Day 2

Another knackering day. I am absolutely shattered, going to bed at 11 which is early as hell for me.

We started out taking the high speed rail to Taichung and took a taxi to the Rainbow Village. 

Then we took the train to Changhua and went to Baghua Mountain to see the giant Buddha. Loads of people were taking pictures of us, I guess due to Joe's blond hair or something.

Then we walked down into town and got the bus to Lugang. We got lost for an hour before we found somewhere to get food, but not before Joe tried some stinky tofu - "It tastes like shitty garbage" was the official verdict haha. We went to a bien dang (lunchbox) place, but it's a self-service restaurant if you want to eat in so we piled plates with a bunch of stuff. Then we walked around taking pictures until it got dark, then made our way back to Taipei.

I could write a ton more but to be honest I just want to sleep haha.

Day 1

Pretty tiring day. We started off at the Chiang Kai Shek memorial. It was closed for renovations, but the grounds were all open so we had a look around.

After that we went to Taipei 101. I love going up skyscrapers and looking out over the world. Then we went downstairs and ate lunch in the food court.

After that, we headed to Tamshui (or however you spell it now), but it was all closing because of New Year. We will probably go back another day.

Then we went to Shilin night market and Joe ate some weird shit. Duck's head and chicken anus are fine, but a cake shaped like a penis is too far for him :) We looked around the stalls for a bit before heading back for an early night.

Linda's coming on Tuesday, but she won't tell me what she wants to do, so we may have to just leave her behind...

Tomorrow, I'll make sure to take cellphone photos of everything...it's all on my cameras so I have nothing I can show on here.

Met up with Joe yesterday. It was pretty good, we ended up going to Ximen night market after we got to the hotel but there were only a few stalls still open. He ate chicken hearts on a stick, I'm probably gonna spend a lot if time watching him eat weird shit and laughing this coming week.

Woke up early this morning for no apparent reason. Strange room and that I guess.  Gonna have to get used to being awake during the day.

Photo - Taichung HSR Station, Taiwan, 2013

Crash

Saw a scooter crash today. I was walking to work as usual, then I heard a bang. I turned to look and saw two old guys on scooters very slowly falling over. It was kinda weird, I couldn't see what it was at first. Like when you take a swig of milk but you're expecting orange juice and it just tastes wrong...I was expecting to see a person on a scooter but they had four arms and legs for a second until I realised it was two people and two scooters.

They were laid out on the road, both trapped under their scooters like turtles on their backs. I helped the closest guy to his feet while some people came out of a house and helped the other. Everyone was talking in Chinese, I guess about calling the cops, but one guy jumped on his scooter and drove off, and that was that.

Minutes later, I saw a cat run across a busy road and get hit by a scooter, and walk away totally unharmed.

I hope this isn't an omen or anything (I don't really believe in omens).

Predictably, I got fuck all done last night as far as packing goes - I had to wash some clothes so I couldn''t pack because it was wet - so I'm up early to get everything ready for Taipei.

You have to love a job where you can get up at 1:30pm and it still counts ss 'early'.

Oh for fuck's sake

Would you look at all that fucking rain

Taipei

I'm off to Taipei tomorrow for Chinese New Year. Joe is coming from the UK, this'll be his first time in Asia...actually probably his first time outside Europe so not sure what he'll think. We'll mostly be in Taipei but I'm sure we can make a few daytrips and whatever.

He's into photography too so I guess we'll be mostly doing that all week.

Hopefully we can meet up without any problems, when my sisters came I went to the wrong terminal and missed them...

New Direction

I'm using tumblr now for videogames and wrestling stuff, but I've been meaning to start a personal blog/diary/whatever for a while (several years). I figure it's easier to use this one than set up a new one (actually I just can't think of a decent name).

World of Warcraft

I got a free copy of the game and a month of play for completing Diablo 3, I've been playing it for the last week or so.  It's much better than it used to be, but it's still just a grindy timesink. There's not much going on right now so I do need a timesink, but I'm thinking I'd prefer to finally get into Disgaea 4. It's giving me an opportunity to relisten to the old Ricky Gervais XFM show as well as Lee and Herring, which is good.