Sunday Rest

Sundays have become our rest day since last week. We tried to take a rest every Sunday and at the same time getting to know more about Taipei, meaning visit different places and getting more familiar with the roads and places. For the last Sunday, we went to Ximending as mentioned in the previous post. It was enjoying to see the roadside artists along the road demonstrating their skills. One uncle was drawing a very beautiful scenery picture while the other young man creating pictures with only color sprays and cardboard. A lot of people bought those color spray drawings as it's only RM10 each. However, we just watched without buying anything.

Last night, we went off to Rao-He night market for a walk. We went there at about 6pm and only came back at around 11pm. The night market is not really huge but with a variety of food, clothes, shoes, home appliances, etc. We ate quite a lot of food last night and bought a lot of stuffs too. MH got to buy two pairs of shoes while I bought a pair of shoes. Besides that, we also bought a few shirts and two cups for our own used.

For me personally, I think this night market is nicer than Shilin night market which is the most famous night market in Taipei. This night market has more variety of things and the price is reasonable.

Baked potato with ham, corn and cheese

a kind of wraps with a type of candy and ice-cream

Forgot what it's called but it's Japanese food

臭豆腐

Our home-cooked meals

After posting up the slimmer-MH photo in previous post, we got quite a lot of questioning from friends and relatives especially our parents whether we are eating right here. I guess it's quite scary as well to slim down 5kg and 3kg respectively within one and a half months of stay here. However, I would say that we were eating too much back in Penang and we are eating right here. Back then, we usually take breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper but note that our supper was normally quite heavy supper, which I think was not healthy at all. Thus, since we came here, we hardly take any supper other than a glass of Milo occasionally unless our dinner was too little and we need stay up too late for homework. So, what make us losing weights? I guess is lots of walking - supper + stress in studies!

Below are some of the usual home-cooked meals that we took at home. Just to clarify that not all of the below are my cooking. Some were cooked by MH as well when I was busy.

tuna croissants and Mun-tou with white coffee

Fried veggies, fried eggs and tofu with mince pork

curry chicken, fried zucchini and dumplings

chicken burger, beans and corn soup

fried fish, fried veggies, chicken nuggets in tomato sauce and steam chicken

On a side note, today we finally managed to get some relaxation by visiting Ximending for dinner after class. We visited a shop which has been greatly vandalized! Not sure it's the creation of the owner or the customers. Show you the photos and you'll know. But one thing sure is... the shredded ice is delicious!

*Nudge* This blog is still alive!

We were indeed quite busy for the past weeks. A lot of assignments and quizzes crammed up our time. Most of the time was spent heating up the couch with our laptops on the lap and books all over the places. However, we are getting more organised this week as it's getting less hectic. Things will need to get rolling again next week as there are more homeworks to be submitted mid of Nov.

I don't really have much idea on what to blog as my brain is quite empty now... So, will just upload photos that we have taken a month ago when one of our friends from Johor came to visit Taipei.

L-O-V-E in front of Taipei 101

A cafe near 101

After enjoying buffet style Ma-la Steamboat

In front of the restaurant in Gongguan

We are moving house again!

This is the third house we are staying since we came here 5 weeks ago. First was in Sindian which was the temporary accommodation where we stayed there for 8 days. Next, we moved over here to ZhongSan district in Taipei City. And last night, we moved house again. But no big deal, this time we were just moving from downstairs to upstairs. Initially we were staying at 6th floor and due to some reasons, we were asked to move up to 7th floor. It was a quite fast though as we only took 3 hours to clean the new unit, packed all our belongings, shifted up to 7th floor and rearranged everything back into places. Take it as an exercise session for us and we would be happier. The reward from the move was a very sweet dream last night.

On the other note, we were rushing for homework, assignments and tests for the last two weeks or more as everything was due at the same period of time. In fact, we have another two reports to be submitted and two tests next week. Thus, life was without any entertainment or leisure time. Anyway, as one of the assignment due date has been delayed to the following week and we have finished the other assignment, we managed to spare a little bit of time for the house moving last night and also visiting a new place in Taipei today. We went to 五分埔 for a walk. It is a very famous and big commercial place which has more than 1000 shops mostly selling clothes. We took our dinner there and spent some time shopping around for winter clothes. Haha... as ordinary as I am, I bought five tops, one skirt and one sweater there. And... ahem... I just spent NT1130(RM120) for all these. And the most expensive is the sweater, not sure if it's hand knitting, it costs NT480 (RM50). As the place was quite crowded and we had no free hands (me choosing clothes and MH holding two cups of pearl milk tea, and vise versa) we didnt take any photo of the place.

But disappoint not, I'll leave you with a slimmer MH at our newest house... photo taken today.

Our Fellowship in Hong-En Church

The previous weekend, we had a small farewell party with Ming He during our University Students Fellowship(USF) in church. She is one of our USF members who is going to further her studies in Germany. We had dinner at pastor's house with lots of pizzas, burgers and drinks. After our normal meeting time discussing on Romans 2, we had our youths coming to our fellowship to have farewell with her as well. She shared her vision and her feeling at that particular moment and also some of the people did share about their thoughts too. The night went well with lots of food including cake, mooncakes, and more tidbits.

Group photo of USF and Youth

And last Saturday, we celebrated mooncake festival in church. It's actually a norm in Taiwan to have BBQ during mooncake festival. Thus, our church had a church-wide BBQ at the badminton/netball court beside the main hall. Again lots of food were served for the night and it's truly delicious. The aunties in church did put their efforts to cook and prepare their favorite dishes for us. Though everyone was kind of concern whether typhoon would be hitting Taiwan at that moment but eventually it was a successful night with just occasional drizzling. The party went on with games conducted by Young Adults and everyone went home full and satisfied.

And today it's actually Taiwan National Day. Thus, Youth fellowship and USF decided to have a combined outing to Fu-Long beach which located about 1.30 hours from Taipei by taking train. And guess what, this is my first time taking train!!! And it was our first time going outside of Taipei city too since we came here last month. We started our journey about about 1pm and had a great time there until around 6pm before heading back to Taipei again. As it's raining again today, we didnt really had much fun in the sea but we introduced to them "Kali-tuei" and they all thought it was fun. If you are M'sian you'll know what game is that. Below are photos taken today.

Fu-Long Beach

The waves were high but not really shown in this photo

Some of the members

MH explaining on how to play "Kali-Tuei"

Two very talented dancers

And it's finally on our way back to Taipei after having a wet and great day.

It's rainy and windy day!!

View from our house

If you are following latest news you would notice that Taiwan is affecting by the Typhoon Parma which has slammed into Philippine two days ago. Though it doesn't hit us directly it does affect us badly, especially in Taipei suburbs and Eastern side of Taiwan. There are a few places which has already suffered from flash flood due to the excessive rainfall. The government authority has been very cautious on this phenomena as lesson had been learned from the previous '88 floods'.

In our place here, Taipei city, it started drizzling yesterday and soon the rain came pouring down since last night until now. It is accompanying with sudden moderate winds. As the situation is not life threatening, there is no closure of schools and works.

This morning, we were out to the immigration before heading to school as we need to collect our multiple entries card from the immigration centre. As we finished application and just stepped out from the immigration building a sudden wind blown over us and guess what... one of our umbrellas got blown by the wind until it was bending upward. Hence, we rushed back to the main building quickly to check on the condition of our umbrella. And... this is the result!!!

I thought it was so hilarious that I cant stop laughing at it.

As we thought that the wind was too strong for us to walk back to MRT station, given that one of the umbrellas has spoilt, we ended up calling one of our friends who owned a car to pick us up from there.

In Struggling

Though the semester has just started and in fact, this is the first week of study, we got stressed up with the workload. We are currently struggling hard on one of the reports which need to be submitted beginning of October. This report requires us to finish reading a selective book about 250-300 pages and summarize the main points. Beside that, we have to do a page of our own application from this book. Mind you, this is only one of the subjects! And this is only the first report and we need to do this kind of report once in a fortnight.

*screaming for help!*