Ocean Day (2)

Not sure what I was doing, I must be trying to cheer up my colleagues by doing some silly things.
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It was 30K away from the base station. The good thing is that our cab can go pass the queue for the parking lot, we set off the hike just slightly pass 4:30am. Sleeping 8 hours a day is vital to me, lacking of sleep is really the hardest bit of the whole hike. I was dozing off in every break we took. The high attitute is also difficult. The air is thin, I felt that, no matter how hard I breathed, I am not getting enough oxygen. After starting my running regime, I have not felt short of breath as much as this hike. I even felt dizzy and felt like to puke at some point. Man, I should have stayed home and slept... I was even thinking about quiting a number of times. But I guess I wanted to see how far I can go and before I know, I got through it alright.

The hike is actually very boring, it is like climbing stairs non-stop. All you need to do is keep walking, and walking up. The sun is high, the only good thing is the temperature is like 20C at such a elevation.

During the break, we ate and enjoyed the scenaries of Lakes Kawaguchiko and Yamanakako. We can even see a bit of the Tokyo bay, cities around the bay, perhaps Tokyo and Yokohama. Um, of course, Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in East Japan.

Ocean Day (1)

This must be somewhere after 6th station...
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It was really an accident that I had mount Fuji hike and open water swimming compeition in the same weekend. This long weekend is the ocean day, 海の日, in Japan (this day must have something to do with sushi). I was a bit worried beforehand thinking I might not be able to get through this long weekend. The plan is to leave Tokyo on Sunday morning just past midnight, go straight to the 5th base station of Mount Fuji and start the hike before 3am. The traffic was surprisingly light at 1am from Tokyo, it took us less than 2 hours to Mount Fuji. However, the queue to get to the parking lot at 5th base station is like 3 to 4 hours long. We were all very disappointed and almost wanted to give up (actually, I was secretly happy about giving up, at least I can go back home and have a good night sleep), we saw a taxi driving pass by.

My colleague quickly formulated the solution, we parked our car in some parking lot then call the taxi. We stopped by a 7-11 to stock up the food and water. At the same time, I thought, it might be not easy to find any available taxi at 3am in the mountain area. Regardless, we got the local taxi company's phone number from the nice 7-11 clerk and the only Japanese colleague ordered the cab over the phone.

As we were unpacking and packing the hiking gear outside of the convenient store, a Taxi driving by. I went jumping up and down, waving like mad and the taxi stopped. Using my broken Japanese to let the cabbie know that we need to go to the 5th station, um, while I was struggling, my Japanese colleague came to my rescue. Soon afterward, We were on the way to start our hike!

MSN with My Dad

劍臣 says:
你哥叫我出去伯爵山莊下吃客家菜晚飯‧兩小孩皮到他夫婦無法吃飯、又打破碗、又撒一地、一個指東一個指西‧就和你們两小時一樣難搞
Joey says:
很忙啊
有吃白切雞嗎?
我也好想吃啊
今天晚上熬夜看冠軍爭霸戰嗎
劍臣 says:
哈哈哈！養兒育女世代傳都一樣、由他小孩煩回他、
有吃到白切鷄‧梅干扣肉‧山下金龍市場每天中午＋二點左右鷄肉攤位有折價白切鷄每盒一百賣五＋曾叔評價讚和萬華名店無差
Joey says:
好吃極了,等我回台北買來下酒吧
劍臣 says:
我先睡‧二點閙鐘响才起來看西班牙奪冠，我信章魚哥、拜湃

Um, my dad said that he is going to take a nap first, and wake up to see the world cup (he set the alarm). The most amusing bit is that he said he truely believe the octopus that Spain is going to win the champion.

What is your hobby

Tokyo is officially getting into summer, I went for a 5K jog then dashed straight to our Sunday morning 12K rollerblading.
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Going to the sushi store in Tsukiji with Irene and her sister, in the shop, everyone (from the sushi chief to the wait staff) has to wear a nametag showing his/her name and hobby. One of the waitress has her hobby labeled as "Saving Money (儲金)".

Japanese Sword Fighting (2)

I begged Taro to let me participate their sword fighting training session on Sunday. In fact, he is very keen in getting people to join the club as young Japanese generation is slowly losing interest in this tradition. The problem is ... um.. quite embarrassing for the weak-nerve young Japanese kids, the problem is the SMELL! The protection gears cannot be washed, you can only wipe them or put them under the sun to control the smelly bacteria from growing too fast. The heavy-duty outfit cannot be machine washed, either. The traditional dye is not made of the best perfumy substance, it gives out irritable odor.

As for me, I don't care too much about it (sport is supposed to filled with sweat and danger), besides, I think the smell is not as bad as in underground subway station in New York City in the middle of July. What I don't quite like is the rigidness of order, ranking, manner, and respect. Sword fighting is not a sport for fun, it is rather a spiritual training to get yourself tougher (the idea is suprisingly fitting so well into Japanese culture). Thinking about the Chinese style of martial art, it is comparatively less formal, um, what do I know, all my knowledge of Chinese martial art are from the KungFu movies.

Nevertheless, it is an very interesting experience, you get to hit people (gear-protected) as hard as you can and yell as loud as you can at the same time. The only problem is that you are not allow to run, you have to slide across the wooden floor with grace.

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.

ひょうてん (Freezing Point)

Fresh Hamachi sashimi in London, I cannot believe this is happening...
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ひょうてん (freezing point) is the novel of a female Japanese writer, 三浦綾子. As a part-time novelist and housewife, her work had won the highest honor in literature in Japan in 1964. I got the book from Old Ho, he got them over the special sales. Strangely this book was getting popular again because a couple of the website I frequent mentioned this book at the same time. The story reveals the subtle, supressed side of Japanese culture. I highly recommend it for anyone who would like to understand Japanese society.

The story started with a prestigeous doctor's family. The beautiful wife was tempted by a handsome young physician, who works for her husband. There was not real betray and cheating occurring but the innocent daughter of the doctor went out walking along the river by herself while the mother was meeting the young physician. The tragedy unfolded when the little girl went missing and found dead the next day. She was killed by a mentally ill man, wondering around the neighborhood. Devastated, the doctor got suspicious about the secret meeting between his wife and his colleague, he pieced things together and got to his own conclusion that his wife is unfaithful to him. Furious and sad, he decided to avenge his wife by adopting the murdurer's daughter after the mentally ill man committed suicide in the prison cell. The orphan was sent by one of his best schoolmates, who is running the orphanage and was pursuing his beautiful wife before the doctor won the battle.

As story developed, we came to realise that everyone has something to hide, something against the other(s). But no one dare to break the ice shaking the seemingly ok equilibrium. Everyone is trying to preserve the small piece of the dignity he/she thinks he/she deserves and no one yell at each other to bring things out. It is really unthinkable in my world, I cannot bear the thought just to keep these emotions hidden for these many years, perhaps people in the cold north (background as in Hokkaido)behaves very differently from the hot/humid/violent south.

Another question is infidelity. Though the beautiful wife never had any thing physical with the young doctor, she has drifted away from her regularity, she was tempted, she was preparing for an affair, is it considered a more serious crime than actually having it?

Sporting Week with Huen's Family (3)

The next day, Sandy and I set out to the sea in the east coast. The weather turned cold and it started to rain, we were not too sure about jumping into the water but decided to check out the condition regardless. As soon as we got out of the 12k long tunnel, the sky got brightened and there was no rain at all. Putting on the wetsuit, Sandy started to teach me skimboarding. The short and light board is thrown on to the shallow water (sometimes the sand), and you have to catch the board from behind and keep your balance. The goal is to ride the small waves breaking near the shore. Though the distance is very short, but this takes a lot of skills to balance.

The quite seaside had nobody else but 2 of us. It was a bit windy but we didn't feel the chill once getting on exercising. The board can slide very fast and falling over the board was... painful because the direct contact of the sand. Time had flown so quickly, and before we realised we were very hungry, it was already noon.

We finished our skimboarding by soaking ourselves in the communal bath nearby. The natural hotspring eased the sore knees and legs. But I still can get sand out of my ears 3 days after.

Sporting Week with Huen's Family (2)

The next day I met up with Sandy for another workout session, although my back and arms were sore from the swing (not really good sign, meaning I am using my arm to drive the club). We planned to run for 5K then go swimming. Sandy didn't jog before, but her stamina is pretty good, we kept running and running. XiaoHo and Old Ho also joined us, but they are not serious runners. XiaoHo was in high spirit, I am pondering maybe we should train him to run as well.

The weather in Taipei was humid and warm, we ran for about 3K and decided to go for a walk with the crowd. Grace was already 1-finger dilated, still walking around with us. I was really worried if the baby would drop as she walked around. We checked out the ice skating ring, I am again thinking maybe we should train XiaoHo to do some speed skating... Maybe he will let Auntie Joey tag along to his skating practice when I get old.

Sandy and I went straight to the swimming pool, the first couple of labs were not really fun. Perhaps we have tired our leg muscles too much. But it got better and better. We finished our labs and went straight to the beer house. Maybe we should include biking so to make our workout the mini iron man next time.

Sporting Week with Huen's Family (1)

I went to visit Auntie Feng in Taichung one Friday when I was in Taiwan, since she is departing to Malaysia the next day, we won't have chance to meet before I fly out to Tokyo and she return to Taiwan. I like to obsorb the positive energy from her, that's almost becoming addictive to hang out with her and listen to her life philosophy (such as be very nice to yourself, if you don't, nobody else would). She came pick me up from the bullet train station, thank god for the train service, it takes less than an hour from Taipei to Taichung. She didn't really have a Taiwanese driver's license but she drove around anyways (during Chinese New Year, she, uncle Thomas and Sandy drove all the way to Tainan for foods, of course, none of them have valid drivers license. They were stopped by police officer, checking drunking driving. Miraculously they went through alright). After lunch, we went straight to the driving range, where she kept brainwashing me how cool golfing is. I tried different iron clubs, trying hard to recall the little knowledge I had with the swing. Golf swing is very counter-intuitive motion, the more you want to kill it, the worse the outcome. I wasn't doing too badly, meanwhile, Auntie Feng was so excited talking about her coming tournament, the instructor, even a potential family trip to Hawaii just for golfing.

Grand Project and the Pigeon

I was working with my mom on a project since last Summer. The project is to move my dad into a separate apartment. It just seems impossible for my parents to live together at all, since my father is not decisive enough to change anything, my mom took the initiatives and vowed to make her life better.

My mother is a woman with determination. Her plans is rational and reasonable (I don’t remember when her plans weren’t that way since I was a kid). We got another flat in the same apartment complex, closed the deal at first week of 2010. Renovation was done the following week, it is ready to move in. At the same time, my mom rented another flat to move in. The side line of the grand project is to renovate our current flat. We cleaned out the flat for this super make over. Too sad that my vacation is not long enough to see to the move, I am much grateful that they have settled into their apartments alright and my dad will be invited for family dinners every weekend.

I wasn’t too sure about my dad’s life after the separation, really need to make sure things are ok with my own eyes. I flew back in early March to check on them. It turns out that he is pretty cool with the arrangement despite the fact that he wasn’t too happy of it originally (losing face perhaps). He is taking care of himself ok and he is extremely busy with friends gathering and so on. I barely had a chance to dine with him during my stay.

He's now having more freedom to let the pigeon walking around the house. Rumor says that he lets the pigeon live inside the closet, but he was laughingly explained to me that he just tried to hide the bird when XiaoHo and Old Ho (nick name of XiaoHo's dad) visited him for Chinese New Year. Pretty cool, I was bursting out laughing, oh yeah, that is really quite funny, as long as the same joking action is not done by my husband (sometimes I think my mom is lacking a bit of sense of humor, oh well, no one is perfect).

He was even telling me how he walked the dog together with the pigeon with a lot of pride (I figure he thought that's quite innovative and should be complimented). He took the bird into his pocket and took Ilang down for a walk from his 22nd floor flat.

The way my dad walk the dog is that he rides the motorcycle and Ilang sits in the footrest in front (Ilang hops on and off when the motorbike stops. But he is really too old to see clearly, sometimes he gets into the wrong motorcycle). The bird was standing in front of the steering panel that time, occasionally flying around but always came back. I laughed again, it is indeed quite funny. Who would think a pigeon from god-knows-where has become my dad's friend and keeps him accompany?