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It wasn’t till last night did I realize that it was Super Bowl Sunday. SO told me the teams that were playing and I was totally baffled. Who are these people?? What happened to the Steelers, or the the Patriots? New Orleans has a team?
Out of the past dozen years I’ve been in the States, men were failing to explain the rules of football to me. I’d never thought Yufi would be the one who finally made me understand what 2nd & 8 means. So for the first time ever, I was watching football with some sort of clarity… and it’s so boring! Before, in my mind, there were these magical objectives the players were trying to meet. Now, it’s just 4 chances to get the ball past 10 yards (or 5 yards or 15 yards). That’s as exciting as watching traffic during rush hour.

This morning, I pushed two feet of snow off of my car. Then I helped Cameron to push two feet of snow off of his car. Then I drove all the way to Rockville to pick up Sid because even if he was able to push two feet of snow off of his car, he wouldn’t be able to plow out of his subdivision.
I’m worried about Kippy. When I called his home this morning, it seemed like he was out of power. Plus he has that half a mile sloping driveway that’s impossible to shovel out. I wonder if he’ll be at work tomorrow. More importantly, I wonder if I should bring the trunk full of food to work tomorrow… I think half of the people won’t be able to make it.

About snow (8AM)
I woke up this morning thinking that I’ll probably just stay inside all day. Then I saw that there’s about two feet of snow blocking my outward swinging door, the shovel located inconveniently out of reach… Now I really want to go somewhere.

About what I did inside (11AM)
After 3 years, I finally realized why my undergrad diploma frame looks different from my masters diploma frame: it’s missing the inner mat. So I called up M-Den and told them to mail me that piece of cardboard. They told me that 3 years is definitely passed their 90-day return policy, but they’ll think about it and get back to me next week.

About more snow (3PM)
Half way through writing my household inventory, I fancied going downtown. Peaking from the door earlier, I thought my landlady already shoveled me a way out.
Nope… as it turned out, she shoveled half way, leaving about 20 feet between me and my car… I’m going back inside to turn on all the lights and faucets…

About more stuff I did inside (5PM)
It took a few hours, but I completed a list of all my clothes, down to last pair of underwear and single sock. Here are a few things I learned:

• I own 86 pieces of clothing, counting only shirts, sweaters, pants/skirts, dresses, and jackets. This is after stashing around 30 items into the Goodwill pile.
• Out of which, only 14 pieces I wore over 10 times but 15 pieces I never wore.
• If I spent what I think is the estimated cost for each item, the wardrobe cost around $4,000. Which isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would.

14 hours in the office… it’s good to be back.

Just got back… fighting jetlag.

After 3, 4 days of bitching and moaning, I’m still to drive myself back from Rockville. Cameron was on his way to pick up my car from Sid’s when I gave him a call. He told me how late he’s staying at work and how Sid’s been ordered bed rest by the doctor, but they’re still going according to plan: which is for Cameron to drive to Rockville (probably with Yufi) to pick up my car tonight and then for Sid to pick me up from Baltimore tomorow, drop me off at Rockville, then for Cameron (and probably Mo) to drive me back to Frederick before Cameron goes back to Leesburg to spend the night…
How did it get so complicated!?!? I told him to forget it. I can drive myself from Rockville, even though I’ll probably fall asleep driving.
If I asked someone else to do me this solid, it’d be as simple as… well, as dropping me off and picking me up from the bus stop would be for any other group of friends.

I brought back a trunk full of food. Mom said that I’m getting ready to feed an army, but our group has grown so much and I don’t think there’ll be enough for everyone. Food includes, two boxes of Chinese pastries and one box of fruit cakes from Chia Te, one box of Japanese baked goods from Ellis, three bags of candy, three boxes of pineapple cakes from two different vendors, five boxes of chocolates, and finally two more boxes of something-or-another from Tokyo airport. Let’s see… what did I get myself? Nothing! Diet starts now! I have no idea how much weight I gained in the past 2 weeks, but Dad said that he gained 5 lbs just by having dinner with us every night.

Cameron’s been telling me all the exciting things I missed at work. One day everyone stayed till midnight to get a package out, once he had to literally watch work get done for half a day, one of the packages was issued without signatures, and one of the reviewers is leaving without replacement.
Wow, such things to look forward to.

Now days are just tying together like one string of errands after another.

Both Dad and Kuan laughed when I talked about going to the comic bookstore. I feel like a complete dork. We’ve been trying to find a closer store but we can’t seem to get away from JB, the same shop we’ve been going to since high school.
I was a little worried that it’ll be closed. Many of the store fronts changed, even some buildings were removed. But JB was still there, and so was the guy who fixes walkmen. Seriously, how does this trait making a living anymore?

Met up with Kuan for lunch. She’s as skinny as ever. She’s doing real well, with the new apartment, new job, and relatively new bf.

Finally found a place to alter my skirt. It turned out that there’s an alteration room in every mall. I think I’m going to get that Brooks Brother suit and bring it over. I hesitated when Jennifer and I were shopping in 101, since the waistline seems to be made for more matronly women…

I stand by what I said, that’s it’s impossible to get a complete dental care anymore.
Went to see my dentist in Taiwan to do all the dental work my American dentist denies me of. She told me that she can’t help me with the mouth guard since it’ll take more than a week and Chinese New Year is coming so she can’t put in a rush order, but she agreed to take care of a few other things inside my mouth. When the drilling started, I realized that she was working on a different tooth than what I was expecting…
Dad laughed when I told him the story and asked me why I didn’t say something. Well, mainly because it was too late at that point. Also, I just assumed that she knew best in terms of what needed to be done.

Auntie and Alison took us to Xinbeitou (新北頭) for hot spring this evening. MRT has a specific metro line going to Xinbeitou. It has only one stop and the cars are painted with happy people bathing. (Side note on the MRT: I love how the benches in the station are made of marble. Not just a thin layer of decorative marble, but solid 5′ x 1′ x 1′ rocks with the seat side blasted smooth and rough field stone texture surrounding.)
As soon as you walk out of the station, you can smell the sulfur in the air. We took an uphill walk on a cobblestone path lined with square lanterns, which also leads to the hot spring museum and one of the most popular open air tubs. The place we went was a hotel that also provides private rooms for soaking.
Here’s a picture of the hot spring museum:

Went to Taipei 101 today.

Mother’s side family had a gathering. I wanted to take a few shots of whatever we had in the cupboard before going (whiskey, bullets, whatever that was handy). I haven’t seen some of these people for over 10 years.
BB started his own computer business with his girlfriend. The two of them travel a lot and told us about their trips to Israel, Iran, Syria, and Egypt. Carol just came back from 5 years in Tokyo and is now working for Cannon as their product manager. Carol’s dad just retired, and is not interested in volunteering work. Jennifer and I are going with Alison and her mom to soak in hot spring on Saturday. Now that I got all my cousins’ contact information, I can write all the drunk emails I can manage (like the ones I sent Debbie before she stopped speaking to me, again).

Spent the past three days in the eastern part of Taiwan, close to both the mountains and the ocean.
Mom put together an itinerary and hired a driver for the entire trip. The driver’s about a year older than me and was incredibly patronizing. Luckily Mom’s in high need of validation these days, so there’s a weird sort of harmonious mood while we were on the road.
We took around 300 photos and it’s going to take me forever to properly label everything. Here’s a quick description of all the locations:

Right off the train, we went to Taroko National Park, one of the most popular destination in Taiwan.
Here’s the Shakadang Trail inside the mountain, we got to hike about 15 minutes of it:

A view of the river from the trail. All blue:

Next we went to 九曲洞. Hardhats required due to falling rocks:

Lastly we climbed to the top of 長春祠. The photo shows the base temple, with two more temples (380 stone steps tall, I cannot find a metric measurement):

Our home stay place owns pigs. These are pet pigs and we’ve actually seen people walking one in the park:

Here are some of the coastal pictures we took on the second and third days:

And here are a few of my favorite valley pictures:

I went to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial this morning, one of my favorite places for long walks, and found this in the gift shop:

Totally awesome!! This is CKS if you didn’t know.

I made an appointment with Leo, my stylist for the past 10 years. Our conversation went something like this:

Leo: What did you have in mind?
Me: Layers on the sides, trim the split ends, and no thinning.
Leo: I think we should perm it.
Me: …
Leo: Trust me, it’ll look great. But we’ll definitely have to thin it out afterward.

That’s how I ended up looking like this:

Leo always has a few kids working for him. I started chatting up one of them. He told me his name’s Ice and that he’s hoping to work for Leo till he becomes a stylist himself. A klutz if I ever seen one, but great with scalp massages.

There are things that takes getting used to. For example, nothing goes into the toilet, except for the very obvious, not even toilet paper. Also there are about five potential receptacles for each piece of garbage. Then there are things where adjustments take no time, like having a dozen shop clerks lined up at the door just to greet you or being served by restaurant owners and receiving complementary food and drinks.

It’s been rainy so we decided to get shopping out of the way. I still need a hair cut and, once my calf muscles feel less sore, go to tui na again.
Kuan and I are meeting up next Saturday, which seems like a long time from now considering we’ve been planning this meeting for a few months.
We’re leaving for the island trip on Monday. Mom planned the whole trip and I’m feeling a bit apprehensive about it. She’s been downloading hypnosis therapy onto my iPod… I’ve honestly resisted this for a long time, but once I tried it out, I found that I actually like being told what to do on a subconscious level.