djkr and friends take on Life

tis day 3 of taiwan. well, yesterday… we did a bit of house cleaning in the morning. we are after all stay in our own home in taipei. we had lunch at home and headed off to this place called B & Q and Hola, where they sell wholesale furniture and nice stuff on the whole. they sold very zen-like plants in testtubes in Hola and other whacky furniture ideas there. we had a tea-break at this coffee house near the shops and walked back the rest of the way to shilin metro before taking a mrt back to jiantan where we live. my chinese is failing me horribly here and i am dead scared of people asking me complicated chinese questions, to which i answer: ‘shi’, even though i don’t know what in the world they are saying. damn, should have studied harder for chinese.

today, woke up earlier and went to a road side store to eat Authentic Oyster Mee Sua. And yes, it is cheaper and better then the one you get at the Shilin Night Snacks Store in lot one. elections are around the corner for the provinces of Taipei and Kaoshiung and everyday we see cute little green/blue/orange trucks with speakers driving around saying why they are the best (the candidates, not the trucks) will never get this kind of thing in sg due to the election policies set in place. got a few candidates flags and tissues with their faces on them…

did my hair; not dyed just steamed and washed, at a place near the Mee Sua road side store called Xiao Ti Hair Salon, whose owner is a guy called Jason. the service there is excellent (free drink before wash, choice of magazine or papers, nice people doing your hair etc) he even cut my hair a bit for free! definately going back there for my dye.

went to gongguan station for lunch and went to a jap restuarant azabu sabo (4th in 2 weeks) where i had some funky mushroom/crab/egg food with redbean and ice cream dessert. got new brown leather shoes for general casual wear at the streets along the national taiwan uni which i will call NTaiU.

currently… i am the taiwan home at cheng de road section 4 typing this… well… its a aircon temperature of 24 degrees here and i don’t even need to put on a coat to go out.

arrived here at about 1800 hrs yesterday, met my dad at the airport and travelled one hour to get to the taiwan home. met my brother who i have not seen in 5 months at the house as well… we had steamboat at this place called shabu shabu… a steamboat restaurant place when the steamboat is for individual rather then for a group. interested concept, akin to that of seoul garden, except that the steamboat is individual and you don’t have to go and get food… rather you order food to your table.

spent the 1 hr after that wondering around shilin night market. just went to browse around.. won’t be buying anything probably until the last few days when i seen enough and know what i want to buy. wasn’t too crowded there yesterday… perfect to walk around.

today, i will be going out to explore the suburbs of taipei..just wander around you know… just walk till i see something i like then i will grab it.. probably you can say i am pretty lucky…being able to spend 1 month overseas like that. and yeah, i guess i am.

now playing: Hero by Enrique Iglesias (if you listen carefully, its a beautiful song)

i know i not have been blogging recently. been busy at work. that’s right work. yc helped me find a temp job as a stock taker at That Card Company. The person who hired me was a Kiwi called Rochelle. Nice lady. I worked at her place from 9 – 5. What i usually did was account cards and pack them up to bring to the various stores all over orchard to restock the stores. it seems easy, but when you see 1000 cards the whole day it gets pretty mind numbing. i mean that literally. my brain went numb a couple of times. and i seemed like a production line, taking stock, pasting stickers, arranging etc. i took about 3 hrs for a medium sized stock to go. the worse part is not really preparing stock. the worst part is stock taking in the stores themselves. you just stay in the store accounting and counting cards that are there and checking them off the list. the longest i took was at times suntec (which i also had a bad run in there which i will not bother to waste my time on here), which was 6 hours! but all in all, the pay was nice for a nice 10 (tedious, mind numbing) days.

i also blew some of my pay on some (not really needed) stuff. i bought a customised bag at cineleisure for 78 dollars. put joker on the front of the bag, which i coloured black and white. will put up a visual when i get the bag. thats the discounted price by the way. also spent a total of 700 dollars on an ipod, earphones and a cover. feeling very guilty (but happy, in a guilty sense) now.

i also spent some time with the charlie section 2 guys the day we orded. had a dinner at a indonesian restaurant at clarke quay and talked through the night. also had a cute lan session where half of the people did not know how to play dota but was a pretty funny session.

on the 18 of nov, i also met up with the spds 21 guys and had dinner cum stayover at my house. it was great just to spend time reminiscing the old days. some of them stayed over as well and we played the ps2. had a great jap dinner to end the session as well. ah…money spent…. pain.

tomorrow, i head off; armed with my ipod and camera, to the island off People’s Republic of China, called Taiwan, or Republic of China. There i will spend approximately 20 days to see my dad and brother after 6 months or so. halfway through my trip, i will go to Hokkaido, Japan as well for a short 5 days. i will keep you guys updated on my travels here so stay tuned.

to taiwan/japan.

ord loh.

so long and farewell provost.

its been fun.