting more and more engaged in watching Andy Murray along the way. I heard of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal before watching tennis and of course knew about how legendary Federer is. And he still is. But, somehow I just supported Andy Murray only.

He did not play really well in 2010 and had a huge slump after losing the Australian Open finals. It was quite frustrating to watch him being struck off tournament after tournament. I was not a huge fan by then still. However, when January came again in 2011, I was watching the Australian Open closely this time, from the start. Murray was doing well through the stages. And once again, he got into the finals.

I watched with a keen eye to see how much he has improved since the previous finals back at Melbourne. He crumbled once again. Djokovic dominated him for most of the match and he went down in straight sets once again. There were glimmers of brilliance from him occasionally but it was never enough to take Djokovic down. It was over before I knew it.

It was then that I realised that there was so much pressure on him and so much criticism about him. Federer jibed something along the lines that Murray was facing so much burden as Britain hadn't had a male Grand Slam champion in like 100 years. And critics from everywhere were piling scant remarks on him, saying that he's an angry kid who couldn't keep a cap on his emotions. That he can't deal with the pressure on the big stages. That he plays too defensively. The British press was exceptionally rough on him and there was the joke that in UK, whenever he wins, he's British and when he loses, he's Scottish.

It was quite horrifying to see that this man had to endure so much crap from everyone. There were people saying he was in the wrong time, trying to win a Grand Slam title in the age of having 3 of the finest tennis players ever, arguably. But, most knew that he has the skills and the ability to win. At the end of the day, it boils down to his mental fortitude.

Nowadays, on retrospect, I knew why I supported him. I knew why I supported him unequivocally, over the greatest tennis player of all time, Roger Federer (no matter how people try to argue, it can't be denied he's the best ever), over the one that challenged and conquered the greatest player of all time on so many occasions and has rose to legendary status on his own too, Rafael Nadal, and lastly, over the one that ran off with a 43 match winning streak in 2011 and captured the No. 1 ranking in grand style, Novak Djokovic. Frankly, compared to this trio, Murray appeared lacklustre and always seemed to be struggling to keep up with these three. Together they were known as the Big Four of Tennis, however, Murray was the odd one out, with a glaring lack of any Grand Slam titles to his name.

But I supported him still because so many things about him resonate so well with me. Though I would say the curly hair is one of the more prominent ones, there are so many more that help me identify with his struggle along the way. He was often commented on letting his negative emotions show on court and affect his performance. On not being able to rise to the occasion when it was required. That was glaring when comparing his performance at non-Grand Slam tournaments. In the Masters series, he dispatched the top 3 well, and sometimes with ease. I once watched him play in the Rakuten Japan Open in 2011, where in the finals, he actually gifted Nadal a bagel (to win 6-0 in a set) in the final set and he won 24 out of 28 points in that set alone. He is the only active player apart from Nadal to have a positive head-to-head record against Roger Federer.

As I watched him lose the men's singles finals in Australian Open 2011, I made a promise to myself. Murray really improved from his previous finals in 2010, though it still wasn't enough. I told myself that as I watched Murray improve, I will work on myself too. To not let my emotions hang on my sleeve and let them affect me greatly. To toughen the mental mettle. I promised that when the day arrives where Murray can cast aside his demons and capture his first Grand Slam title, I would strive to do the same for myself. It does not mean that I would not try along the way, but it means that this man would be the role model for me.

And I continued following his progress through the year. I picked up tennis in school too. Once again, he slumped after the loss in the finals. I waited. And near the end of the year, he rose. In awesome fashion. He captured a string of titles in the lead-up to the World Tour Finals and actually won both the singles and the doubles crown in Japan. He was on the way to his goal of ending the year ranked No.3, ahead of Roger Federer. Even though it did not happen in the end, his form was showing very well.

Then at the end of the year, Ivan Lendl joined his team and it caused waves across the tennis scene. Lendl himself was a former multiple Grand Slam champion, but only after losing 4 finals at the Grand Slam tournaments. Many were waiting to see if Lendl could effect a change in Murray that so many coaches have tried in futility.

The effect was amazing. There were obvious changes to Murray and he started to look different, in terms of how he played. Many were awed by how Lendl caused this in such a short period of time. When the Australian Open arrived once again, I kept my hopes high this time. And Murray did not disappoint the hopes of so many.

He did not win the title. His third try at a Grand Slam tournament finals. But he did not let anyone down. The semi-finals against Djokovic had the quality of a Grand Slam final and Murray played awesomely. He lost by a fine margin at the end of the 5 sets, in a tiebreak after 4 hours and 50 minutes. Many were proud of his performance and I myself was extremely happy with that, even though he did not make the finals this year.

This time, he did not slump after his loss. He continued to work hard. Even when during the French Open, where he suddenly appeared to have had a serious back problem in the match against Nieminen, he fought on and overcame his opponent. Only to have a former British Grand Slam champion, Virginia Wade, calling him a "drama queen". Even back at home, he has to deal with all these. Throughout the years, it seems the British media and people loved Tim Henman, the previous British No. 1, much more than Andy Murray.

His on-court demeanour and behaviour in press conferences did not endear him to many. But, he's not here to please everyone. He's here to play tennis. And after the French Open ended, Wimbledon was up next. He failed to defend his title at Queen's but went into Wimbledon and stormed into the finals, to face Roger Federer.

There was immense expectations from the man who became the first British Wimbledon finalist since 1938. I was at the International Biology Olympiad (IBO) and thankfully, got to run off from my shift early to catch the match. I was listening to the Wimbledon radio on my phone as I was rushing back to my laptop and heard him win the first set. The first time he actually captured a set in a Grand Slam final. And this was his fourth one already. However, the retractable roof came on due to the weather and Federer was playing probably some of his best tennis ever. He remains undefeated under a retractable roof and Murray lost simply because his opponent was too good. But his body language and everything else from him has changed so much, since his last Grand Slam final. In his speech, he teared and thanked the crowds for giving him so much support. That was when Britain started to throw their support behind Murray. It wasn't the first time he was brought to tears after losing a Grand Slam finals match, but this time he showed the world that he is really edging closer.

At the London Olympics 2012, he showed the world what he was made of. With the awesome home ground support back at Wimbledon grounds, he defeated Djokovic in the semi-finals and Federer in the finals in straight sets. He played brilliantly and avenged the loss to Federer from a month ago, back at the same place, in Centre Court. He won the gold medal in men's singles and the silver medal in mixed doubles alongside Laura Robson for Britain.

His dazzling summer did not come to an end there. People were waiting to see when he would end the Grand Slam drought for Britain after winning the gold medal with such style. The US Open is the last Grand Slam tournament of the year. His last chance for the year.

Murray started off the tournament quite fine, clearing the first two rounds quite easily. He had a tough time in the third round, enduring a 4-set match against Feliciano Lopez and winning sets based on tiebreaks. In the next match, he was up against Milos Raonic, widely reputed as the best amongst the rising young players. Murray played near perfect tennis and totally dismantled the powerful serve of the Canadian. No matter what Raonic did, Murray crushed it perfectly well. However, he struggled once again against Cilic in the quarter-finals.

Entering the semi-finals, Tomas Berdych took the first set and was looking very threatening. However, Murray adapted well to the strong winds on the court and won the match with quite some difficulty. After Federer was knocked out and Nadal withdrawn from the tournament, Djokovic was the only one left in Murray's path to the elusive Grand Slam title.

Last night, I forced myself to sleep early at 10.30pm so that I could wake up at 4am to watch the finals. I was trying out some new sleep tracking app and it turned out the alarm did not wake me up. Thankfully, I woke up somehow on my own at 5am and by the time I turned on my computer, it was almost the start of the tiebreak.

Murray won the first two sets but went down in the next two. I was reminded of how frustrated I was watching him in the past few finals. However, he did not crumble this time. He rose in the final set and played like a champion. And when he closed out the set, I was beyond happy. I cannot describe how I felt. In fact, I was already tearing in joy at certain points in the fifth set. I knew he was not going to let this slip past him anymore.

And he didn't. There wasn't a moment of doubt after he took the break in the fifth set. The first male Grand Slam champion since 1936, where Fred Perry did it at the US Championships (the former US Open). A wait of nearly 3 years. And I finally get to see Andy lift the champion's trophy of a Grand Slam tournament. It was worth the wait. More than worth it.

And it's time to fulfil my promise. I will continue to support Andy Murray and maybe he'll win Australian Open next year. Maybe he'll go on the same streak as his coach, Lendl, did. But for now, I'm just going to celebrate his victory. Spot me in my England t-shirt today. Hahahahahaha! :D

rotted-12:25 PM

Thursday, July 19, 2012

school just started. i must make use of this time while i'm not flooded by work. this is to help me recall about the trip in future. pictures alone can only do that much. so i'll do this in a chronological order. it's a very very long post. haha. i may be switching between Mandarin and English along the way. (note: this post was started on 11th Jan and is still in the making.)

Oh before that, let me introduce the people who went on the trip with me. And as it happens, on the trip nicknames were given and changed from time to time. lol.

Gary: my JC classmate with many nicknames (mew, fairy goh, gary the snail and more recently, 派大星, which he vehemently denies and claims Irvin is 派大星)

P.S. 派大星 is the Chinese name for Patrick the Starfish from Spongebob Squarepants. We watched quite a few episodes in Taiwan. lol.

Irvin: Gary's secondary school classmate. I knew him and Pui Kit through learning tennis together. Heard about him (though it's his nickname) before when I was in JC. Nicknamed Nose (came from Red Nose, which he never understands why he got that nickname). Which is also why he is "the reindeer".

Pui Kit: Also Gary's secondary school classmate. Nicknamed Ham (from Hamster). I do agree he looks like a hamster, like from Hamtaro. lol.

Oh and me. Somehow I was labelled the Moose on the trip. Will elaborate further later on.

26th December, Monday (Singapore to Taipei)The flight was at Terminal 3. And just like our Penang trip, Nose and I were the earlier ones and Gary and Ham were late. Well, Gary's always late. Took TR2992 of Tiger Airways and as usual, I couldn't sleep on the plane. When we've reached Taoyuan International Airport, we were rushing to catch the Freego bus (飞狗巴士), which would take us straight to our accomodation for the night, Taipei Backpackers Hostel at 西门.
The air was really good, and keeps getting better as we go up. Gary was highly exhausted and during the steep portions, he was literally huffing and puffing. Finally we reached one pit stop, which was the tea research facility. The boss explained that ever since PRC tourists actually climbed the fences to steal the leaves, the authorities decided to enforce restricted access for that place. The boss's family somehow got access and brought us in. The view was breathtaking and we could see a lot of mountains and the two lakes: Sun Lake and Moon Lake. I won't bother describing how nice it was because I can't do it justice. lol.

And we went even higher up to the meteorological station which was the highest point of that mountain, at 1020 metres above sea level. We were commenting that it'll be a great place to chill and even mug. The boss was explaining that people usually appreciate such places more with age and that younger people would probably get bored pretty soon.

Along the way, he was commenting that a lot of people visit 日月潭 just to see all the over-hyped tourist attractions (not without slipping in a few snide comments about the PRC tourists again. =P). However, they miss out on the true beauty just because they refuse to wake up early. I do understand his point of view and the early morning view and environment was pure brilliance.

So, after all that, we went back for breakfast, which wasn't very impressionable. Haha. After that, we took the ferry that brought us to the over-hyped tourist attractions around the lakes. We had mushroom 茶叶蛋 at some temple nearby. By now, we realised the famous produce around here are mushrooms and black tea and thankfully, they did not attempt to mix those two. They have a penchant for mixing red tea or mushroom with anything possible. Following that, we had 面线 at a place called 朱妈妈面线, which was recommended by the guide on the ferry. The 面线 turned out to have a certain Italian taste, which we determined to be pizza. Interesting. From then, we went back to get our luggage and rushed for the bus to 埔里 so that we can change to another bus to 清境.

After buying the tickets for the bus to 清境, we realised we had about 40 minutes to spare. So, Ham and Nose went to get food. Gary and I were supposed to take turns queuing for the bus. After about 10 minutes of waiting, no one else was queuing. I got bored and went to sit. Ham and Nose came back soon with really tasty bread from 几分甜 bakery and caramel milk tea for me.

And we forgot about queuing. When the bus came, there was a flurry of footsteps and suddenly, there was a long queue. And guess what, only one person managed to get up the bus. The bus was damn full. After coming back to Singapore and talking to my other friend who went Taiwan at around the same time, I realised this is because the bus departed from Taichung station and then stopped at 埔里. In any case, we decided it was pretty much no point to wait for the bus and refunded our tickets. We then took a cab up and by the time we reached, it was 3.30pm and we had around 15 minutes to catch the circus show in the farm.

The performance involved quite an array of stunts performed during horse riding. Nose and I were highly amused by some white fluffy dog a few rows in front of us, which was barking aggressively at the horses at times. Inferiority complex I guess. After the show, we took a walk around the area and pretty much concluded that most animals were hibernating somewhere for the winter. Then again, it was also because we walked in the wrong direction. In any case, we saw Gary's "relatives", which were some snails kept in a tank which was quite inconspicuous. This is because of 2 rabbits set on tables in front of the tanks. We spent some time trying to take pictures of the rabbits, especially the white one, called 小白. It was then Gary and Nose started the argument about who frightened the rabbit. It involved accusations of one tickling the back of the rabbit's ears and the other molesting the butt of the rabbit.

It was still rather early after leaving the farm. So we decided to visit the 7-Eleven nearby to get some of the famed cup noodles from Taiwan (with meat inside!!). It was beside some attraction which had the theme of a small Swiss village. There was also a shop selling honey products on the second floor and a paper-themed restaurant spanning both floors. Outside 7-Eleven, there was a small booth selling postcards of different materials and themes. I was a bit tempted to send some back to friends. By the time we finished visiting those few places, it was dark outside and we decided to give the Swiss garden a miss and just buy our stuff and go back.

Back at the place we were staying (Starry Nantou, 观星园), we have steamboat (酸菜火锅). It was great simply because it was warm, as compared to the freezing temperature outside. After going back to our room, Ham decided to bathe first. The boss instructed us before that to fill the large bucket provided with hot water and bathe from there. This is a precaution as we were high up on the mountains and the water supply might be a bit erratic. Ham just bathed straight from the shower head. Halfway through his shower, we heard a exclamation from him that cold water suddenly came out instead. I was very tickled by his description that he was squatting and shivering in one corner. Lol and thereafter, none of us bathed that night. xD This was also partly due to the fact that we were shivering up in the mountains and the beds has electric warmers, which saved us.

I ate my Ah Q noodles after a while, which was rather disappointing and Gary was eating 满汉大餐, which was good as usual. The 太空面包 from 几分甜 was really impressive, even when compared to the tasty rose bun with cream cheese I had in the afternoon. Nose was feeling very cold and he was guessing he was falling sick. Too bad he was right.

29th December, Thursday (日月潭 to Hualien)
Ham woke up early to try and capture the sunrise. I woke up a short while after to enjoy the early morning view. Nose was feeling the effects of the suspected stomach flu already and didn't join us for breakfast. Ham, Gary and I had breakfast in the open facing the mountains. The breakfast was quite sumptuous and it felt good eating the piping hot breakfast out in the cold with the great view.

The driver came earlier than expected and so, we quickly packed and brought our stuff down to depart for Hualien. We departed at 9am and was expected to reach Hualien at about 5pm. Along the way, he would drive us to some attractions, including Taroko Gorge (太鲁阁) near Hualien. I can't remember was it the cab driver that brought us to 清境 or the boss of Laurel Villa at 日月潭 that told us it was a good decision to go to Hualien from 清境 by car as the view along the way would be great and there would be many attractions to visit.

But nope. Along the way, most of the time I couldn't appreciate the scenery around me. I was suffering from motion sickness pretty soon into the ride. The driver is very skilled and adroitly negotiated all the bends almost without reducing speed at all. During those bends, I was swung to the left then right and then left again. Thankfully, I was able to fall asleep after a while. It appeared that during my slumber, they were all amazed by the skills of the driver, even Gary too. He's the one who always boasts about his so-called driving skills and is very good at blaming other road users.

I woke up when we reached 合欢山. It was very windy and was as cold as 清 境. From the observation decks there, we can see the many other mountains in Taiwan and the driver was telling us that this year, as there is insufficient moisture in the air at 合欢山, it appears that there wouldn't be any snow falling on 合欢山. Haha we got a little bit disappointed. But, it also saved us a bit of money. This is because if snow fell, the driver has to install chains on the wheels to plough through the snow and that would cost us a bit more. Ah well, guess it was fated. More so in view of the fact that it snowed in the area just days after we left.

Along the way up, we stopped by an area with icicles forming on the side of the mountain. They looked very beautiful and in my haste to get a closer look, I slipped on the small sheets of ice formed on the ground and fell. And after that, back to the nauseating ride.

After continuing on for a while, we stopped for tea at a small lodge. It was a rather small and quaint place, with photographs of 合欢山 which were breathtaking and inspired Ham quite a bit I guess. I had peach honey red tea and the peach honey was very fragrant. Such breaks were highly therapeutic for my stomach which felt queasy. We stopped for lunch at some cafe near to Taroko Gorge and the food was disappointing and expensive. Nose hardly touched his food as the stomach flu was hitting him quite hard. My appetite was quite diminished after all the swerving of the car. At one point, I ran to the toilet as I felt imminent regurgitation and thankfully, it only made its way up to my throat and a bit into the root of my tongue. Urgh.

After nearing Taroko Gorge, we made several stops to look at the scenery and somehow it wasn't as impressive as I remembered it to be. Nearing the end, Nose decided to take a nap inside the cab instead as he felt very uncomfortable by then. Thereafter, we finally reached Hualien and checked in at our hotel which was very near to 七星潭. When driving past 七星潭, the driver was telling us that what we see today at the tourist attraction is actually not 七星潭 but the Pacific Ocean instead. The original 7 lakes have already dried up and one of them was actually converted into an airbase, which we saw on the way to the hotel.

The room was quite decent and had a balcony which overlooked the Pacific Ocean. The roof was open to hotel guests to get a much better view of the Pacific Ocean. We then decided to go to 自强夜市, the most famous one in Hualien and our driver drove us there. It looked almost exactly the same as how I remembered it. We ate the usual stuff that people usually eat from there, i.e. 棺材板, 烤肉，牛排, fruit juice etc. Nose didn't eat much still and after visiting the 夜市, we called the lady who was our driver's boss for transport back to the hotel. And it turned out she called our driver to fetch us back again. Goodness, he had a really long day and still had to send us back. On the way back, we asked to stop at a clinic for Nose to see a doctor as the TCM stuff Nose and I brought along didn't help much. The visit was damn fast and everything was settled under 10 minutes. Amazing. Before we returned to the cab, we decided to tip the driver as we felt bad that he had to work for us for a whole day. Before that, he was telling us that the lady boss was very nice to us and that a two-way trip to the 夜市 would have cost us about NTD500.

Oh and I forgot to mention something. I can't remember since when, we noticed that on one of the movie channels available on cable in Taiwan, the frequency of Stephen Chow movies was very high. A scene from one of his movies we watched in Hualien involved someone taking Stephen Chow's shit-smeared hand to slap his face. It was damn hilarious and hard to shake out of the head. Random but funny.

30th December, Friday (Hualien)

Anyway, back to cycling. I'm going to give much attention to this to fully describe the epicness of the conditions at which we were cycling against. When collecting the bicycle, we already felt the extremely strong wind coming from the Pacific Ocean. It wasn't until we started cycling along the path to 七星潭, perpendicular to the wind direction from the right, then we realised the bikes were moving slightly to the left as we pedalled straight. The hood of my jacket was flapping against the back of my head. The bike moved gingerly forward with a constant urge to move left. I had to pedal extra hard to keep the bike moving forward properly. And occasionally, bushes would appear on our right to shield the bike from the wind. The strong wind, accompanied with the moist air since we were near the sea, made that cycling trip very special. Something I doubt I will experience here.

When we finally reached 七星潭, we were treated with a damn beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. The seemingly endless beach reminded me a bit of the dream beach that I visited during my school trip to Perth in Sec 4. Haha but the weather conditions were vastly different. In Perth, it was sunny and bright, though very windy too. Interestingly, I never got to know the name of the beach. Slowly, I walked towards the waves and against the winds. I think this beach would go down as my 2nd most favourite beach, after the Perth one. I love how the sky looks dark and the how the refreshing sea breeze was causing my hood to flap wildly. Lol. Then, Gary and I saw a path of pebbles+rocks which was pointing to the sea. It looks very outstanding, compared to the haphazard arrangement of the other stones around. Gary and I went around to find some small rocks or big pebbles to extend the path. Then, Gary gingerly walked the path as Ham took pictures of the snail "crawling". At some point of time, Ham took a picture of me facing the sea. It's my favourite picture of the whole trip. I shall put the edited and unedited versions here. I personally prefer the monochromatic one.

From there, we decided to cycle back and check out the 原野牧场. When we reached, Gary and I went up to check it out. We saw a cafe on the second floor of a wooden house. So, we went up to ask them where are the animals. Well, it turns out it was a restaurant with just 2 goats in a small enclosure nearby. How miserable. Though Gary enjoyed himself thoroughly feeding the goats with dried leaves from the floor and laughing at how stupid the goats were. The place looked quite boring on the whole, so we went back to check on Nose.

In the end, we decided to walk to 原野牧场 for lunch since the area looked pretty dead. To be fair, the cafe is not bad for chilling, over goat's milk though. Haha. The inner decor was pretty nice apart from the windows which looked like they haven't been cleaned in quite a well. We ordered goat's milk and Nose ordered orange juice since goat's milk would most likely not agree with his stomach. Ham had cold goat's milk while Gary and I had the hot one and ours was eligible for refill since the cup was smaller. Well, the hot one exuded a rather strong smell. The milk came with cheesecake, which had an awfully sweet layer of solidified syrup or something. Too sweet for me. I scrapped it off before having the cheesecake. In my opinion, the best thing we had there was the garlic bread Nose ordered -.- Thereafter, Gary went to feed his friends some dried leaves again, while we wondered if the milk came from these goats which ate dried leaves from stupid strangers.

In the afternoon, Nose, Gary and I went cycling, albeit under significantly better conditions. Ham said he wanted to take some photos and we were guessing that he was off to do some "dirty business". Before we cycled to 七星潭, we stopped by the 柴鱼博物馆 nearby. It used to be a factory that produced 柴鱼, more commonly seen as the bonito flakes we add to takoyaki (octopus balls). When it went out of business, one businessman felt it was quite a waste to let it be torn down. So, he went to discuss with the authorities to retain it as a cultural attraction. We looked around the place and tried some of the food they sold there. We then went 七星潭 and on the way back, one dog followed us all the way back. It was really quite cool and it stopped whenever we stopped too. Haha, in the end it followed us back to the hotel and sadly, we had to send it off. It was pretty intent on following us though along the way, even if we sped up.

After meeting up again at the hotel, we initially wanted to go to 南滨夜市, which I went to the first time I went to Taiwan. It was quite memorable among the 夜市, as they had quite a lot of games. I tried archery and also set off fireworks then. The hotel told us 南滨夜市 was almost completely closed as there was renovation going on at the carpark nearby. That was sad. So in the end, we went to the city centre to look around since we found a pamphlet which listed 10 food places we should try. Haha so we embarked on the quest to eat all 10 items.

Along the way, someone passed me a small booklet that introduced 蔡英文, the presidential candidate. I kept it as reading material for the train ride to Taipei. I think we ate about more than half of the things stated but the food there. Some of the better stuff was 公正街包子店. The 蒸饺 was very nice and we tried their 小笼包 too, which was very different from those in Singapore. These looked like normal 包s. In the end, after walking around, we went to try the food from their rival next door, 周家蒸饺. They sell almost the same items and both operate 24 hours. Highly competitive. I found both quite nice and there wasn't really much difference. After walking around for quite long, we bought bubble tea and went back to the hotel. This time, I had lavender milk tea, which tasted better than the one from 自强夜市 the night before.

31st December, Saturday (Hualien to Taipei)
We checked out pretty early to catch the train at 10.40am to Taipei. Nose's sister and friends were also going back to Taipei and was on the same train as us. When we reached the train station, someone was giving out booklets that introduced the other presidential candidate 马英九, who is the incumbent. The person wanted to give one to Gary who quickly pointed at me instead and said “给他。他要。” Nice, now I've collected the booklets of these two forerunners. There was one more candidate in the race, James Soong (宋楚瑜) but he's kind of like the Tan Kin Lian of the Taiwan elections. On the verge of losing deposit but still don't wanna withdraw. (Not sure if the Taiwan presidential elections have the deposit rule too.)

Anyway, so we got on the train and as usual, I couldn't sleep much on the train. Instead, I was listening to my iPod and reading 马英九's election campaign booklet. It includes some stories by people close to him, as a whole portraying him as a down-to-earth and caring leader. I think it's undeniable he has brought about in change in Taiwan politics in which it is no longer as fiery and unruly as it used to be. I still remember watching a piece of news once about the parliamentarians throwing rice packets at each other in parliament and hurling very well-chosen profanities at each other.

And so we reached Taipei Main Station and had to find Purple Garden Hotel, which Nose's sister and friends were also staying at. Initially, we decided to follow them and we realised the one leading them doesn't really seem to know the way. So, we decided to just find the place ourselves and see which group would reach first. The hotel was situated very near to 中山 station, which was just one stop away from Taipei Main Station. Those two stations are not very far apart so we just followed the general direction with the help of the compass on Ham's iPhone. We took about 20 minutes I think and we checked in and deposited our stuff in the cafe at the lobby. After I changed and was walking out to the cafe, I saw the delegation of Nose's sister and friends arriving at the hotel, looking very defeated and with a hint of frustration from some of them. Haha it turns out the one who led them got lost and they got a bit sian of walking for so long. We decided to go for lunch then proceed to the 市政府 station where the countdown concert would be held at.

We couldn't decide where to eat and ate at some fast food outlet called 牛乳大王, which sells Chinese cooked food and their star items are the milkshakes. It was quite interesting since it was the first time I was eating at a Chinese fast food outlet. When we got to 市政府 station, we exited at the basement of some shopping centre at a Uniqlo store. There was a crowd there, which suggested a sale and Nose and I saw that the jeans were going for NTD999, which is around $45. We told ourselves we'll get it if we see another Uniqlo store on the trip.

We reached the area at around 2 to 3 plus and so was still pretty early before the concert starts. And so, we visited the Eslite building first to look around Eslite Bookstore (诚品书局). If I'm not wrong, it's the biggest outlet in Taiwan and spans several floors, with each floor selling different things. I remember the last time I went to Taiwan in 2009, the floor selling music CDs and DVDs also sold posters. But this time, I didn't see any. Damn, I was planning on getting some if they sold them. But then again, transporting those would be highly troublesome.

I was looking at the books displayed on the bestsellers shelves. Before going to Taiwan, I was already planning to buy the 那些年，我们一起追的女孩 book. This is because my brother's copy was still on loan and i had been queuing for quite long and also, my friends (Nose, Ham, Gary and another guy called Yongjie aka Yogi) bought the movie production book for me. So, I was thinking might as well collect the book too. In any case, we spent really quite a lot of time there and that was just the first of our many trips to 诚品书局. And I mean it when I say many and it was not restricted to just Taipei. I guess the place is really nice.

I digress a bit here. Going to Eslite got me thinking about the state of bookstores there compared with those here, i.e. Borders and PageOne. I'm not a business student but just offering my two cents worth. I feel the main issue is the insufficient land space we have, which would result in expensive land. For a bookstore that appeals to the masses, there must be a critical mass of books to attend to the varied interests of the masses, which would require substantial space. Of course, other things would come into consideration, like economies of scale and operating costs. But, if we just look at the space issue and compare to the rise of niche bookstores nowadays, it's not really hard to see the link. I'm guessing here that the sales to size of shop ratio isn't very high for most of these bookstores. Having a niche makes it easier to survive I guess since a niche is likely to allow you to be able to price your books higher and would most likely require much lesser space. Kinokuniya is one chain that seems to be doing pretty well as I feel that while it caters to the masses, it has a niche of Japanese books and magazines which would cater to the Japanese expatriates in Singapore. I don't know much about Harris so I can't really comment on that.

Anyway, back to the trip. We left the place without buying any books since we didn't want to lug them around for the whole night. At around 4 plus, we set off to find the concert venue. And we got lost. It was surprisingly hard to find the venue and there were so many people around the 市政府 area. Well we bought some snacks along the way to fill our stomachs a bit before going for the concert. We couldn't really decide on what to eat for dinner yet though.

By the time we got to the concert venue, it was already quite crowded. There was still about 45 minutes to the start of the concert when we arrived. There were a few warm-up acts there, presumably to test the sound system out. For one of the last few acts, the singer was wearing a lanyard with a tag around her neck and looked just like a staff member from the technical crew. I was commenting to Nose that she sang pretty well and was pulling off tough songs from Ah Mei. Near the end of their performance, when she introduced her band, I got a shock. I was kind of expecting the lead singer of the warm-up act to dress less like some random technical staff. Haha.

Frankly, it was a rather long and boring wait. When we were planning the itenary for the trip, we were deciding where to go for the New Year's Eve countdown. Nose and I were trying to find out the artiste line-up for the concerts at the different locations. If I'm not wrong, we saw that Mayday was performing at Taipei but the rest of the line-up weren't very appealing. For the other concerts, the line-ups were just average. So, we chose Taipei mainly for Mayday and for the famous Taipei 101 fireworks. Exactly 2 years ago, I was at the exact same location to watch the countdown concert too. It was very painful for my legs, having to stand for so long and I watched all the way till midnight for the fireworks and Mayday was one of the last few performers I remembered. In fact, their performance was the best for me that year.

And finally, after a long wait, the concert started and Mayday kicked off the concert. They sang about 1 or 2 songs before they got to chatting with the hosts. It turned out that the reason that they had to start off first this time was due to the fact that they were having a countdown concert at 台北小巨蛋 that night. Apparently, Ah Mei (张惠妹) was also having her own countdown party that year. No wonder, it seemed that across the whole Taiwan, the line-ups for the countdown concerts looked kind of lackluster.

In total, Mayday performed about 5 to 6 songs I think. Damn good. Just like how it was a few years back. They can really work the crowd up. But, unfortunately, the instant they left, the whole event felt like it kind of flopped. The singers that followed were either unknowns, or quite famous stars singing new songs that felt like they weren't up to the cut. After a while, we just decided to leave the place and go to Taipei 101 to find dinner.

We had a rather long dinner while I was busy letting my dear legs recover from the prolonged standing. Nose was spending most of the time checking out one of the girls selling ice-cream from Cold Stone Creamery. Amazing how that took up quite a bit of the dinner conversation. And at around 11 plus, we hurried to find a strategic spot to watch the fireworks.

By "strategic spot", I'm not just referring to the view of the fireworks. Frankly, to me, that was secondary. The issue at hand was the proximity to the MRT station. Two years ago, after watching the fireworks (that contained a technical error -.-), we walked to the MRT station and to our horror, the crowd outside it was scary. And we had to walk the length of quite a few MRT station stops before changing to take a bus. So this time, we checked the map for a prime location with a rather good view and very close proximity to the MRT.

We were good. Heh. We walked through the crowds (standing and sitting) and finally got to the middle of some small park near 新光三越. As we were walking to the location, I caught a glimpse of 马英九 on the huge screen showing the scene on stage. I was wondering if it was lucky of him to be able to get some "extra coverage" during his campaigning period or was it just sian for him to have to attend it still.

The fireworks started a while after Ham gave up trying to set up his DSLR on the tripod. Our view was pretty good and only the lower floors of the building was obscured. The view was magnificent and from the start, it already looked like it would surpass the one I saw in 2009. 4 minutes of well-choreographed fireworks were captured on my camera and despite its awesomeness, we did not forget to take flight the moment we kept all our stuff. But, eh it turned out we kind of didn't really know the way. We followed the general direction of where others were running towards and thankfully, we got to one of the entrances of Taipei Main Station. It was very crowded but still wasn't as bad as the crowds outside MRT stations that I saw 2 years back.

In the wake of the several MRT breakdowns in Singapore in December last year (of which I was almost caught in one of them), the professionalism of the Taiwan staff was very impressive. Commuters were released in batches to enter the station, following which, they queue up in front of the gantries where they were again released in batches to go to the platform. It sounds really simple but the effect is really good. After entering the station, there weren't any squeezing already and even inside the trains, it was a comfortable journey. We were really impressed by their meticulous planning on New Year's Eve itself where comprehensive information were provided and I remembered from the previous trip that they requested everyone to allow the elderly and the young to enter the stations first. Graciousness. Maybe it's in their culture. People queue up orderly to enter the trains and everyone stays on the right on the escalators so that people who are in a rush can take the left side.

We reached back at the hotel room quite early and was watching the humongous crowd outside the MRT on the news. Thankfully we were quick enough. And then, I noticed a short news snippet in the ticker at the bottom of the screen. It was snowing at 合欢山. -.- wth. Ah well, though we missed the chance to see snow, at least we escaped the trouble that comes along with snow.

rotted-1:30 PM

1st January, Sunday (Taipei)
We woke up kind of late after having a tiring night. So, we went to 龙山寺 to try to 求签. When we went to Penang previously in July 2011, we went to 求签 at the Sleeping Buddha temple (though it was through an electronic machine lol). Poor Gary got a damn cui 签 so we wanted to see what kind he would get over here in Taiwan.

In the end, we spent quite a bit of time like some lost sheep and still didn't manage to find out how to 求签. So we decided to move to the next destination, 故宫. We chose to go on the 1st because it was a public holiday and admission was free.

We took a bus from the nearest MRT and walked up to the place. The walk up was already very nice. The architecture along the way could already give one a preview of what was to be expected on the main grounds. We found out that there was an temporary exhibition at the other building and when we arrived, we realised this exhibition was not free on public holidays and it was quite expensive to enter (about 20 plus bucks SGD). So we just decided to go to the main building. (My other friend, Kay Siong, entered all parts of 故宫 for free since his Taiwan buddy's mum worked there. So good.)

The last time I went there, Kay Siong's buddy's mum gave us the explanation for all the artifacts and I found it very interesting. This time, since we were on our own, it felt a bit boring, especially since we did not get the audio guide too. We spent about 3 to 4 hours there. Nose and Gary were quite bored and were enjoying themselves by entertaining themselves. Gary was trying to act like a cultured man and was pretending to understand the Arabic text and other foreign unintelligible languages.

By the time we left, it was late afternoon already and we can go ahead to 士林夜市 already. The famed destination for food lovers visiting Taipei. Before the trip, I realised that the 士林夜市 that I visited 2 years back was actually a temporary market and the temporary market was actually in place since 2002. And the new market opened on Christmas Day of 2011. We were really lucky to be able to go for the new one.

For the new one, the basement was entirely devoted to all the 小吃 stalls and the ground floor had some game stalls and other random stalls. The neighbouring buildings also had some random shops on the ground floor. Frankly, the only stalls worth visiting are the stalls in the basement and all the other food stalls in the vicinity. There are probably more food stalls in the vicinity compared to those in the basement.

The basement was a nightmare. owing to the fact that it was New Year's Day and the market was newly opened. It felt like a concentration camp. All the walkways were damn congested. And curiously, we noticed that there were many replicates of the same stall. Maybe they were trying to gain more exposure against their competitors. I didn't remember much about the food here, partly because I was too disturbed by the amount of people there. When we got out to the streets, things got much better, especially the food.

Along the way, we tried a lot of food. Ham was very obsessed with 炸牛奶. We found a stall there that was supposed to from Singapore but oddly, it had a weird address with two road names inside it. Beside that stall, we ordered 金桔柠檬 from a Taiwanese who has just completed his National Service. He was chatting with us about the unique lingo of Singaporeans and his experiences as a driver while working with Singaporean NSFs during overseas exercises. Singaporeans are always recognised overseas when they start talking.

Overall, it's worth visiting in my opinion. There is a lot of good food all in the vicinity. I think the shopping area of the place was not completed yet. The previous time I went there, there was a long shopping district and a pet street too. The food is probably enough to attract visitors.

2nd January, Monday (Taipei)
It was a day for venturing to the northern parts of Taipei, 北投 for the hot springs and 渔人码头 mainly for the view. Both turned out to be quite disappointing as I did not find out more about the places we were visiting beforehand. Both places were closed on Mondays. What luck. So, important thing learnt from the trip is that for visiting attractions on Mondays, prior checking is a must.

At 北投, we spent about half an hour trying to find the 温泉拉面 shop, called 满来拉面, that I visited in my previous trip. We scaled up the hill and went down again to ask more from the staff in the 便利店. When we finally reached the place, it was closed. And we were hungry. And we were already disappointed when we found out that the 温泉 museum was closed on the way up the hill. Thankfully, some food outlets were open still and we settled at a noodle shop, which was just outside the entrance of 地热谷.

The shop owner had a handsome dog called 小黑. it was very well-behaved and the other customers were also playing with him, apart from us. At least the lunch was decent. Either that, or we were damn hungry from all the searching.

After lunch, we took a slow walk towards the hot spring area (which thankfully was still open on Mondays). Nose, Gary and I decided to try the hot springs. The last time I went there, I didn't join the rest inside the hot springs as I forgot to bring my trunks or any extra underwear. And I was sick then also.

There were 4 different pools, each of different temperature ranges with 3 hot ones and one cold one. The cold one was really cold, especially since it was winter. Just dipping the feet inside was enough to make us jump away immediately. The hot ones had temperature ranges of 2 degrees Celsius each, starting from 37 degrees till 43 degrees. Obviously, we went for the 37 degrees one first. Inside that pool, there was an overwhelming majority of the elderly and led us to comment that they must have a strong constitution.

After washing our feet with the water from the pool, we gingerly made our way in. And I can only think of 2 words that can describe us accurately: 丢脸. When we stepped inside the pool, the water level was above the knee level already. The water was damn hot and when I turned to look at Nose and Gary, their expressions were showing a mix of pain and discomfort. We moved extremely slowly to one end of the pool where we could lean against the wall. When we tried to dip our bodies down into the water, we jumped back up quickly. Now, I can totally imagine how comical we must have looked to all the others in the pool.

We repeated that process several times and suddenly, one old lady opposite us smiled and said to us, “快点下去。” Embarrassed, we dunked ourselves in, to much more discomfort and soon, itchiness. We were inside there looking very awkward and uncomfortable when 2 guys entered the pool. They were obviously Singaporeans (partly because one was wearing OCS shorts). So, we decided to watch how they would react to the pool.

They appeared slightly uncomfortable too. However, they left the pool about 10 minutes before us. We were commenting that they are weak, given that we were inside there for a longer period of time. I think we were just trying to improve our self-esteem. xD We left soon, since we were not supposed to stay inside there for extended periods of time. Although, the uncles and aunties were still inside enjoying the hot springs.

On the way back to the MRT, we visited the library nearby. Its exterior was that of a wooden house and it is a "green" library. The last time I went to 北投, we only walked past the library. If I was travelling alone, I would have spent some more time there. But ah well, we were moving on to 淡水 to see the 老街 and 渔人码头.

And what luck. 渔人码头 was largely closed on Mondays too. No wonder when we arrived, the whole place looked like a ghost town and there were almost nobody there. We visited a few shops which were thankfully still open and ate some of the local delights. We played a while at the arcade there and enjoyed the view from the upper deck of the place.

On the way back to the bus stop, when we were crossing the Lovers' Bridge, we saw a street performer sitting about 100m away from the end of the bridge. There were two huge speakers flanking him and he was singing very beautifully. At least it fitted well into the mood, with the whole place being very peaceful and quiet. We bought some Meiji ice-cream from the shops nearby and took the bus back to 老街.

淡水老街 is quite famous and consists of many streets of 路边摊 and shops. Some of the famous food here are the 阿给 and 阿婆铁蛋. And I like neither of them. Haha nothing special in my opinion. Also, there were many stalls there selling those kind of extremely tall ice cream cones. Irvin got one and it didn't really taste very good. We walked around a while more and tried a bit more food. When the sun set, we went on the MRT and left for 西门町.

And just like how I remembered it to be, 西门町 didn't have much to see for me. Occasionally, there were some street artists busking. They were mainly dancers and I must say they were really good. There was one who actually danced to 胡夏's 那些年 and was actually dancing out the lyrics of the song. I was mesmerized. Haha never thought the song could be danced out. The main attraction here of course was 阿宗面线. We took quite a bit of time trying to find it and when we reached, we bought two bowls to try. To me, it wasn't very impressive. Haha. Maybe it's because of the expectations.

That night, we moved from Purple Garden Hotel to Cityinn Hotel Taipei Station Branch III, which was just one street away. This arrangement came about because we booked our Taipei accommodation pretty late and there weren't much availability in many places. Cityinn is a boutique hotel that had a new branch near Taipei Main Station and we decided to book it in the end. It wasn't very spacious but I personally loved the themes of the place, mainly quite cartoonish. We joked that certain features of the hotel would appeal to Ham more since there was a few TV channels with R-rated content and each room was given a free condom. Any inferences that you may make from here is purely up to your imagination.

3rd January, Tuesday (Taipei to Kaohsiung)
Once again, we were back at Taipei Main Station, this time to take the High Speed Rail (HSR) to Kaohsiung. Finally, we could buy the cheesecake and we woke up earlier for this. Haha to prevent a repeat of previous events. It tasted quite good and reminded us of the cheesecake from Fiesta in Singapore.

Before going down to the gantries, we bought some 火车便当 for lunch on the trains and this time, we bought from the kind of more "authentic" stall, which was operated by the train company itself. This time, one of the two boxes we bought tasted so good. I think it was some pork chop set. The vegetables inside also tasted damn good. I almost forgot about the existence of the other. =P

The HSR was really very fast. Looking out of the window kind of made me feel kind of disoriented, since the normal trains we take are significantly slower. But still, the view was pretty awesome. Well, HSR isn't really very cheap and we bought about 3 weeks before departure I think. It's really quite good to buy early since the discount can be quite significant. Ours was 30%, which is quite a lot given that the ticket was pretty expensive to start with. This early bird discount applies for bookings more than 2 weeks in advance. Good way to save on the transport.

We reached the HSR station in Kaohsiung, which was called 左营 and then, took the MRT to 三多商圈 station. Our accommodation, La Villa de Sweet Heart, was supposedly near the MRT station. We followed the address given and was looking for the building numbered 2 on the street, which was a very long one. After walking all the way down the street and back up, we went inside the Starbucks of one of the shopping centres to ask for help. We managed to borrow the laptop of a very nice and helpful staff member of Starbucks and realised to our horror, we got the address and the phone number wrong. It was building numbered 21, not 2. And the building was just across the road from the shopping centre. We took more than one hour to find it and everyone was a bit sian by then.

We booked two rooms, with different themes. One was the ballet room and the other was the comic room. Stupid Gary chose the ballet room for us without seeing carefully. Lol the comic room was much better. Shelves and shelves of comics and there were quite a lot of movie DVDs. Our room had a wide range of classical music and of course, a make-up table that looks just like those you saw in the movie Black Swan. How nice. Hahahaha.

By the time we got settled in, it was pretty late in the afternoon already. We took a walk to the 海洋公园 nearby and also to the 85 大楼. There really wasn't much to see or do. Lol. Along the way, we saw a bike station near the entrance of the park. It turns out to be part of a project from the government for residents to rent the bikes and cycle around the place. I had heard about this system in place for Taipei and it sounds pretty good. I guess it would help in solving traffic congestion issues.

At night, we went to 六合夜市, which was the biggest 夜市 in Kaohsiung I think. And sadly, it was quite below our expectations. The 夜市 spans across a very long street and has a total of 170 stalls. I guess maybe it's because there were a lot of stalls selling local specialties and they didn't appeal much to us. Near the entrance, there was a stall which is very famous for their 木瓜牛奶 and was visited many times by 马英九. It was decent. Hahaha we didn't have a good impression of the place in the end.

After going back to the MRT station near our hostel, Gary and Nose said they wanted to go check out the "casinos" nearby. They were kind of like entertainment outlets because I think casinos are illegal in the country. Ham went back first and I went to explore the 诚品 in the mall. The 诚品 here was quite big and spanned across the whole floor. Also, the design of the place was quite unique I find. I quite enjoyed the place and spent quite some time there.

Turns out those two didn't go inside any of the entertainment places so we just went back to enjoy the rooms. Oh ya, forgot to mention that Gary had a odd habit of sleeping on the sofa facing the TV screen. So, I get the whole bed to myself! Haha, one of the benefits of sharing the room with him.

4th January, Wednesday (Kaohsiung)
Woke up rather early today somehow and everyone else was still knocked out so I went down to walk around the place to see if I can source for some breakfast. About 2 to 3 streets away, there were a small group of food vans/motorcycles. There was a rather wide variety for me to choose from and I took very long to decide, in line with my indecisive nature. It took me many walks around the vehicles to finally decide on soya milk and porridge. The porridge was nice and tempted me to buy another bowl the next day.

Day trip to 旗津 island. Kay Siong told me about this place and he wasn't really impressed, partly because it was quite crowded when he went. We had to take a ferry there from 鼓山渡轮站 and in the area, we saw quite a few shops that were selling 芒果冰 and other kinds of shaved ice. Popular food in summer one would expect and though it was winter, we still was thinking of trying. We decided to come back at night later.

Near to the port area, there was this interesting drinks vending machine which was advertised as selling bottled drinks that could undergo quick freezing. I have never seen quick freeze in action before and I think it was the same for the rest. So, we bought one bottle of coke to try. It was really cool. Irvin unscrewed the cap and took a sip. When he closed it back, a bit of freezing started to occur. When the bottle was overturned, the liquid inside froze instantaneously from bottom up. Really cool. Anyone wanna see the video can ask me for it. Haha.

The ferry ride didn't take long and when we came out from the port at 旗津, there was a bike shop right in front of us. We read up and found out that riding around the island would be the best. There were some people peddling their bikes to us already on the main island, outside the MRT station. But, we were thinking that renting on the island itself better.

In 旗津, there are mostly scenic spots for tourists to visit and as for food, the place is well-known for its seafood. We took the route that went around the island in an anti-clockwise direction. First stop was the 炮台, which was a rather good location for photo-taking. It was quite a walk up the hill but the view up there was quite worth it. The place reminded me a bit of Fort Canning Hill. One can get a bird's eye view of the surroundings on the island up there. It appeared to be quite popular with couples too. Lol.

After walking around the place a bit, we went down and continued cycling along the edge of the island to the next destination: 风车公园. It was quite a long journey and along the way, we stopped at a market to get a drink and maybe some food. Here, I found a stall selling 弹珠汽水 and I was quite tempted. In the end, I bought one to try for fun. I don't think I tried it before. The drink is nothing special. Haha it's just that the design is unique. There is no cap for the drink and in place of it, there is a marble. When the marble is pushed down, the pressure is released and you hear the fizzling of the drink. And don't worry, the marble is too big to come back out of the opening. So, no worries about swallowing the marble. Haha.

We slowly cycled on and along the way, there was a van that drove past playing some Hokkien song on the loudhailer mounted on top of it. Turns out it was some election campaign van for the local candidate. Still come up with song. Lol. When we finally reached the 风车公园, it was quite near sunset time already. I quite like the whole row of 风车 spinning to the wind. I could see why Kay Siong didn't like the place much though. Quite artificial in terms of the place having a very touristy and man-made feel. Ah well, cannot compare with Hualien for sure but it was quite decent still.

It got pretty late so we cycled back to where we came from and returned the bikes. After asking the boss about nice food nearby, we went to some seafood shop and ordered quite a bit for dinner. Ham is not a great fan of seafood so he went to look for a bakery, his favourite place for food. Lol.

We went back to the shaved ice shop that looked pretty famous, based on the number of autographs in the place. xD Ordered the strawberry one. That shop had a special bowl that serves 30 people. It looked really huge and kind of reminds me of the Vermonster in Ben and Jerry's.

After going back to the MRT station near our hostel, we decided to explore the basement of the shopping mall. We saw a supermarket and went in to raid the place for snacks. Haha I bought a mini bottle of vodka for my brother and the most memorable food we bought was a pack of 沙琪玛. Memorable not because it was good, but because it was so bad nobody wanted to eat it. It ended up following us back to Singapore where it was given out as gifts. HAHA =P Nose went to check out the SOGO store upstairs as he was considering if he should get the Marvel character t-shirt that he saw the day before. In the end, it was closed. That shirt was nice, but far too expensive.

When we went back to the hostel, we indulged in our next favourite TV show of the trip. After Stephen Chow, now we have....... Spongebob Squarepants in Mandarin!! I can't remember exactly when did we start to take notice of that show. Probably in Cityinn or when we got to Kaohsiung. It was quite fun to watch, especially when during the opening songs or when the main characters started to sing during the show. Nose and Gary soon started arguing who was 派大星 (the Chinese name for Patrick the starfish). Lol there was some stupid song that was sung by 派大星 and Gary kept singing it. -.-

5th January, Thursday (Kaohsiung)
We didn't really research up much on Kaohsiung before the trip. So, we only decided where to go when we were there. On this day, I kind of convinced them to go to the National Science and Technology Museum. Haha, we had lunch at the Mcdonald's and I had McGrill. Wow, it was really nice. Nose told me that Singapore had McGrill too. Never knew that. But it's expensive in Singapore mah.

The museum is supposedly the largest in Asia and consists of two buildings separated by the road in between. One of the buildings is only used when students come for workshops or other programmes. The main building consists of many floors and has an IMAX theatre too. I thoroughly enjoyed the place and seriously hoped for more time there. Based on the science and tech museums that I've gone to, I realised the science part fascinates me much more than the technology part. Haha really a pure science person then.

What I liked about this museum is the highly interactive nature of the place, especially the physics exhibits. I'm not a huge fan of physics but the exhibits really made those concepts they were trying to put across more interesting. At the chemistry area, there was an exhibit that displayed the phenomenon of magnetic levitation using superconductors. Too bad we missed the demonstration time.

The other three looked horribly bored at the place most of the times, apart from the few occasions where there was some fun game which was entertaining for a while. Haha. We also contemplated watching an IMAX movie but decided against it as it wasn't really cheap. So, we decided to go back in the end.

The best part of the day has yet to come. Haha we were looking for a dinner place and thought of the BBQ place we walked past the night before. The name of the place is 逐鹿炭火烧肉 (http://www.mydeer.com.tw/order.htm). From outside, it looked quite nice and we went there a bit too late the night before and was closing already. We asked them for the price of the dinner buffet and it was NTD495 for 3 hours.

There was a lot of meat on the ala carte buffet menu and on top of that, free flow of Haagen Daaz and Meiji ice cream. Trust me. That was our best meal in Taiwan. Ham said that place was the saving grace of Kaohsiung. Hahahah. For 3 hours, we had a lot of prawns, mussels and meat. The design of the place was pretty cool too. The seating around the BBQ pit kind of resembled the Japanese tatamis and one row had about 3 pits. The shoes were all placed at the side and most of the time, we just sat there and ate and ate and ate. That night, our appetites were superb. Even after all those meat, we still had the stomach for about 4 rounds of 3-scoop ice cream desserts. Completely worth the money. My top recommendation for anyone going to Kaohsiung. Ham was commenting that 逐鹿 was the saving grace of Kaohsiung. Lol.

All full and satisfied, we went back for more of 海绵宝宝 and 派大星. =p

6th January, Thursday (Kaohsiung)
Our 4th and final day in Kaohsiung. The main reason we had so many days for Kaohsiung was because we expected that we would have much to do over in Kaohsiung since it was the second largest city in Taiwan. It turned out that our research was far too insufficient. So, this day, we decided to follow some food guide in our hostel rooms that gave recommendations on good food in the 左营 area, the vicinity of the HSR station.

Kaohsiung in general is far less populated than Taipei but 左营 is worse than that. It looks like a ghost town. The area has several scenic spots and has a rather huge lake, called 莲池潭, with quite a lot of temples around it. People usually cycle around the lake and visit the places. We were too obsessed with finding the food places on our guide. Therefore, we went on foot to find the food outlets.

In the end, most of the places were closed and we only managed to find one of them. So, we settled down there for a rather long lunch, while deciding what to do next. Kay Siong recommended me to take some tourist shuttle bus that was available in the 左营 area where people could hop on and off at designated spots. It was a pity that we did not take that, or we could have explored the scenic spots of the area.

We did not realise that during our hunt for food, we wandered off quite far from the 左营 MRT station. Since the plan for the night was to go to 瑞丰夜市, we found a way to take a bus to 生态园区站 and we could take the MRT down to 高雄巨蛋站. From there, we can then walk to 瑞丰夜市. We kind of wasted the day already, since by the time we reached the 夜市, it was near nightfall already.

All we can say was this area is the second saving grace of Kaohsiung. 瑞丰夜市's layout was highly different compared to that of 六合夜市. Where 六合夜市 is along a long stretch of road, 瑞丰夜市 has many rows of stalls, all very compact in a relatively small area. And there were so many things here we could stuff our faces with. There was also a rather huge LED signboard with the words 瑞丰夜市 in big print.

The first stall that caught my eye was one selling churros. Imagine my surprise, churros in Taiwan. And the stall was operated by one Chinese lady and a Frenchman. I decided to 打包 it when we were going to leave. The place was rather crowded and we had to weave our way through the crowds. Sadly, I can't remember most of the stuff we had there already. The first half that we walked was all food and there was another half of shopping. Occasionally, there would be some game stalls in the shopping area. I was just amazed at how many stalls there were because from the outside, it didn't look like a very huge 夜市.

When about to leave, we still bought quite some stuff. We bought some juice, some cheesy snack and my churros. Ham went off earlier to a bakery again. Lol, one of his favourites in Taiwan. 85度C cafe. It has outlets overseas too, in China, USA and Australia. But as per most franchises overseas, I heard the Sydney one is horrible.

When we met up with Ham, I spotted the first ever 贡茶 outlet in Taiwan. And I found out that 贡茶 started out in Kaohsiung, which explains its absence in Taipei. While ordering the drinks, we were chatting with the counter staff about the differences in 贡茶 between Kaohsiung and Singapore. In Kaohsiung, they have more flavours and also two sizes for the drinks. Weird that we only have the small one. Even Koi has two sizes for the drinks. I ordered 太妃奶茶, which is toffee milk tea. Silly me thought Singapore doesn't have that flavour. It tasted just like caramel milk tea though.

7th January, Friday (Kaohsiung to Taipei)
Finally going back to Taipei and this also signals the final leg of the trip. The HSR took us back to Taipei and the 便当 this time was awesome too. Haha thankfully. The rest was pretty much asleep most of the time. I was sitting beside the window, reading 那些年我们一起追的女孩 and listening to my iPod. I always cherish the time I'm on my iPod when on a trip, simply because iPod time is drastically cut whenever I'm on holiday. Haha. I remember this part quite well. The whole scene reminds one of some cliche TV drama. The book, scenery plus music.

We quickly checked in back at Cityinn and immediately set off for 佳德糕饼, which is the shop selling top-notch 伴手礼 in Taipei. Sadly, we took the bus in the wrong direction and spent quite a bit of time getting there. It was really quite hard to find and it seems they do not want to have more outlets. Haha.

There was an interesting episode that unfolded outside the shop where some Malaysian lady, who was a tourist, kind of took an interest in Gary. Dunno what was she high on. In the end, she got his number and actually called him later at night. Creepy. Usually people goes there to buy their pineapple tarts. But after the trip, Ham let me try the green bean cake from there. Oh my, it was beyond awesome. The pineapple tarts pale in comparison (partly because I didn't really like the tarts in the first place).

Down the alley, there was 几分甜 bakery, which Ham and Nose went to in Taichung. This time we bought the 太空面包 again and since it's fresh, it tasted really good. Ham bought some of their bite-sized pineapple tarts too. By the end of it all, we carried a lot of stuff. Really a lot. So we decided to go back to the hotel to put down our stuff before departing for the last 夜市 of our trip.

We took the MRT to 后山埤 station and started to walk towards 饶河夜市 and 五分埔. The night before, Nose and I were trying to find one place that sold nice 鲁肉饭, supposedly frequently visited by Jay Chou. Dropped by it en route to the 夜市, the name of the place is 胡须张鲁肉饭. All members of the staff wore a T-shirt with the words Formosa Chang and 胡须张 printed in bright pink and yellow on the back. We ordered a small bowl of 鲁肉饭 each and shared some dishes.

The 鲁肉饭 was damn awesome. Serious. The other dishes weren't spectacular, maybe in comparison bah. Although I must say it was quite oily, but it was really super nice. I was seriously considering having another bowl but we still had the 夜市 to go to after that. So, we decided that we may come back for more if our stomachs were not filled to the brim. Haha. When leaving, I saw that the shop was selling their 鲁肉饭 in packaged form. 1 packet of 1kg rice and 3 packets of the condiments. Ham was commenting that he'll be scolded for buying rice back when it can be readily bought in Singapore. Well, the rice looked kind of special and in the end, I found out it was Japanese rice and could really be bought in Singapore. Ah well, anyway, Nose and I were considering buying it back so that we could eat it in Singapore. Either way, we KIV-ed it to the end of the night.

We walked past 五分埔 but there wasn't much that we wanted to look at. To me, that place is shopping heaven for girls but not really for guys. The place gave me the Bugis street feel but this is much larger. Anyway, we just moved on to 饶河夜市. But the sian thing was that it started to drizzle a bit.

Thankfully, it never developed into rain but it was kind of sian to walk the place with water splashing on your feet. Meh. We didn't really buy much food since the weather kind of turned us off. One of the last stops was at a teppanyaki shop and that was probably the more impressionable food we had at the 夜市. I really think the 鲁肉饭 was too good already. Hahaha.

No surprises there when we walked back to 胡须张 for seconds. Each had another bowl of 鲁肉饭 and Nose and I bought the package home. Happy happy. And I must say that was one purchase I never regretted. Cooking it myself also gave the same taste (then again, it was pretty idiot-proof). Hahaha the condiments pack just needed to be heated up and I just needed to adjust the water amount for the rice carefully that's all. Haha.

I can't remember exactly but I think this was the night that Nose and I went to collect our Uniqlo jeans too. When we were in Taipei previously, both of us each bought a pair of jeans there. It was quite cheap and amounted to about SGD40. We sent them for altering and would collect when we were back there again. I'm sad to say that even though the jeans fit me very well, the issue of its colour leaking is highly annoying. Stained my shoes when it rained and anything else stainable that I put in the pockets. Tsk.

8th January, Friday (Taipei)
The last day. Meh. Sad that the trip was ending. We kind of slowly took our time haha. Decided to go to Taipei 101 to try out the 鼎太丰 there as we thought the DTF in Taiwan was awarded the Michelin star too, like the HK one. Only after queuing then we realised that we were wrong. But ah well. We ordered quite a bit, in a bid to clear out NTD. Hahaha. It tasted pretty much about the same as the Singapore ones. The interesting thing was how we paid the bill. It came up to about NTD2100, which we paid with...... a lot of coins. =D hahaha. I felt genuinely embarrassed when we had to pay the bill.

After that, we went upstairs to spend some time before going back to check out and depart for the airport. We saw an outlet of PageOne that was almost not noticeable from outside as it was undergoing renovation. There was a small area outside that was selling bargain books at very very cheap prices. I bought 2 Agatha Christie books I think. The interior of the shop was still very nice. I had a great time walking around the inside and browse through the books. There was this book I saw that was about the Story of Science. It wasn't cheap as it was an English book. PageOne and Eslite in Taiwan sell Chinese books at very cheap prices but not the English books. I took a photo of it and was planning to borrow it from the library back in Singapore. In the end, I bought it off online for about only SGD13 since it was so rare in Singapore (only Kino had it, according to my research).

And then, the last walk back to Cityinn. Checked out, got on our cab, back to airport. The funny thing was as our cab started moving to the airport, to our horror, we saw a 夜市 just two streets away from our hotel. Faints. Hahahahahah. We never walked to that area. Damn. Maybe next time. On the cab, they paid me for all the accommodation in NTD. Dear me. Now I'm stuck with quite a bit of NTD. Those going to Taiwan soon can come find me to change money. Hahaha. The flight back to Singapore was a bit sad but ah well. It had to end. Nose and I were just sian when we arrived back in Singapore as there was a freaking long queue for taxis and it was in the middle of the night. So tired.

Conclusion (finally!):
I'm highly ashamed to say that I took more than half a year to complete this. HAHAHAH. I promised myself to writing a bit of it daily during the last semester. Failed so badly. This is a prime example of my level of procrastination. Near the end of this whole blog entry, I had to rack my brains to recall things that happened so many months ago. Thankfully, I started to note down the highlights of our daily events on a piece of paper when I was in Kaohsiung.

So here u go. The efforts of 6 months and about 8 days I think. (Completed this on 19th July) I cannot remember since when it started when my friends gave me the -.- look whenever I said this post is near completion. I always hear "我听你讲很久了咯！" xD I hope whoever is still reading this won't find this too long or what. This is mainly for my memories' sake and if anyone wants to use this as reference, feel free to clarify any doubts or any queries with me thru the chatbox I guess. I know it's full of spam but yea. Not comfortable sharing my contact details online haha. That's all!!! Thanks to all my friends for harping on my procrastination and thanks to Ham, Nose and Gary for the awesome trip!

rotted-1:20 PM

Monday, February 20, 2012

i look at the uncompleted drafts in my log of posts and it brings me back to what i'm thinking now. is it worth it for me to actually continue to try for this research module? it's draining me out in epic proportions and i find myself emotionally wrecked so often.

看不见回报不代表没有回报。可是，这是可以预算出来的。现在为止，我还是认为这是不值得的。我还有六天的时间来决定。

is it time to throw in the towel or should i grit my teeth and endure all the way till november? my estimate now is that during the holidays, i would be roughly working on a 3-day week and my whole july would be free of research. this is a really tough decision.

rotted-9:07 PM

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

haven't finished my post on the album review. it's currently quite low on my priority list, especially with my earphones being sent in for repair. in any case, i'm not really in the mood.

met my UROPS professor today to discuss about the research module that i'm undertaking. i'm expected to work in the lab for about 20 hours weekly. the thought of that is purely depressing. the research paper that he gave me to read is so freaking difficult.

it's just the huge contrast with my life a few days back. the contrast is so stark it smacks me right in the face. before i can fully adapt back to reality, school is already giving me a tough time. even eating dinner reminds me of how Taiwan food is so cheap yet so good.

i've yet to start on my post on the Taiwan trip. i guess it'll come out before the album review still lol. but many things that happen in Taiwan just appear in my mind now. reading the 那些年 book on the train and in the bathtub. eating at 士林夜市. watching stupid and random shows on tv. walking through the different 诚品 stores.

i need to slowly adjust back to this city. the city with horrible weather, horrible metro system, horrible service standards, horrible food (and bubble tea of course) and many other horrible parts of it. lol. still, i must be thankful for the things and people in this city that still deserve my love and who love me too. at least, they help to make life a bit easier for me.

rotted-12:07 AM

Friday, December 23, 2011

Songs of the Week

Been quite a while since I last did this. Heard a few really nice songs lately so here I am. This can be good practice for my album review post too haha.

1. 林育羣 - 人海中遇见你

Heard it as my brother was playing the soundtrack of the movie 那些年，我們一起追的女孩. His voice is amazing. After reading the movie production book, I found out this song is a cover and the original version is so obscure that a google search gives near to zero results. Despite not hearing the original version, I feel 林育羣's voice is a good fit for the song, not considering the emotion component of his rendition. Overall, I love it.


2. Adele - Set Fire to the Rain (Live at Royal Albert Hall)

I first saw the performance on Youtube. This song never really grew on me. Until this performance. The first thing that attracted me deeply was how they filmed the video and the effects applied. The first point pertained to the camera filming candid shots of the audience singing along, with brilliantly chosen angles. One of my favourite shots is at 2:28. Dunno why. The second point about effects apply to the few times they decide to show some of Adele's gestures in slow motion. Allows you to observe her expressions well. Love it. Love the gestures when she sang the words "burn", "flames"at the end of the lines. And also, the way she sang the word "watch". Haha, very unique. All in all, i started to love this song after watching the video. This came in a very near second as 人海中遇见你 is supported by the movie, which I really love.

3. Christina Perri - A Thousand Years

Yesterday, I saw a video shared by my one of my friends on Facebook. It was about a creative marriage proposal, by the co-founder of Nuffnang. Very nicely done video, with the song being the most outstanding part in my opinion. The song choice was brilliant, and carried the mood really well. I was very soothed yet becoming slightly emotional as the song progressed. Christina Perri's voice is very special and I really can't put a finger on how is it so. Got the urge to find the song after watching the video.

4. Kelly Clarkson - Why Don't You Try

Well, for this song, I shall retain my comments for the album review post, which should be completed ideally by tml. =P

5. Jennifer Lopez - Papi

This song reminds me of the Batam trip I went on a while back. For the 3 days there, I can't remember how many times did I watch the music video already. Haha it's a rather silly video with the rather lame storyline. But the dances in the video were impressive. They were rather well-executed throughout and the clapping in the video, which was sadly not in the original song, made the melody even more catchy. The main attraction of this song for me is the melody. Highly catchy. Now that I think of it, I can't remember why did I suddenly listen to this song again.

Yup, so those were my choices of the week. Anyway, I was mulling over this random thought that came into my mind. Where you encounter a song, does it matter to how much you would like the song? This popped up in my head as I was writing the part for Christina Perri's A Thousand Years. I think this is very true in the case of romantic movies/videos/scenarios etc. It pretty much links up with my previous point about knowing the story behind a song.

Well the train of thought kind of stopped there. Haha, other things came to my mind suddenly.

有时事情演变的速度真是令人感到有点措手不及，但又觉得好无奈。

rotted-11:42 PM

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

今天，我看了最近大家应该都已经看过了的电影，“那些年，我们一起追的女孩”。看完后，感触良多。而且，知道到家了还在想。回家后，第一件事便是想找找看弟弟买的同名的书是否在他桌上。可惜他借给朋友了。其实，也说不上为什么这部电影对我的影响如此的大。在电影院看的时候，大概从电影进行了四分之一后就断断续续眼眸泛泪。某些部分看到眼泪夺眶而出，滑下脸庞。

可能是电影产生了许多共鸣吧。刚才，在与朋友的谈话中，我们都发现最近颇受欢迎的爱情片尽是男女主角最后没在一起的所谓“不完美”的结局。可能这代表人们变聪明了，了解爱情片常上演的梦幻般的爱情与浪漫不切实际。也可能代表人们对爱情的憧憬似乎变得比较实际。可能就因为所谓的“不完美”的结局更能引起共鸣，更印象深刻，深入民心吧。

昨天，我在面薄上说了这句话，“我总觉得了解歌曲背后的意思，作词人想表达的意思，才能将听歌的过程变得更完整。当然这只是用于创作歌手。” 话虽如此，今天看完电影后，主题曲“那些年”里的意境突然变得好清晰。虽然演唱人与作词人并非同一个人，我还是认为我说的也算吧。

就算结果没在一起，至少他们曾共同创造了许许多多美好的回忆。有时，最简单的事其实最刻骨铭心。女主角，沈佳宜，说了一句让我印象深刻的话，“人生本来很多事就是徒劳无功的啊。” 两位主角还运用了平行时空（parallel universe)的概念。不知为何，看的时候就有想叹气的冲动。

今天好累。不知到为什么。本来有许多想法在脑海里打滚着，现在都不知到哪儿去了。忘了也算好吧。好想再看多一次。

就算没在一起，至少他们暧昧的期间好甜蜜。

rotted-11:01 PM

Sunday, November 13, 2011

my physical condition's getting worse by the day. whole body's full of aches and pains. and i'm not sleeping well lately. and i can't find the first half of my CM2111 notes. so annoying. meh, i'm hungry too. time for breakfast.

rotted-10:42 AM

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