Taiwan Week 1

Ok. It's been a week and I haven't written about any of the hilarious things that have happened, the crazy food I've eaten or the neat places I've seen. There will be pictures but our trip photographer forgot a usb cable so those will come later. Hopefully I can remember most of this... I left Saturday morning (14Nov) and was upgraded by some fluke to business class. One of the two guys coming with me got bumped up too, but not the other. No idea why. It sure was funny though because I checked in last and the other guy that got bumped checked in first. Somehow, it skipped the guy in the middle. This has turned out to be the start of an ongoing trend for him. So business class is amazing. The seat lays flat for sleeping, wine and beer are free, the food is nice restaurant quality and the service almost annoyingly attentive. It was INCREDIBLE. Fastest flight of my life. We lose a day in the air and arrive in Taipei on Sunday night. That sucks because we have class early in the morning. Oh well, I'm in Taiwan. I'm having trouble understanding people, I can't work up the nerve to speak. I just listen... A lot. Monday morning, we wake up early and go foraging for breakfast. When you see the pictures this term will become more clear to you. The choices are endless for food and it is almost all delicious. They eat some weird things but I'll try it all once. Except for one thing. It's called stinky tofu. It smells like a corpse stuffed with week old dirty diapers and has been known to incapacitate city blocks. No joke. Ok, so I'm kidding but only about the incapacitating part. I can smell it from about 500 feet away through building walls. I'm not even tempting fate with that one. I finally find something like a burrito with 2 or 3 thin slices of meat, rice, cabbage, carrots, garlic, peanut powder and cilantro wrapped in a rice tortilla. Awesome. I promise. We eat and walk to the subway but I notice that no one else is eating and put my food in my back pack. I asked Jeff (other guy on the trip) if it was considered rude to eat and walk on the streets. He said 'No way. It's fine.' I'm not so sure so my food remains safely tucked away in my bag. He is from here so I figure he's right but as they say "When in Taipei..." We are about to get on the subway and a police man blows his whistle and yells at Jeff that you cannot eat here. HA! I win. Observation skills 1, native blood 0. We get on the train, find class get blasted in Chinese for 5 hours and wander the streets free again. We eat something call "Beef Noodles" and it contains beef tendon. The waitress assumes that I will not eat it and informs my Chinese friend that they are making me a bowl with just meat. He said "Did he request that?" she replied "Well, no but we just assumed..." Right, so 5 minutes later I get my bowl that is just like the others. Foreigner repelling beef tendon and all. Ok, so they were right. It's not really to my liking but I kind of wanted to discover that for myself. It tasted all right but the texture was not OK with my American tongue. Night falls and we wander through a city market known as XIMEN (Western gates) the name hearkens back to the days when there were walls around Taipei. Amazing and odd food abound in an incredible organized chaos. I ate a bowl of noodles that I was told is delicious. Considering all the people standing around just eat it I figured it must be good. It is, but as I was eating it I found some strange chewy substance. Not wanting to know, I asked what it was after I finished. It was pig intestine. Sweet. You know, I hate eating pig and now I ate intestine. Oh well, what's done is done. Next up I tried something called DONGGUACHA (Winter melon tea). It is sweet and refreshing. Delicious. I tried some chicken but when I nearly choked on a bone I gave up on that idea. I bought some fruit from a vendor selling fresh cut guava, papaya, dragon fruit and assorted others not found in America. I walked until my feat hurt then walked back to the subway and rode home. I think we turned in at around 1030pm. I spent about $10 all day. Sweet! The next few days are much the same with different foods. Tuesday I tried CONGZHUABINGJIADAN[JIALA] (Green onion pancake roll with egg and spicy sauce) with WENDOUJIANG (warm soy milk). I found my food. Sticking to it. It's awesome. I eat it almost every morning. Of everything I've tried this is the one I'll miss. Tuesday we go to SHILIN YESHI (the SHILIN market). My least favorite place that for some reason every vistior to TAIBEI should see. Crowded, smelly and loud with way to many DALUREN (Mainland China Chinese, they are rude, loud and smell. I know, I'm mean but if the shoe fits) I tried oyster omelet, and ROUYUAN (ok don't laugh Meat Pill) the omelet is self explanatory but the meat pill is a ball of gelatonous rice about the size of your fist with QINGCAI (green cabbage) and meat inside. Not bad, not definitely not my favorite. The omelette might have the potential of tasting good but the surroundings smelled of stinky tofu and I couldn't enjoy food very well. I found a stall selling fruit smoothies and got a fresh watermelon drink. SCORE! That's awesome as I'm sure you can imagine. We leave the food area after Jeff finds some KAOYOUYUCHUAN (Roast squid on a stick) and I buy some more fruit from a vendor by the main market area. Guava is good. I also tried mountain apples. They were good, but I'll stick to guava from now on. By now I'm sure you've noticed the focus on food. Well, that's because here, it's all about the food. Everything else seems secondary. It is a huge part of their culture, one that I had no understanding of before this trip. Friday comes at last and Jeff, Doug and I head out into town to get lost and find our way back. We are looking for a club we heard about but it is not open yet when we get there so we decide it sounds fun to ride elevators. Let me explain the sport. You get on an elevator, ride to the top then stop on each floor to see what it's hiding. It's amazing what you can find. The first one we ride on is just a department store. Nothing interesting. The second is a large building with poor signage which is fairly standard here. I have no idea how things stay in business. We ride to the top and find a personal theater. You can rent a large home theater setup with chairs and everything and watch from a huge selection of movies. Cool, but we were hoping to talk to some people and use our language skills. Next floor down please. Apartments. Next. 10th floor (Sounds like dead floor in Chinese) The elevator jolts to a stop and the doors slowly eek open. We are startled by the empty floor that is lit only by the light casting feebly from withing our elevator. It's like a scene from a cheesy horror flick and I'm jamming the close door button because that floor is way too creepy. NEXT! Apartments. Next. Oh, this is nice. Marble floors, nice lighting. Smells nice (a marked change from most places). We disembark from our faithful elevator and are greeted by a polite service lady who guides us into a karaoke room complete with big tv, surround sound, nice couches and books of songs with 4 mics. Sweet, we found something. We thumb through the pages of the song books and find no English songs which sucks because I can speak, not sing, Chinese. So I open the door to leave and find the service woman right in my face. "You're leaving?" so I say "Yeah, no English songs so I think we'll be going. Thanks though." She has be wait and ushers us back into the room and starts to explain the services provided by this lounge, The name of which suddenly translates in my mind as Perfume, uh oh. She explains pricing which is quite expensive and gets to a part about "and every 30 minutes we switch girls unless you like them, then you can keep them..." and I go "Wait wait wait. Let me make sure I heard you right" I repeat it back and I did. I say "I'm sorry, this is embarrassing we didn't bring enough money and our friend back at the hotel would really like this place. We need to go get some more money and our friend then we'll be back." NOT!! So gone. We get walked to the elevator by an attractive girl (that's her job, this is an objective observation) and when we get in a "couple" gets in the elevator too. I emphasize the fact that we are speaking English by speaking loudly in hopes that they will say something uh... embarrassing? It works. The guy says "You are so hot, you should come home with me tonight." The girl replies politely with "I'm sorry I can't, I've already been reserved" I look at my friends and say "Did you catch that?" one says "Uh, reserved?" yeah... that's what I heard too. So we leave. We eventually found a bar that had cheap beer and karaoke so we stayed for awhile and talked to random people. The day before, doug had discovered something called a maid cafe. It is a French maid themed cafe with overpriced food and waitresses in French maid costumes. The costumes are actually far more conservative than what most girls wear on the streets so mostly they're just for manga fans to oggle and not speak to. I'll tell you more about that in next weeks post. Now it's Saturday and we go to the warfs with Jeff's aunts who enjoy speaking TAIYU just to confuse us. Very sweet old ladies. They took us out to some SICHUAN food where I tried ZONGZI (A rice ball with meat inside wrapped in a tea leaf then steamed) some spicey greenbeans, hot and sour soup (authentic, don't puke like I almost did. I found duck blood cakes in there) and some delicious MANTOU that was fried (it looks like french bread and tastes like it only slightly sweeter.) So onto the subway/train to get to the docks. We wander around a bit in DANSHUI enjoying the local shops and I snag a dragon for Ryan for about $0.75 and some awesome KAOYUMI JIALA (roasted corn with hot sauce) Doug picked up some mochi candies which are a sweet rice jello like candy. They're good. Jeff's aunts buy a ticket for us all on the ferry and we head out to YURENMATOU (the fishermans warf). The waves are huge, but remember, this is a river. As I get off the ship, I say "That was fun!" but with the standard BEIJING 'r'ification that I learned in school. I am promptly corrected by the guy on the back of the ferry that it is fun, without the r and I repeat my self with the r and he re-emphasizes that I am wrong. Ok, I'm wrong. I say it his way. Such is life with so many QUYU (regional dialects). We get coffee and fesh crab while seeking shelter from the driving rain and head back. On the way back I get some Almond milk tea which is great! I buy one for each of us since it's warm and we're freezing. I fall asleep on the subway back and wake up just before my stop. That night we head to XIMEN again and discover a restaurant that is toilet themed. Right, you eat of a small toilet shaped bowl. Weird. Doug buys a mock US passport that says "United states of condom" on it, I guess he thinks it's pretty funny. I hope he doesn't read this. Sleep. Wake. Sunday is here. Time for relaxation. We hop on the train to BEITOU and wander around until we spot a nice looking spa that is Japanese styled. We go in, I dazzle the person at the counter with broken Chinese and we get a 30 minute massage followed by an hour in the hot springs for 33 bucks. Wow. I'm so coming back here. We head back to the hotel, take a nap and wake up to go out with Mike and Doug to hit a few bars and get some dinner. After two disappointingly boring bars filled with Americans speaking English, Mike finds a karaoke bar where everyone speaks English, or Tagalog. But hey, at least they have decent English song collection so we have a good time. It get stuck singing Tears in Heaven then I sing Hotel California and it's time to go. Mike's headache won't go away. Probably my singing. Sleep. And the next week begins.

Home at Last

I am finally home. This was the first vacation where I actually felt more rested when I got home than I did when I left. That is a rare treat indeed so thank you to everyone who made it possible. I missed my little ones something fierce and I'm glad to be back and doing my part in holding down the fort. I think God is working on my about something. My dad and I talked about this a bit while out in the Canoe, and then God worked on me about it a bit more that night. Judging. I didn't even know this was a problem but it turns out that I had been doing it to my own little brother for a long time and it was creating a rift between us. I was having breakfast with him and his wife when I felt it was the perfect time to apologize to him for it and tell him how proud I am of many of his decisions. It turns out that the night before he had been talking to his wife, Amber, about me and how it seemed like I was mad at him about something. What I said to him was exactly what he needed to hear from me apparently and he thought that Amber had talked to me that morning. She hadn't, but God had. So now I'm back at home and I'm fighting with something. I am more than a little upset with the behavior of one of my neighbors. I want to have a civil conversation with them and work this out, because they have been good friends for nearly a year now. A single misunderstanding later and my wife and I are getting bashed to all of our friends. So now I'm trying to avoid judging them, or being angry with them. Perhaps this is just meant to be a lesson. It affected my child, so I'm having a harder time with it than I normally would. Just goes to show though, that most conversations I have with my dad end up having a direct impact on my life almost immediately. Now how does he do that???

Separation

So Holly and I have only been apart for about a week, and she is a strong woman who normally fairs perfectly well without me. This time around however, she has had the worst string of bad luck ever! The moment I touched down on the east coast she calls me to inform me that our daughter has a large lump on her bum which turned out to be MRSA. Holly herself had just gotten over a case of this right before I left. So they end up spending 3 days in the hospital while my baby girl is poked, prodded, stabbed and suffering through this. MRSA is no joke either. So they just get home and suddenly Holly's bumps return. Awesome. Now she is most likely going to have to have them lanced again but all of our friends are either sick, cracking mentally or somehow unable to help. I need to be there for my family but this was an unprecedented opportunity to see my family back home in Oregon. I just need to know why all of this happens to my beautiful wife when I'm not there to help her. To make matters more difficult, there are like 50 people wanting to talk to me and spend time with me here, but Holly needs my time too especially right now. This happens every time I leave. I think my mere presence somehow stops bad things from happening. Just looking at the trends of the past, that seems to be true, regardless of how unlikely that seems. I miss my babies and my babe, but it is really a problem because of all the things that are going wrong. I mean Holly sprained her ankle and the tv broke today too. Seriously, what is going on out there?

A Note on Prayer

I know I don't post much, but sometimes I just feel like I have something to say that might be worth putting out there. This is one of those times. I've been doing a lot of meditation on spirituality and the true nature of God. I'm not saying that I'm in to all the new age belief systems that attempt to de-deify God in order to make Him more approachable. I think that to do that is to miss out the key point. To de-deify God and find your inner god is just a new form idolatry where the idol is your self. We are not gods, but we come from God. He made us and as He puts it, all things are held together by Him. With that said, in order to find ourselves, we have to admit that we are of Him and must rely on His wisdom in order to even know what questions to ask of Him. This leads to my title topic. Organized religion seems to teach us to pray by protocol. "Dear God, {insert platitudes}, I humbly approach you with {wish list}, not to say that I'm not grateful for {more platitudes}..." repeat until you feel like He must have heard you. The problem with this methodology is that it requires us to assume we even know what we need! I can't remember the last time I felt like I knew what path was the right path or that I knew what I needed to ensure that I was doing the right thing that would end up best. The repetition also makes people believe that it's the words that make the prayer. That is not the case. Words, are a form of communication for use with other people, they can be in any language, any combination of sounds and still have the same core meaning. God said that He knows what we are going to say before we say it, so why even bother speaking our prayers, let alone repeat them over and over again. It is our emotions and faith that empower our prayers, and we speak them because our words are there to make it real to us. While praying in our minds is powerful, to say it out loud is to commit to it and give your emotions form. This is why I pray aloud despite the fact that words are for people, not God. I have been led to the fact that the most powerful form of prayer is God guided prayer. One must fully release any belief that they know what to pray for. Ask God to lead you in your prayer and He will often times guide you to the root of problems in your life and lead you to understand things that eluded you grasp. Many wonder how you know when God is talking to you. For me, it's when I suddenly have an answer that is way beyond what I could have come up with. Often times it contradicts what I wanted to hear. When I am praying, it's more of a conversation. I drop the protocol, let God guide my prayer and just hash it out with Him. I tell Him what my concerns are and he tells me what they should be, He answers my questions before I can get them out of my mouth and redirects my thoughts from the question to answer. It's a powerful experience whenever I make time. I should do more often.

A Procedure

Just got done with my "procedure". I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable at the moment. Ok, a lot bit uncomfortable. Aleric made a running head butt straight for the effected area just like I did at my dad so many years ago. Nice to know that some things never change. I'll let all you thinkers out there figure out what procedure I had done.

A message from my phone about my phone

We just got new phones. They are message phones and everything works as you'd expect. Funny how the blackerry didn't...

An Enlightening Day

Yesterday didn't start out that great but it unrolled in ways I never could have predicted. I got up early so I could go to stand watch at 5 am which is never fun. On my way into work I spoke with God about my life and the direction that it is going. As I prayed for guidance as to which path I should take I decided to allow my prayers to be guided by God. This turned out to be interesting and more fruitful than I imagined possible. It is a little wierd to do this, to open myself up like that. I found that I stopped praying for guidance and felt that the answer to that question had already been given, and instead had started praying for my relationship with my family. I prayed that my children would be healthy, happy and creative individuals and that Holly and I would have the wisdom to raise them right. I also found that I was telling myself that I needed to eliminate video games from my life for now. This is not going to be easy, but I know that it is because I was allowing them to take my attention away from my wife and my family. So for now until I feel that the situation has changed they are all going into the closet. The final thing that I found the need to ask for was that He would guide me toward understanding the true nature of God. I will be writing blogs more on this in the future, but He has already begun to show me His nature. Then I got to work and discovered that I had gotten up early apparently just for the time with God because I didn't have to be at work until 1pm. So the rest of the day unrolled as you might imagine. I went home, slept in, woke up, went to work and eventually came home. So last night Holly and I were talking, it got really late but I was thinking about what I had prayed about in the morning. I remembered thinking about how I never talk to Holly about spiritual matters despite the fact that they are important to me. It occured to me how ridiculous that is. So I broached the subject. As it turns out, she still loves me and in fact I feel that after our talk last night we have never been closer. I was able to say some things that put Holly's mind at ease, even though I had no idea she was stressing about them. We communicated on a level that we never had before and it was amazing. I feel that our relationship has improved so much more in one night than I ever would have thought possible. All of this was because I woke up earlier than I needed to and spent an extra hour alone with God.

I must be crazy

So my inner child came out and compelled me to stay up until 1200, waiting outside my local gamestop so I could get my hands on a game that I won't even be able to play until tomorrow. I've been following this game since it's conception about 4 years ago and it's release has been delayed for two years. It's finally here and I splurged on the limited edition so I could get some special in game units. I know, it sounds pretty ridiculous. I feel the need to explain my theory of why the store was full of guys like me and the occasional understanding, if not patronizing, girlfriend/wife. When I was a little boy, a new toy meant more than just another object, it was a whole new world of possibilities. My army men were tactical pieces in a war between me and my brothers with personalities of their own. Maybe they came to life when we weren't looking. My simple electronic toys became sophisticated remote control devices to space ships that existed only for me and my brothers. As I got older, reality imposed it's rigid structure upon my dreams and the toys lost their magic. This is where video games come in. People pour their imagination and creativity into these games, bringing the worlds that existed only for me and them to life before everyone elses eyes. There is no disappointment, reality's influence is limited to whatever the dreamer allows. This is what these games are to grown men. They are the chance to feel imagination at play.

The solution

Thanks to my mom's expert advice, Holly and I came up with some ways to embellish the cake and make it cooler. It sort of has fun with and commemorates Destiny's desire to have a water birth. I hope she likes it tomorrow at her baby shower.

My dilemma

How can I make this cake look cooler?