Japanese Sword Fighting (1)

Hanging out in a nice little pub in Shibuya with my colleagues. The basement restaurant specializing everything skewered. In Japanese crusine, skewers are so important to accompany drinking activities. Everything can be skewered, including minced chicken, entrails, chicken skin, scallops, veggies, or any combinations of the above. They can be grilled(chicken skewer - Yakitori), panfried (tepanyaki) or deep fried (Kushiage). The best of all is that they serve my favorite sake, otokoyama (man mountain) from Hokaido. It is clear and crispy. Not much annoying after taste, oh man, I miss it very much.

We started drinking and eating late (worked until 10pm on Friday evening... This Japanese project is really vaxing). I rode my bike over to Shibuya and it took me a while to find the little pub. My manager was so surprised that I have no idea of the famous department store Shibuya 109's whereabout, he had to gave up his nicely cold beer, came up to the street level and looked for me.

Anyhow, the food and drink were both good, we left the restaurant around 3am. Everyone was half drunk and wanted to ride my bicycle on the still-busy Shibuya street. Taro, my Japanese colleague, is the Japanese traditional sword fight master, who has practiced the art for more than 25 years. He insisted to show me the trick(I guess he wanted to lift up the rear wheel and keep balance with the front for a while). He fell over while breaking abruptly. With the rigid sword fight training, he cling on to the handle bars when he was flat on the floor.

A rope

In ancient China, the emperor sometimes sent a piece of yellow fabric to people, that mean, go kill yourself by hanging your neck with this piece of nice silk. I sometimes wonder why people at that time would submit to this absolute powerful and never thought about running away. I think the reason is that it would be an easier way to die without too much pain. Otherwise the emperor has the power to throw you into the boiling oil or slice you into thousand pieces (one of the most cruel punishment, the executor would be guilty if the person die before he finished cutting a thousand pieces of meat off). Cruelty is the way to mind-control the crowd, I guess.

Cliente

I actually watched this film (French Gigolo) last year on the plane (very much like to explore non-hollywood films from countries other than USA), a coincident that it was still available on my way back to Tokyo from Taipei, I watched it again. Judith is a level-headed, charming and independent 50 something. She treats herself with young men once every so often by paying for the service. I have no issue of paying for sex, um... in my opinion, paying for sex is worse than no sex (cross my fingers, hope I will not think differently later on). Judith fell for the innocent Patrick, who really is not pro in this game. I am quite delighted by the openness about the sexual desire of women in their fifty (Judith's sister is an interesting contrast). The story was told in a very smooth way. You can feel the struggle of Judith's rational and lusty selves. Patrick can never be her real partner (background, social status, moneyness, age difference, level of sophistication, etc.), she tries to prolong the pleasure as much as she can. Of course, I think she enjoyed it because she really likes him.

About Patrick... I am not too sure. At certain level, he did like her, but he like her even more given the possibility he can escape the financial pressure (he did it to pay for his wife's beauty salon mortage)

I happened to stumble upon another Chinese writer's work with similar storyline. But this was written from the guy's perspective. At the beginning it looks as if the lady's made a great effort to liberate herself, but it turned out that she is the experienced buyer. The guy was badly hurt. Man, I wish the author could read what she wrote at the beginning before letting the story runs its course.

Icelandic Volcano

Just to record the long journey and trauma last month when making my way from London to Amsterdam. Spending the week in London for some training, I had to go out almost every night after work to catch up with some friends. My manager in the Netherlands bank also threw me a going-away party on that very Saturday, everything was going according to plan until the volcano exploded.

Knowing my flight was likely to be cancelled, my manager sent me text message and email urged me to find the alternative to get myself back to European continet, I think he even mentioned swimming across the channel. Since air travel is impossible, the 2 possible ways are through the overnight ferry or by Europe star. Partying again on Friday night, I completely missed out the chance to move my body to Harwick, where to board the ferry before 11pm on Friday night. I woke up on Saturday morning with headache due to dehydration, thinking I should at least try to book a Europe star ticket to either Paris or Brussel.

Luckily I was able to find a seat to Brussel leaving around quarter to 11, I hastily packed up, get the car, running to Kingscross station. I thought it would be easy to get the fast train ticket once I am in Brusse without further research. Getting into the train, I felt much better, hey, not bad, Brussell is only 2 hour train ride away from Amsterdam.

When arriving in Brussel, I realised I had made a big mistake. The ticket service counter was packed with nervous and anxious travellers. There is no way to get anything without getting into the line. I had no internet access, no way of finding out what other options are but wait. I waited for 3 hours to get on the slowest, snail-like intercity train around 5pm, crawling across all the cities, big or small. I arrived in Amsterdam just quarter to 9pm, just on time for the party.

Getting Big?

Returning from my brief vacation in Taipei, I was only disappointed that both Grace and my mom commented that I look bigger than before. The daily jog has made me feel very comfortable about eating whatever I feel like to eat, at any time. What I don't realise is that my body has managed to come back to the status quo that all my appetite has turned into the calories I burned during my run effectively and it has successfully got me to what I was before. I can run without shocking my body too much (no more join or muscle pain even if running for hours).

They said to me before I left for the airport, "hope you are not any bigger next time we see you".

The Sculptress

First read of Minette Walters' work. The obese and ugly inmate might be in the prison for the crime she didn't commit. The writer vowed to get to the bottom of the mystery, and met the love of her life after a painful divoice (handsome and depressed ex-cop is attractive?). The seemingly innocent girl (hard to use this word to describe her, because she makes people fear her because of her size and ungliness) really killed her angel-like sister and mother? The author is trying to depict her as the super intellengent manipulative freak, who controlled the rythm of every meeting the innocent writer had with her.

The story has all the Hollywood movie elements, I am surprised it is not on the big screen yet. Easy read and quite entertaining (who would think the father's lover also sleep with the daughter?) But what makes me think more if why Minette spent such a long time to describe the unpleasantness of Olivia. That can easily build up the agreement among readers, oh yeah, the ugly obese girl is of course behaving the way she described.

Suppose pretty face people have less chance of dealing with the negative emotion caused by the being disliked or bullied?

La Saombra Del Viento - the shadow of the wind

The story telling technique is pretty good. But what attracts me is not the mystery of the writer Julian Carax but the small side line of the main character, Daniel Sempere's friend Fermin. He is almost like the clown in the whole story, being sheltered by Daniel and his father as a homeless, his history slowly unfolded. He was arrested and tortured during the Spanish civil war, yet no one really knew what he did to annoy the authority (though you didn't do much, but in that environment, everything can be used against you in the court of, um..., totalitarism). Though he still wet his pants when hearing the head police office name (that was his tormentor in the prison time), he is actually the most loveable character in the whole story. Not sure why I wasn't quite attracted to the young, pure and innocent Danienl, the puppy love between him and the blind girl was pretty interesting, and his later relationship with his best friend's sister was also quite intense. But somehow I feel that he is lacking something more powerful in his character, being very young of course if one of the reason.

Fermin is not the most wealthy nor intellegent, he is very certain about what type of woman he wants. After he met his godness, he still flirts with women of all ages (I guess he cannot change that, he was born with it), but his mind is set. He thinks love is about stepping out of your comfort zone, challenging the unknown. His godness gave him the reason to become a better human being more than yesterday, he wants to be good because of the thought of she is going to be so proud of him. Interesting character.

Taiwanese wife in Nagoya

Emily's new born, 4 weeks old. Seeing the baby only made me realise how much maternal instinct I have, that is... none.
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Comparing to the supressed, reserve, conservative and meticulous neat Japanese, Taiwanese are sometimes understood as overly-friendly, easy-to-content and lacking of forethought and thoroughness.

Hanging out with Irene (my best friend married to a Japanese guy), I was always cracking up about the funny stories inspired by the culture shock. One time she was trying to make the Korean rice powder pancake, chichimi, from the package. The instruction saying that she should pour some flour into the mixture but there was none in the kitchen. She fiddled around the carboard and found the pancake mix. She thought, oh well, that is also flour so she poured in the pancake flour into the bowl. No one told her that the pancake mix has got the vanilla flavour and sugar mixed in, the result was revolting (please imagine pouring the soy sauce over your strawberry cake). She was so embarrassed, trying to stop her husband having the second helpings (I think he was eating it out of duty).

Over the golden week holidays, Irene went to the Pachinko Parlor with her husband. While her husband walked away looking for other machines, she was sitting in front of the machine by herself. The credit is running low but she had no other kind of entertainment but to continue her game. She pulled out the 5000 yen bill, and blindly stuff the money into the slot within her eyesight. In the noisy and smoke-filled space, she found out that her money was not crediting her game. It turned out that she had just funded the machine (and the guy) sitting to her right.

What's for Valentine's Day Present?

My cousin, Jen, has a very sweet boy friend. On Valentine's day, he gave her a hand-made (he made it himself) padding for her butts because she was falling a lot on the snowboarding trip a couple weeks ago.

"Chi" flow

I was trying to feed the Doreamon some California red wine, and Harun came to rescue the poor animal.
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Coming back to Taipei for a brief 4 days to check on my parents in the Japanese golden week holidays, I went to the fixing bone (Chinese version of chiropratic) place to experience the bone fixing in Taipei with Irene.

Waiting in the lounge, I was the only one getting mosquito bites in the whole clinic (mosquitos love me for some reason). Fixing bone is very fun, the so-called doctor knows kung-fu, and he can feel what's wrong with your spine, the common problem is the crooked spine and so on. He will then push and turn and fold your body to make it straight again, too sad that I have no problen at atll (maybe the problem is in my head). He really folds your body like folding a piece of paper, you heard the sounds coming out from your joins everywhere. It is a very interesting experience...

One of the treatment is to put the vacuumed cups over your back to help the "chi" flow through better at the end. My back looks like a pepperoni pizza. The vaccuumed cups sucked out the flesh into the cups (it looks like I have 4 breasts on my back, ha ha ha ha), so the brusie is like big dark circles.

I think I have very high pain threshhold (falling 4 times over the bike on the snowy winter night last December causes bruises over my knees but not much pain though). Hearing the bond cracking sounds every where from the spine and joins, it hurt like hell that I almost wanted to ask the master if I can have something to bite into so to prevent myself from screaming like a little girl, ha ha ha.

After the fixing, we were told to drink a lot of water and warned about the possible muscle ache and join pain. However, I am feeling nothing of that sort. Perhaps I really do not need the bone fixing at all.