Taipei Day 2 - Danshui old street / Fisherman's Wharf / Shihlin Night Market

Getting lazy to re-post all the photos which I've already uploaded on facebook. Think I'll just write my thoughts, and keep the photos here to a minimal.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/alan.teo.986/media_set?set=a.10152315978921356.1073741856.701936355&type=3&uploaded=20

Danshui old street is a nice quaint place, with many specialty snacks like tie dan, fish crackers, so do google and check out what to buy before coming. And don't be an idiot like me who bought from the first stall you come to... I did that and got overcharged by 20yuan per packet of tiedan.

We also tried A-gei, which wasn't that great. We liked the fishballs and beehoon there more. A surprising delight was the green tea macchiato from Lattee!

It's a huge ass cup of thick green tea, with a generous layer of milk on top. Of course, served without a straw, as the correct way to drink it is to tilt the cup enough such that the green tea rushes into your mouth together with a little bit of milk. Yummm.

We went to lover's bridge by ferry, (You can use Easycard to take it! Don't be taken in by the lady yelling for you to buy tickets) but the bridge was closed -_- We still got to watch the sunset from the pier, which wasn't too bad. Nice and relaxing.

We went to Shihlin at night, which was hell. The streets were packed and it was like being squeezed with sardines. And the basement food court felt like IT fair on the first day on a weekend - can barely move and can't change direction, and the whole place smelled of chou toufu. Didn't like it much.

The highlight of the night was the Black Pepper pork bun, which is found somewhere upstairs. Sorry, no idea how to give directions because the whole place was a mess. Good luck!

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.