adrian is rad

The toilet in my hotel apartment is crazy. Not as-seen-on-TV-japanese-super-crazy but much crazier than American toilets. It has buttons. Toilets shouldn’t have electronics…

I took the bus to work today. #902. That was an adventure, but it was dirty cheap (50 cents) and was probably as fast as a taxi given that traffic was the limiting factor. Next time I’ll be able to cut out the half an hour of trying to find the right stop/ bus route beforehand.

The buses have signs on them clearly instructing you that no birds are allowed.

ESPN is in Chinese here but there was still a good amount of coverage of the baseball. That’s comforting.

The glasses in the apartment are small. That’s probably good as I’m used to drinking coke out of super quick slurp-sized glasses rather than 8 oz tumblers. Might be good for my figure.

Days of lifting heavy things while moving has left my back in a sore/rry state. Ibuprofen to the rescue.

I’m in Taipei. I live here now. Yeah, that’s weird.

Handy converter for you east coast people: flip the time am/pm and you’ll get my time (later the same day or the next day). West coast is a trickier conversion.

Shoegaze/ slowcore musics are not the ones to listen to while trying to stay awake. gah.

I sort of wanted to go to a taiwanese baseball game but one of my coworkers is telling me no one watches it anymore because of some gambling issues. they watch the yankees now because there’s some taiwanese pitcher on the team. frickin yankees.

went out to lunch with some coworkers today, to the mall food court. such a crazy amount of food there and each place had a display of what each prepared dish would look like. I could have spent two hours at least just taking photos of these dishes.

going to the ATM to get foreign currency out is pretty funny when you don’t know what the exchange rate is. “Hmm, how much is a lot of money? 100? 10,000?” Luckily I guessed about right.

I’m still awake, but barely.

I’m feeling some excitement for the first time since May when the anxiety started.

There aren’t many bar bars around here. Many tea bars. “Taiwan Beer” (the market leader) is okay. I look forward to many more.

Shabu Shabu is an experience. And in the version we got, a lot of food. “What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?”

There is this awesome Jackie Chan/ Yow Ming visa commerical on right now. Jackie tries all these sports but gets disqualified in each for his crazy stunts.

a) I dislike change. It ends up my floor because my pockets get too heavy. I had $41.68 on my floor as of this morning.

[Also, the Page Mill branch of the Stanford Federal Credit Union has a coin machine like those at Safeway but no commission! You get a receipt from it to exchange it for cash or deposit it.]

b) I have a lot more stuff than when I moved to California just under 4 years ago. It’s still manageable but barely. I can also be brutal when it’s time to pack up in terms of what I throw out and what I keep. Like today I threw out my coke can birdman costume (after it had sit on Craiglist->free a few days, I should note) even though it took me a ridiculous amount of time and energy to make but I knew I wasn’t going to use it again.

also:
c) I’m moving to Taiwan, well, now.

What Plug is good for finding what plugs are in use/ what adapters/ converters/ etc you will need when traveling to foreign countries. For instance if you are going from the US to Indonesia, this is what you’ll need to know.

This site is also pretty good.

A few nights ago: Texas Rangers 30, Baltimore Orioles 3.

Rick Ankiel: phenom pitcher. Great rookie season, but no control and wild pitches in the post-season. Struggles with control and injuries over the next few years. One day up and decides to become an outfielder instead. A few more years and he makes his major league debut in the outfield, hitting a home run in his first game (and a few more in subsequent games).

Thanks for the good suggestions. Here’s who I ended up donating too.

• local 1/4 Catholic Charities CYO, San Francisco Archdiocese They provide a variety of good services to people in San Francisco and San Mateo (my) county.
• national 1/4 American Red Cross national disaster relief fund. I think the Red Cross does really good work and you never know when the next disaster will be.
• international 1/4 African Medical and Research Fund I like that they’re doing research into malaria, which is a major problem, in addition to many other major problems (HIV/ AIDS, TB, safe water, etc.)
• international 1/4 Compassion International A suggestion of Colin last year. Worthwhile services for impoverished children in the developing world.
• international 1/4 South Africa Development Fund They sponsor a wide variety of worthwhile programs of all different sorts in my ancestral home.

Yup, that’s 5/4. I ended up finding more worthwhile charities than I originally was going to donate to so, I just ended donating more.

I’m looking for good charities for my annual birthday charitable contributions.

Charity Navigator is good at finding good charities that spend their money well. I’ll probably split it up 1/4-1/2 international (South Africa/ Africa focus), 1/4-1/2 national and 1/4 local.

I saw Superbad last night. It’s really funny and uses some dirty language.

I give it four fingers and a thumb.

Make sure it’s dry and that it doesn’t have any leaves or cracks. Just put the address right on it and put enough postage on it.

This is what my parents got as a “postcard” from hawaii.

[I’m not looking for reassurance. In fact that’s the last thing I’m looking for.]

People ask if I’m excited to leave for Taiwan. I say I’m anxious. They say “oh, you’ll be fine.” Or “you’ll have a great time!”

They, who haven’t lived abroad or lived abroad with a group of Americans or in an English speaking country. And who aren’t shy.

I’ve done this before. I’ve done this before being much much better prepared culturally and language-wise. I lived in Germany for this amount of time. I learned a lot, saw a lot and in many ways had a great time and I have years of stories now.

But, it was incredibly hard. I didn’t make any friends and though I was nearly fluent in German, the language barrier was still difficult. At times it was intensely lonely. Like burst into tears randomly while walking down the street lonely.

Yes, it’ll be a good experience. Yes, I’ll see cool things and have interesting experiences. But I’ve very realistic in my anxiety.

Before buying things (like an alarm clock) specifically that have dual (or can accept a wide range of) voltage/ frequency capability, I might have wanted to check what voltage/ frequency Taiwan uses.

The answer? You guessed it: exactly the same as America.

On Sunday I saw the Pirates and Giants play at ATT Park with dug.

The pitching match up was $126 million Barry Zito (the highest paid pitcher, 2007’s stake is $10 million) vs. $380,000 Tom Gorzelanny. Zito walk the first three batters, gave up a two-run home run and a two-run triple (both to Josh Phelps). Meanwhile, Gorzelanny had his first complete game shut out, helping him earn the National League co-player of the week honors.

It was a fun game to watch and it was the first time I’d sat in the left field bleachers (5th row–nice grab, dug!). All in all a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Both teams then flew to Pittsburgh for a make-up double header on Monday. I’m only mentioning it because there was some craziness with the line-up on the Pirates behalf. Between the two games, here’s some of the odd positions:

• Doumit, normally a backup catcher, playing right field (until he sprained his wrist)
• Castillo, normally a 3rd baseman (or utility infielder), playing right field (once Doumit went out, first game)
• Bautista, normally a 2nd baseman (or utility infielder), playing left field (second game)
• Phelps, normally a 1st baseman, catching

Wow!

inches from my head. It’s so close the sound feels like it’s coming from inside my head. It’s sort of freaking me out.

So I’m back from Kauai. I’m usually not one for sit-on-the-beach vacations. I travel largely to learn about the world and to gain a wider experience with varied cultures, so a vacation divorced from those things seems almost silly.

But I have to say, this trip was amazingly relaxing. I saw some really beautiful things, hung out with some great friends and new people and generally had a blast. I even changed my opinion about snorkeling (from “meh” to “that’s kind of cool”) and hiking (I’ve been burnt out on hiking, camping etc since high school when I had ~150 nights of camping under my belt by the time I was 16 due to Boy Scouts, but I found it mentally very relaxing.)

I think the highlights had to have been:

• The wedding on the beach. Picturesque and touching. A rainbow even came out right after the ceremony.
• Hiking to the Hanakapi Falls. A fairly long and strenuous hike during the hottest part of the day under a deadline (to get to the airport) but still 100% worth it.
• Snorkeling. I saw a lot of different types of fish that usually only exist in fish tanks and we even followed a sea turtle (at a safe distance!) for a bit.
• Hanging out with friends, especially on the beach. Beers on a beach with friends is an important and awesome thing to do (if you choose to drink alcohol).

Stay tuned for photos.

I’m in Hawaii. It’s kind of pretty.

We did suit Friday at work (a play off of casual friday). I looked dashing: