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Thursday, January 02, 2003
Happy New Year, everybody! I can't believe is already 2003..I'm still stuck in the mindset of it having just turned 2000. Remember the hype surrounding Y2K? That turned out to be a big nothing.
Anyway, I'm gonna be posting these trip updates in smaller-sized installments because there's too much randomness to describe all at once, and I'm sure you'll be pretty bored by the time you finish reading each entry.
Today, I'll be talking about the pre-Japan stuff. The first night we were here, we attended a church Christmas banquet where they served traditional Taiwanese dishes. Decent and very filling meal. Despite being full, we still went to the night market afterwards because that's what you do in Taiwan. Walking around, my brother was quick to notice the knock-off sports merchandise ("Aboids" as opposed to "Adidas"..funnily, the word "aboids" printed in that font actually does bear resemblance to "adidas"). I played this game where you shoot balloons with a plastic BB-gun to win prizes. We ended up playing enough times to win this big Snoopy-like replica (he looks exactly like the real thing except that he's blue instead of black, and his shirt says, "Happy Dog").
The next day is when we went to do the whole photo album thing I already described. Side note: we already picked the poses we liked for the album. They turned out pretty good (although still "fake" looking).
The following day, my aunt took us (my bro, sis, and myself) to their country club of sorts. It's in this really tall building in Kaohsiung on the 38th floor. We exercised, swam, and sorta went to the spa there. While at the gym, the trainer woman (a short, sorta buff woman) "taught" me how to use a treadmill in Chinese (I kept nodding because I didn't understand about 1/3 of what she was saying and besides, I know how to use a treadmill..in fact, the treadmill programs were in English, so I could probably explain better to her all of its functions). After taking a wonderfully long and powerful shower, we waited to have dinner with my other uncle/aunt (my dad's older brother).
We ate at this fancy restaurant at the hotel where they had all of these Christmas-y decorations strewn about including..*tada* party hats and party blower thingies at the table. This would be the second night I had some form of steak and lobster for dinner. One of the waiter guys was wearing a sweatshirt that said, "San Diego" on it. When asked if he was from there or had been there, he seemed to have no clue where (or for that matter, what) "San Diego" even was. I figure he was just wearing it because it was the only red thing he had and he needed it to match the festive environment of the restaurant. I found it funny that another person at the restaurant was named, "Peter Lai" (that's my brother's name). We joked that that would be him in the future..
OK, I'm gonna stop for now since this entry's already long enough. Stay tuned for the Taipei Tale: Part I.
9:08 AM Albert
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..a life in DUO