I was planning to go to Toronto today, but nobody can go with me, so I went for a shorter route. Canadian Tire was the first stop, where I got a surprisingly cheap desk lamp (priced at $13, but the cash register says 50% off…). Then off to New City Supermarket, where the traffic was horrible because of the Farmer’s Market thing (note to self: don’t go there on Saturday mornings). Eventually found free parking, and took home a little bit of stuff. Still, far less than what I would have gotten in Toronto… So, that’s pretty much the adventure for the day.

As a shocker, I went out and walked around the campus as exercise. The lap time is 28 minutes and 2 seconds. Along the way, I encountered two groups of runners, all Chinese male, it appears. Then I go, I really don’t like these runners…mostly because I can’t run like that, not even close. Anyway, wish I had some people to walk with so that my mindless wandering could be less boring…

I should try to remember to take a picture of that moon tomorrow night…

Week 1 of the scheduling didn’t work so well, probably because of my recovery (or the lack thereof) from jet lagging. Week 2 is hot off the press, and it will certainly not work at all. I should make themes for each week…hmm…maybe that would be too much for me. It does seem like this week 2 is going to have a “writing” theme, as per supervisor’s request.

While I was really really hungry, I weighed 86kg this morning. So that’s 3 down from the all time high.

Yesterday: Huge load of laundry in the morning. Scrambling at school with frantic calling. Fellowship in the late afternoon/evening wasn’t too bad. 26 people showed up, which is more than usual. The little name-guessing game didn’t finish, unfortunately, but they had a good time, I think. The most expensive Bible study ever was not too bad, either, although I start to wonder if the expense was worth it. Came home and pretty much passed out for the rest of the evening.

Yesterday: All morning trying to prepare for supervisor meeting, only to write down a few meaningless things and done nothing of substance. Well, unless you count scratching my head as something significant… There was a C&O social to meet the new grad students. I think I talked to one new student, which is like a record high for me. Then the supervisor meeting was not too bad, I guess. I’m expected to produce a big, thick, juicy stack of paper for her to read by next week, so I guess I need to do some work now. Went home, prepared the Bible study, had the pre-study, and it was all pretty fast and good. Once I had a theme in mind, it was pretty quick. I can only thank the Lord for that. By 8pm, I was pretty sleepy (actually, I wasn’t even sure how I got through Jeopardy!), so then went to sleep. Eventually woke up at 8am, with a few intermittent breaks in between.

We have rain today! Apparently they haven’t had rain in a couple of weeks now, so I guess that’s a good thing. It’s certainly cooled down a lot today, but not cool enough to bring on the long sleeves.

It was good to talk to Austin.

Apparently I’m doing a reverse anti-jet-lag thing, turning my biological clock back to Taiwan’s time zone. Not good.

Very interesting Final Jeopardy question on “The Map of North America”: Number of Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes.

It’s going to be a very busy day today. So busy that I almost fainted just thinking about it.

Hmm…now my arms and legs are quite sore. I guess I need to follow the old wisdom of warming up before exercising…

In addition to preparing for supervisor meeting tomorrow, there’s the additional pressure of preparing for a Bible study for pre-study tomorrow. I’m not sure I can handle them all. In fact, I’m not sure how I got involved in this…

I have to admit, I’m quite sensitive in many aspects of my life. So that’s probably why I’m very easily hurt.

Here I am, typing away on my laptop in my office using wireless connection. I’m sure this wireless thingie would become less of a novelty some time soon, but not now. If I have a good enough battery pack, I might actually be able to walk and type this thing, but I guess that’s not to be.

So I’m in my office, looking to do some research work here. But…I simply couldn’t do anything. I see Shengjun focused on making his program, and I go, why couldn’t I be as focused as he is? Maybe I’m really not interested in what I’m doing with the research? Or maybe it’s a lack of perspective of how to proceed? I don’t know. In any case, supervisor meeting is tomorrow, and so far I’ve got nothing. Not unusual, I guess.

My right hand’s fingers are involuntarily shaking. I don’t really know why.

Day 2 in the supposedly “new” life: it was crazy. Little veggie, one banana, some exercise, no research. Started with Aaron’s visit, hence the exercise. It resultd in a slightly low blow, which caused an amusing pain for the rest of the day. Class was slow again. Came home, ate lunch, checked email, and the TA prof said there’s a meeting at 2:30, but didn’t say the location. It was 2:15. So I rushed to school, followed people around, only to find out that the meeting was between the 3 profs, and the email the prof sent was misleading. Hmm…embarrasing. So I went home, slept, watched an amusing episode of Millionaire, went to Costco, Chapters, came back, ready to sleep. Then all of a sudden I’ve been enlisted to go to Toronto to pick up Aaron’s mom. And his mom landed close to an hour ago. Yikes…so I went to my car, put my car key in the ignition, and it wouldn’t turn. Ok…had to go back to my room, switch keys, and try again. And it worked, using brute force. So then off we went to Toronto, pick up his mom, had a stretch of traffic jams both ways since those smart construction planners decided that 12am is a good time to reduce a 3-lane highway to 1. The entire round trip was 3 hours, longer than the usual 2. Anyway, that was my crazy day, and all I got was being laughed at by Francis.

I believe in “smooth” driving. Nobody else around me believes that, unfortunately.

My planned schedule is all screwed up. I guess that was sort of expected…I shall try to do better in week 2.

Day 1 in the supposedly “new life” (or “life under fire”): No exercise, some veggies, no fruit, lots of chicken at Swiss Chalet, no research. I guess I blame my legs that are still quite sore for some odd reason. Also for some odd reason, I had some bounce in my steps…hmm…weird. Started the morning at around 7 with 2 hours of unpacking, which was kind of hard since there wasn’t much space left in the suite. Dumplings for breakfast. Class at 11.5. The professor was so slow that I actually managed to solve the exercises in class…never happened before. Afternoon nap. Evening trip to buy a laser printer and wireless card. So now I print with laser speed and can go online wirelessly with tortoise speed. Now I’m quite tired again, so the hour of dedicated Bible study didn’t work. So sad…

I’ve made a decision that once something comes up that needs to be done and can be done quickly, I might as well do it immediately instead of trying to write it down on some random piece of paper that is my temporarily to-do list and forget about it soon. I really hope that will go well…

One thing I’m quite afraid of is doing or saying something bad or stupid once and lose a friend.

Just got back to my room. I’m quite tired, so just a couple of short descriptions here. Total travel time: 24 hours. There were no delays with the flights, which was a surprise to me. But I’ve encountered way too many turbulences on the way (and that’s not counting how Francis was driving my car). The layover was sort of painful, dragging around huge luggages for more than an hour. But overall, I’m here, and I need some sleep.

The suite is very clean again, I almost didn’t recognize it. Alan’s girlfriend must have done the job again.

Is flying a blimp around an airport safe at all?

Well, the rain is coming down real hard right now, but not much wind. So I think this should be fine. Maybe.

Leaving in a couple of hours, and I still haven’t really started packing. The story of my life, then.

Some final thoughts on this trip: I guess in the end, I do not regret much about taking this trip. I certainly still could not fit in nor live in this kind of environment, but I’m glad to have made friends from church. Hope to keep in touch with them. I’ve looked forward to leaving here ever since I arrived, and I still look forward to it, but maybe with a little less enthusiasm now. Alright, next post from a difference continent!

The day we all went crazy…that was yesterday. From 6AM to 10PM, there were six of us that went from place to place all day long, with many others joining in between. First, a breakfast at Swensen’s that proved to be a bit too western for me. Then a trip to YangMingShan that proved that I was the most physically inept of the bunch, which was no surprise anyway. We had lunch there at some kind of a historic site, I think, I’m not sure. Next stop, bowling. And I got the highest combined score…hehehe…so all that practicing sort of worked. Doing nothing significant at KFC was next, and then the mass dinner. Pretty good dinner, I think. A bit claustrophobic for sure, with 15 people around a moderate-size table, but it was nice. Of course I could have said more things about everything, but I’m tired… It was a good (and tiring) day, that’s all I can say.

Then there was today…woke up late, obviously. Made the game for tonight’s youth fellowship. Mesister took the keys she left for me, so there was some panic there. The game went well, and we were all surprised by Ching-9′s ability to answer riddles. And the “strong chicken” team still couldn’t figure out how to use the buzzer… Then I felt kind of depressed, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m leaving a group of people that I got to know sort of well in the past three weeks. Maybe I’m just getting too emotional, I don’t know.

The worrisome typhoon made a slight turn to the north, so it shouldn’t affect the take-off for tomorrow’s flight. Then again, we are still going to fly over the typhoon, so I’m not sure how that’s going to go… Anyway, I’ll make another final post when I wake up, pack, go to church, and then I’m out of this island.

Today’s route: Home –> Taipei 101 –> Elim Bookstore –> MacKay Hospital –> Home. Ate a mediocre lunch at 101. A passion fruit smoothie went sour. Found out that the cost of going to the observatory is $350, which is quite a bit more than the $120 for the ferris wheel yesterday, so I didn’t go. There’s a bookstore that contains more English books than a typical bookstore in Canada. There’s a $12,000 ($480CAN) headphone at Bose. “If I were a rich man…” then I would go for it. A long walk to the subway and a short ride on the subway took me to Elim bookstore, where I bought a book. Would have bought much more, but I guess I was in a fruitful mode of “self control.” A long ride on the subway took me to MacKay hospital, where a few minutes wait and 2 minutes of meeting with the doctor yielded two things: (1) I don’t have hep B nor C; and (2) The 2-minute meeting cost $350. So the ride to the top of 101 doesn’t sound too expensive right now… Then there’s the uneventful ride home, and my legs were sore again. So much for the planned mountain climbing tomorrow…

Two things that I won’t miss in Taiwan: Food venders literally shouting for business, and the flyer distributors on the street. I just find that food venders that are shouting for business are very annoying. So to make a point, I usually don’t go for food venders that do that, just to show that their incredibly intrusive advertising tactics do not work. Well, I’m only one person, so that’s not going to change anything… About the flyer distributors, again, I find it really annoying and intrusive. I have to change my walking patterns just to avoid receiving (or refusing to receive) some useless pieces of paper, andthen have the trouble of thinking where to recycle the junk if I indeed got them. It’s also a waste of natural resources, quite frankly. Both practices are, in my opinion, hints to this city that is in love with business and money.

Typhoon Khanun was formed in the Pacific today, and forecasters say it will hit Taiwan with full force on the 11th, possibly the strongest at 2pm. Hey, guess what, that is also the departure time for my flight to Vancouver! Yikes…I really hope CI does well this time…

Today: The attempt to get that “overseas Chinese enlistment deregulation” thingie almost failed by bureaucratic red tape, but eventually got done, sort of, I think… Lunch at Brother Hotel that involved lobster was surprisingly cheap, and the food was “cheap” in another sense… Afternoon trip to Miramar and the giant ferris wheel with Carl. The wheel is really really tall, and the individual compartments do shake when we move. But it has great air conditioning, so we were happy. We found out the high pollution of this city first hand when the photographs that we took of famous landmarks were all quite foggy.

I weigh myself today, and got 87kg. That’s 2kg less than my peak. So, good news, I guess. There are four of us who are doing a weight loss challenge kind of thing. Not so much a motivational thing, more like just silliness, I think. I’ve volunteered to do a private website for that…

I may have said some things to Carl that would be embarrassing if he leaked it out, and there’s a good chance that this could happen. I guess I need to really think before I talk, especially when interacting with super hyper talkative people.

Briefly recap last week’s events… Monday: diarrhea in the morning, made a mess of the things; clean up the mess; took an early uncomfortable bus to Tainan; met 4 cousins; service commemorating the 10th anniversary of grandfather’s death; trip to the graveyard that included some of the most beautiful pictures taken; large feast that I couldn’t quite enjoy. Tuesday: trip to Kaohsiung; Italian lunch at a huge department store, at the 11th floor, which was way too high for me; bought shoes and CDs; trip to Gongshan; met up with Iris, Lawrence, Henry, Joy; Henry grew up so much! Wednesday: early comfortable train to Taipei; stayed at home for the rest of the day. Typhoon Talim was approaching, and we got out of the south just in time. Thursday: giant typhoon hits, mighty exciting; my room’s door was rocking even though it’s at the core of the house and every window was closed. Ok, there, I’ve finally caught up with the journal.

Today: Small earthquake in the morning that scared me a bit. Haven’t had that for a while now… Went to Taiwan University to meet up with Su GuoShien. It was nice to be able to talk about things I’m studying without getting confusing looks all the time. There was a nice big Thai-style lunch. He’s very talkative, and very much experienced in academia, so he was able to share a lot of his views and experiences. Toured around the book stores, and bought a book myself. Probabilistic Methods. I’m not sure why I bought it, but it’s sort of cheap and I may need to use it some time in the far future… Met up with mesister afterwards, and bought some CDs. And that’s pretty much it.

Mom’s in Tainan right now, and I should join her on Friday, return Saturday, and fly home on Sunday. Now that’s a tight schedule!

I guess I’ve always been curious of other people’s lives. I’ve been known to flip through people’s drawers, bags, closets, etc. or go into people’s rooms without asking for permission (that was before…and I still get the temptation now and then). I also read people’s blogs, even ones for whom I had very little or no contact at all in real life. I guess I just want to know how the rest of the humanity lives, because apparently my life sucks.

Note to self: Need to modify summer camp game program for distribution; need to go to the Songshan administrative office so that my folks don’t get the “enlistment” notices again; need to send MYF mail regarding time changes.

Schedule for the rest of the stay here (subject to change, as always): tomorrow, go to Taiwan University to meet with GaGa’s husband; Wednesday, go meet Carl and do something; Thursday, go to the hospital and then to Tainan to see grandmother; Friday, still in Tainan; Saturday, return to Taipei, go to youth group, pack my stuff; Sunday, go to church, say goodbyes, take lots of pictures, and go home. I get the chills when I type the words “go home”… And I will certainly be returning to a different world, what with gas prices at 1.30 per litre?!