Kaohsiung Visit

I went to Kaohsiung again this past weekend. This time, instead of watching a tournament, I played in one! There is a quarterly Taiwan tourney for local teams. Last time it was hosted in Taipei. Since it's winter, this time it was down south where the weather is much warmer and sunnier.

High Speed Train Notes

• Buying your ticket near the entrance to the HSR is easier than straight off the MRT (where the lines are long). There is a fast train (2h) and a super fast train (1h36min). Check the schedule to make sure you get the super fast one - sometimes the super fast one leaves after the fast train and still gets there earlier.
• Non-Reserved Seat - cheaper ticket. Get there early so you can get a seat in cars 9-12. (website quotes $1385, but I'm pretty sure I paid $1180)
  
• Reserved Seat - assigned seat but more expensive $1490 NT
  
• If you are with a group you can rotate the row of seats around to face each other.
  
• There is a vending machine with water and coffee. There is a cart lady that brings snacks (crackers, seaweed, more drinks, pocky, etc).
• The HSR stops at Zuoying, not the Kaohsiung Main Station.
  
• There is a free shuttle from the Zuoying station to just in front of Kaohsiung City Hall (within walking distance of the Culture Center). There is one every 20 minutes.
  

15 teams at the tourney, including some middle school teams. There were 3 foreigner teams - Taipei, Taichong and Kaohsiung. We came in 2nd place, losing to a team that only let men on their team (the same team we lost to last time that had women on the team but wouldn't let them play - you can see how they avoided being criticized this time).

I regularly play with some of the Taipei players at Wed/Fri pickup. One of my favorite players is FeiFei (as in FeiPan!) - pictured here with an Old Eagle player, nicknamed Turtle. Unlike some other players, FeiFei has great spirit and awesome layouts. He is a fun person to play with or against.


There were some seriously long byes between games, so I took the opportunity to practice my Chinese. There is an organizer who I always enjoy talking to. He speaks at a level of Chinese that is challenging but comprehensible. I grabbed Phatso so he could practice too. He told us a story about how there are different dialects of Taiwanese. Depending on which part you are from, you might use "di" to say chopsticks or "du". So if you want to ask someone what region they are from, you can do so by asking them how they say 'chopstick'. In Taiwanese that would be, "linggong di a du?" However, if you say it really fast, in Taiwanese, then it sounds like the same way you would say "Your grandfather is a pig!" Haha - a good way to tease someone. He also taught us some other Taiwanese phrases like Thank You (douxia) and Disc (oops, already forgot - I'll have to ask Phatso).

After the games, I got to see my aunt. I call her Jiu-Ma (Jiu-Jiu is my mom's youngest brother, but he was away this weekend). She is one of my favorite relatives - she is so nice and so easy to talk to. She invited over two of my cousins (biao jie - my mom's older sister's 2 oldest daughters), who also live in Kaohsiung. Apparently they met me the first time I came to Taiwan about 20 years ago. However, I don't remember them. One of them is an English teacher, so her English is excellent. But we tried to speak in Chinese the whole time so I could practice. A couple hours talking with them and my vocab already increased. In natural conversation, people tend to use certain phrases over and over - a good way to increase listening power.

I caught the last train back to Taipei (it left at 9:54 pm) and hit the sack!

Classmates

As I've mentioned, I'm taking an intensive course this quarter - which means you meet 3 hours a day instead of just 2. You are also supposed to have 4 hours of homework each day - but after the switch in teachers, I find that I have about 2 hours max. This teacher does not push us as hard, and I find that I am not progressing as much as I should. I'm hoping to take the Chinese New Year break to push myself to review all the old material - as I am slowly forgetting old vocab.

The best thing about the class is my classmates. They are a fun bunch. Everyone has a great sense of humor and when it comes to question and answer time, they'll crack a funny joke or tease the teacher a little with a fake answer. We also do stuff together after class occasionally. The other week, we all went to Shida Night Market and got a variety of foods and then ate outside the school. (Sana is in a neighboring class and joined us for the meal.)


A few of us then went to NOVA, a collection of mini computer shops near Taipei Main Station. It's supposedly more expensive than Guanghua Computer Alley, but less hassle. The IBM/Lenovo shop is there and they quoted me their price for a new slim dvd drive (mine broke a while ago). They only have new ones and they only have dvd writeables (mine is a dvd-r with cd-rw). And it is super expensive! It wasn't a waste of time though - the guy there cleaned my whole laptop! It looked brand new when he was done with it. He was more than gracious - he practically ripped my computer apart before I could say anything - I think maybe he was bored, and the idea of dusting the innards of my Thinkpad was the highlight of his day. Or maybe IBM taught him good customer service. Anyways, I was a happy camper.

Note: At Nova, most technical terms are in English - the only special thing is they call laptops "notebooks".

Ying Ge

I read up on some other Taiwan blogs and one of them mentioned an easy day trip to YingGe. So, I went there a month ago to check it out. There are tons of pottery shops and lots of street food. There are a few DIY (do it yourself) shops as well. We went to the one next to the German sausage guy. I had a beautiful bowl within 10 seconds of starting - but it seemed too soon, so I kept playing and ended up ruining it. The owner helped me start over and I tried to recreate what I had done before, but to no avail - in fact, I ruined the clay completely again. The boss got me started again and I decided to stop as soon as I had something half decent. The boss took a look at it and made it bigger and we called it done. After, I carved my name into it - to give it a little character.



We went back 2 weeks later to pick it up (the delivery fee is something like 200 NT and the train fee is about 60NT round trip). We were surprised to see how much it had shrunk! The second time we tried a different DIY shop in a back alley. The lady wouldn't take her hands off my bowl and kept telling me I was doing it wrong. She was also frustrated that I didn't know Chinese and couldn't understand what she was saying. Basically, I was applying too much pressure and not building high enough before making it wider. I wasn't pleased with her customer service. We decided to have the piece delivered - this shop takes 4 weeks to deliver (the first one only took 2 weeks).

Both shops glaze your pieces for you - your bowl is pretty much left to chance what color and pattern it will be. They show you samples of what it might look like - inevitably, they show you the most beautiful ones.

Overall, Yingge is a fun day trip. It can be tiring browsing all the stores to purchase stuff - after a while they all start to blend together.

Visa Extension

I went to extend my visa today. Easy peasy.

Shida - 6th floor machine - print out the first two forms (grade + attendance report, and proof of enrollment). Bring your student ID number and 50NT.

Convenience Store - photocopy the first page of your passport and your current visa. 2NT per copy.

Bring above papers and passport to...

National Immigration Agency
台北市廣州街15號
15 Guangzhou St, Zhong Zheng District, Taipei City
Tel: 02-23899983, 02-23889393
Hours: M-F 8am-5pm, through lunch

From Xiaonanmen (小南門) station, exit 2, take the first left and then first right. The large building will be on your right. Bus 660 from Guting also stops nearby.

Get a number at counter 14, fill out the form on the table, and wait for your number to be called. I hardly had to wait - I didn't even have time to finish filling in the form before my number was called! There is no fee for extending. The extension is until the end of your quarter as indicated on the enrollment report, or 60 days, whichever is less. The employees speak English.

Afterwards I went to the Carrefour around the corner. It's open 24 hours.

Ketchup and Mustard

Oh, I just realized I haven't blogged since about xmas time. So here's a short update.

For New Years, a bunch of us went up to Yangmingshan to watch the fireworks blowing off of Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building in the world). We first met up at a cute little restaurant for dinner. We had quite the spread - I would definitely recommend going there again. I forget the address -- which is nearly useless as no one seems to use the address number on that street. The English name is The Stone House Restaurant - which again is nearly useless as if you stop for directions you'll need to use Chinese.

Afterwards, we braved the 4C weather and set up camp. We caught the fireworks just in time from further up the mountain. Then we went back to camp to have....more food! We had a camping barbecue, Chinese style. Much different from the Coleman stove Christina and I borrowed from Gretchen and KC last summer.


With the Coleman, we had a very small pot to work with and a small gas can. With the Chinese style barbecue, we have to gather our own wood, pour magic flammable liquid on, and then cut up an enormous amount of vegetables to be cooked in a ginormous wok. The chicken is also basted with Chinese barbecue sauce, for extra yummy goodness. You can guess which camping experience had me gain weight. Was it the one with sparse meals followed by 6 mile hikes through Yosemite? Or the one that was done after a filling Chinese meal and followed by hot chocolate with marshmallows and Baileys? Hmmmm.

I guess I've been having a lot of barbecues. Last Saturday, as I mentioned, I went to Lucas' place. It was mostly foreigners there in the beginning. We grilled up some kebabs - mostly vegetables with a little bit of meat. A couple hours later some of his Taiwanese friends showed up, and that's right, take a close look at the picture...


Yes, that's sausage wrapped in bacon. I was full from the Sandwich Ring and the other grilled veggies so was able to stay away from the double pork whammy.

Return of the Sandwich Ring

I had another go at making one of my favorite recipes - the Ham Spinach Sandwich Ring. The recipe is in a previous blog post. It came out beautifully, but I didn't get a picture of it until it was nearly all gone. I brought it over to Lucas for a pre-BBQ snack. It went by in a flash - everyone liked it. It came out much better this time than last time.


Since I still can't find spinach in Taipei, I went ahead with this filling:

2/3 c chopped onion
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 T olive oil
2 c chopped fresh Chinese greens (about 4 oz)
1 c chopped fully cooked black pepper ham (from Wellcome)
3 slice Provolone cheese (from Costco)

1. Cook and stir onion and garlic in oil until tender.
2. Add greens. Cook, stirring occasionally, until wilted; cool.
3. Stir in ham and cheese.

For the dough, I used the bread machine on the Dough setting. Unfortunately, I forgot to put in the blade. I realized it was missing after adding the yeast and flour. When the initial mixing was done, it looked very soupy. I thought there wasn't enough flour - so I added more. Then I realized the blade had flour stuck underneath and wasn't on all the way. So once it was on properly, I restarted it and it turned out fine.