Showing posts with label Taipei. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taipei. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Words Cannot Express It Properly

Today was my last day of my internship at the Taipei Zoo.

I'll miss it and I will always look back upon this summer as one of my very best, with people that I would never trade away for anything in the world.

You guys were the best.

I already miss it.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Auntie Su! Auntie Su!

Bus ride to the MRT Technology Building Stop. NT$15
MRT Ride from Technology Building to meet up with Lisa then to SYS Memorial Station to try to get seats for all the people. NT$4
Waiting around for an hour at the Hang Ten for the other 12 people to show up. NT$0
All you can eat pizza and fried chicken for an hour and a half. NT$350
Looking at the photographs from the night. PRICELESS.

For everything else, there's Masterca..oh wait. That's not supposed to go there.

In all seriousness, tonight was a lot of fun. Just hanging out with people I enjoy being with and having conversations that are intellectual, nerdy, and some just plain stupid is something that I really love when a group of people get together.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Water Falls

The boy looked around at his surroundings. He appeared to be on a boat, in the middle of a large body of water.

Ludicrous, he thought to himself. How he came into this situation, he had no idea.

The boat drifted lazily along. The skies were grey and cloudy, hinting at a coming storm. The heat and humidity was unbearable, the feeling one gets when the rain is about to fall, yet refuses to.

And still the boy sat in the boat, drifting wherever the wind took him.

Stupid, he thought to himself. Where was his oar? How did he manage to strand himself out here in the middle of nowhere? Why was he all alone in an empty boat, with not even an oar to help him navigate?

A bottle floated by him.

Interesting, he thought to himself. Where did the bottle come from?

He leaned over the edge of his boat, his hands gripping the sides tightly. He was afraid to fall in after all. He couldn't remember the last time he had been in the water.

His hand grasped the handle of the bottle, a little water kissing his hand. He gasped, the water was so cold, yet it was so refreshing.

Ahh! he thought to himself. Was this bottle worth it? He weighed it in his hand, the smoothness of the glass a comfort to his sweaty palms. There was a cork in it and upon closer examination, a message in the bottle.

He pulled the cork out. With a loud pop, a piece of paper drifted out of the bottle.

01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110

He blinked once. He blinked twice. The message was unreadable, a slew of numbers that made no sense.

He flipped the paper over. On the back there was a small message written in the corner. Simply put, it said

Enjoy what time you have in the water.

The boy thought about it. He had been afraid to touch the water for a while now, instead choosing to sit in his boat. Where it was safe. Where he couldn't get wet.

But he realized, the water had changed from when he had last been in it. It wasn't the hostile waters he had known earlier. It wasn't the whirlpools which had tossed and turned and spun him in circles till he was dizzy. It wasn't geysers that had shot him into the air and had him come crashing down violently.

Instead, these waters seemed gentle. Seemed calm. Looking at the storm clouds in the horizon, he knew that these waters wouldn't last. That soon, the storm clouds would come and force him back into the boat. He knew what kind of water was good now though...so, for the time being...

He jumped in.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Oh My Goddess!




In the past two days, my sister and I have watched 20 episodes of How I Met Your Mother. For those of you who watch the show (GINGER!! :D), you know how awesome and addicting that show can be. We’ve been watching the show as a way to get over our jetlag (that’s why we spent 9-12PM watching it Friday evening), but seeing as I am up at 6AM Saturday morning, I’m thinking EPIC FAIL.

We went to Longshan Temple (or Lungshan Temple, 龍山寺) the afternoon we landed in Taipei.

Quick history lesson/geography lesson/Taiwanese facts about Longshan Temple!

Located in the district of Manka of Taipei, it was founded in 1738 and dedicated to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. It was rebuilt in 1919 and completed in 1924.

Longshan Temple always keeps it nature as a Buddhist temple, but also houses many deities of Taoism, showing the tolerant mentality of the Taiwanese people.

It is well known that the statue of Kuan-in (Goddess of Mercy) in the temple survived the bombing from the Allied aircrafts on June 8, 1945. The whole main hall and a part of the right annex were burned out during the air raid, but the statue of Kuan-in remained completely intact. Crazy, seeing as it’s made of wood and the whole temple was practically burnt to the ground.

One more thing, my dad’s grandfather helped work on the rebuilding of the temple and one of the pillars was actually carved by him.