Taipei 101

Monday 1/31/11

This morning we took a Taxi to Taipei 101 for some shopping and sightseeing. When we arrived, we headed to Shin Kong Mitsukosha department store first to grab some lunch at the food court. The food court was filled with all kinds of Asian food, kind of like the Mistuwa food court x 10. There were all types of Chinese/Taiwanese/Hakka food, Japanese food, Korean food, Thai food and some fast food places. It was so overwhelming it was hard to choose what to eat. I ended up with a pork katsu donburi and a Mos burger on the side.

After that we headed upstairs to do some shopping. The main floor of the department store was all beauty stuff. They had most of the same premium brands we have in the US like Chanel, Dior, Chantecaille, Cle de Peau, etc and also some premium Asian brands like Shu Uemura, Kose, Fancl, etc. I wanted to buy some makeup to bring back but there was so much it ws hard to focus. There were a lot of cute shoes and boots (from Europe? Brazil?) but they were pretty pricey. I wanted to see the selection at the cheaper night market type places first.

Next to that department store, there was a small indoor mall that had boutiques from all the major European designers. Some of the stores had a sale sign in front that read 3, 5, or 7 which means up to 30, 50 or 70% off selected items (respectively). It was hard getting used to and the boutiques were so small it was hard to tell what was on sale and how much it was on sale for. It seemed like the salespeople just memorized which ones were what since the items weren't marked.

After we were done browsing, we walked to Taipei 101 which was a 4-story mall in the lobby. We headed up to the 5th floor which was the entrance to the observatory. After getting tickets, we waited in line for the elevator up. The elevator was super fast, something like going up 3 stories every half second. I got very woozy but it was a very short ride up. At the top we each got a little museum-tour-like speaker and walked around to take pictures and see the displays. There were a couple of gift stores at the top, a coffee shop and some other little things to do. After about an hour we headed down.

On the way down you can see the large damper ball which is this massively huge round structure suspended in the middle of the building that is used to keep the tall building secure and not sway in the wind. We also had to walk through the largest coral/jade shop ever before they let us exit. By the time we were done it was dark outside and we jumped into a taxi and headed towards Julia Wedding studio to look at our picture proofs. The traffic was horrible (New Years? Rush hour?) and it took almost 2 hours to get to the photo studio. We arrived around 8pm and it took about 2 hours to sort through 355 picture proofs to narrow it down to our top 42. The package we chose had 30 pictures included so we had to pay $1500NT ($30) extra per picture.

After Julia Wedding we went to the Shilin Night Market to eat traditional night market foods. Yup, this meant stinky tofu and oyster pancakes. At the beginning of the trip I was actually excited to try these things. I typically like exotic foods and it would be nice to like these "special" Taiwanese items but as soon as I walked into the stinky night market and actually saw the foods being cooked I was pretty grossed out. I tried the stinky tofu anyway, which was deep fried and didn't look bad, and got as far as putting it on my tongue before I had to spit it out. It tasted like really, really bad/strong fish sauce and literally stung my tongue. The oyster pancake would have been much better except it was drenched in this questionable red sauce. I took a bite (without the sauce) and actually enjoyed it until I got some gooey pancake part. I'm noticing that a lot of Taiwanese food is gooey. We ordered a couple other dishes like this oden-type soup with unidentifiable floating white things in it and some fried tempura fishcake which was good but had this pink sauce on top that I didn't like that much. After that we walked around some more to take pictures and I was just so tired (and grossed out) that I couldn't really enjoy browsing around. It was like an overly crowded flea market that smelled. There were rows and rows of clothes and accessories vendors and each played their own loud house/dance/pop music. It was craziness. After 15 minutes of being over stimulated we took a taxi home and I knocked out.

First Morning in Taiwan

The 14 hour flight here was brutal! It started out okay -- the flight was half-empty so we were allowed to move where we wished. We opted to take the first row to get extra leg room. After about 5 hours my back started hurting and I started getting restless. I watched The Kids are Alright, half of King's Speech, Love and Other Drugs, half of Mary Poppins and read a couple of chapters. I was determined to stay awake since we were arriving in Taipei at 10:30pm (6am PST). By about hour 12 I was not feeling it. My back hurt, my shoulder was in pain, my legs were aching and I started feeling nauseous from the airplane smells. They served porridge and the smell just made everything worse. I used a throw-up bag to "filter" the airplane air and sat with my head between my knees for the rest of the flight.

When we arrived in Taipei it was warmer than I expected. It was cool outside but the humidity made it easy to sweat. I was really hungry but too tired to do anything. It was about a 45 minute drive to Max's grandma's house in Shilin and I knocked out in the car. I had a bad ulcer and stomach pains when we arrived so we decided to go to the night market to eat something. I felt like a zombie but I knew I'd feel better once I got something in my stomach. We went to a random restaurant and had cold chicken, fried rice, sauteed vegetables, tofu and sweet and sour pork ribs. Amazing that such a random street restaurant tastes so much better than the over-greased Chinese food in LA! We stopped by 7-Eleven to get some tea eggs and tea and then headed back to the apartment. Max's grandma lives in a new apartment complex built by the Taiwanese government for government workers. (His grandfather was in the Taiwanese equivalent of the CIA.) Was I allowed to blog that?

I showered and knocked out and woke up at 7:30am the next morning. I forgot to turn my iPhone alarm off and the time automatically adjusted! In the morning I met Max's grandmother who was so happy to see us. We had some sweet soymilk and watched TV until Ivan and Max's mom woke up. After spending some time with the family, we headed out for some breakfast. It was about a 10 minute walk to the best Taiwanese breakfast I've had in my life. There was a salty soy milk which was served like porridge, scallion buns and some Chinese donuts dipped in sweet soymilk. Even the panfried radish cake was 100x better than the best dimsum in San Gabriel! Since I don't have my laptop with me pictures will have to wait until I get back!

We rushed back to the apartment to meet Max's aunt and cousin who was visiting from the U.S. too. We watched Asian music videos on TV while snacking on some fresh hand-rolled egg rolls (the cookie, not the appetizer) and Taiwanese fruit. Then his other aunt and cousin who live here came over and we had pork chop rice delivered to the apartment. Again, the best I've ever tasted. Doesn't even taste like any of the pai kut fan I've ever had in the U.S. The pork was so thin, tender and flavored. The rice was soft and sticky like Korean rice and it had really good steamed vegetables, corn and seaweed in it.

I am so full, it's barely 2:30pm and I feel like I've already gained 5 pounds. I'll be back later hopefully. It is a pain to type on a Chinese keyboard btw... Ｔｈｅ　ｓｅｔｔｉｎｇ　ｋｅｅｐｓ　ｇｏｉｎｇ　ｂａｃｋ　ａｎｄ　ｆｏｒｔｈ　ｂｅｔｗｅｅｎ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ　ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒ　ｓｅｔｓ．

Day 1 in Honolulu

It always amazes me how much you can get done in one day on island time. We flew into Honolulu early, so we arrived at 11AM PLUS gained 3 hours on the way over. We both stayed awake during the entire flight (I'm completely caught up on Gossip Girl now) and were starving by the time we arrived.

We took a shuttle to our hotel and checked in our bags before heading to the streets in search of food while we waited for our room to be ready. We tried out Iyasume Musubi, hidden in a back alley by King's village and shared a spam/cucumber musubi and a salmon onigiri. Afterwards we walked about 10 yards before sitting down at another restaurant, the highly-rated Jinroku. I loved the laid-back atmosphere and the teppan-style open kitchen with skilled Japanese teppan chefs. (My first time seeing an actual Japanese chef at a teppan place). we shared a pork and cheese tonpei yak which was an omelet of cheese and slices of kurobuta pork topped with a cream sauce, a tomato-based sauce and takiyaki sauce. After devouring that in mere minutes we shared a crispy chicken negiyaki dish, which is like okonomiyaki but green onion-based instead on cabbage-based. It was amazing as well. We ended our lunch(?) with their popular milk pudding.

After our two mini meals, I stopped by anlocal spot for a quick massage. The tension in my neck and shoulders have been a lot worse lately and I think I've gotten used to the constant dull pain that results from it. After the massage we walked around for a bit before checking back into the hotel at 3pm. At the hotel we unpacked, arranged for our car rental and luau reservations, took a 20-minute nap and then was out the door by 4pm.

We headed down to the beach to enjoy the sunny weather and our 35% resort-wide discount on food. We hung out at the Banyan Court watching surfers while sipping on a lava flow and munching on spicy taro and sweet potato chips dipped in a crab and spinach dip. Max spent a few minutes in the sand/water before we headed out towards Diamondhead to do more discovering.

As we got closer to Diamondhead, we decided to take the 1-mile walk inland in Kapahulu towards Waiola Shaved Ice. I was still pretty full from our snack but needed the walk so we went. It was a long, sweaty, smoggy walk but we finally made it... Only to find out it closed just 10 minutes before we arrived. No worries, we headed up the street to Leonard's Bakery for their famous piping hot malasadas (Portuguese donuts). We sat outside eating our donuts when a local started engaging in conversation with us -- all about food. Masa was a 3rd generation Korean local that was excited to hear that we were as interested in good food as he was. One topic lead to another and an hour later we were STILL taking down his food and hotspot recommendations. Then the friendly, older gentleman offered to take us around on a quick ride to show us how to get around and then take us back to our hotel. Sincerely hospitable offer but of course I was hesitant. Well, Max wasn't and he accepted! We piled into his Ford F350 and started on what ended up being an hour-long tour of old town, freeways, Chinatown, downtown and even included a stop at Liliha Bakery where our impromptu tour guide bought us some creme puffs. I was a little weirded out (and scared for my life) but this guy was so nice, friendly, funny and genuinely good-natured.

He finally dropped us off in Waikiki around 8pm. Max and I walked around a bit to browse the uppity stores like Louis Vuitton and Chanel in our sweaty summer clothes and flip flops before deciding to have a late dinner at Ramen Nakamura, which is famous for their ox tail ramen. As we were waiting for a seat, Max noticed that Cheech from Cheech & Chong was dining alone (the only other non-Japanese person in the joint). The ramen was amazing and the ox tails were delicious dipped in their ginger-shoyu sauce. The gyoza were meaty and unique but the fried rice left some flavor to be desired. We ended the day at ABC stores to buy essentials for tomorrow.

Phew, what a day.

Turning 30.

What better way to turn 30 than a week-long celebration of favorite eats, discovering new places and epic performances? Since my birthday fell on a Tuesday this week, I took advantage and indulged myself through two weekends to celebrate. No holds barred. No want gone unwanted.

Yoga.
I guess you could say it all started at Purple Yoga on the Saturday before my birthday. This is the first time I took my mom and I quickly learned that at 52, my mom kicks my butt in both cardio and endurance departments. Kind of an embarrassing realization at 30.

Shau May.
Nothing beats a late night run for Shanghai pan fried dumplings in San Gabriel. Did the usual, and ended it with sipping on a mango delight on the car ride back home.

Alcove Cafe & Bakery.
On Sunday, Max and I took the dogs for brunch in Los Feliz. It was Max's first time and the food was delish, as always. We shared some crab cakes to start and I had the country breakfast. Cora was a little barky (as usual) but we were able to keep the two somewhat under control. This was Lulu's first real outing since her radiation therapy.


Hollywood Bowl.
Later that night Max and I went to the Hollywood Bowl for a performance of RENT directed by Neil Patrick Harris. The show was amazing, a gazillion times better than the time I watched it at the OCPAC. The cast was captivating and talented (especially Aaron Tveit as Roger and Nicole Scherzinger as Maureen) with the exception of Vanessa Hudgens as Mimi who made certain scenes just flat out awkward. We shared some great prosciutto, cheese and breadsticks and had probably the best time I've ever had at the Hollywood Bowl.

Good Stuff.
Even though my week was full of meetings and (gasp) work, Max and I happened to sneak away to Good Stuff on Tuesday for an actual birthday lunch. I only had 50 minutes and because of the long wait for a table, we ended up rushing through the lunch and spent almost the entire time on our respective phones, answering e-mails and IMs. Oh well.

Surprise party.
At 3pm I was thoroughly surprised at work with a Susie's Cakes celebration cake, gorgeous flowers from Effusive flowers and, well, Max. He and Jo-Anne set up a fake meeting for me and some of my favorite co-workers joined for a quick cake break. Max won major points with the co-workers.

Ayaka.
After work we took the long trek to Diamond Bar to take Emi and Ayaka out to dinner. We said hi to my Athai and family and then headed to Guppy's in Rowland Heights for a quick dinner.

Ridiculously good looking people.
My sisters surprised me at home with an epic ViJo production. Yona blindfolded me as soon as I arrived and walked me into a completely redecorated living room. They set up an entire stage complete with curtains and stage lights. The show was funny, heart-warming, sentimental and ridiculous all at the same time. I was so touched that they spent so much time putting this together, and put so much effort in performing it!

Bottega Louie.
On Wednesday we headed up to Bottega Louie after work for a quick dinner before a show at the Staples Center. This was our first time there (I got the idea from seeing Flo's pictures from lunch earlier in the day) and we were so impressed with the place! The entire restaurant/market/bakery had raised architectural ceilings, almost like an old bank. The place was white and airy and the food was so good. We shared the portobello fries which I still dream about and two pastas that were great, but not spectacular. I wish we had a place like that near work. And I also wish I had enough of an appetite after dinner to order some desserts and pastries.

Lady Gaga.
After dinner we went to Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour at Staples Center. It was a-ma-zing. We had great premium seats (from Max's work) that were really close to the stage, but unfortunately we were perfectly situated to the side of the stage. We saw her profile the entire time and sat right underneath the LCD display so our visibility was a little compromised. We were a little distracted by the 'little monsters' around us -- some young, some old, some high and some barely clothed -- but all in all it was an amazing show and quite the experience.


Mermaid Restaurant.
Milton and I shared a happy birthday happy hour at a dive bar called Mermaid Restaurant in Hermosa Beach (his choice). I rode over there with Jo-Anne and Megan and Max met us a little later when he was done with work. We started with some light drinks and ended up ordering sandwiches and such for dinner -- it wasn't half bad! I have to say though we were the youngest people there. And the most Asian.

Beach Par-Tay.
And the partying continues, though this one was work sanctioned. Our annual summer party was at the Beach House Inn in Hermosa Beach. After a morning of hectic work, client reviews and internal meetings, we all headed to the beach for a half day party. There were sandwiches from Jersey Mike's, lots of drinks and various activities like massage stations, live music, volleyball games and an Over the Line tournament. I left a little early but had a decent time just lounging inside the suite. (The weather was much too cold for an actual beach party, sadly.)

Shopping + Food.
On Saturday Max and I headed to Rodeo Drive for some lunch and shopping. We had lunch at Il Pastaio (Max's first time, my second) and it was very good. (Sense a theme here?) We had what was probably the best prosciutto I've had in my life, some burrata, a zuppetta (clams & muscles in garlic tomato broth) and a lasagna. Needless to say we were stuffed and got up promptly to walk it off. We headed to Christian Dior to size my finger for my birthday gift, an 'Oui' ring, but not before wandering into Ilori and buying me a pair of sunglasses, one of my many self birthday gifts this year. There are two situations where I completely indulge in shopping for myself: when I'm on vacation and the weeks leading up to and after my birthday.

Bergamot Station.
We headed to Bergamot Cafe afterwards for some coffee (easiest way to get some Intelligentsia coffee that I know of) and stopped by Hiromi Paper to say hi to the sisters and to a few of the gallery showings to gawk at art.

"Drinking night."
Drinking night was a complete failure. We all had a large pho dinner at Pho Tasty and were too stuffed (and bloated) to drink anything at the Korean drinking place we found in Cypress (called Royal Square). So after a poor attempt to down some beer and soju, we gave up and went to music studio for karaoke instead. Yona was a remote nazi, skipping every song she didn't like, Aai sang too loud, Henri took himself way too seriously, Vina sang her usual eclectic choice of songs and Max was too shy to sing into the mic. I wasn't.

Athai's again.
We visited Athai again but this time took my mom + sisters. Kee Kiu was also over. We hung out for a few hours just talking and catching up. It's the most amazing thing in the world to be able to spend my birthday with my 92-year old great grandmother!

Irvine.
On Sunday I had my "main" birthday party. My sisters, friends and various family met up in Irvine to watch Eat Pray Love and then we headed over to Tokyo Table to indulge ourselves in lobster dynamite, mochi gratin and honey toast. And about 20 other dishes. We stuffed ourselves silly, had great conversations and ended it with sake bombs. Oh, and we took sticker pictures.

Sick day.
On Monday, Max and I took a sick day to join Mason and Marcela for brunch at Old Vine Cafe. We had a nice quiet meal and then walked around to shop a little. Then we headed to South Coast Plaza so that Max and Marcela could spend their gift certificates on sunglasses. After that we headed separate ways and Max and I shopped for some patio furniture. After complete failure, we headed home to rest, and then back up to LA to pick up my 'Oui' ring. Even though we arrived in Beverly Hills half an hour before the store closed, Olympic Blvd. was completely shut down for President Obama's visit and we were unable to crossover to Dior before they closed. Instead we joined Yona and Aai for dinner at Il Buco. I am IN LOVE. The pizza was delicious, the calamari was perfect, the prosciutto was heavenly (same restaurant group as Il Pastaio) and the pastas were tasty. Oh, did I mention how perfect the apple tart was?

Ok, I am spoiled.

More Doing

Today marked my first weekend of more doing, less complaining about not doing. I took Friday off to keep a closer eye on Lulu since this week will be the last of the worst. I ran a few errands: went to the dry cleaners for what seemed like the first time this year, picked up some bird seeds at Petco and set up my new bird feeder.

Later that night I drove up to Little Tokyo to meet up with Max, Vina and Henri for dinner. We arrived a little early for our Sushi Gen reservation so we had Happy Hour at Haru Ulala first. This was my first time at Sushi Gen and I was quite impressed. It's been a while since I've had good sushi and this really reminded me again that the sushi/Japanese selection around home is crap.

On Saturday I woke up a little later than I would have liked but was able to make it to the 1PM Hot Yoga class. This was the first time I've done it so early in the day, luckily it wasn't too hot out. After yoga Max and I went to Mimi's Cafe to share a plate of chicken tenders. They weren't as tasty as I remember them to be in high school but it was a nice, quick, light lunch. (Except for the giant French Onion soup with 1000 grams of sodium.) After our lunch outside we went to Trader Joe's to shop for groceries for dinner. We invited Max's mom and Ivan over to finish up the steaks from Robinson's Prime Reserve.

I looked up a couple of recipes online and decided to make white truffle risotto and butterscotch budino. (The recipe was from Pizzeria Mozza) Both dishes came out good but weren't very popular -- the risotto was too heavy and I think everyone thought the budino was too sweet/flavored. Which is how it's supposed to taste but I didn't have any cookies to help balance it out.

Later that night Yona and Aai came over to spend the night. We had our usual 1-hour of bickering about what tv show/ movie/ netflix/ appleTV to watch and then I called it a night.

Today (Sunday) I work up a little earlier (10am) and made omelets for everyone. After breakfast Max made us all coffee. I took a couple of minutes to prune the garden and realized the empty dirt patches in the front really bugged me so Max and I visited Martinez nursery and Home Depot for some plants. I wanted a perennial or evergreen border around our front steps so we wouldn't have to worry about replacing them all the time but we didn't find much selection. We found more flowers to fill out the front, hopefully they're the type that are evergreen in Southern California. I also took all of our dead/dying cosmos out from the front and replanted the ones that were "salvageable" in the back. Seems like I'm starting a little patch of "random flowers" in the back, let's hope it doesn't grow to look too awkward.

After buying plants we went to play tennis at Shadow Park with my sisters. We did an hour of tennis, did a singles tournament, then played basketball. After I stubbed my toe we abandoned the basketball courts and went to the mall to get some cherry lemonade. Walking into the food court got all of us hungry so we headed to The Loft for a proper dinner.

We came home to a messy house -- the plants we bought earlier had to be planted, the dishes from the morning weren't done, the downstairs was a mess from having 4 dogs running around all day. Of course a cluttered house means a cluttered mind for me so I'm doing a little here and there to get the house presentable so I can relax in these last few hours of the weekend. I guess it's time to mop now.