hey folks. it's hard to do any work after coming back from vacation, and today is no exception. i'm just looking forward to going home and resting; my body thinks it's pull an all-nighter. jet lag is a bitch, no?
anyways, the rest of my stay in taiwan was just mainly eating (i ate very well, even vegetables!) and accompanying my mom to various destinations. like i said, we had a chauffeur, so he just took us to some places. i went to the national palace museum, where the main attraction was this cabbage made of jade. it was beautifully made, but it didn't hold my attention for that long.
there was also this museum where they featured rocks that looked like food. yup, sort of strange, huh? other than that, we visited the water, and just walked around our neighborhood a bit. my mom couldn't handle too much physical activity, so we didn't do any hikes or anything.
at home, i watched a lot of tv. there are a lot more channels than when i was back in taiwan 15 years ago, including stuff like espn, hbo, cinemax, etc. i did watch the us/greece basketball game live, and that was a total bummer.
i didn't get a chance to ride the subway, but i did visit the underground malls. not much to see there... just mainly women's clothing stores. the ritziest place was the mall next to taipei 101; i had never seen an issey miyake store before.
oh, and i flew business class on the way there, and i got bumped up to first class on the way back. that was AWESOME. my seats could recline all the way back, so i got to sleep for a good 7 hours on the 11-hour flight back. and i had caviar for the first time! i didn't know how to eat it, so i just watched what people were doing around me. it was interesting, but i'm not sure i would eat it again, especially if i had to pay for it. oh, and they gave us noise-cancelling headphones too, although i couldn't get mine to work.
i also got to go into the EVA air VIP lounges at the airports. they had free food (and pretty good food, too), and free alcohol. so i had some whiskey; in SFO, i had three/four shots of johnnie walker red, and that gave me a headache. but yeah, rich people travel well.
so taipei... not sure if i'll go there again for "vacation." i mean, it's nice to hang out with my parents and all, but family doesn't make for a fun vacation. i'd rather go with some people my age so we could hit the nightspots or something. the city is huge, though. i suppose that a good working knowledge of its layout and and subway system would make it easier to travel around.
during my stay there, while walking around, i didn't see many cute girls. in fact, i think i only saw one; she was tall and had a nice face and figure. but the rest of the women... not so much. i was pretty disappointed, actually. i was expecting hot waitresses and cute women dressed up in cool outfits and stuff, but alas.
ok, that's pretty much it for my taiwan wrapup. i'm glad i finally went, but now it's back to normal life.
so i flew in around 4pm from taiwan, and nelson picked me up. i went home and unpacked, and later he and i had dinner at il postale in downtown sunnyvale. i always have a craving for pasta, but i'm usually disappointed by the dish that i get. this time, it was the chicken that was overcooked and tough and dry.
that night, i fell asleep at a reasonable time (12am or so), but i slept until FOUR pm the next day. that translated to 7am taiwan time, so it made sense. after i got out of bed, i finally watched the series finale of _alias_ that i had taped many months ago. it was actually pretty good; they let some of the main characters die.
that night, paul and i met some others at black angus for some prime rib. it wasn't very good, though. sigh. another disappointing meal. but the company was good; there were some friends there that i hadn't seen in two years.
that night, i had major insomnia. i couldn't sleep until 4-5am, and once again, i got out of bed past 4pm on monday. what a waste of a weekend, huh? i got to have dinner with alan, though, which was nice. we went and got la bamba burritos and caught up.
so that was my labor day weekend. i should have done more, but my jetlag really fucked me up.