Squareface @ 31°North

I didn’t check out Taipei 101 (apparently the tallest building in Asia) because I don’t like paying to see something. Haha. I’m cheap that way.

I’m trying not to narrate ‘coz I know it’ll get boring, so I hope the extensive pictures will entertain you better.

Accommodation:

After the fear-inciting night at Happy Family Hostel, I knew it was time to move, and move I did. Unpacking and packing led me to Chairman Hotel. For NT$1100 (S$55) a night for a single room (without windows. A window-ed room would cost about NT$100 more), it was sufficient and cosy.

I stayed on a street that was selling plenty of cameras.

The Night Markets:

Shilin Night Market is a confusing grid of eating shops which sell almost the same thing. What’s the competition about? Which tofu is the smelliest?

The Food:

Pot stickers

水饺 (dumplings)

soy bean drink!

花枝 (something similar to squid)

淡水阿给 (VERY NICE). I was very full but couldn’t resist finishing this. Wrapped in beancurd skin, the vermicelli (aka tang hoon) dipped in the special sauce makes you full but yet dig for more.

What youngsters do:

At every mini arcade, youngsters are crazed addicts at the bball machine.

The Hair Salon:

My own TV set to be entertained while my hair gets done.

I permed it a little. Total hairdo (hair wash with incredible massage, cut, style, perm) cost me less than S$50.

Getting Around:

Using the EasyCard gets you cheaper fares than single-journey tickets (although in a very cute form of a token). Tourists are usually inclined to purchase a day ticket, but after some questions asked, I find the EasyCard of the best value. Purchase it for NT$500 (NT$100 deposit, NT$400 value), use it as much or as little as you want on trains and buses, and you can get back whatever value there is left, and even the deposit. The one-day ticket can be purchased at NT$200 but only restricts your unlimited rides on the MRT only.

The amusing:

This got me googling “betel nuts”.

The enlightening:

A Giordano salesgirl wrote me detailed instructions on getting to the places I wanted to check out!

Excursions (to Keelung city and Yehliu Park):

A morning tour in a private car for only NT$900 (S$45) and who should I meet but 2 other Singaporeans in the tour!

Cheng Pin Bookstore (this section is dedicated to CG):

This bookstore is renowned for their opening-and-never-closing hours (24 hours lah)! Although this particular outlet was not the 24/7 one, I found it a very conducive place, complete with a tea cafe on the 2nd level, accessible by wooden staircase.

There were many specialty shop corners though, which I thought was a little inappropriate for serious book lovers, but oh well.

Then GUESS WHAT??!!!

I found an abundance of great NOTEBOOKS!!!!!

And I couldn’t resist buying a few hehe. CG, they pack your purchase in paper bags!

I learnt a slang word in Taiwan! K书 means to be a very avid reader. This derived from 看书…something like 书，一直看看看…so it became K书, and is used widely as a term to either describe a reader, or a provider).

Last glances:

It was my first time on seats located at the front of the screen…our food trays are actually tucked inside our handles, and we can’t place our bags in front of us. And many kids step on our feet while trying to cross over to get to the other bathroom.

Taipei is a city with blue skies and mountains as its backdrop. More importantly, I found Taiwanese to be very friendly and helpful, a stark contrast to mainlanders. A simple direction question posed to strangers on the street led to a Taiwanese whipping out his PDA to locate the place for me, or a Giordano salesgirl writing it down for me. Should the same question be posed to Shanghainese, a curt reply or a wave at the direction will be all you get. Or they’ll tell you to walk some distance ahead, and ask someone else.

Incredibly looooooong queue to check-in to my Vancouver flight. The flight was fully booked (thus very hard to obtain a seat when booking), and they were checking in passengers going to Honolulu too (some passengers were dressed in Hawaii shirts and straw hats haha)

So I queued only after buying a BK lunch so that I could eat while waiting.

I’ll miss the Taiwan meimeis who add an 哦 (in first tone) at the end of every sentence.

After using a bicycle to get to and from places for the past 2 years, suddenly the idea of a bicycle as a recreational tool is not my cup of tea. However, I do recall liking to cycle in parks before all this, and right now I’m introduced to cycling on the beach, which is something unheard of in Singapore and Shanghai.

I’ve tried running on sand before, and it was exhausting. So I suppose cycling on the beach is also not an easy feat, but better to be on wheels than on feet I guess.

beach cruiser bikes are meant for leisure rides, equipped with only one speed, and are simple in form. They can be ordered online and shipped within California, and the 50 states. International shipping is also available to those in Canada and Europe, using FedEx, DHL, or UPS.

On account that I’ll be surrounded by the ocean when I’m in UBC, maybe I should get a beach cruiser to live the experience. However, looking at the prices of the modestly designed bicycles, I understand why I saw an American dismantling the bicycle he bought here and shipping it back home.

This is a sponsored post.

I moved out of Happy Family Hostel after one night. I slept alright because I was dead tired, but the falling asleep process was not easy since the floor trembled whenever a vehicle drove past.

From left: the ceiling in the bathroom; the switch and cobwebbed corner; the crack in the thin wooden wall held together by scotch tape.

From left: the collapsing ceiling in the room; the hazardous switch in the bathroom

Granted, it was in Taipei city centre, near the Taipei Railway Station and the MRT station.

The view outside the window

The view below my window

Fortunately I hadn’t paid for my stay and managed to get away paying for only 1 night. As I was walking down the stairs in relief, you know what the owner said? He asked which website I found his hostel from, and asked me to kindly leave a nice review on the website. Gosh. Actually his hostel does have plenty of good reviews on hostel websites and forums. CG, I still prefer the hostel we stayed in Beijing. This Happy Family hostel was just a crappy old-apartment-turned-money-making-squatter.

I cannot elaborate on things right now because my weak internet connection may go off anytime, so here’s just to bao ping an (report that I’m safe) to you faithful readers! Despite my parents’ and friends’ concern about last week’s Taipei typhoon and this week’s China Airlines’ explosion, I’m in Taipei unscathed!

I haven’t seen much of Taipei yet, but I feel more at home here than in Shanghai. I hear people speaking a dialect similar to what I grew up listening to, and people are really friendly! To get to Happy Family Hostel from the airport, I was aware (after reading up online) that there’s a bus I can take instead of throwing money to a cab driver (which will cost me at least NT$1000). I approached the airbus counter (大有) to ask about the bus to Sheraton Hotel, which I heard was near my hostel, and in return, I was given rather detailed instructions on how to get there, because the very nice guy behind the counter actually called up the hostel to enquire the location, and then showed it to me on the map. The bus ride only costs NT$90 (S$4.50)!

The journey took almost an hour, and I walked a big round and made a detour, but I finally reached the hostel with not too much ache from the heavy bags I was carrying. I left my biggest luggage at the airport for collection on Saturday, so that I can stay in Taiwan without that huge hard thing, so at least I wasn’t lugging around that black hard thing.

Right. Now for the scoop on the hostel. It is shabby. As I’m typing now, there are ants crawling on the windowsill near my shoulder. Whenever a heavy vehicle passes by, I can feel the floor tremble. I’m on the 5th floor, and not all the staircases are lit, so it was creepy when I went to the OK convenience store to get water. A mirror in the middle of the landing did not help that experience. The common bathroom does not have any hooks anywhere, and there are so many cracks on the ceiling and the sides that I constantly felt that I have to shower fast in case anything falls. Well, for a single room in the city centre for NT$500 a night…unless I find something better I guess.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@”, claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
“The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him’,” the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While the “@” simple is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word “at” to sound it out — which with a drawn out “T” sounds something like “ai ta”, or “love him”, to Mandarin speakers.

Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people’s increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialisation and the Internet break down conventions.

Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like “King Osrina.”

Li did not say if officials accepted the “@” name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.

Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognise them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).

One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare “rong” character that gave newspaper editors headaches.

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It’s also running very short. With one week left in Singapore, I don’t know how I should allocate my time left.

I can’t upload my photos at home, and I don’t have the opportunity to bring my laptop around to connect wifi, so it looks like I can only share my happy memories in Singapore with you after I leave Singapore. Haha.

For those dying to see me (yeah come on I know you miss me to bits) but can’t because I am almost fully booked for the rest of my time here, you have the following options:

1. Try to squeeze yourself into one of my remaining available slots (I’ll only be opening up such hot spots for the especial though hahahaha)

2. Come visit me at Singapore Science Centre (opening hours: 10am - 6pm, last ticket will be sold at 5.15pm, admission costs $6/adult) and watch me talk about bioluminescence vs biofluorescence (yes, gosh…). Alternatively or in addition, I am available for lunch from 12.45 - 1.45pm (limited to that area only).

3. Come see me off next Wednesday, 22 August 2007, at Changi Airport Terminal 1, from 12pm onwards. My flight is at 1440h, flight CI0662

I’ll really miss all of you this time round.

…is a secret. So go and watch it for yourself.

Haha. It’s a not bad secret la.

Update: I’ve got another job for Wednesday and Friday too! Yay I’m fully occupied for most of my remaining days here.

Update 2: I suspect the exhibition I’ll be involved in next week at the Science Centre is either Gene-Fest (”where visitors get to uncover the Science behind living things that can produce light and learn more about DNA fingerprinting in a forensic scene.”), part of science.07 or the Biotech Fair 2007. Admission to Singapore Science Centre is only $6 I think, so you know what to do! It’s time to do some learning at the interactive Science Centre, where you probably never stepped in since…ever?

Who says it’s hard to find a job for 2 weeks? I found a job for a week! Haha…

Concerned friends have encouraged me to take a break, and that I should just rest and relax at home, meet up with friends, and just take it easy. However, I feel that I “rest and relax” a great deal during school term, and for the past 3 weeks, so it’s time to get out there to make that ka-ching sound (cannot really resonate due to unfantastic pay) in my bank account!

I’ll be an event coordinator from Monday - Sunday next week at Singapore Science Centre. There’s some event (Bio related) that I know nuts about, but it beats sitting around on my bum at home or cold-calling in the office!

So it looks like I’ll be spending my last week and weekend during this interim in Singapore at the Science Centre! Hope I get great colleagues.

Yay! I’ve been jobbed! Thanks to an aggressive recruitment agency.

Since there’s nothing much else to say on occasions like these other than “take care”, “be careful”, “keep warm”, “eat well”, “goodbye” and my own line of “you got pack poh chai pills or not?!”, a good way to avoid confrontation with the pain of separation is to take pictures! Thanks to Sam for being the sensitive photographer, and of course, my lovely Nikon P5000.

Guess what the following 2 pictures have in common:

Joanne, my longest-time friend, and me

Winni, my sec 3 and 4 science lab partner (and of course more than just that), and me!

Could you figure it out? It’s… suddenly my friends are shorter, and more midget-like than me!

According to Joanne, these flowers were very recently planted! (The airport is Joanne’s work place ok, don’t play play)

But of course, those were just attempted illusions. This is reality:

I’m wayyyyyy shorter than these pals. Nevertheless, I know they still love me. Hah.

Have a great trip, Reina!

At least for the 2 days at Far East Square Flea Market. I decided to set up a stall at the same location as the previous attempt at entrepreneurship because rental is cheap ($20 for 2 days); and there’s no need to book a spot for the whole month (China Square Flea Market regulations), nor way in advance (other flea markets).

Day One
Day Two

In a nutshell, profit was made!