My week in Taipei

It was nice to get to the first holiday of the school year, and I chose to use this to spend a week in Taipei. As well as obviously meeting up with Jessica, I thought it would be nice to meet some friends that I used to hang out with over there. Paul and Mike are a a deadly duo of Canadians who I had the pleasure of re-living some good times with. It been some time since I had seen them and ,with the aid of some beer, much catching up was done. We had a BBQ on the last Friday before I left at Mike's apartment (a really nice rooftop apartment with a sweet patio/rooftop). He really knows how to cook up a feast, and most types of meat were presented in the chargrilled format :) I ended up having a little too much alcohol, but hey what are holidays are for! In the morning, I had probably the worst hangover I have had for some years. Which was weird as I was acually pretty coherent at the end of the night (or morning), and had drunk quite a bit of water before going to bed! But anyway, the fact remained that I had a real stinker which included not being able to eat anything... and I was meeting Armi that day to catch up. Armi arrived and it was obvious that I wouldn't be able to function, so a solution was sought. We went to a medicine store and bought me a couple of miracle working tablets, which basically got me feeling tip-top in about 15 minutes- not bad ey! So we ended up eating a massive lunch in a dim- sum restaurant, had a coffee, shot some pool for a few hours and finally ate dinner in an over-priced "italian" restaurant!! It was awesome to see Armi - I have known him since university and he's a really funny guy. He's definetly one of those lifer friends who you know you could hang out with when your old and grey :)

Earlier in the week, I had amused myself visiting some familiar areas of Taipei to hang out. The place is changing, especially DaPingLin where I used to live when I was there. It's a suburb in Taipei County and was just starting to grow when I was there. Now they have a massive new Carrefour store, B&Q store, loads more restaurants. Everywhere you look new buildings are going up. But me and Jessica were still able to go to my favourite restaurant there, with a couple of her friends. A small basic Thai restaurant; in fact even that place had grown, but they still served up the same super spicy and sour Thai food - even the lemon fish I have longed for since I left 2 years ago :)

All in all this trip was not about doing exciting new things, it was about reconnecting with some very special people and remembering the life I had in Taipei. In that respect it was a success - paul, mike and armi.... if you're reading this, I hope to be sat supping beers and shooting shit (as Americans would say) when we are all old and grey!!

The DVD store - Part 2

Now hopefully you have read my antics below at the first DVD store and thought "that sounds kinda crazy!" But recently I went to another kinda crazy DVD place that really made me realise that I am living in China now :) This guy at work (Peter) took me to this DVD place that is on the top floor of this department store type place. We get to the floor and it is basically full of these small kiosk-stall type places that sell DVD's and CD's. So I am shown a couple of boxes of DVD's and start rummaging through; now the thing that is different about this place is all the DVD's they have are 100% ligit DVD's from Europe, and they are still only 5 RMB a pop (maybe 40p or something like that). So they are not like the (still very good)Chinese copies that I bought in the other place. Anyway, I am looking through the boxes on the stall and I am thinking well actually this isn't looking too hot as they only had maybe 4 or 5 boxes. But all this changes when Peter talks to the guys there and they tell us to go with them to anoher floor. Well basically we end up sat outside this tiny stockroom, sat on small stalls; we sit there for about one hour as the guy passes out box after box after box of DVD's for us to look through. After that hour is up I have a pile of DVD's as high as....well.... lets just say I had a lot! I bought full seasons of friends, Futurama, The Simpsons, classic films such as Rambo, Back to the future & even the first full season of Knight Rider!! And all on original disks in proper DVD cases. Yet another pure China experience, and i'm loving it :)

The Cool Japanese Restaurant!!

I went to this cool restaurant for a guy's birthday at work (Rob). It is a Japanese style restaurant where you all sit around a hot plate and eat as much food as you want for a set price. Most of it is cooked in front of you and is pretty nice :) But the deal gets even sweeter when you realise that this also includes as much beer and sake as you can order! And the beer is proper Japanese beer like Kirin & Asahi. So you can imagine how much of a good time we had there :) In I ever eat there again in that kind of situation, I think I am going to be a little less gung-ho about the sake! We went to a bar afterwards, and lets just say that the sake/beer in my belly did help my progress there!! But definetely a place to keep on my radar in Guangzhou, certainly if you go with alot of people.