Veggie food

One thing I love here are the vegetarian restaurants. There are not all created equal, however, but the nice ones serve pretty good everyday food for a very moderate price. Considering a lot of the local food is prepared with impressive quantities of oil, doesn’t contain a lot of vegetables (or only the official overcooked leafy green) and accompanied by the mandatory whiter than white rice, the veggie restaurant is a very healthy option. This filling meal came along with a soup and a few pieces of orange, cost a mere 100 NT (under 3 USD).

So from the top, clockwise: a vegetarian stew, sauteed kale, mixed vegetables stir fry, taro cubes, and a big piece of 5 flavor tofu. What’s with the purple rice? The local version of “brown rice” is actually a mix of grains containing black glutinous rice, hence the purplish color. Also noted, this mix does contain a lot of white rice, but it’s already a step up the plain white rice.

A long awaited item!

 

Somethings will always puzzle me here. The fact that until very recently, we only had bars of soap in the washrooms of my university was stagering for all the foreign faculty members. After all, our uni is not poor, it’s got flat screen TVs on the wall broadcasting the very little watched closed circuit uni news. We also have huge trashcans that are actually too big for the hallways and must cost a fortune each. But soap? You mean liquid soap in a dispenser? No way, that was too expensive. Of course, bars of soap only appeared during the SARS period in 2003… Prior to that, no soap at all.

Then the MOE announced a nerve racking inspection of the uni for an evaluation. Suddenly, things started shaking up: renovations were going about, the washrooms got updated (pretty swanky actually) and we now have toilet paper and … the long awaited soap dispensers!

 Let’s see how long it actually gets refiled…

Typhoon Krosa

Yes, another typhoon. We had one about 3 weeks ago, and now we’re having another one, stronger. Watching the rain and wind from our 22nd floor windows was pretty interesting. Our car narrowly avoided being flooded. This is the view of the flooded road, trafic had to be diverted for about 1 hour. Things came back to normal quite quickly and all the water on the road was drained in not time. Quite amazing.

Here is a view of the bicycle shops, the stream and the old “three wall house” (typical Chinese house), all flooded in milk tea colored water. The level of the water kept rising for a couple of hours until it reached this level, then an hour later, it subsided to a more usual level. People living in these building sure got a lot of damage.

Here is the same place, shot about an hour later. Pretty amazing! My thoughts are with the people around the island who suffered from this typhoon.

Back to school

Time for another school year! The semester started 3 weeks ago, and the dust is just starting to fall down! Managing 64 students per class (times 6) is quite a task! Then you have the ones that come to listen, hoping to join if some other student drops the class. On the good side, I have loads of last year’s students that are back for the Sophomore classes, that’s always heart warming for a teacher!

I have to put some Hong Kong pictures online, I had a great time with Katharine, a fellow lady expat!

A Hong Kong soak!

Well, like many Westerners living in Taiwan, I really enjoy going to Hong Kong. It has so many things Taipei doesn’t have! Not that I don’t like Taipei, but a soak in HK is always nice! It’s like living in Montreal and going to New York. So here I go! My good friend Katharine just moved there, so here is the occasion to see her! Last time I see her was before my wedding, so that’s over a year ago and we used to hang out a lot on Taipei. So I booked my ticket right after Katharine announced she was moving there. It’s good to have her back in the neighborhood!

I’m back!

 

 

Yep, after two looongs flights, I’m back to the island! It’s nice to be back to great weather, what a change from the dryness of Montreal (yes, folks from there, it IS dry compared to here!!!) Everything is accessible on foot, and cheap as well!!! Oh yea, and tax is included in the price!

The way back to Taiwan takes forever, but I was sitting next to nice ladies on both flights, both flights were smooth, we had edible plane food, and my luggage was already waiting for me on the carousel in Taipei, I had to run up to the first suitcase (for the record, this is an absolute first)!

It’s good to be back and for now, I’m on jet-lag!!!

Back on the island

After two months back home, it’s now time to head back to Taiwan for one more year of teaching and other projects. Wonder what this year will bring in! It’s a very exciting time in my life, I’m going back to plenty of interesting opportunities, I feel like this year will be fruitful!

I’m in love!

I love horses! I loved horses when I was a kid, I still love them! The most contact I’ve had with a horse for the past decade was watching races in Hong Kong and Macau once in a while. I must have been the only nutcase going there to actually watch the horses without even placing one bet!!! Anyhow, today I went to visit a stable near my parents place and it made me realize that having a horse is not that expensive and if someone doesn’t spend too much on a fancy car or other non-essentials (for me, that is), it could be feasible. A horse might even be the one reason that will tip the balance in favor of moving back to Canada in the near future (what an insult to my family and my friends, the balance was tipped by… a horse!!!) Anyhow, meanwhile, I’ll be dreaming of that big guy, way out of reach of my meager budget!!!

Allergy Season

For those fellow allergic people, here is a picture of the main culprit! How can such an innocent looking weed (ragweed to be precise) cause so much pain and trouble???

I want this house!!!

Last weekend, I went to a small village near the St-Laurence River, called Deschambault. It’s one of Quebec’s 10 most beautiful villages, and for a cause, it’s full of gorgeous old houses that have been painfully renovated to their old time glory. As in many countries, there was a time in Quebec when old houses were just an inconvenient housing option and people were keen on modernizing and turning them into more practical housing. The results were catastrophic and many houses were turned into ugly hybrid architectural messes! Then, about 20-30 years ago, some people woke up and realized that these inconvenient badly insulated old wrecks were in fact our cultural heritage and once they were gone, they wouldn’t magically come back. (Duh!!!) Some owners started to renovate them in a more respectful way, and make them revive to their old time glory. Some owners who didn’t care sold their houses to move into new ones, and new owners took pride into keeping the heritage alive. That one thing I wish I can see one day in Taiwan: for people to stop the massacre of their lovely “san he yuan” and preserve them instead of tearing them down to build a 10-floor housing building. Of course space is scarce in overcrowded Taiwan and money is sadly often the main concern behind any move! A ray of hope lays in the countryside, were some of these houses still stand and their owners saw the potential of turning them  into tourist attractions (combining revenue with preservation). Anyhow, all this to say this house back home in Quebec is PRETTY and I could only dream of living in such a place!