They look like this
That was Thursday I believe, on Friday I still had a massive headache so my aunt mixed some lemon flavored cold-flur medicine. I drank it but it didn't really help too much, she then gave me some strange icy-hot gel that surprisingly worked. I think it's some sort of anesthetic. Since my cousin Anita or Rex's sister arrived home from Japan, they didn't have room in their house so I crashed my eldest aunt's house in Keelung, which is my dad's hometown. At night when I recovered, she brought me and my little cousins or rather they were my cousin's kids to the "Night Market." I'm not sure what to call them but I feel like cousin's was more appropriate. They called me uncle though because I guess we're not in the same generation. But we're closer by age, the girl is 18 and the boy is about 15. My dad had me when he was kind of old so all of my cousins are at least 10 years older than me. The really weird thing is that I don't really know their names, although when I asked, the girl said her name was "Gladis" but I don't call her that, nor do I really call her by name. I just sort of tap her on the shoulder and vice versa. My name is more easier to remember for some reason so everyone here calls me "Kimbo" since I don't really have a chinese name.
Heres a pic of Gladis, who is my eldest aunt's daughter's daughter, and then on the right is my eldest aunt's youngest son's daughter, name yet unknown. I noticed this. We don't really know each other's names, just our relation to each other. For instance I call my aunt, "Big aunt." I don't know her name personally.
xcbvxcb
We went to the "Night Market" on Friday night and it's quite an event! It was very very crowded there. I can even say that it's worst than Times Square on a busy day! There all sorts of street vendors everywhere. They sold lots of strange food, anywhere from stuff like pig's liver, intestines, goose livers, and animals parts not sure. They also had food that I really don't know how to translate. Basically I just saw lots of veggies and soups. It probably looks and smells delicious but it is completely inedible for me. They sold juices of all sorts of fruits. They had games for sale, they had cell phones for sale. Man it was everything! Except maybe computers, haha. But we'll get to that later.
Heres a pic of the Night Market
Heres a shot of more stores on the side. Also notice the motorcycles or mopeds.
Well I didn't really eat much there since everything was so weird to me. I'm sure if I could smell I might be a little more adventerous. But I didn't take any chances that night. After the Night Market we went to the Arcades. I looked around for some familiar games and well I stumbled upon Soul Calibur II. I love this game! I challenged my little cousin, the boy, which I still haven't gotten his name yet to Soul Calibur II. He accepted and then we fought. At first we would beat each other back and forth but after I chose my prime character, Cervantes. I completed dominated. I would win 4 times in a row. He would eventually gave up and started playing other games while I continued my game beating the computer. Eventually some random kid challenged me. After a quick 2 minutes, he was defeated. He put in some more money for a rematch, again he was defeated! Hahaha! At this point he walks away from the machine. I play the computer a bit, and win at least 4 matches until yet another person challenged me. He got owned. But on the rematch he finally overthrew me by cheesing out and ringing me out. No problem, I want to use up these tokens anyway. So I rematched him and observed his patterns, caught on, changed my strategy and countered him hardcore. He rematched me but his strategy hasn't changed much so I owned him 3 times in a row. I was having a bit of a power trip, until finally some kid came by. Looked at me and my screen for a bit, I guess he scouted my fighting patterns and then challenged me. This kid ripped me a new one. He would guard impact my attacks which means he would guard at the perfect moment when I swung which would cause me to freeze for a second and then toss me across the screen, over and over again. This kid is serious. So I noticed he had a defensive strategy. I used this over him by attacking less and tossing him whenever I could. This partially worked but he had some sick counters and really unpredictable attacks when we got close. He knew my tricks and I couldn't pull any fast ones. After kicking my ass 2 times in a row I rematched him again and finally pull a win. He rematches me again but then this time he owned me 7 times in a row and I ran out of coins. Good game.
Heres a shot of us going into the Arcade. I apologize for the bluriness. I was in constant motion.
After the Arcade we went home. My aunt lives on the mountain which is really cool, this gave me the opportunity to take some nice looking shots! At home, I took some pictures.
This is my setup, its just like home, lolz
The following day nothing really happened. We just kind of relaxed at home. But on the day after we went to Taipei from Keelung. We met up with Rex there and here are some photos I took on the way there.
We arrive at Taipei and look what pops up!
A shot of the streets of Taipei, not quite menacing, eh? But very nice looking.
Mopeds are very common in Taiwan. I thought this was a lot in Taipei but however as I got to the other cities they became swarms of motorcyclists.
Starbucks is everywhere
Another shot of Taipei
More motorcycles!
Our destination, Taipei 101
But first, the Electronics Convention. Since I lost my Ipod on the plane I snagged a new Ipod Video 60gb at the show for only $420. Roughly 40-60 bucks cheaper than the US.
More shots of the buildings around the Taipei 101
Inside the Convention center
Taipei 101
....one of the tallest buildings in the world.
Wikipedia - TAIPEI 101
I took some shots right below the 101, 101 stands for the number of floors it has. Although the observation deck was at floor 89...
Shot from below
The interior, initial lobby
Fast forward, we get an elevator that takes us to a floor that we have to pay tickets to take yet another elevator to take us to the observation deck. The ticket costed about $350 Taibee(taiwan dollars). Divide that by 32.8 and you get the actual value in US dollars. So the ride up costed about 10 bucks.
And then finally the moment you've all been waiting for. It's absolutely breathtaking.
Sim City!
Nice shot of me and Taipei behind me
I took lots of shots of the city but I wanted to take a shot of the city and a bit of the Taipei 101 building so that you know that we're really up here.
Inside the Taipei 101 mall
Top view of the mall
Another shot
Last shot of inside the mall, we were trying to get the hell out of here
The area is filled with lots of department stores and malls, among one of them is a place called "New York, New York." The funny thing was there was nothing about it that anything similar to home. Anyway heres a shot of the statue of liberty outside.
The front side view of New York, New York.
They don't have Dunkin Donuts there but what they do have is a knock off from the Japanese, Mister Donut. It's also very popular here. Quite tastey too.
Inside NY, NY. I thought this brand was kind of funny.
Going down into the cafeteria area in search of food.
Decorative lighting at the cook's station.
I finally found some "Engrish." For those of you who are no familiar with the term. In Asia, romanized text is sort of exotic to asians. Sort of like how we would put chinese characters or japanese characters on tattoos. However the grammar and spelling is usually horribly inaccurate and you get really funny text on ads or even public signs. You can check this website that is completed dedicated on Engrish. www.Engrish.com
Here we have Engrish, "I had to strike the petals, so tenderly." I was then quickly told that I canot take pictures there as it sort of a poschy, uptight store reminiscent of Soho in New York. But I got the shot, haha!
We're no longer in New York, New York anymore. We're now in ESlite. At first it was "Elite" but no it was E S Lite. It's sort of a massive bookstore chain, picture Virgin Megastore but Barnes & Nobles style. I didnt know if I wasn't supposed to take pictures there so I took some ninja-pictures (captured as stealthily as possible)
More pics inside the bookstore
I'm looking for really interesting shots. I began to experiment with placing my camera on objects to give you a sort of close-up, perspective and 3/4 view. It came out pretty good except I got some bluriness. By the end of the trip I should be pretty good at taking pictures, haha!
Finding our way out of the E S Lite bookstore
We just missed the street light that has a really long delay and we sit and wait for about 10 minutes. I use this photographic opportunity to take a picture of Rex, my aunt and my cousin's son, who's a gamer, not very social which I very familiar with. Btw, their street light has a timer on it so you know how much time you have left to cross the street. I saw this in San Francisco so we might see this soon. Rex has a funny hairstyle.
We went home to Keelung after this
END BLOG!