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.