My Saturday (3/31)

I am going to write about my trip with French people. I know American and French people hate each other, which I find fairly entertaining. So, if you feel it bothers you too much just stop reading.

As I arrived at the Grand Forward Hotel, fairly early on Saturday morning, Bruno was outside the hotel waiting for me. He then invited me to have breakfast with him and his secretary. I decided eating another breakfast that morning wouldn't hurt. Soon after, Jimmy arrived and we hit the road. Our first destination was the National Palace Museum. Jimmy asked me to buy tickets first while he parked the car. It's my fourth time being there and the place changed a lot since my last visit. Not totally clear on where to go I mistakenly lead them to the wrong entrance.

The place is so enormous; we were only able to check out the ceramic, bronze and jade carvings. I was really impressed that my boss, Jimmy, looked at the artifacts in such detail. At the beginning I really enjoyed looking at all the different carvings, but soon I felt sleepy and lost interest. Although, it's good to know Bruno and his secretary, Eve, loved the show. At 2 pm we were still walking and talking in a nearby garden. Although the garden was quite beautiful, my stomach had been growling since one o'clock and we still haven't eaten lunch.

The trip highlight of the day was the restaurant in a hotel that Jimmy took us to for lunch! The hotel is called 椿園 chun yuan , located in 士林 Shi Lin area. Everyone was captivated by the restaurant's dream-like scenery. The restaurant was located in a lush forest at the base of YangMing Mountain. We ate too much and laughed too much. After lunch we walked up to Chun Yuan's tea house where we enjoyed afternoon tea. There, we took some pictures with some very funny people that happened to be dressed up like cartoon characters. We also talked about ghosts and some silly aspects of the Japanese lifestyle.

The above is already good enough for my day.

After tea, we went to enjoy Chun Yuan's hot springs. This was my first time in a hot springs with foreign women. Their hot springs looked similar to a swimming pools, the only difference was that everyone was naked. Even when women changed pools they walked in the open completely naked. I actually felt very comfortable and happy to have this new experience.

Story continued...
We then drove to the Grand Hotel to take a quick look inside. I accompanied Bruno and Eve to the downstairs of Grand Formosa Regent Taipei (晶華酒店) to find a good goodbye present for Eve, where the cheapest teapot costs NT$800. They felt NT$800.- for a teapot was too expensive, so we didn't take it. We then went to a Mazu temple in BanQiao that's the only thing left in their mind to do before leaving Taiwan. Afterwards, we went to 板橋後站 BanQiaoHou Zhan in search of a teapot. At BanQiao we found a nice looking teapot for only $140. In addition to finding the teapot, I also was able to get Bruno's watch fixed. After seeing The National Palace, eating lunch in a beautiful forest and searching for teapots in traditional markets we finished our amazing day in front of the Grand Forward Hotel and I showed them my cool motorcycle that they don't have. I was so glad that our plan came together and that everybody was happy.

The end!

spring party, Mar. 17-18, 2007

I want to write a diary entry and some stuff about the weekend. Maybe it's a bit long-winded.

I took my dad, mom, sister and her boyfriend to our company outing, which is enough for an entire table. We woke up fairly early on Saturday to be able to arrive at the Grand Forward Hotel at 7:30AM. Actually we left so early because my dad is such an impatient person for anything and everything.

First up, let me tell you about the tour guy on the bus (team leader from 東南 travel agent). As we hit the road, she began to tell us the story of why Taiwan is called Taiwan. Her low-raspy voice made me sleepy. She was very different from the stereotypical tourguide.

Our first destination was 月眉 (Yamay) in Taichung County, which is an amusement park. We rode a few of rides. My mom and dad are not able to ride very high excitement rides, so we didn't stay there too long. The most amazing thing we saw was a circus show. I especially enjoyed watching and was even shocked at times how the rings of different sizes and different colors seemed to fly effortlessly around the dark room. I was thinking about how it was similar to the ambiance of playing lazer-tag. I am sure I would definitely like it too.

After Yamay Discovery World, we headed for the hotel "馬武督" to check in and rest for a while. Later, we had the spring party dinner with a drawing for prizes. The party was held by our sister company "亦益" and they hired a band, rather than inviting people to sing on stage. The lead singer was really cool and sang some popular songs, including Japanese songs, like "you are everything" that made many people, especially the Japanese dance like crazy. Near the end of the party, our agent forced me to dance in front of the stage. It was fairly fun then.

So, what kind of prizes did I draw? At the first round, I was quite disappointed to only get a 5,000 prize- only at very beginning second draw since the highest prize is $50,000. But the boss announced there was another round for total of $600,000-. This time I drew the lowest prize of 10,000-. So, the total is $15,000- that's higher than the lowest prizes of $13,000.- I dressed up and wore make-up, but this seemed not work too much. I was happy that my sister's boyfriend stayed with me until the end of the party and helped me to take pictures. It's nice that someone stayed with me for an entire party.

The next day on Sunday, we went to 綠世界 (Green World) , where you can discover the diversity of biological species. The place is enormous and so we just took a look at the birds garden. The most shocking thing I saw was the bird show. It might be fun for little kids to see them do tricks, but to me it looked so cruel, as I know those birds' wings were being cut for the sake of the show.

I almost forgot to say things on Sunday morning! Jimmy, Rolly, Henderson, Larry, Jerry, Jacket and me played basketball there and they nearly forgot I am a girl!!! It's a lot of fun!

The end!

my dinner (Mar. 9, 2007)

I probably cannot sleep because of the coffee I drank tonight. Let me tell you about my dinner story from tonight to practice some English.

It’s a cold night and I decided to head to English class right after getting off of work. After arriving at the first QK coffee shop, I discovered that it’s still early and I tried to look around the nearby stores to find a decent place for dinner. First, I saw a large billboard about rice noodles that led me to its restaurant. Then, I saw their rice noodle sitting in an enormous bucket outside the restaurant, which looked really disgusting and I could not imagine what stuff was added by passby-ers. So, I decided to check out another store that sold porridge. When my oyster porridge was served to me, I wondered what the hell I had ordered. Why is there such a small amount of porridge in a huge bowl? It also tasted like shit. I was really hungry, so I ate as much as I could stand before my stomach started to reject it.

A while after returning home, I was still hungry. I was very happy to find some instant noodles. Although I had never eaten them before, they looked really good. I soon discovered they also tasted horrible. I then decided to cook myself. I got rice and eggs, started to prepare my perfect meal. Because I was so hungry, I forgot to add garlic or onions first! Damn!!! I had already mixed up the eggs and rice. Anyway, in the end I still made a perfect fried rice dish!!! My fried rice is so awesome!

The end!

updates ~ first translatoin paid job, health, year-end party ...blah blah blah

I don't write my things in English often cuz my English sucks. You can see people usually blogging by their mother tongue, but I find it's cool to switch from Mandarin to English sometimes. Okay, here you go more updates. Cannot detail all of them then.

I spent about 8 hours last Sunday to help my friend translate a company intro. and my friend gave me 2,000 for it. Since I thought it would be rather easy after the first glance, I didn't charge them too much. But, then I knew there are so many specialized terms I don't know. Nice try anyway.

About my health problem, it's funny I just knew that I have to be careful about talk about “that women's monthly problem” with Americans because usually they don't ever talk about it with people that aren't their wife or mother... So, if there is any American guys check out this blog by chance, they have to stop reading cuz this bothers them too much. I cannot find anyone anyway. Not sure when the pain started.. probably when I was so young at high school. I had to suffer from the pain and did nothing for at least 2 days every month. Maybe I just got used to suffer from the pain and being lazy to really solve it... I am not sure about the pain level everytime since most of them are all of severe pains. The problem made me become moody, emotional to people around me, and ruin so many beautiful days.

This moring, I went to see doctor for the day 6 and realised I could simply cure my pain by having a tablet a few times for one to three days per month and this won't have too much side effect or influences on my liver. He seems to be a trustful doctor then, so I will follow what he said next month. After that, I went straightly to our year-end party in 吼嗨啞湯泉啤酒會館 about one hour late but it's still fun!!!.. We sang as in KTV and drank beer crazily like last time of new year countdown. I was flushed with only 5 cups of beer. Is this something to do with my liver? or my heart? Well, I know I love drinking alcohol sometimes!!!

After the party, I still got lots of energy and planned to take my aerobics class. But, I didn't go. Instead, I stayed at home watching Australia open (tennis). Really wish I were a tough guy and being healthy all the time b/c I really like to sweat a lot and do sports.

宜蘭的梵梵溫泉...(2006跨年)

今年的跨年, 我跟雙鍵化工一些同事去宜蘭玩, 抵達 隨園民宿 後, 大伙即輕裝,穿涼鞋前往 梵梵溫泉, 途中要經過小溪, 所以要涉溪. 我其實一點都沒有驚慌的感覺, 走的相當充容, 因為之前已經有溯溪經驗了, 相對於其他的女生, 我覺得自己是不是太強悍了, 過去的爬山經驗讓我感覺一點都不累, 也不需要別人照顧... 這樣會不會不像女生呀? 因為我的個兒小, 不管是男女同事都會一致的認為要拉我一把, 所以剛開始時為了要配合其它人的期待, 我也只好當個弱女子了...

抵達時在那兒有許多人已經在露營了...因為我們也不過是走了一小小段路ㄚ!!! 雖然跟我理想中的露營地方有一段距離, 想想這應該算是大部分的人, 至少是我們公司的人所期待的地方了...

下面是大家一起泡熱湯的地方, 蠻舒服的ㄡ~~~雖然我還是不太習慣泡這種熱熱的溫泉.






























回到民宿後大家 玩骰子樂, 吃東西, 玩牌, 倒數邁入2007.... 還打了不少電話給其他同事, 老闆們拜年!!! Hmmm..今年的跨年比較瘋狂一點!! 看看 flicker 有更多照片ㄡ!

雙鍵化工-KTV 之夜, 12/29/2006

今天是我第一次參加公司的KTV, 想不到玩的這麼開心. 地點在板橋的錢櫃KTV.
開始時我跟Janice先到場, Janice 一下子批哩啪啦的就點了好多首歌,
後來大家陸續來了, 有Cindy, Ruby, 林小姐, 蘇博士, 雅惠, 美惠跟兩個小孩, Apple, Wanda, Henderson..
氣氛到後來愈來愈High, 尤其是唱伍佰的 " 墓仔埔也趕去"時 每個人都亂跳起舞了... Wanda 的那首"我愛台妹" 也唱的超炫!!雖然是聳聳的老歌啦!! 大家還玩了一些彩帶拳, 罰喝啤酒...
忘了帶照相機了, 所以只用手機拍, 希望很快有照片可以 post 上來 :)

photo for Photography Exhibition, River Bar Jhongli (Zhongli)

下面是 我, MJB, 黃嘉千, 還有那個止口渴又不傷胃的 Chris 一起合照 :)