Skeptickle

Some highlights of our trip:

• Seeing my family in Flushing, NY, which was pretty much Taiwantown, U.S.A.
• The Statue of Liberty, minus the two hours in two different security lines.
• New York pizza!
• Seeing Wicked for the first time on Broadway.
• Tuna tartare and the high tech Japanese toilet at Sakagura.
• The view from the Top of the Rock.
• The window displays were redonkulous!
• Straight New York tap water. Seriously.
• Lunch at Jean Georges with Karri and Misha.
• The Met, minus the insane crowds.
• The butternut squash soup and tweed kettle pie (got it b/c of its name!) at Tea & Sympathy with Karri.
• Central Park right after it snowed.
• Junior’s NY cheesecake with strawberries, thanks to my cousin Theresa.
• The Apple store on 5th Ave.
• Blueberry pancakes at Clinton St. Bakery, minus the 1 hour and 45 minute wait  >_<.
• The last minute right before the ball dropped at Times Square, minus the 5 hours and 59 minute wait beforehand.
• 30% off sale-price sale at BR.
• PDT Bar. Really great original drinks made in the old-fashioned way.
• Momofuku Ssam Bar’s fried brussel sprouts (trust me), kimchi apples, and  steamed pork buns. I don’t usually eat much pork, but I’m glad I made the exception this time.

Lowlights of our trip:

• The wait to do practically anything.
• The crowds and lines and more lines, and more lines…
• Did I mention the lines?
• Slow-ass people that take up the entire sidewalk (actually, that’s a running pet peeve of mine so it doesn’t only apply to New York).
• Trying to hail a taxi in freezing weather and they’re all full.
• Rob lost one of his gloves at the Statue of Liberty and it seemed like the entire island sold out of mens gloves. We tried BR, J Crew, Gap, H&M, Armani Exchange, etc.

Overall, a great trip and we’ll want to be back in the couple of years to experience the stuff we didn’t get to see yet. Photojournal to follow when I finally get all 5k pictures uploaded.

I had so much fun this Halloween . Rob and I went up to the City to hang out with our friends M & G and danced the night away. The only sad part was that M was sick so he had to go home early, but other than that it was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to.

Pictures:

Vampire Bill (from True Blood).

A very sick Santa, literally.

Keepin' it together.

Scary tooth-fairy.

I was a Renaissance pirate wench.

Much needed H2O after a tiring night of dancing.

Hope you had a fun Halloween too!

Sorry for the interruption to our regularly scheduled programming, but I wanted to write about something else besides wedding stuff this time. Rob and I will be traveling to Taiwan in a couple days and I couldn’t leave without first writing an introductory post about it. You see, I was born in Taiwan and still have about half of my relatives still living there. Even though I don’t visit there as often as my other Taiwanese peers, I still have a tie to it as most do with the place of their birth. This is the place where my parents grew up, where both sets of my grandparents ran restaurants while raising 6 children on each side, and  where I spent the first year of my life on this earth. This is also where one of the people I look up to the most resides- my 2nd aunt from my mother’s side. I haven’t been back to see her for over 9 years now and I think I’m long due for a visit. She seems eager to meet Rob and to see me now that I’m all grown up.

To tell the truth, I’m a bit apprehensive about going. Even though I have family there, I’m not really close to any of them except for my 2nd aunt. If my mom were alive and accompanied us then it would make the whole trip easier. She would know where to stay, what to do, etc. etc. My dad is not much help because he only remembers the Taiwan that existed 30 years ago (back when the island was still under martial law, before the computer industry helped modernize the place, and everything was very different back then). Therefore, we won’t have the benefit of a real guide so we will have to wing it. Secondly, I’m not 100% fluent in Mandarin Chinese (more like 50% give or take) and I can’t speak Taiwanese at all. So there will be a sort of language barrier, which is the main source of my anxiety. For someone who was born there and grew up in a Chinese-Taiwanese family, this is culturally looked down on.

Lastly, I anticipate both Rob and I sticking out like sore thumbs. Like Japan, almost all the people in Taiwan look homogenous (as in, all of regional descent). Rob is Caucasian so it’ll be interesting seeing how people will react to him being there. It will also be interesting from a social science point of view to see how he will react to being in a place where he is part of a small minority. Race is not the only thing homogenous in Taiwan, size is also something that most people are pretty much the same at. If you are a female and not a US size 2 or smaller (yes, negative sizes exist there) then you are considered overweight. It is not rude for people to point that out to you either. That is the number one thing I hear complaints about from Taiwanese people who now permanently live in the States. They usually get bigger in size because of the nonconformist culture in the U.S. and then they face criticism when they go back to visit Taiwan. So since I’m well above a US size 2 and on the tall side, I’m definitely going to get some unwanted attention.

That said, I’m also looking forward to getting reacquainted with Taiwan. I miss the food and the people, and I’d like to experience more of the culture. Taiwan has an extremely rich history which makes up its hybridized culture. The island was originally inhabited by two indigenous tribes that were theorized to be the original people that traveled west to later populate most of the Pacific islands. The Hakka people from northern China started immigrating there to escape oppression. The Portuguese and the Dutch landed there at various points, one peaceably and the other for commercial interests. The Chinese started trickling in mostly in the last century or so, during which they faced heavy tensions with their neighbors (the Japanese) and internally with civil war. The Japanese occupied Taiwan for about 50 years and a lot of their culture had rubbed off. You can still see architecture, food, technology, etc., that were strongly influenced by Japanese culture and design. The Chinese Revolution brought about a lot of changes to the island. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan when China fell to the Communists. They brought with them some of the Chinese cultural artifacts and ideas that were later banned and destroyed in Mao’s China. That’s around the time when both sets of my grandparents moved from China to Taiwan.

View of Taipei 101, arguably the tallest building in the world. {Image by *dans from Flickr}

All this history and its current predicament in international relations has made Taiwan uniquely different from any other place in the world. I’m sure a lot of things have changed since I last visited and I’m excited to have the freedom to explore some of the places that I haven’t been to before. I will blog about our trip when we get back since we probably won’t have an internet connection over there. Wish us luck!