What's next?

So now that I'm back from Asia, what's next on the itinerary? Without going into too much detail, here's a very tentative outline of what I'm planning for the rest of the year:

Summer - Fix up my house, help Dad clean up his house, do some whitewater rafting and camping. I am still thinking of going to South America (Brazil, Argentina, and Chile), but I have not made any arrangements yet, so maybe I'll give myself until the end of July to book this trip.

September - Road trip to Lake Louise in Canada.

October - Possible cruise to Mexico. Italy and Western Europe.

November - India, to visit my sister who will be there for work.

December - Skiing in Tahoe and/or Colorado.

January - Move to Taipei and learn Chinese.

Photos at last!

Here is a bit of the old (crowded market street in the Midlands, left) and a bit of the new (Victoria Harbor and downtown skyline, right) in Hong Kong.

Macau's colonial past lives on in a preserved ruins of St. Paul's Church (left), and in the decorative cobblestone paving at Senado Square (right).

Here's a small slice of Las Vegas on the tiny island nation of Macau. You'll see a lot of familiar names, like the Sands and Wynn.

The splendor of natural limestone rock formations in Yangshuo (left), and the beauty of manmade gardens in Suzhou (right).

Suzhou's Grand Canal with bright red lanterns at night. This canal was an important trade route, and extended all the way to Beijing.

Adaptive reuse at Shin Tien Di took an existing lilong neighborhood and turned it into a lively shopping and commercial district (left). Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, government building, and performing arts center in Shanghai (right).

Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, with over 300 steps to get to the top.

Terra Cotta soldier (left), and Jean and Erin being nabbed by modern soldiers (right) in Xi'an.

The Temple of Heaven (left) where the emporor made sacrificial offerings, and a historic hutong or courtyard house (right) near Beijing's Forbidden City.

Redevelopment of Shinyi Road in Taipei (left), with Taipei 101 towering in the background. Food stalls at a busy night market in Taipei (right).

Gotta love YouTube!

Click on the links under "Pieces of Asia" for some moving pictures packed with fun and hilarity.

I brought the heat back from Taipei

So remember my post entitled "Melting" where I lamented on the heat and humidity in Taipei? I came back Tuesday afternoon and was greeted by temperature in the 70's in San Francisco, but it got to the 80's by the time we reached the South Bay, and it was in the low 90's yesterday. Since the weather was temperate and cool all the days prior to my arrival, my brother claims that I must have brought this heat wave back with me to the U.S. It is in the high 80's today, but at least it is a dry heat, and for that I am thankful.

In actuality, it was scorching hot my first week in Taipei, and then it cooled down the second week because of the rains. Rain or shine, it was very humid, so humid that paper gets soft and a bit moist from absorbing moisture in the air - not enough to wring out drops of water, but you can definitely feel a dampness, like when you pull out a dollar bill after it's been through the washing machine. I've been taking dry paper for granted all these years.

Home Sweet Home

My Dad accompanied me to the airport early this morning, and stayed behind to watch as I went through immigration and we waved goodbye through the plexiglass barrier. From Taipei, I flew to Hong Kong for a transfer, and I had about 4 hours to kill before being able to board my flight to San Francisco. For those of you who have not been to the airport in Hong Kong, it is huge, and I mean GINORMOUS (adjective, meaning overly large; taken from the words "gigantic" and "enormous" to form "ginormous"). The shiny glass, cavernous terminals stretch as far as the eye can see. I'm sitting in the terminal listening to some tunes and catching up on my journal, when I hear a distinct, familiar voice. I look up and it is my Aunt Haruko and Uncle from Taipei who have come to Hong Kong to visit their daughter, my cousin whom I met up with earlier in my trip. Given that it was such a large airport, it was a fortuitous coincidence that we happened to be at this precise location at the same time, for neither of us had any prior knowledge that the other would be traveling today.

I arrived at my house in Santa Clara at approximately 4 p.m. PST the same day. I've been in transit for almost 24 hours, with approximately 14 hours spent in the air, 7 hours in various airports, and the remainder getting to and from the airports. Thanks to the International Dateline, I was able to relive the same hours of the same day twice.

I apologize for not posting photos of the trip on here. I am downloading my pictures right now and will start posting some photos as soon as they are processed. I'm guessing I have close to 2,000 photos and video clips from the trip.

Rain and my childhood home

It's still raining. Looking back at the blog, I realize it's been raining since Monday, and the forecast predicts more rain through the weekend and all of next week. Taipei is soaked, and some parts in the northern portion of the city are flooded. I'd better get started on the ark.

My Dad was telling me that a couple of years ago, it rained so much that it flooded the subway, and the city spent a lot of money pumping out the water and buying new electronic equipment, not to mention having to close down the entire subway system. They've since learned their lesson and installed barriers so that the flooding could be contained. Live and learn.

There is plenty of construction going on along Shinyi Road, where they are putting in a new subway line and many of the 3 to 5-story low-rises are being redeveloped with 12 to 20-story mid-rises. Taipei 101, the world's tallest building (at least until the Burj Dubai is completed in 2008) with the highest finished floor, is also on Shinyi Road. It's neat looking down the street and seeing all the construction cranes and scaffolding, and the Taipei 101 way on the other end with it's needlepoint antenna lit at the top.

Check out Taipei 101 at http://www.taipei-101.com.tw/index_en.htm

Check out how other buildings around the world rank http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001338.html

Shinyi Road is where I spent my first three years, and this afternoon I visited the building where we used to live, the sidewalks where I used to roam and meet and greet the neighbors every morning, the park where I used to play, and the back alley where there used to be a beef noodle stand. The neighbors are all old now, but Dad still remembers them and all the stores that used to be nearby. We met some of the old residents recently, and some of them still remember me as a child. I was too young and only remember the home appliances store next door, the stamp/chop-maker a few doors down, the post office in the next block, and the dentist that extracted one or two of my baby teeth. I'm seeing the building possibly for the last time, as it is slated for demolition this coming October to make way for a new 14-story mixed-use building. I'm not sad though, it is an old building and not a particularly pretty one at that, and should be redeveloped to realize its full potential.

Boutique Palace

It has been raining cats and dogs since last night, and there's no sign of it letting up. Then again, weather here is a bit unpredictable as I've noticed that it will rain on a drop of a dime. Dad calls this the northeast rains (a Taiwanese phrase), which occurs this time of year. Oddly enough, it usually rains after intensely hot weather. In the past few days, the sky has been a bit gray and the weather is cool, and it has been raining on and off. Occassionally at night, I will hear the rain pounding hard on the roof, as loudly as if it were lead bullets coming down instead of droplets of water.

I've been pretty lazy lately and just taking it easy. Today is a working day though, I will be meeting with some architects on a project this afternoon. One of the amazing things about development in Taipei is that for residential projects, the developer will oftentimes build a "model home," which is a scaled model of one or two of the units plus a sales office, typically two to three stories tall with parking tucked under the building on the ground floor of the intended development site. I had visited one called Boutique Palace in central Taipei, and is so named because it is near Taipei's version of Rodeo Drive and is located near a string of high-end shops and international hotels. The sales office was really posh, with flat screen TVs and lounges, a huge crystal chandelier, and really shiny interior fixtures. We were greeted by no less than three people from the moment we set foot in the building. The exterior of the model home is usually very artsy and modern, and does not necessarily correspond with the style of the intended development. Boutique Palace's model home, however, went with more of a neoclassical style, while the actual permanent development will have a modern/international design.

After all the units have been sold, the developer will demolish the model home and then begin construction of the project. On average, they will spend about $600,000 to maybe up to a million dollars constructing and demolishing the model home. I think it is a bit of a waste to build and then demolish. In the US, developers will typically build a few units first, convert the garage of one of the units into a sales office or place a temporary sales trailer on the site, and then convert the unit back once all the units have been sold, so there is minimal demolition and they do not have to wait for all the units to be sold to begin construction. I suppose this model works when you have the luxury of having a lot of land, but it probably doesn't work so well for a mid- or high-rise residential development.

While Boutique Palace is a bit of a misnomer for a shiny glass building with studio lofts (hardly a palace) and maybe one or two "boutiques" on the ground floor, one thing I am thankful for is that these developers are not giving these projects cheesy Italian names and throwing in the word "villa."

Saying hello to my Mom

Dad and I took a trip to a large temple called Fo Kwan Shan in southern Taiwan near Kaoshiung, over the weekend. We took the newly completed Taiwan High Speed Rail, which can go up to nearly 200 mph. It took about 1.5 hours to get down there, and would have been 6 hours by car, which is roughly the distance from San Francisco to LA. I'm amazed that so much of the line was elevated, and got me thinking of California's own high speed rail project and how long before we see it come to fruition. I got to see a lot of the countryside filled with vegetation, fields planted with fruits and vegetables, and little villages dotted along the way. There are also temples with steep roofs with elaborate and colorful decorations, and lots of mid-rise cookie-cutter "farmhouses" with gleaming metal water tanks mounted on the gable roofs. There is no sense of aesthetics in building design, and no attempt to screen a/c units and water tanks -- in essence, these are honest plain buildings for honest hardworking people. They are different from Taipei's gleaming glass highrises.

Kaoshiung is an industrial powerhouse, but there is not much to see except this river that runs through the city with large golden lion statues. The river used to be very polluted, but there has been a lot of effort in cleaning it in recent years, and it is now transformed into a beautifully landscaped park where people recreate and watch brightly colored dragon boats, or just stroll along the top of the creekbed and admire the changing colors of the flowers and greenery. We were there in the afternoon, when the tired boatkeepers are napping and old people are lounging on the benches, but I'm told this place is packed at night.

At the foot of Fo Kwan Shan temple, there is a little village where Dad and I bought fresh lychees from local farmers who have just picked them this morning. If you have not tried lychees, you are missing out. They are small, juicy berry-like tropical fruits that are very sweet. Be careful not to swallow the black pit in the middle. The flavor is sublime, words cannot do it justice. We take the lychees and put them on two plates, offering one to Buddha, and one to my mom.

We attended an evening lecture with an overview of the Tchau Shan pilgrimage we will be doing early tomorrow morning, which is bowing in prayer after taking three steps, starting from the lower gates of the temple and going up to the main sanctuary. The whole thing takes about an hour and a half, and Dad and I wake up at 5 am to participate. It's a terrible thing for a germophobe because you're kneeling with forearms on the ground, which is composed of either asphalt, concrete, or marble, and then you get up, walk, and bow again. It is hard bowing on the uneven asphalt, especially with all the little asphalt pebbles, but concrete and marble is very level. I'm wearing capris because it is more breathable and it covers my knees, but otherwise does not provide much padding. At 5:30 am it is already warm and humid, and there is already a large group assembled ready to go on the pilgrimage. I eat a piece of hard candy in the morning to give me enough sugar to carry me through the morning. I don't mind the sweat and dirt because afterwards I give my arms a good washing and dream of taking a shower. I don't mind the discomfort of the hard ground because there are ways to keep from hurting your knees by not landing on the boney parts. I am happy to do the prayer because it will help eradicate some of my bad karma. Little old ladies do it, and for some it is their second, third, fifth, tenth time. They give you a canvas napsack with a stamp and a pin, and each time you do it you get a new different stamp and pin. I only have the one stamp and one pin, but I hope to go back and get more.