Tuesday May 14th, 2013
No school at all. Not a single minute of either University
or Tatung high school…yet my internal system insisted on waking up early as
usual with resistance to falling back asleep. Gosh darn it. :P There’s really
no problem in doing so but I just wonder, exactly how much jet lag will invade
my system come two weeks time? It’ll be interesting for sure. XD
Together, host father and I travelled to the National Taiwan
Museum next to NTU MRT station located in 228 Peace Memorial Park. The front
looks exactly like a museum would, doesn't it? It reminds me of the movie
“Night at the Museum” or even Klein Collins High School. XD
Two bull statues relaxed at the gate. Even though pretty
much exact in appearance, they apparently are made out of different material.
I’m not sure what history these statues have but I thought to include a picture
anyway. ;)
If you haven’t noticed already, my host father likes to go
view museums. We’ve been to so many that I was beginning to think we’ve seen it
all. I was wrong. Oh so wonderfully wrong because it had a special
something-something.
QI PAO!!! (In English) CHINESE DRESSES!!! :D THIS WAS
AWESOME! We caught the new exhibit on its opening day before the tourist rush
hour so we could pleasantly meander through the displays. Different dress
designs were proudly standing throughout the location as they formed a general
dress evolution pattern. At first, Chinese dresses were very loose fitting,
long sleeved and fairly plain in design. Gradually they took in more
embroidery, colors and slimmed down with cut off sleeves. The types of Chinese
dresses I have fall somewhere in the 1900’s time of evolution. This exhibition
was fantastic because it included English so I could understand and easily
follow the history timeline. AND I LOVED IT ALL! What luck it is to have seen
it fairly close to getting Chinese dresses and before I leave. A beautiful,
fabric-filled blessing!
Think that was the end of my excitement? Well,
nope-nopedy-nope! Climbing one floor of the dazzling interior decorated
building, another exhibit stood waiting to be admired. And admired it I did!
How could I not? IT WAS TAIWANESE ABORIGINALS! WHOO-HOO! :D Even though it
lacked English translations of displayed Chinese paragraphs, I still enjoyed
gazing at all the artifacts of each tribe. Here, I show ya some!
Pretty hefty objects huh? What do you think they are? Clubs?
They are, in fact, cups! Yeah, large cups for sure but interestingly designed!
A snapshot of some tattoo patterns.
The oh so famous Taiwanese aboriginal boat. On the right is
the boat in-progress with the left being the finished product. Every boat I’ve
seen is always white, red and black with similar patterns. When at the
aboriginal museum seen last Saturday, I learned that the process to make a boat
like this extends to nearly two years. The reason is that it’s one big
ceremony. You must have the correct materials, season, rituals and all kinds of
other jazz to make it. Therefore they really are special pieces of culture.
The B1 floor had an amber exhibit from jewelry to pipes to
blobs with ancient bugs trapped inside. Upon sight, the though ‘JURASSIC PARK!’
immediately popped into my head. Not ten seconds later did I turn the corner
and find a little toy figurine of the white-clothed founder of Jurassic Park
from the movie. I love how the museum embraced the possible events the Jurassic
Park book/movie suggested. Hilarious! Hilarious but deadly! XD
For the afternoon meal, the two of us went to a cafeteria
underneath the Caesar Hotel. Here we selected “Magic Curry” in favor of getting
our curry on! Not only do both of us like curry but I had a personal mission I
wanted to try, seeing whether or not I could handle spicier curry. Would Andrea
tear? Would she cry? Would she beg for milk? I was curious to find out!
My selection fell upon chicken curry, not only because I
love chicken curry but also because the menu showed it rated as number one. A
definite must! There were four levels of spiciness. I didn’t know the level of
each option at this restaurant, or any curry restaurant really, and neither did
host father. Wanting to challenge but not punish myself, I gambled with the
second to highest spicy level. Seemed like a good choice. Host father ordered a
fried pork roll with asparagus and cheese inside. He also made one of our meals
a lunch combo set to share between the two of us. For the combo, host father
picked out salad, chicken & mushroom soup, vanilla ice cream scoop and
coffee.
A new style of curry to me, it came with a plate of flatten
rice with the other goodness all in a metal pot. Goodness included chicken (of
course), one broccoli and some carrots. I could see some dabs of red within the
liquid that predicted a flare of hotness. ‘This is gonna be fantastic’ I anticipated.
And it was! SO…DELICIOUS! Loved the chicken and loved the
sauce! The sauce wasn’t bland nor fiery hot, but possessed a little kick. It
induced very slight runniness of the nose and a tingle in the lips but really
not spicy. I probably could’ve non-painfully eaten the highest level of spice
but it didn’t matter because the creation in front of me was AMAZING! Ultra
love! I will have to try a truly red-hot curry sometime though. That battle
WILL happen at some time or another. ;)
Following the main meal was dessert and beverage. The coffee
was for me and ice cream for host father. With cream but no sugar, the steamy
cup of coffee was very refreshing and relaxing. Btw, my host family doesn’t
like coffee but know I do, which is why host father chose it. Twas a kind,
thoughtful gesture. ^_^
With our bellies satisfied with num-num-nummy food, we
walked to the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center. Remember this place? It’s the
one with four floors of purly Taiwanese souvenirs from just about everything.
Host father dropped me off here and had to head off to work. Therefore I slowly
took my time looking over the store’s products a second time. Even though I’ve
seen it all already, it still was very enjoyable to see it all again. I would
like to purchase a few merchandise but will have to come back another time
because host father said host mother gets a discount at this store. We shall
meet again oh fantastic store. ;)
Off on a walk I go! There was a little bit of a walk between
the store and Shandao Temple MRT station but it happened to be very pleasant.
Many green trees and shrubbery were planted along the roads with old-style buildings
popping up here and there. It created a very nice atmosphere to stroll through.
The hot weather was a bit unwelcome but nothing too steamy. Before host father
left for work, he handed me an umbrella saying it might rain today. Seemingly
unlikely with the bright, warm weather plus Google predicting 0% chance of rain
all today, I took it anyway because it’s best to listen to Taiwanese host
father, am I right? But it looked very improbable that I would even remotely
have need of it.
Time available aplenty, shopping extended while electing to
walk the distance from the subway station to the house rather than riding the
usual bus. First was my beloved bakery shop for a square pineapple cake cutter
and possible means of baking brownies. I still have two bags of brownie mix
that I’ll have to bake but doing so in the Chinese metal lunchboxes (“bian
dan”) didn’t strike me as the best idea. Not only would the brownies come out
difficult to cut and share, but last time it took an abnormally long time to
reach semi-baked status. Whether that was a problem with the convention
oven/toaster oven or using the bian dan boxes, I wanted to try another method.
So I happily exited this delightful shop with individual tin
cups and three cookie cutters. All together, it was a very cheap and reasonable
purchase. The shop owner helped me answer a few questions concerning baking.
Originally I was going to use mini-cupcake wrappers but she pointed out I would
need tools to hold it in while baking. 100% my host family didn’t have a
cupcake-baking tray nor did I want to buy one in Taiwan, I swapped over to
these tin cups instead. Seems perfect for both baking and easy distribution
reasons. Yay! I’m excited to try it out!
Not expecting to, I ducked inside a small stationary store.
As a reminder, these types of stores have a whole slew of variety from paper to
pens to books to mugs to jewelry and beyond. It seemed unlikely I would find
anything desirable, I was proved wrong.
Look at this brilliant, marvelous, wonderfulness! Sengoku
Basara 3 manga in Chinese! OH GOODNESS GRACIOUS THIS IS AWESOME!!! In case
y’all don’t remember, I adore Sengoku Basara as it is my all-time favorite
anime series. Now I don’t profess to be able to read Chinese cuz I can’t (YET!)
but this is where it starts. It truly is the most optimal way for me to begin
when my Chinese gets to a certain level. I already know and love the characters
and plotline of this book so there’s a solid foundation to launch off of. When
the needed time and skill rolls around, I’m readily anticipating when I can
dive into reading and translating the books!
The other purchase was three packets of origami paper. These
came about because I was in need of smaller sized paper with a bit of flare for
a secret project of mine. That’s what the far left one is for. But once I saw
another packet with five types of stunning Asian styled paper (the other two
are the same just viewing the front and back) my eyes target locked. I’ve never
been able to try my hand seriously in origami but these oozed out inspiration.
Not only that but I’m fairly certain their prices would knock the socks off of
origami loving friends in America who go to stores like Michael’s for their
origami paper. For most of the paper I saw, each sheet comes out to be half a penny
or sometimes one cent. How incredibly cheap! Of course I can’t turn down some
gorgeous sheets of paper for such a bargain! I’ll attempt my hand at origami
when back in the States where I won’t have to worry about my creations getting
crushed in luggage transportation. ;) Another thing to be uber excited about!
:D
Third time I’ve been corrected today. Host father was right.
Google was wrong. It was indeed raining and substantially too. I was mentally
projecting ‘thank you’ thoughts to host father because I would’ve gotten soaked
without the umbrella he handed me! And that is why you listen to your host
parents, the natives of the country. :P Streets were silk with water and
umbrellas of many different personalities protecting the people underneath became
the new mood of Taipei. What you see here is the street reaching back towards
the house.
There’s not much else to report on but I’ll point out
something special in dinner. A platter of baked and fried shrimp with a sweet,
thick sauce squirted on top. I’m not sure if this is a Taiwanese dish per say
but I have seen it once or twice before in Taiwan with no recollection of
America offering it. Thus, why not show it to y’all? Tis tasty!
Oki doki, I now bid y’all a good night! Sweet dreams to all!
^_^