funny incident

Conversation between me and Luca (our Italian colleague)...

Luca - "hey, u gotta try this website"

Me - launching my MS IE, "what's the URL", as I start to type in 'www.'

Luca - "no, no, no whoa whoa."

Home trips

Alas I will still be on Taiwan soil to sing the majulah Singapura! There's a party held at the Howard Hotel by the Singapore Trade Commission - they're called that cos technically no country other than a handful of countries maintain an embassy or consultate here. Recognizing communistic PRC instead - bah! Money talks, and the world's too pragmatic.

I digress. I will get to sing majulah Singapura with fellow Singaporeans since Aug 9 falls conveniently on a Sunday this year.

And then, I get to go home to truly be amidst my fellow countrymen (minus the extra 2 million real China PRC types, that I do not personally like so much). The last of my SQ miles used for this purpose - Aug 28 to Sep 22. Yep, almost 3 weeks, well, technically 2 weeks. First week Sep will see my leading every single (well, I aim high) 6a, 6b and 6b+ climb in Krabi. Ok, ok, throw in a few 6cs for the added challenge.

I fear I am growing zenophobic in my old age.

So prepare the lion dance and the orchid garlands - I land Aug 28 10pm into Terminal 3. And don't forget to tell the New Paper (they're about as gossipy as the media here in Taiwan).

Just in case the cost cutting measures get to you as well and the lion dance troupe is too extravagant, I will be back in Singapore again not long after.

I booked my first Jetstarasia trip home for Dec 18 to Jan 3. Not flying home via SQ is a big step down. Boo hoo.. I'll survive I hope - stuff myself silly before boarding the 4 hour flight of fasting.

China’s President Congratulates Taiwan Leader on Election as Chairman of Party

China’s President Congratulates Taiwan Leader on Election as Chairman of Party -- from today's New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/world/asia/28taiwan.html?ref=todayspaper

Ma is now chairman of his KMT party.

I still don't quite get the irony of the KMT being warmer and more reconciliatory to communist China versus the Taiwan opposition DPP party.

The KMT fought a losing war to Mao Zedong's communist army hence fleeing to Taiwan.

The DPP which was setup in 1986 seeks an independent Taiwan. But they bear no war wounds or emotional baggage that comes with fighting each other to the death right?

Ironic.

In any case, with me being in Taipei for now, the KMT wins for us a peace with China. And peace is always a good thing.

Lesson 101 - do pharmacies exist in Taipei?

Because there's a lot of Chinese medicine/Chinese medicine clinics/Chinese medicine pharmacies, feels like 90% of all medical related clinics are Chinese medicine, not the normal western doctors.

I had somehow assumed there are no regular pharmacies in Taipei. I know it doesn't sound logical, somehow...

I've been getting my stash of the usual stuff like sinus pills or motion sickness pills every trip back to Singapore.

Until last week.. I was due to climb Jade Mountain and needed to find a pharmacy to sell my Diamox or any anti-AMS (acute mountain sickness). My last trip up a big mountain many years ago, I fell quite tragically sick with AMS.

I trotted into Watsons since they had a pharmacy counter. They said I had to go to a 藥局. So I went back to work the next day and innocently asked Rae 'what's a 藥局?' She said it's everywhere, and that there must be a few nearby my place. So I took a walk and yeah, found 2 near my place. Got my anti AMS pills, climbed my big mountain successfully.

Here's 2 popular franchise pharmacies, you should be able to find one nearby your home. Yes Pharmacy is the one right by my place. Phamacists here are pretty helpful and yes they do carry the brandname drugs I wanted specifically.

Yes Pharmacy 躍獅連鎖藥局
TingTing Pharmacy 丁丁連鎖藥局

I even made a 2nd trip back to the pharmacy to get some rash cream - yeah, still suffering from eczema.

So guess what, pharmacies do exist in Taipei.

And yes, you're right, I do need to improve my Chinese....

Solar eclipse - and I saw it!

I've never actually seen one nor cared very much. But this time it's most visible in North Asia - hey, I'm in Taiwan.

I couldn't sleep last night, eventually falling asleep at 4.30am. Slept badly and woke up at 8.30am only because there's an AMD meeting at 10am.

It appeared dark as I was leaving the house, so I grabbed an umbrella - thinking it's rain. I stopped for a latte at Ikari as usual, then decided to walk to work since it was kinda cloudy. Cloudy is wrong - I remembered the eclipse only when people were staring at the sun and pointing...

Tried to snap a pix of the sun with my cellphone - no luck. Staring at it hurts the eyes. So my office is truly geek-dom. I walked in and say, hey guys, eclipse outside. They coolly tell me to go the pantry where there're filters to see the full eclipse.

Picture taken by a colleague from our pantry window.

And tadah - the whole annular solar eclipse. Just a cresent light ring around the darkened sun at 9.50am. Truly amazing. God is great! What a spectacular sight!

Dream fulfilled - bagging tallest peaks of Taiwan

2 dreams carried over from last year - (1) visit 蘭嶼 Orchid Island, off Taitung & (2) climb 玉山Jade Mountain.

Last weekend, I visited Orchid Island. And now dream no. 2 fulfilled.

Almost didn't get to do this, a typhoon had blown in and Fri, the day before we were to leave, it was officially off - Jade Mountain national park was closed. I had dinner with my colleagues Friday night & ironically in the taxi going home after dinner, Emily pointed out the taxi driver's name - it was 王玉山or King Jade Mountain. Hmm...

9am on Sat morning, Honda called me to tell to get my stuff, the park's open and the trip's back on! Without applying leave (no time), I only had time to drop by the drugstore to get some anti-mountain sickness pills, and presto, we're off.

Sat it was road trip all the way to Nantou, and we stayed at the base lodge. I went right to bed, no shower. Sun morning, we rose early and started the long 5 hour walk up to the high camp 排雲山莊. Mon 2.30am we made our summit bid, first the main peak, then the eastern peak. By Mon 2.15pm, I was back at the base lodge where our bus was waiting.

I'm really thrilled that I got to summit Jade Mountain - in the process bagging the 2 tallest peaks in Northeast Asia, the main peak (3952m) and east peak (3940m). Taiwan being so mountainous, lists its 100 best peaks as 百岳.

My pix - http://www.flickr.com/photos/8062670@N07/sets/72157621764305588/

Now here's the funny part to the hike. I'm actually the youngest member of the team. Amazingly everyone else is in their 50s, 60s. Heck, Sandie who's perhaps 50+, brought her brother, now he's 70. And at every rest stop, they wait for... ME. Yes! Taiwanese people are really strong! A common refrain when I show up at each rest spot is, oh she's here, followed by, oh she's now lying flat again (她又躺平了). I was soooo beat.

My legs were so sore, 1st morning back, I contemplated jumping down my spilt level studio because my 39-yr-old legs are absolutely jello.

Last night no. 18 from 宫廷Massage just outside of Tunghua night market did her magic. I highly recommend this place if you need an excellent massage in Taipei. :)

Thank you God for dreams fulfilled.

Funny advertisement

You gotta give it to Taiwan - they're very creative. I love this ad. Cracks me up everytime.

A dream fulfilled - Orchid Island

This trip has been in the planning since mid of last year, canceled repeated due to typhoons. This time around, there is so little confidence that it'll happen and when it finally did, even I was surprised.

No excuses, but I was so sure it'll get canceled that I didn't pack til the day itself. I forgot my camera (brought the dive housing though) *slap forehead*, and I forgot clean tshirts. Well done, Felicia (kick myself).

The island is very beautiful.
The hotel is very sucky.
Our fellow guests are very loud, especially at 5am in the morning.
The diving was ok - similar to Green Island.
There are a lot of sea snakes in the waters off Orchid Island - we see at least 3 snakes per dive.

Still, I had great fun.

Take the photos off the Ah Guang :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aniceday0101/sets/72157621290037189/

MJ's memorial service

On another conference call this Wed evening.

So here I am sitting here, watching TV, playing Zuma on Facebook, replying the occasional email and trying to listen to what the folks are saying on the call, yeah, all at the same time.

What am I really doing? Watching MJ's memorial service on TV mostly. They actually had MJ's casket at the memorial. And I was thinking, who is that Asian woman singer, she can sing! Googling reveals everyone asking the same question - she's some backup singer who used to work for MJ? Anyways... she did a great job singing We are the World.

That song brings back memories, think I sang it at some school dance with my class. Or rather I believe I lip-synced to it.

Yawn!

Diving 东北角 Taiwan's North Eastern Coastline

东北角 is the nearest dive spot for Taipei residents. It's a quick 45min getaway. Ironically, it is the same place for outdoor rockclimbing.

I had been to the exact same spot, almost 2 years ago, Nov 07, the area by Hemei primary school. Except I was there to rockclimb and the school was the entrance to the crag. We dive right off the carpark in front of the school. In summer, it was a frenzy of activity. Divers, snorkelers, people frolic-ing/cooling off the summer heat... and the occasionally rockclimber walking by. I yelled hello to a fellow climber I recognized.

Got my 2nd chance to practise my photography skills. There was very little currents, but visibility wasn't too great. 1st dive was ok, then it got progressive worse as the tide came in. Still, this place was pretty amazing - harlequin shrimps, a flamboyant cuttlefish changing colours in its attempt to free itself (we surrounded it all angles with our cameras ;0 ) and a peculiar winged fish that looks like a bat - is it a dragonfish? Need to ask the dive guide... Also I kept seeing tentacles from crevices that'd move if you approached. Tried to prod it and it retracted totally into the crevice, at that point, I was convinced : octopus! But Ah Guang says no, it's related to the sea cucumbers which incidentally moves and also has tentacles. Dang... wanted to pull the critter out of its hiding place, but was afraid I'd mis-member it, so er, be a good safe diver.

Key takeaways :
1. 东北角is pretty good diving
2. I still don't get this dive and shoot picture thing
3. My camera distracted me so much that I was down to 0 on air and didn't realize it! Ah Guang grabbed my gauge and pointed it with much consternation. Then he gave me his buddy air. Yeah, my first time using someone else's backup air.

My pictures. Of noteworthy mention, harleqin shrimp, flamboyant cuttlefish especially.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8062670@N07/sets/72157620992814002/

Neihu or Muzha?

I've started looking at apartments. Hoping to move to live by the riverside. The good thing is there're lots of apartments by riversides since there're lots of rivers/streams. I like Neihu neighbourhood but the apartments there cost more. Muzha is nestled against mountains and has less foreigners ie not so neat and orderly, but there're new developments that cost less for more.

Today I viewed 5 apartments over lunch. 3 in Neihu - they were all too small or were icky. 2 in Muzha - both were nice, 1 is a little over my budget, will see how the negotiations go. But in any case living in Muzha means no MRT, traveling via public buses or taxis. Nothing that screams 'rent me!' for now.

Taipei at a total standstill midday

The entire north Taiwan including Taipei grinding to a total standstill at midday?

We practiced an air-raid alert today. The sirens went off and between 1.30 to 2pm, all cars were not allowed to drive on roads, no human traffic along the roads. On the streets, life grounded to a total stop.

I had no clue, as is the general rule here, everything's in Chinese, those not so proficient in Chinese tend to miss too much.

I had gone to the gym over lunch. Then stopped by 7-11, bought a healthy salad lunch and was happily walking back to the office when I got stopped by policemen. They invited me to the police station and ignored my whines 'i have a meeting at 2pm'.. HP was just across the street and they insist I cannot 'just run back to the office' and that I had to 'cooperate with all of Taiwan'. Fine. Here's how close I got back to the office pictorially...

So I pulled out my salad lunch and ate it in a police station. :)

Back slightly late into the 2pm meeting. But this is really good. That Taiwan takes national defence very seriously.

Kinmen over the weekend

I finally made it to Kinmen this weekend. Kinmen is ironically closer geographical, 2km to Xiamen, China rather than to the main island of Taiwan.

So why is Kinmen, Taiwan and not PRC? Who knows.

Shortly after the war, before US stepped in to warn China off, there was fighting at Kinmen between the PRC and the KMT of Taiwan. Most of our touring were of the war remnants, like forts and bunkers.

The highlight was the closest point to Xiamen, China. We could literally see the talk buildings there!

Our tour came with free bus tours, there were 4 but our laidback style meant that we kept missing the start times of the bus tours and we'd take taxis to some midpoint and jump on the bus there. The Kinmen people - taxi drivers and the tour bus drivers seemed very bemused to have sudden additions to the tour midway through. And they never understood us - you want me to take you to bus tour stop where?! They kept muttering these Koreans... we ain't Koreans!

The 3 things people buy from Kinmen - knives, gaoliang wine and peanut candy. I bought a bottle of gaoliang - can't help myself. Will think about who to give it to when I bring it back to Singapore. The peanut candy was consumed in minutes. Whew!

Pix - http://www.flickr.com/photos/8062670@N07/sets/72157620723081736/

The Geek Transformation

I started out with a simple Yahoo email account, then I started a blog, added a Flickr account to park my pix, needed a Youtube account to hold my videos, along the way added a Yahoo ymail email account, on much cajoling from Yingzi, started a Facebook account. And now, my latest update on Twitter.

It's like Transformers, I am pretty geek-fied.

Speaking of Transformers, I got free tickets to the VIP premiere on Monday. Er.. it clashes with a regular conf call. This gets tricky - work or movie, conference call or entertainment, responsibility or relaxation. What am I saying? I'll be in the movies if you need me at 9pm Monday night. :)

Listen to the words

Happy Birthday Calvin!

La.. la.. la...

For the 3rd day in a row, my inbox was 0 when I left work.

Today I went to a Microsoft event for the Windows 7 launch. It ended at 4pm, I was home by 4.15pm. Cleared my emails back to 0 again by 5pm.

Now contemplating whether to do an evening run in the 29degrees C heat or just stay on my couch and rot on a Friday evening....

Day hike - 鹿角坑-阳明山

With the HP Mountain-Climbing society again, on a day hike to a waterfall in 阳明山.

It's basically rock-scrambling, hopping, jumping alongside a very clear stream until we hit the end-point, a nice cool waterfall.

Very few people make it out here, so the walk was really pleasant, cool under the shady trees. The trail smelled good, of flowers actually... All very pleasant Sunday hike.

We met at 6am, were down to eat a huge lunch together at 1pm and by 3pm, I was home napping.

More pix-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8062670@N07/sets/72157619442079020/

Success

Was talking with a friend Sat night about success (material success as defined by the world today).

We were both in the same HP department in 2000, 2001 and comparing our team-mates today, 8-9 years later - people with qualities for success aren't high up the career ladder versus the ones everyone hated and disliked.

Which begs the questions, what parameters does success require?

Garin thinks it's because we're too nice - so the age old adage, do nice people really finish last?

There was an article in IHT today about IQ and success, and the conclusion they arrived at was, success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&em

What if you had perseverance & drive, but also a nice person? Why should your niceness work against you as it seems to, based on track records of so many...

And then today's gospel, Mt 5:1-12 had the answer. Eternal success over material world success.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

Stop the world, I wanna get off...

I'm in another one of those moods. I want out of the world for a bit.

It's funny, every couple of months I get the blues. Where everyone annoys me, every little selfish act against me grates. And being alone intensifies it. Strangely, unhappy when left alone, still unhappy with not left alone.

Obviously my goals towards amiability are falling short. Perhaps I am not amiable afterall. Gasp!