Taiwan/Taipei - Day 1 - Taipei101 and Ximending

It's been a while! I want to blog all the major events in my life so that I can look back at the year and think 'wow, I've done so much this year'. Kinda hard to blog about what happens at work because everything's hush hush, so have to make do with my leisure activities (more interesting to talk about anyway)

So I just came back from a 5D4N trip to Taipei with the gf, so I'll blog about the individual days, once a day starting from now.

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Day 1
We flew Tigerair to taipei, which frankly is shit and the seats are really uncomfortable. The full recline is equivalent to the normal angle of a sitting chair, so you can imagine the slightly less than 90deg angle of the fully upright chair. Very uncomfortable 4+hrs.

Anyway, our first order of business was to find some tauhway which jolenezhong said was 'damn good'... so we made our way to Eslite... and found out it was the wrong one -_- Google maps shows an eslite near Zhongxiao dunhua station, which was near taipei101, so we thought it's the one jolene went. Turns out, it isn't.

SH managed to buy an interesting book from there, so it wasn't all to waste. We walked over to taipei101, and to our delight, their basement food court had the daohui!

The traditional daohui in Taipei is different from SG's in that there are much more ingredients than just beancurd. The minimum option is beancurd with peanuts, and even then it's 50% of each ingredient, unlike in SG where the beancurd dominates the dish.

This version was some jelly + peanuts + daohui. Pretty yummy! For about 50 TWD I believe.

I think she looks damn cute here so I'm posting this lol. This is the Taipei 101 mascot!

After this we headed back to Ximending to explore the night market.

A Zong mee sua, a popular stall in ximending. It doesn't have oysters, but uses scallops/squid instead I think? Fairly tasty. But according to our taxi driver, this is a ripoff. Stay tuned for real oyster mee sua in Day 5's post.

Some fried meat from the stall next to the meesua stall. Pretty good! i liked the swordfish belly and the pork. 

We also had chachago milk tea, mango milk and ji pa from Hotstar (honestly, the ji pa wasn't fantastic. I think the Singapore's shihlin street snacks is better). Yumz. 

Didn't take at picture of the mango milk, but I think it's really worth it? There were SO many mango cubes in the cup, practically half the cup. And they were all juicy and sweet and soft. Why are the mangoes in Taiwan so good?

And that rounds up the first day! Was a pretty short day, because we only landed in Taipei at about 1++pm.

What are you?

If I were to press a gun to your head and force you to answer this in 3 seconds, how would you answer: "What are you?"

There was a period of time when I would say 'I am a gamer'. That was when I was spending hours grinding out games of Starcraft 2, trying to climb the ladder to Masters league (and I did). That was when I spent hours raiding in World of Warcraft. Would I want to be a 'gamer' again? I would love to be. But my circumstances don't allow it. Now I play 1 or 2 games of League of Legends, ARAM mode every night. Some nights I don't play. I used to play a bit of Hearthstone, but now I've got semi-bored of it. I can't really say I'm a 'gamer' anymore.

How about the question 'What are your hobbies?'

One or two months ago I went for a course which had participants in their thirties and forties. As part of the icebreakers, the trainer asked everyone to share their hobbies. A recurring theme was 'I used to do XX, but now that I have a kid... my kid is my hobby lor'.

This is kind of sad isn't it? When I think about myself, I used to play bball regularly, I used to game regularly, I used to watch many tv shows regularly. But now as work has begun, everything has to be done in moderation, and it can't be as frivolous as before. After I get married or have a kid, everything is going to change again. I will lose my hobbies. And gain a new one I guess.

Our identities seems to be shaped by our circumstances. Which makes it kind of strange, as you would think 'you' should be fairly constant, and you are just adapting to the circumstances. But it really isn't. 'You' just changes, along with everything around you.

What are you? I guess 'you' is a product of your innate personality blended with your current circumstances. And at present, I am a humble civil servant who is fairly content with his job, who plays the occasional games and watches the occasional show, who goes to the gym regularly in hopes of bulking up. I am also the boyfriend of my girlfriend who enjoys spending time with her and seeing her smile, I am also the friend of my friends who enjoys spending quality time with them and forging bonds that will hopefully last forever.

[Dream] The Dystopian Society

I can't remember the exact starting point of the dream (as in all dreams, as nicely pointed out in Inception), but I was in a deserted place with deserted roads. I mention this because I knew what my purpose was there, despite not remembering when it started.

I was trying to get out of the deserted place, but I couldn't find a cab. I walked and walked, and came across an old, abandoned house. To my surprise, I saw 3 people stumble out, all covered with dirt from head to toe, their frames rugged and gaunt. One of them was my secondary school friend, B.

Right on cue, two taxis arrived. I was about to get into the back taxi with 2 of the other people, but decided to board the one with B. When I got in and the taxi drove off, I began asking him what happened, but the look in his eyes made me stop. 'I have gone through ... so much,' he croaked weakly.

I somehow understood this as a mystery higher organization had done this, and it was not my place to ask, nor did I really want to know what abuse he went through.

After driving for a while, I asked the cabbie: "So are you going to Potong Pasir (B's house) first or Boon Keng (mine)?"
He casually replied: "What makes you think we are going to your homes..."

My blood froze. I realized the taxi was not a place of refuge, and it was not taking me to safety. It was taking me to them. The organization. Whatever it was. I had to escape. I did not want to go through the abuse that B went through.

After observing traffic for a while, I found the opportune time and opened the door and dived out of the moving vehicle. I rolled to the side of the road, and began running. I ran for several minutes, and quickly flagged another cab that I saw.

As I got in, I began to say "Uncle, to -"
He cut me off with a grin: "to Boon Keng, -my address- right? I know..."

SHIT. He was part of this too! He knew exactly who I was, and where I had come from.

"You need to go another 2km to get out of the area we are in control of, boy", he laughed.

I resigned to my fate. If they had control over everything within a 2km radius, there was no way I was getting away if they wanted to catch me.

--

I was in a room with B, and some unknown individuals. This part of the dream got a bit fuzzy, as I think I was approaching the waking phase of my sleep cycle. From what I can remember, I wasn't tortured or anything. In fact, they explained to me how the organization functioned.

"From when you [he was referring to everyone in that world I think] are born, we will observe you. We will make circumstances occur for you. You think you got your job by your own merit? No, we arranged for it. Some people are meant to suffer -he glances over to B-, some, like you, are meant to succeed. Everything is decided by the organization. "

I recall being confused. Why was I earmarked for success? How did they decide what happened to who? How did they carry out their decisions? I had no idea, and would not receive any answers to these questions, as I woke up shortly after.