Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Grapefruit Gang





BS, EW here....

Last night and early into the weeeeee hours of the morning.
The Grapefruit Gang (AKA Pineapple Gang) assembled for yet another SHRIMPIN adventure. Although attendance was low..... Spirits were high and so were some of the members, I think?

All and all it was a really good time to tag along w/these folks.
Thank goodness for the sympathy shrimp or we would have starved......

Move over Iron Maiden

I was at home Friday night with my mother watching America's Greatest Band. A concept which I hope will go away soon but basically set up like American Idol. Bands come on stage to perform in front of a pannel only to get ripped apart by judges afterwards. Fairly entertaining for the viewer and cold for the performer. Anyways, a band comes on the stage and the judges say
" listen, do you guys remember what you wrote as your interests on the application?"
" Ummm, Iron Maiden I think"
" well it says here your interests are Ninja's, Boobs and explosions"
The kids burst out in laughter

Anyways, check this out

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Someone chartered a plane


The name of the city is...

Friday, October 26, 2007

Baseball World Cup

The World Cup begins November 6. Here is the schedule.
Taiwan games are November 6 vs Italy, Nov. 8 vs S. Africa, Nov. 9 vs Japan, Nov. 10 vs Spain, Nov. 11 vs Mexico, Nov. 13 vs Panama, Nov. 18 vs USA. With the exception of the Italy game, which is in Tien Mou, all the games are in Taichung, either at the old stadium or the new Intercontinental Stadium, just off Chung De Rd. Unfortunately, Team Canada is in the other pool and play their games in Tien Mou or Shinchuan. I will be making a trip to cheer to cheer on the red and white. Only preliminary round games are played in Taichung, with the playoffs in Tien Mou and Shinchuan, beginning Nov. 16.

Remembering Ferley


DAMN! What a pair of ugly ducklings.

Remembering Palawan


DAMN! What a fine looking pair of young men.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

West Coast Trip Part 3, 4, 5 and 6

My first movie. Enjoy

Sunday, October 21, 2007

H K T P h u k e t




Did you know?

  • The smallest commercial aircraft flying out of HKT is a ATR with 70 seats.
  • Over 66,035 passengers can travel out of HKT every week.
  • There are over 210 domestic flights per week from HKT.
  • HKTl connects with 16 cities nonstop.
20 carriers and Tiger Airlines is 1 of em.
NOK is still in ther also.......

Got 3 new Chinese 1's 4 next week

See ya then.... low and slow headin for th 4 o seventy seven

B K K S u v a r n a b h u m i







Did you know?

  • The largest aircraft flying out of BKK is a 747 with 474 seats.
  • There are 275 flights per week flying on small aircraft from BKK.
  • There are 666 nonstop flights out of BKK per week that have over 300 seats per aircraft
  • There are over 1,133 long haul flights per week from BKK.
A stagering 84 airlines servin this location per month.......
And NOK Air is 1 of em. Wait a go NOK. Truly increadible:)

D M K D o n M u e a n g

Did you know?

The shortest flight out of DMK is 199 miles.

The longest flight from DMK is 482 miles.

The largest aircraft flying out of DMK is a AB3 with 247 seats.

The smallest commercial aircraft flying out of DMK is a 737 with 150 seats.


4 airlines left servin this location...... Come and get it. EW

Birth of a Parrot



Enjoy :)

bX-9pjt6o

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What up w/th BS..... just tryin to add some pics.


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Friday, October 19, 2007

This month will see the start of two baseball tournaments in Taiwan - The Asian Baseball Championship (The Asian Cup) and the Baseball World Cup. The former will be held exclusively in Taichung at the old Taichung stadium and the new Intercontinental Stadium from December 1st-3rd (English schedule here, Chinese here). The latter will be hosted at several cities around Taiwan. Taichung games commence on November 2nd and end on the 14th. The finals will only be in the Taipei area. Chinese schedule here. (D-Wayne, can you help out with the English schedule you found yesterday?)

Ticket information - outlets, online purchasing and types -for the Baseball World Cup can be found here (English).

下一項
Final Costco (好事多) post, I hope.
The grand opening for the Taichung Costco is November 11. Hours are 8:30am-9:30pm.
  • Memberships purchased by the 8th will still include an extra membership card. So, if you purchase a membership you will get a primary, secondary and a gift membership for $1,200NT (personal) and $1,000NT (business)
  • Regardless of when you obtained your Taichung membership card, it will be valid until the end of November 2008. Mine was purchased in August and I will not lose any months because I purchased it before the store opened.
  • There will be a free "Western" breakfast for the first 6,000 cardholders. 8:30-10:30am
  • They will also give away to the first 20,000 cardholders... 10 eggs. Yes, 10 eggs.
  • The temporary office has been moved into the actual Costco building. So, if you want a card, go to 台中市南屯區文心南三路289號 and the office is on the 1st floor.

下一項

"Too much garlic is not enough." Me. A long time ago.

I love garlic. A lot. And now there is some initial research that garlic can be really good for us. Researchers at UAB found that garlic juice injected into human red blood cells prompted them to emit hydrogen sulfide, which causes blood vessels to relax. They also say that after crushing or chopping the garlic, you need to wait at least 15 minutes to allow the reaction that produces this release. Here are two articles discussing the study. The first is more general and the second a bit more specific.

However, do not view this as a coronary panacea. Garlic has no effect on cholesterol and also this:

Eric Block, professor of chemistry at the State University of New York, Albany, has also done extensive work on garlic. He called the paper "provocative" but expressed some concerns.
For example, he said, "the benefits of garlic on cardiovascular disease remain controversial, because they have not been established by the gold standard method of placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical studies," he said.

My mother told me that while she was in Saudi Arabia the Saudis would swallow whole, peeled cloves of garlic to aid their digestion. While my wife was talking to a farmer near Taichung about a natural make-up remover and cleanser, he started talking about garlic. Now we have a bottle of garlic wine in the mail. They might be on to something. Drink up and reek not of booze, but of garlic.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

That was my ice cream!


My daughter now makes me google pictures for her amusement. This was found under "donkey." I thought it was cute.

Language 2B Study Menu

Language 2B students: click here to study / download the menu. You must look up any words that you do not understand by yourself.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Monday, October 15, 2007

Crome Relic Live

I missed this but someone has had the good sense to get it up on the internet.

Video of Pimp's last gig with Crome Relic. Pimp now launching solo career in Canada.

A couple other videos from that show here.



Crome Relic soldiers on. Pimpless Relic at a Moon Fest Block Party here. Check out the guy doing curls on the left

Visit North Korea Ad Campaign Kicks Off


alternative caption:
What's good for the goose stepping girls is good for the gander (taking a gander.)

Supermarket Opens


Jason's of TPE 101 fame has finally opened.

It is a little pricey. B2 Chung Yo department store.

An Imperfect Storm

As my wife and I are in the planning stages for our return home to Texas, she tasked me with actually coming up with some plans. I responded that I had already finalized my plan, which was to not make any plans. Not acceptable. So I told her I would brainstorm some ideas and get back to her. Here is my list of Things I Want To Do, transcribed, unedited from my notebook.

  • Get in better shape
  • Something with chiles, beef or cheese (not soft)
  • Improve my Chinese
  • Be a Yakult rep.
  • Make a table or workbench using mortise and tenon joints
  • Buy a Leatherman
  • Never have to prepare another resume
  • Never teach in public school in the US
  • A fusion barbecue and traditional Chinese tea shop
  • Mesquite ranch / farm
  • Be able to dunk again
  • Never own a cell phone
  • Have a NBA or college player come to my school in Taichung and give a basketball clinic.
  • Wear a Lee Deng-Hui t-shirt to the Beijing Olympics
  • Maybe a bubble tea shop place thingee
  • Find a third person to play Red Alert 2 with Red A and myself
  • Get a henna tattoo that says Henna tattoos suck! ( Actually tried this on vacation in Boracai, but was refused by all )
  • Five-toed socks for my family ( This should be on my Christmas gift list but if I didn't write it down, I would forget about it)
  • Taco Villa manager

I thought I started strong with a safe standard. Her nod of agreement turned into a facial furrowing of fury after the second one. I explained that my brain does not storm uninterruptedly. There are fluctuations. Sometimes it gusts, drizzles, freezes or just hits a dead calm.

I found out that there definitely are wrong ideas in brainstorming and that doing exactly what you are asked to do can be worse than not doing it at all.

下一項

Coming soon - Schedules and information about the two upcoming baseball tournaments in Taichung. I thought one of the other hibernating contributors might want unlimber their fingers and take a stab at it, but it appears not.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Good Men, Great Men, and My Grandfather

There are many types of people in the world. Some are kind, some are evil, some are just plain bad. My grandfather was a man who fit none of those simplified categories -- he was what we should all strive to be. Most readers know of my affection for the old man, WWII soldier, Ford Motor Company employee, father of two. I won't tell stories of his greatness, but if we could be half the man he was, the world would be a better place.

He died last week down in Houston at my mother's place. I attended the funeral and got to spend a week in beautiful, scenic Houston. At the funeral, his nephew-in-law said something which I thought telling: he had never heard a bad word spoken about my grandfather in any capacity. We should all be so lucky. Lift a glass for Charlie Havis tonight, it's on me (figuratively of course).

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Fisherman's Wharf



Hey B's & G's out ther in BL.
EW there, live from San Francisco.....

Or at least that's where me and the wife got stranded by United last month.
Not a bad place to be stuck for the night on United's bill for a Typhoooooon in Taiwan:)

Monday, October 08, 2007

FUTURAMA


FUTURAMA fans!

There's a FUTURAMA movie coming out in November. It's the first of four feature length movies they've made that will be cut up into episodes for a new season next year on Comedy Central. Here's the trailer of BENDER'S BIG SCORE.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Thought Experiment

Imagine you are getting into taxi in Taichung.

The driver has some music playing.

What would be the most surprising song you'd hear?

Please answer in comments.


Example:

If Heaven ain't a lot like Dixie by Hank Williams Jr.


A related anecdote:

In 1992, I got in a taxi in Taichung, where the driver said in New York accented English, "So, what do you think about Clinton?" Turns out he was a NYC taxi driver who had to emigrate back to Taiwan because "he couldn't stand all the rules."

Thursday, October 04, 2007

West Coast Trip Part 2 of 6


After driving across the Prairies for 3 days, we went to Waterton National park in Alberta. For those of you who don't know, Waterton borders with Glacier National Park in Montana. Together they are called the Peace Park. This National park is located at the tail end of the Canadian Rockies. Driving from Lethbridge towards the park is quite scenic as naturally you are driving towards the Rockies with nothing but gold prairie fields to the right and left of the car.





As we arrived at the gate, we chatted with the park warden about the best place to camp. He told us naturally the interior of the park is very scenic and that's what we were after. Upon my friend expressing his dear fear of encountering a bear, the warden told us not to worry.

10 minutes later we had encountered our 5th bear. We saw 10 bears in total-8 black bears and 2 Grizzly bears in Waterton park. On our trip we saw a total of 15 bears. Quite an amazing number.




Of course being so close to Montana (5 hours) I met up with a law school buddy of mine. I'll save the details of how late he arrived, but I did manage to convince him to have two drinks.











We got up at a relatively good hour and did a day hike to Bertha Lake. Surprisingly, lawyers seem to have done many of the trails at Waterton. Both on northern and southern sides of the park. This hike was absolutely beautiful with a hike through the ever changing forest, up to the lake. Not an extremely long hike, but beautiful all the same. The first photo is taken from the trail as well.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

IJ....... I need my Chinese book and tape

Pls. drop off at wayne-wayne's.......

Sorry for the crappy personal post folks.
But ya know "Sometimes bilingual, always bi crappy".......

EW over and out.

Take Chinese book and tape....... To Fubar......


Tuesday, October 02, 2007

The Green Fairy

Carrefour is now selling Absinthe. It's the made in Czech kind, which supposedly has the real deal wormwood. NT$ 1300 / bottle, but 70% alcohol. (I think you need to add water to absinthe anyways.)

I can imagine Ponce right now. Its Halloween. Ponce is in a frilly black Victorian suit, the kind an undertaker wears in a Western movie. His monocle is perfectly balanced as he fusses over absinthe at the smoky poker table.

"You see, just enough sugar on the spoon, and then the water. And could you please turn up the Morrissey? Thanks. Aces over Eights. Dead Man's Hand. I win."

UPDATE:

Karl, none of these are quite right, but they also sell monocles.

Monday, October 01, 2007

HOCKEY!!



Hockey season is upon us. Time for hockey drafts. If you are interested in a fun pool, go to yahoo. id # 70400, password is flames. It's free!