Work: I was at tutorial duty the day after I got off the plane. The assignment was on one of those topics that I have no idea for, but I went anyway. Other than being slightly dizzy and stuff, it was fine, although it went for two hours…way too long. Then today, I overslept for my supervisor meeting and was late for 45 minutes. Both of us laughed it off, as jetlagging is really a common experience, I guess. So I got more things to do before the meeting next week. Meanwhile, marking!!! Some things never change…although hopefully this does change after this semester is over.

Poker one-liners: Playing too much poker. It seems that I will always lose whenever I play AK. What are the chances of getting J-10 three hands in a row and lose with it three times in a row? When I flop a flush with A on the table and Q on my hand, who knew that the guy who kept on raising me until I went all in also had a flush, but with K in his hand…

My mind is too messed up.

Ah…the flights back to Toronto… I arrived at the airport early, since my dad was also flying that day but with a much earlier flight. Waited a long time and finally got past the customs. 3 long hours of wandering remains, where I found free wireless internet! The flight to Tokyo was overbooked (don’t know why), and the plane has this strange 2-5-2 row seating arrangement… Hmm…I don’t know. Anyway, it was an eventless flight (poor food was as expected).

I had 5 hours to spend at Tokyo Narita. Well, it’s a big airport, I had 5000 Yens to spend, and I had plenty of duty free shops to go to,…but I also had a pretty heavy backpack… I was more in a sit-and-go mood where I would sit down at the gate, do something, then went off to do something else. I ended up watching Arrested Development and doing puzzles for the “sit” part, and buying two sudoku books and a headphone in the “go” part. I ended up spending 3800 Yens, and left with a sore body. Funny thing is that the cashiers here only spoke Japanese to me, so I can only nod my head and stuff as I have no idea what they’re saying.

Contrary to the Taipei-Tokyo flight, the Tokyo-Toronto flight was quite empty. I had three seats for myself for the flight! (By the way, I’ve just realized that all three cities’ names begin with the letter T…) So I got tons of sleep on the flight. Although this might be bad for jetlagging…as I’m now realizing… Another funny thing is one of the flight attendants spoke to me in Japanese, and I’m like, “huh?” Well, I had Japanese sudoku books on the table, that’s how she figured I know Japanese…heh. I knew this would come up some day… Anyway, the guy behind me also had three seats to himself, but he was snoring…doh. Towards the end of the flight, I saw a beautiful scene outside the window, the scene of snow-covered grounds sprinkled with cities here and there. And then the view of Toronto where skyscrapers appeared in bundles all over the place. Too bad I was too lazy to bring my camera down from the luggage cabin to take pictures… And apparently we flew into the airport from the east, so there must have been a bit of detouring… Anyway, good flight.

Danshui: After a second unsuccessful attempt at riding the Maokong gondola, we decided to go to Danshui instead. Now I remember I was here about six years ago, just before I left for Waterloo. It was a difficult time as I was facing this transition into a totally new environment, and I was scared. And now, six years later, I am almost done with my PhD program, facing another difficult stage of my life. I didn’t think much about it this time, though, since I was pretty tired…heh. Last time I saw a beautiful sunset; this time I saw a haze…so it wasn’t as romantic as it’s lived up to be.

Service industry: The service industry here is very enthusiastic…almost too enthusiastic. Sure they want to attract customers and get people to buy more, but I just find it annoying. I prefer the (mostly) Canadian way of just a simple hello and let you shop freely unless you want to ask a question or two. Well, that is, except for Future Shop.

I’m typing at the airport. Now that I’m leaving Taiwan, what are my thoughts? Well, I kind of didn’t care much for this trip. It felt more like an obligation to let family and friends see me rather than me wanting to see them. It makes for a pretty dull trip, I felt. Maybe I could have been more excited about it, but I just wasn’t able to. Coupled that with the constant jetlagging and borderlining sickness, I certainly didn’t have a good time. But, at least it’s done now, and I can go back to my regular life, which is also ending very quickly. Actually, I’m not even sure I feel good about going back to Waterloo… I can’t face the immediate thesis defence, the longer term dealing of what to do with my career, and the fellowship that’s in a difficult transitioning period. But at least I’ll have Forest and Li Zhen, so that’s good.

Price: People keep saying about the low food prices here in Taiwan. Sure enough, there are these small restaurants in side streets that do have pretty cheap food, although even the locals are saying the prices have risen recently. But to get better food, you have to go to higher-end restaurants, and they do cost a lot! But generally speaking, the food is good regardless of where I went to eat. Now the prices for other things…the clothes are cheap, and my mom got me a ton. Elsewhere, mostly I looked at the computer-related items, and some small items are indeed extremely cheap (a blank DVD disc costs around 8 cents Canadian). But the large ticket items like the LCD screen and PS3 are all priced about the same or above Canadian prices. So…not much of a bargain to be found.

Election & my trip: Back when I was booking my flight here, I was baffled when the travel agency said that they have seats for the flight to Taiwan, but not for the flight back. It’s nowhere near peak season at all, so I was wondering what was going on. I found one plausible explanation for this, and that is that because of the election here, many people living abroad returned to Taiwan to vote! So maybe that’s why there weren’t cheap tickets available…

Air pollution: I still couldn’t handle the air pollution that exists here. Whenever I walk outside beside the road, exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke would blast my nose, making it very difficult to breathe. That’s one reason why I can never come here to live…

Election: So I stumbled upon an election here in Taiwan. Here, politics and elections are huge. Debates are everywhere, and people take their “colouring” seriously. So it’s not so surprising when the voter turnout was around 75%, meaning more than 13 million votes were cast. Compare that with approximately 15 million votes in the last Canadian election, which is a country with a population that’s about 50% larger, that puts Canada’s democracy to shame… Then again, I don’t care much for political stuffs, neither here nor there, so shame on me!

Money: I hate all the talk about money here. The problem is what to do with too much money…and it’s all very uncomfortable to me. Anyway, on the subject of money, I’m apparently known as someone who don’t like to spend much money, saving as much as possible. Well, that’s only because I only buy things that I like, and there are very few things that I like. In fact, I splurged on the few items that I was interested a while ago…so, I don’t think I save money well.

Poker: I’ve been playing poker online for about 3 weeks now, playing the free games, of course. It’s quite addicting. But I’ve found two things that could stop me from playing… (1) I lose in consecutive games (which I did one day, and quit playing…for only one day); and (2) I win in consecutive games (which is what’s happening now). I kept building up my “play money” bank, but for what? It was fun at the start, but now, being constantly on top means it’s getting boring…

Crowds: During the weekend, crowds are expected. But I wasn’t expecting such a huge crowd for a gondola ride! It was Saturday, and the family was ready to take the Maokong gondola near the zoo. When we got there, we found that the line went from fourth floor to third floor to second floor to ground floor, and then stretched out over 1km on the outside! These people are crazy! So we decided instead to go to the zoo, only to find it closed. So we decided to rent bikes and ride along the not-so-picturesque creek. Good thing I didn’t fall off the bike.

Grandmother: There was a dinner on Sunday that was supposedly celebrating the birthdays of my grandmother and I, both of us have it on pi day. It was a rather uncomfortable dinner, as I don’t know most of the people. And some of the people were trying to sell their “magic” water, which was really laughable… However, the best part of the dinner: seeing my 92-year-old grandmother drink alcohol! Hehehe…

Sick: While in Taiwan, I’ve been constantly borderlining being sick. Pre-symptoms like itchy throat and coughing constantly appear and disappear. But now, two days before I leave here, I think I finally caught it. Doh. On the positive side, I haven’t been sick since I was in Europe last August, so I didn’t need to be bothered with it while writing the thesis. So that’s something to be thankful to God for.

Now that my trip to Taiwan is almost over, I would like to write down a few things here to recall some of my experiences…

Shopping for clothes: I was attending Ed and Ingrid’s banquet but didn’t have the semi-formal clothes, so we went shopping the first full day on arrival. The thing is, I didn’t really like what I bought. I went for the strategy of just buying something that looks acceptable and move on already. Didn’t want to spend too much time on this. So, I got a new shirt, pants, tie and shoes. And of course mom bought more casual wear for me without me looking at it…

Meeting old friends: The surprise of the trip is definitely meeting lots of people that I haven’t seen in years. At the banquet, I saw Claire and Frank, both of whom I haven’t seen in 4 years. Obviously I haven’t seen the people at church for more than a year, but the surprise was seeing this guy BenLing, whom I haven’t seen for over 6 years. As always, I take pictures of everyone!

I’m almost sick. Several times already.

Being with these relatives aren’t too bad. They think I grew up, but I think I was just in a sedated mode.

Taking the high speed rail for only a short distance is not a good idea.

I don’t really enjoy luxury things.

I’m still jetlagging.

One job opportunity closed.

This is the first time that I have no idea what to do during a long flight. Normally, I would be pressured into doing school work, but would turn to reading and puzzles to avoid doing work and feel guilty about it. Now…no school work, so it felt weird to be doing some reading and puzzles on the plane without the pressure from school. So bizarre…

I stumbled upon an embarrassing plane ride. Turns out that the flight from Tokyo to Taipei is a Hello Kitty theme flight… The outside of the plane was painted with a ton of HKs, the boarding pass has a HK head on it, the headrest of each seat is pink with HK, the flight attendants were wearing HK aprons, the screen in front of each seat has dancing HKs, even the food has HK-shaped dessert…yikes. Really destroys a man’s dignity, I think…heh.

In any case, both flights were smooth with only a bit of turbulence, which is nice. The food…well, that’s not worth discussing…

Phew…that’s the beginning of the end…handed in my thesis last Friday. Relieved? A little bit, but not too much…don’t know why.

The snow storms are crazy! The last big one during the weekend dumped 40cm here…

Going to Taiwan tomorrow…not particularly looking forward to it.