Earthquake

Well, looks like we had another earthquake last night. It was around 12:30 a.m. or so and I awoke to the sound of shaking glass. This is the second earthquake I have felt so far since being here and while I will probably never get "used" to it, it no longer worries me that much. Just to let everybody know, I'm fine. Nothing shattered and it was hardly worth mentioning. Here's a link to the latest info.: Click!

On another note, it looks like a tree outside my jutaku (apartment) caught on fire (lightning perhaps). This wouldn't necessarily be "news worthy" except the tree is located right beside the main gas storage unit for our building. Luckily the unit didn't catch on fire. Why? Well, from the looks of things, it seemed like a couple of housewives saw the blaze and put it out with their garden-hose. Pretty funny if you ask me. And some people think being a homemaker is not a "real job". Thank you!

台湾

Welcome to Taipei! Land of the scooter, face mask, good food and GREAT clubs!

One of the things that struck me most about Taipei was the sheer number of scooters everywhere! I swear there were more scooters than cars. With that, everybody also seemed to wear face masks. Aside from the SARS scare a couple of years ago in Toronto, I had never seen people wear face masks in such numbers. Mind you, the face masks in Taipei seemed to be more "fashionable" than the plain, hospital-style ones. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of LV and Burberry ones.

Let me say this: Taipei International Airport is GHETTO. I thought I had landed in some 3rd world country and wasn't going to get out alive. The place just looked grungy and old. Luckily I wasn't there for very long .. well, actually..

Speaking of THAT, I was _supposed_ to be in Taiwan with my friend. Let's just say, that if God exists, and he took a crap, he definitely shat on my friend that weekend. Long story short, problems with VISAs, passports, etc., caused my friend to not only miss Taiwan, but also Japan! In fact, he was ESCORTED to his seat on the airplane back to Toronto. Now that's BAD LUCK. I think for the rest of this year, whenever I have a bad day, I will think of my friend and everything won't seem so bad.

Anyways, back to Taipei.


Coincidently, one of my friend's I had met in Toronto a few years ago, but who is Japanese, but is studying Chinese in Taipei currently (follow that?) was kind enough to take me around the city. We went to all the touristy places which was pretty kool. She took me to the night market in Taipei which is sorta like a typical Chinese market.. except there seemed to be a lot more food vendors. Of course being the open-minded food-person that I am, I was willing to try anything. Taiwanese street-food is pretty good! I had a whole bunch of stuff that I don't remember. That being said, I DID have .. umm .. problems .. later that night -- but nothing major. :)

Indoor Food Venue.


Aside from the typical walking-around, sightseeing, I didn't get a chance to do much. The weekend weather kind of sucked so, it kind of put us off from doing too much partying. However, I did get the chance to hit a Taipei club on a Friday night with some of my friend's friends. And all I can say is: Wow. Taipei clubs are definitely wild. I wasn't sure if I had walked into a club or a strip-bar. Enough said. lol.

Apologies!

Agh~ I apologize for the lack of posts lately. I was sick last weekend and for most of this week. The kids enjoy coughing on me .. A LOT. I've started washing my hands religiously after every class. I just need to get through three more weeks of almost straight elementary school; after that, I just go to the office and my JHS until mid-march. がんばって！

A lot has happened since my last post -- the most recent being the Canadian Federal Elections. It looks like we elected a minority Conservative government under the dictatorship .. I mean leadership of Stephen Harper. Although I personally dislike the guy, at least under a minority government he'll be somewhat restrained. It should be interesting to see what he does over the next year or so .. that being said, I am glad I won't be in the country during that time.

Back to Hong Kong!


Hong Kong really did go all out during Xmas. That's a shot of the enormous Xmas tree in Times Square. Did I mention where I ended up spending Xmas Eve? I went to an arcade. It was pretty sad. lol. I'm kidding. It wasn't _that_ bad, really. My friend Simon had to go to a family dinner and none of my other friends were there yet. I had walked a good portion of the city during the day and just wanted to find somewhere to sit and relax a little bit. I found an arcade next door to the restaurant I was at and just stayed there for a few hours. Money well-wasted.

In other news, my computer appears to be broken (something about a harddisk error) so, I may have to get it repaired. Stupid Apple. I hope not all Apple products are made with such inferior quality. looks at ipod *sigh*

I'll be funnier in my next post, I promise. It's been a long week. A _very_ long week. Pictures of Taiwan next!

P.S. In response to your question Cheryl, "I'm working on it!"

Hong 香港 Kong

Well, where to start. I guess the best place to begin without turning this into an epic is to say that Hong Kong was awesome. It was my first time there which, as has been pointed out to me numerous times, is weird since I can speak Cantonese (albeit poorly). One of the things that struck me about Hong Kong was the no-nonsense attitude of HKers and the general "busy-ness" of the city. It seems people are there to do one thing, and one thing only: to make money! Of course this is a generalization and probably an erroneous one, but that was one of the impressions I left HK with.

On another topic, the city itself is, surprisingly, quite clean. I had always imagined HK to be a dirty place where people spit and litter everywhere (this image was probably from watching too many triad movies in my younger days..). Aside from the occasional grungy alleyway, I didn't notice anything too ghetto. Architecturally-speaking, the city is in a class of its own. The designers of the city definitely deserve some kudos as many of the large and most prominent buildings (the HSBC, Bank of China, IFS and Lippo Centre come to mind) are constructed magnificently.

The night-life of HK is definitely in the LKF-area for foreigners (Lan Kwai Fong) and TST (Tsim Sha Tsui) and Mong Kok for the locals. Everywhere I went in Hong Kong one thing I noticed was that there were _so many people_!! Causeway Bay, Times Square, Nathan Road, etc., everywhere in Hong Kong there just seemed to be people everywhere! It was great! Unlike some people, I actually enjoy the hustle-and-bustle of crowds. It makes things feel .. alive.

Naturally, I spent many nights in the LKF-area. See below!


The area is mostly filled with bars and clubs of every kind and during New Years', it was just jam-packed full of people. Going up the "hill" was literally like trying to swim through the crowd. It was pretty kool. I probably spent a quarter to a third of my nights in this area just walking around, bar/club hopping and whatnot -- by the end of the trip though, the last place I wanted to go to was LKF. Haha, I guess it was just LKF-overload.

If there were only a few words I could choose to describe what one would see in Hong Kong, some of those words would be: Taxis, buses, Mercedes' and neon-lights. Hong Kong really does have an unbelievable amount of neon-lights. Advertisements in neon-lights were literally back-to-back. It's amazing some places even bother having them as you can't seem many of them unless you are literally right in front of the shop!


And yes, before I went to HK many people did warn me that some of the taxi-drivers in HK are unscrupulous and would "take the long route" if one looked/sounded like a foreigner. I tried my best to not speak too often (I have a strong Canadian-accent when I speak Chinese) while in a cab by myself and tried to look as "local" as I could! Haha. It worked for the most part!

I have a lot more to say/type but it's getting a little late so, I'll stop here for now. I'll have more stories/photos to share with future posts. I'm just having difficulty trying to summarize a 3.5 week trip in one post! I'll leave this post with a photo of my friends and I at "The Peak" during nightfall. You can't really see the HK skyline but if you wanted to see that, you could just scroll down!


Stay tuned.. btw, I _am_ glad to be back despite my occasional whining .. it's just the post-vacation blues!

Rubbish!

No time to post anything on my trip yet -- I will do that this weekend. However, I stumbled upon this article in the Japan Times while going through my daily newspaper readings. Absolute rubbish (that's one of my fellow ALTs favourite phrase.. thanks James)! Click here!

Welcome Back!

After a long and well-deserved vacation, I am back! As much as I enjoyed my time in Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, I am glad to be home. On that note, seeing my friends from Canada also reminded me of the life I left behind. It was good to see everybody again. Updates and pictures to come..