star shanghai

The best way to spend time with Alex is to go to the office with her. Begged for some work even. And the view from the new big office is cool!

a night out on the bund

Wiring for the trolley buses on Fuzhou Road:

Little Hong Kong:

The Bund:

Pudong:

qibao

Close to Vanke, they're tearing down the old houses (like everywhere else in Shanghai nowadays) and setting up a tourist attraction: Qibao Old Town - pseudo historic houses with lots of shops and restaurants mainly catering to Chinese tourists. It was packed on a normal monday :-S

farewell

My last day in Taipei :-( celebrated with the traditional farewell dinner at the Vietnamese place in Kungkuan. With the usual suspects: Hans and Ya-Ching and Reiner. And Michele. And she brought Fei-Fei, my oldest friend in Taipei and ex-colleague at STAR :-)

modigliani

After a friend saved me from a day of channel-hopping by asking if I'd have a quick mid-morning coffee with him at Taipei Main Station, I went on to my favorite temple in Taipei, the Confucius Temple, and then walked over to the much busier Bao'an Temple right next to it. From there, it wasn't far to the Fine Arts Museum, so I took a quick detour via the Taipei Story House (the current exhibition was a tad boring, though - just a couple of jars with Chinese medicine remedies to smell) and then paid the entry fee for the "Pieces from the Modern Arts Museum of the City of Paris" exhibition. And walked in and stood in front of my first real Modigliani ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The girl with blue eyes - BEAUTIFUL!!!

botanical garden

Every time I go there, it's a little bigger and nicer :-))

translation

I went to Kungkuan to present myself at Pristine, a translation agency that might be in need of freelance translators. I walked in there, and the manager said: "I've seen you around." - Mh, yes, I used to live in this area. We had a nice chat, I promised to email them my resume, and then she asked if I had presented myself at the Chinese translation agency a couple of floors below. So I walked in there, straight into a Chinese-language cross fire: "What are your experiences? What is your background? Who did you work for before? Where are they located? What are your fields of expert?..." Felt a bit weird to stumble into this kind of crossfire after having been a manager of a translation agency myself :-S But I guess if they believed just anyone walking in there claiming to be a former manager of a translation agency and now being an expert freelance translator...

work out

I did a 3-hour up-and-down hike on Yangmingshan. First I raced up the stairs to Qixing park that my mum, Sarah and I had to hike down in the dark last year in summer when we sort of picked up that Dutch guy on the way up and he turned out to be so slow, it was starting to get dark when we reached Mount Qixing, with 1120m the highest peak within the vicinity of Taipei. As my mum and that guy have really bad nightvision and the stairs were of course unlit, Sarah and I each had to lead one of the two. So we went down going "step, step, step, no step, no step, step, step, step". Needless to say, it took us ages and we were utterly exhausted by the time we reached the street. And it was so late that we had to walk for at least half an hour before we found a taxi. The next day, I got terribly sick from the exhaustion.
It was much nicer doing the stairs during the day. And there was almost nobody around which is probably why I managed to get so close to those beautiful big blue birds who kept leading the way for a while. I think they were Forumosan Blue Magpies. There was no point in going up to the park and taking pictures of the view since there was zero visibility, so I turned towards Lengshuikeng. By the time I got there, it was really foggy, and I have absolutely no idea what the area looks like. From the description, it looks like it might be worth it going up there another time when the weather is better. I just went on towards the Juansi waterfalls and found in them one of the nicest spots I've been to that close to Taipei downtown. As always when doing a hike in or around Taipei, I kept thinking that I should have done that much more often during my time here. But every time I thought that, the next weekend would come, and there would be so much every-day stuff to deal with. Or the feeling of just wanting to hang around at home would be so strong that it would usually take months before I'do the next hike and find some other absolutely great spot fairly easy to reach.

alleycat's
Reiner was working late and then called about dinner, so I suggested my beloved Alleycat's. I didn't expect to run into either Jenny or Alan, so seeing Jenny there was a niiice surprise. Hopefully, I'll manage to run into Alan on Saturday, when Roelof is having his birthday party at the Neihu Alleycat's.

page one

Had lunch with Michele, just like I used to do most days after I stopped working. We walked into the bagel place next to the office, and the girl behind the counter smiled at us and remembered our usual order :-)) Had a looong lunch with lots of women's talk, and then I went towards Page One to look for the books on my shopping list, the new Mao biography by Jung Chang and the new Harry Potter. Didn't buy the books, though, because of course RichardM was right, they're not out in paperback yet, and the Mao biography was about 1200nt. I guess I'll have to try through Amazon then if I want them in English. Bought some other stuff but nothing fancy, just to have something to read while I'm here (I brought so much stuff for Reiner et al. that I hardly packed anything for myself). I did the Warner Village (nothing really interesting on)/ Mitsukoshi (how can they make profit from having 4 giant department stores one behind the other???) detour back to the MRT and went home to get ready for

the forumosa happy hour

:)))))) Of course, I had sort of timed my stay here so that I could go. And it was just as always, as if I hadn't been away :) A couple of new faces were there and some of the usual suspects, like Bri, one of the first GC members 3 years ago and who I went to Taiwanese class with. When was that again? Or Tarra who I knew even before I moved here. And Maoman brought the t-shirts :) my name is on the back, too ;-) even though I haven't really been posting much lately :) Reiner's name is, of course, much further up, he's number 6 or so. As always, Reiner kept counting my drinks and whenever I asked if I could have another one, nodded and ordered. Paid with a minor hangover the next morning :-S

kungkuan

Walked into Hans' office this morning just like I used to do every morning before work. And what we talked about wasn't that different from back then ;-) except for the part about my reverse culture shock in Germany, like how uncomfortable I feel in German crowds whereas I can handle crowds here in Taiwan well enough. And, of course, the part about anybody in sight feeling qualified to comment on our family planning ("why haven't you stopped taking the pill yet?"), even people I've never met before. I know that it's about the same here - as soon as one is involved with a Taiwanese family. Never was for me, though, nobody ever bothered me with that while I was still here.
Got myself a phone card, too, Monika's prepaid card that she keeps using whenever she's here and that she left with a friend who works in the pseudo Goethe Institute, just around the corner from Reiner's place. And immediately started messaging. Being able to get answers was quite nice for a change :-) Afterwards, I roamed my old neighbourhood and did the whole Kungkuan tour that I did so often on the weekends: down all of Tingzhou from my place towards Keelong Road and back on Roosevelt, with a quick dash over to Hsinsheng, to check out the cd stores and Eslite. Wasn't in much of a shopping mood, though, even less than usual, I guess partly because I still have so much stuff in boxes in Germany that needs to be unpacked before I can focus on buying lots of new things. I've got to go back before I leave, though. I promised Tuesday to bring her some of her favorite cat food from our old pet shop and didn't feel like buying it today.
We, Reiner, Michele and I, concluded the day with diner in Carnegie's: Fish and Chips with the most delicate mushy peas ever and two large Hoegaardens ;-)))))

bitan

Did something today I've been meaning to do for years: Hiking up the trail in Bitan. Poor Reiner ;-) We set out for Bitan after "breakfast" (around 2.30), crossed the bridge and basically kept on walking. And suddenly found ourselves in one of the weirdest places ever. Must have been some sort of amusement park or something. All that was left were some overgrown plastic cars, a concrete platform in the middle of nowhere, broken marble stairs and lots of rubble. Got to make a post on Forumosa, somebody there surely knows what this used to be, maybe Sandman?
Amazingly enough, it was Reiner's suggestion to keep on walking ;-) We did and had the chance to enjoy some of the Taipei wildlife: suddenly 5 or 6 squirrels were chasing each other and throwing nuts at us. We watched them for a while and then went on to the "Scenic flat-top" from where we had a nice view all over Hsintien and the south-east of Taipei including barely visible 101. As we were already on the top, we took the chance to go on even though the mention of a bus station evoked memories of that hike I did with Michele in summer and where we ended up walking for ages in the scorching sun until a nice elder Taiwanese couple took pity on us and brought us to the next bus stop. And were back at the Bitan bridge much faster than we'd expected. Tried to take some pictures of all my favorite food-stall food (fish balls, deep-fried vegetables, quail eggs) before it got too dark and then managed to cross out the next thing on my shopping list: I bought 6 bags of dried fish/shrimps/squid for Tuesday and myself to snack on at the "Local Taiwanese produce" exhibition in front of Hsintien MRT :))) (first thing I crossed out on my shopping list were the dangly cell phone thingies on the Jade Market yesterday).
On the way home, we bumped into a German guy I know, and he went: “Are you STILL here or again?”:-)))

h o m e

Helle, sorry, maybe you don't want to read this :-S
I'm home! After the worst and longest bout of homesickness I've ever been through, after 3 months and 11 days, after the longest time I've ever been away from Taipei in the 4 years since I first came here in November 2001. I got all excited being among so many Taiwanese during check-in. I didn't sleep for a second on the plane (and instead caught up on movies I'd missed like The Island or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and checked out all the Chinese cds on demand). And I cried when the first peaks of Taiwan came up through the clouds and on the bus all down Zhongshan North Road.
I just had a perfectly plain normal Saturday with Reiner, with a sandwich breakfast, the usual Flower and Jade Market trip including checking-out the give-away pets (a tiny, still blue-eyed Tuesday and some beautiful Tugou puppies), a stop-over at Bade Road and Guanghua Market for roaming all the DVD stores (only bought like 12 – I’d have expected more new stuff after 3 months), a big bowl of beef noodles with some tofu + hundred-year eggs, a quick afternoon nap, an evening stroll around Shida including hijacking Reiner’s cell phone for textmessaging (and having him tell me that I'm not supposed to walk while text-messaging ;-)), peaks into shoe shops, an onion-egg pancake and my first pearl-milk tea in 3 months :) :). And two videos before going to bed.
And it’s nicely warm and humid, and I can still speak Chinese, and I feel completely at home and less than half as weird and out of place as I do in Germany.

weird :-s

When I got to Germany in July, there was this poster at my transfer gate in Frankfurt:

When I arrived in Taipei this morning, China Air played a video during the landing. The first picture was this:

the market place of Halle (it was a feature on Haendel who was born in Halle).

wedding anniversary

It's our second anniversary tomorrow, and since I'll spend the whole evening on the train, we opened the bottle of champagne tonight.
Happened to be "Germersheimer Zungenloeser", the champagne my Chinese professor had produced by some of his winegrower friends after he became dean of the FASK. The bottle has been waiting for the perfect occasion for two years :-)

4 more days

:-)))))))