Hi! Let's nerd out for a while.

So my phone has been a little dodgy lately. I had been running a custom rom with the latest JB on my Crespo, but kept getting FCs and random reboots. I decided I've had it, and went back to Cyanogen 10. Well, that was no good either, I randomly lost root a day later and got stuck in a bootloop. Restoring from a nandroid did nothing, and neither did flashing - I don't know why, but I had also lost write privileges. Fortunately I could still get to fastboot, so I pushed TWM to replace clockworkmod. That didn't help either. Tried sideloading another custom ROM, froze on the Google lock screen for about 15 minutes. Did a battery pull, it won't even start up now. It had a shred of life when connected via USB, in that Windows recognizes it as "Unrecognized Device". Tried pushing every driver I could think of, it rejects all of them. After trying that for a while, it doesn't even have a pulse anymore. TLDR, my venerable Crespo is dead. After probably 20 different roms, countless tinkering, and god knows what, I have moved on.

I jumped on the popular kids bandwagon and got a i9300 now. I really hope HTC doesn't go by the wayside anytime soon, and the One is an outstanding phone - just one that is out of my price range. At least having the most popular smartphone in the world will make it easy to dig up hacks for it. I quite like the rom I have now, Ultimarom 12.0. A few minor bugs, but rock solid in terms of stability. I lived with Touchwiz for all of 30 minutes before I wanted to shoot it in the face. I think Blogger has had an aneurysm from all the red squiggly lines under those words, so moving on.

In much more relevant news, I am finally finished with my visa process, which is a giant pain in the ass. It's hard to say which is worse - China's or Taiwan's, but I have to lean slightly in Taiwan's direction, if only for the crazy stupid lines. The first time I went I waited for 2.5 hours just to be told I don't have the right whatever. Except the whatever can only be applied for on the other side of town at a different office. So I had to go over there another day, and this time I got there stupidly early as to not wait. Cut down the 2.5 hour wait to 20 minutes. Then I had to go back to get my passport a week later. Then I had to go back to the other office. Did I mention each time I did this I woke up at 6am? The final time the guy had some non essential questions, which I understood, but I just wanted him to process the damn thing.  I played the stupid foreigner card "聼不懂" which has worked surprisingly well all this time. It's really a get-out-of-jail-free ticket, I should stop using it. Anyway my card is in the mail, which I hear is valid for up to 3 years. So, that's cool. If things ever go down, nice to know I am a Taiwanese resident.

I've mentioned to others how the bus drivers here are absolutely crazy. They adopt the "sudden stop and acceleration" method like it's a religion. I have never been on any bus where the drivers are so obsessed with throwing everyone on the floor. The one I had one the way back from the office was particularly bad, though. Like some sort of stunt school dropout, this guy was making turns so sharp I swear the bus was going to tip. Blah.

It has been quite the movie filled few days for me. On Sunday I saw Jason Statham's new movie, Parker with a new friend of mine I met on the Taiwanese version of Craigslist. I had a great time, although the movie was "meh". It's Jason Statham, you know what you get. And then last night, I saw Iron Man 3. Which, I don't know why Taiwan gets it a week and some change earlier than everyone else. Not to spoil anything, but it really is my favorite Iron Man yet. The antagonist was kind of strange, but this one more than the others shows just how fragile Tony is. He's not a god, just a regular dude who manages to make really good suits - and once you take away the suit, he's pretty vulnerable. I also saw at the theater adverts for Gatsby, Monsters University, Hangover 3, and Star Trek. So, it'll be a movie filled next few months.

In a more sad note, I remember last year in China how randomly my favorite baozi place just disappeared one day and never re-opened. The same has happened this time. I dropped by as I do almost every morning, and there was cop in front of me. No worries, they've gotta eat too. Except he quickly got angry and started yelling at the old couple working there. He went behind the counter, started tossing about a clipboard and in general just being a dick. I was about to leave when he turned to me and said "What do you want?" I was like "uhh... 3 baozi?" He said "Well hurry and order then!" So I did, and the couple looked quite terrified the entire time. I thanked them and left. Next day, gone. It's been a week now. I'm guessing they didn't have some sort of permit or somesuch, but it certainly does make my breakfast more expensive. Seriously, those guys were awesome.

You'll notice there are no actual photos this time. I had about 5 that weren't uploaded yet before my phone died, but no biggie. I finally have visited every subway station in Taipei, so achievement unlocked. I bet 99% of the locals haven't even done that. My quest to complete the Everest Challenge is still underway, so any large stretches of free time will be with that. Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it.

He's kind of like Justin Beiber, except talented and not a douche.

That's right, I met the Taiwanese heartthrob Aaron Yan! Who is he? Actually I don't have a godamn clue. But I do know he's kind of a big deal (seriously, he has his own Wikipedia article!), based on the number of fans who stood outside to get his autograph on a piece of paper. Truthfully, I wouldn't have even bothered, but my friend Sabrina in Ningbo just said to me a few days earlier how she is obsessed with him. Always out to blow minds, I stood in line for about an hour or so just so I could send a picture and rub it in her face. Honestly he was very nice, I think I took him a bit off guard by not being his target audience.

I did send her a poster and CD he signed, so don't freak out. I'm not actually that mean. But, a bunch of other things happened as well. For example:

* I got on the Taipei News

* My picture was taken with some sort of naked Indian man.

* I went to a Taiwanese KTV

* Had a Reddit meetup

* Caught some shrimp

* Climbed more mountains

So yeah, Taipei news. It was pretty brief, I'll link it at the end of the post. The funny thing was is I had a response in Chinese, then they stripped all of it out and just used "當然" (Of course). Well, frak them. I didn't even know they aired it, but my high school classmate Nate posted it on my Facebook. The naked Indian man, well... that speaks for itself. The Taiwanese KTV is pretty much the same as a Chinese one, with walls so thick it sounds like a library, and an absence of drunk Chinese dudes throwing up in the hallway. Overall... less fun. The Reddit meetup was awesome, met a lot of nice people and said goodbye to my friend Ting. Also, Redditors in Asia are 37% more awesome. Seriously, do the math yourself. The shrimp was at Shilin Night Market, it's a game of skill where you have to get one without breaking your line. Surprisingly difficult. But afterwards they will cook it for you, so I proudly ate my prize. I will accept all names for him in the comments below.

I think we need a paragraph here, don't you think? Lately I've been meeting up with locals, usually for coffee just to expand my base of friends. So far it's gone pretty well. I've met three amazing people, and I hope we all remain in touch. I met one of them for coffee today in Banqiao, which is sort of near the end of the blue line. You know what that means! Oh... actually you probably don't, but that means I went to the end of the blue line and climbed 3 godamn mountains. That only leaves 1 station left in the entire MRT system I have not been to. The mountains were all around Yongning, however Google Maps is just plain wrong on the names. And Bing. And Mapquest. So consulting all 3, the ones I remember are 天下山, 南天每山, and 青原山. I'm not even 100% sure if that's right. But I'm just writing them here for my own sake. Not that 99% of you can even read that. I could have written "You're a big poopy head" and you'd never know. Maybe I did?

So here's me on the news @ 0:42.

Hint - I am not holding a nice word

I kinda forgot that I had a blog and spent another day in Kaohsiung. So, my bad?

I booked the trip a bit last minute, so unfortunately I couldn't find the same hostel for two nights in a row. Not to worry though, as I did find another not terribly far away. It turns out, it was right next to the artsy area down by the pier. Funny how that works out!

This hostel was definitely the smallest I had ever stayed in. In fact, I'm 99% sure it's just someones house and they decided to have the 2nd floor be a hostel. There were only two rooms, each with (presumably) 4 beds. It gave it a very homey kind of feel, especially when they offered to make me coffee in the morning and loaded me down with maps.

The agenda today was one I had missed yesterday. I had heard that there is a mountain nearby called Shoushan. (Not to be confused with Xiaoshan, my home in China) This mountain has monkeys living on it. Yes, you heard right. I get to see and possibly have my things stolen by monkeys. I was pretty damn stoked, so off I went. Also, another mountain climbed. Check.

And I am ever so sorry to disappoint, but I did not see any monkeys. I did however, see a lot of cats. In fact at the base of the mountain three of them surrounded me, maybe in hopes I would drop my backpack of delicious sweaty socks. However, it was not meant to be. I was a bit surprised, after coming to the top, to find a very well maintained road. Also it had the characters for what I thought said zoo. I followed it, and sure enough, I could have taken the nicely paved road with a sidewalk to the top. Also there was a zoo there, but I haven't even been to the Taipei Zoo - no reason to go to the not as good one here. But they did have a bus, which saved me time from walking down the mountain.

Back at the subway, I had another two spots to hit up today. One was the Sugar Refinery. I know what you're thinking, but all the books I saw said "no for real, this place be cool". They did not disappoint. Right outside the subway was a cool artists village, full of crazy things, a few theme park rides, and a Spanish lady selling empanadas. Wowowowow! Amazingly delicious, I wish I didn't eat all day before coming here. They also had baozi the size of my frikin head, filled with mushrooms no less. I went to the sugar refinery, which was basically a cool old factory they opened up. I kind of got mixed in with a large group walking in at the time, and these two little girls in front of me said "Wow look, theres a foreigner behind you!" The other turned around, and stared at me, mystified. I replied "A foreigner? Where?!" They pointed at me and the rest of the group had a chuckle.

The star of the show was though, the strange little shack I found on the way out. There were two parrots out front, which I thought warranted further investigation. Turns out it was an oddities museum, with a bunch of "aliens", strange pig fetuses, that sort of thing. I thought it was hilariously awesome, and well worth the 50 kuai entrance fee. Also I got to hold a snake.

I only had one stop left in Kaohsiung, and that was Lotus Lake. It was fortunate that it was near the train station as well. Lotus Lake is a very nice, scenic place, which is worth visiting once but has little to have you come back. It's basically just a bunch of old temples around a lake, some more interesting than others. They do have a water skiing rope in one section, which was kind of cool. I was told it would take 3-4 hours to see all of Lotus Lake. I arrived around 2, my train was at 6. I was done by 4.

I didn't really have time to go anywhere else, so I thought I might as well eat. I got some ham fried rice, but then the lady just apparently decided to throw in other stuff as well. In addition to ham, there were pigs feet, shrimp, octopus, and what I think was chicken. I don't know if she just liked me, or it was refrigerator cleaning day. I noticed in the fridge though, very large bottles of beer. Larger than any other I had seen. I asked her how much, she said 100. In comparison, a beer at 7-11 is 40-50. I thought I had time to kill, so why not?

Upon further inspection, this was a 1 liter bottle of beer. Did you know they exist? They do exist. I sat along the lake, drinking a comically large sized bottle. I asked a few passerbys to help me out, but nobody seemed interested. Anyway I started walking back towards the train station, obviously drunk, and thinking "I am the biggest idiot for not using the restroom before I left." By the time I got to the station, I was about to burst. Slept like a baby on the way home, though.

Om nom nom nom!

OK so, I got to Kaohsiung late at night, and after checking into my hostel there wasn't much I could do except go to a night market. Fortunately it's the most famous one and recommended in all the guidebooks.

Liouhe is pretty cool, but it can't hold a candle to most of Taipei's. They do have one amazing thing though. You see that picture? That's a corn dog. The spiral thingy is fried cheese. The one next to it is minced garlic. Then they dip the whole thing in BBQ sauce. America... we lost. The corn dog arms race is over, and we have soundly been defeated. We might as well bow down now to our corn dog overlords.




So after that I passed a bar, and well... Why not? It was actually a karaoke bar, but everyone there was Hakka. At least I think Hakka. Anyway they weren't Chinese. I met a cool guy named Phillip who used to live in Texas, so his English was quite good. He has a company making lights that can be controlled by your smartphone. Interesting dude. The bartender told me this is the first time a foreigner has ever been in the bar, and gave me a tequila shot to celebrate.

So the next few hours are a bit of a blur. I went back to the hostel at some point and chatted with some Koreans about my trip to North Korea. They do not care or know anything about the current sabre rattling coming out of there. "Business as usual."

So for my first actual day I went to Qijin Island. While taking the subway to the ferry, 3 girls sat across from me. One was wearing shoes with the English flag on them, so I asked her in Chinese if she was English. She laughed and said no. We got to talking, and it turns out they're students from Taichung going to Qijin Island as well. They suggest we go together, which I'm more than willing to. Then, on our way they whisper to me they're not actually Taiwanese, like its a secret. I respond "Me too." They laugh and say they're actually from Shenyang, the city I flew into on the way back from North Korea. I tell them I used to live in Hangzhou. Instantly we swap QQ numbers and are BFFs.




The 4 of us had quite the day at Qijin. While waiting for the ferry it started raining. Like, open the heavens and drown the infidels heavy. We got soaked, and our umbrellas did jack shit. But it was a short wait and off we went.

Qijin is cool, but nothing amazing. It's a tourist area for sure, with somewhat dirty beaches and endless stalls of food and souvenirs. Mostly it was just a chance to walk around with my new friends, and we had some great soup from a street corner. They commented the noodles here are not as good as China's, which I had to agree with. The octopus was awesome though.

Back on Taiwan proper, we weren't sure what to do next. One suggested the Art Pier, which is a bunch of weird art pieces down by the dock. Somehow we got talking about children and they jokingly asked me if I had any. I said I have 3, and they bought it without any convincing. They asked me questions about them, and I said I was just joking. I called them all gullible and they said they want to kill me. But they had their revenge - when we made it to the pier they said they filmed parts of Titanic here. I believed them as they told me why the director chose Taiwan. Then a few minutes later they all turn to me and simultaneously say "開玩笑!" (Just kidding!). Grr, they got me good.

Later we said goodbye as we went to our respective hotels. After checking in I walked around looking for dinner but came up empty. I decided to go back to Liouhe, and wouldn't ya know it? I run into the 3 of them there. Not a minute later another crazy deluge comes, and I blame them for jinxing the weather. We went around the night market together and said goodbye (again). That night I added them all on QQ to keep in touch.

There's still one more day to go in Kaohsiung, so that'll be tomorrow's post. It involves sugar and "monkeys".

Y halo thar Kaohsiung.

I had a few days off for tomb sweeping day (which is exactly what it sounds like), so I jetted down to the southern end of Taiwan to see the 2nd largest city, Kaohsiung.

I'm glad I'm typing Kaohsiung a thousand times, because it spells nothing like it sounds. Taiwan sometimes uses the old system for writing Chinese characters in Roman letters, and sometimes the new one. Just because fuck you, I guess. Like how Beijing used to be Peking. Anyway Kaohsiung is pronounced "Gow-shung". Didn't expect that, did you?

I am the lamest Jedi ever

I'd never heard of this place either until I got here. I figured I'd also try out the Taiwan High Speed Rail system. I was told by my coworkers its too expensive. It's about $50 US and 1.5 hours to get to the other end of the godamn country ya'll. That's pretty awesome in my book. Compare that to probably $35 and 5-6 hours for the slow train. I think I'll take option A, thank you. Also Kaohsiung is south of the Tropic of Cancer, which I think is the furthest south I've been. And god, the weather here sucks. Constant rain, hot, humid.

I'll save the sights for the next blog post the following day or so. Overall my impression of the city is that it's friendlier than Taipei, and they like their space. It's more sprawling, and they have benches and trash cans on every street corner. Oh my god Taipei! Benches and public trash cans! What a novel idea. I can't believe the city hasn't exploded yet.








In general things seem more utilitarian here. Whereas Taipei's subway has fancy LCDs, train progress indicators, all that fancy stuff, Kaohsiung has a paper map stuck on the wall. All the stations have a code number, R1-R# for the red line, and O1-O# for the orange line. Also they're named the orange and red lines, not the "Tamsui line" or "North Dakota line". Simple. It works. Even the stations are very spartan, with few adverts or lights for that matter. They're not in an open plan like Taipei. The two directions for one line may not even be across from each other. It's a maze of corridors with no glass, that randomly has some doors that open and a train's there. If there weren't signs, you'd probably never guess it. The whole place has a 70s secret base vibe to it.

Whew, I think that's enough about mass transit. In all honesty the people are more polite here and more interested in talking to foreigners than in Taipei. However, I still don't feel that Taiwan's rep for being friendly to foreigners is deserved. You guys need to smile more. All of you. I'm looking at you, baozi eating guy in the corner.

Anyway next time I'll talk about what I saw, and the friends I met from a rather unexpected place.

Well certainly this post has to be more upbeat than my last.

I've made a few dents in the "not many friends" front over the past few days. There was a post on /r/taiwan from a Canadian who was coming to visit Taipei for a few weeks, and wanted some people to hang out with. Since every Redditor I have met is totally awesome, I decided to jump at the opportunity. Ting and I had a great day hanging out around Taipei Main, seeing several things I never have before... and some I have, but that's alright. We did find a totally awesome bar I will definitely be back to. They have build your own paninis, which if that isn't a win I don't know what is. Overall we had a nice day walking around the city, and seeing as how her family is Taiwanese, I got some insight into daily life. Also, her Chinese is much better than mine. Balls.







However, I also managed to meet a girl from Texas who moved here a few years ago. Her parents are also Taiwanese, which I'm beginning to think the only reason people come here is to meet their family. We had a nice trip up to Maokong, shooting the breeze and getting to know each other. On the way back she invited me to go to a bar where she was meeting some of her friends, where a salsa/rock band was playing. What a strange, but fun night indeed. This bar had kids riding around on razor skooters amongst the drunk crowd. However, they also had German beer. The singer, I swear to god, was the reincarnation of Mitch Hedberg. Long hair, always looking down, emulating his way of speaking, and even bearing a bit of resemblance to him. Honestly though, they played a fantastic set. I would buy their album. They came from Tainan, which I now want to visit based only on how awesome these guys were. In fact, one guy was so taken he brought his plate of spaghetti with him on the dance floor. So while everyone is rocking out, he is giving zero fucks and sitting there slurping spaghetti. If that were not enough, there was a pirate and London cab driver talking, and the lead singer of the second band (some Russian dude), gave me a shot of vodka that was unlike any vodka I'd had before. This was the real deal. Whew.

Right, so that brings us to today. As you may have noticed in the first photo I am holding a paper man. That is a Flat Stanley from my sister's coworker's son? At least, I think that's how the connection goes. Anywho, today's project was to go to the end of the blue line and climb the mountain near Nangang Convention Center. Now, I have been to many (in fact, almost all) of the MRT Stations so far. When I say they have "nothing", I mean nothing of note. Nangang is another level of "nothing". They don't even have infrastructure. To give you an idea of what I mean, there are no 7-11s. That's like saying there's no chili in Cincinnati. It just doesn't make godamn sense. It's just construction site after construction site, with light industry. The two paths on Google indicating the entrance to these mountains was now a factory and a factory being built. Defeated, I went back to the MRT and decided to climb a place I saw last time in Neihu.

I must've backtracked 4 times, following the signs before I found the entrance. You see these photos? That's the entrance to Kangle. You know who else knows about this place? Nobody. The entire time I was there, I was constantly breaking spiderwebs with my face on the way up. Part of the trail had been taken over by a farmer for his own use. The parts left of it that existed were covered with slippery flat leaves, and the rocks with moss. I fell several times trying to get up this thing, and it was so slick it was damn near impossible. But I prevailed, and got a few nice shots on the way.











And that's about it. I finally finished the last of my Chinese lessons on the train back home. Now I just need to brush up on the characters, and I am sans any sort of Chinese curriculum. I have a few takeout menus, my goal is to eventually learn every character on them.