On the Third Day of Chinese New Year

It's finally sunny out, so I decided to take my camera out with me on my morning walk.

This is a neighbor's dog.
She's a Japanese breed called "shibainu" (柴犬). Naturally, she's wearing a kimono in celebration of the Chinese New Year.






The entire town is deserted during the CNY holidays.
This is one of the major streets in the downtown core.







This is the entrance of Da-an Forest Park in the heart of Taipei City. An ox is guarding the entrance... with its tongue out.

Happy Year of the Ox.







Inside Da-an Forest Park













Glittering flowers





































Happy birdie playing in water









Happy kitties under the sun.

When I first saw them, the one with a white belly jumped up trying to catch a butterfly. Unfortunately, my stupid camera was too slow to capture it.











Bare naked trees and a bare naked cow





At first, I thought it was "Super Cow".
However, one may wonder why "Super Cow" would be flying on a broom.
The answer was about 10 steps backward.
It ain't "Super Cow". It's a Witch Cow!



















I first noticed the kid because of a warning sign on the left side of the slides.
The wooden part of the structure was waiting to be repaired, and the park had put out a warning sign asking parents not to let their kids go up there.
When I got there, the kid was already up there by himself and his parents were nowhere to be found.
"Come on down," I said to the kid. He didn't answer. His parents probably taught him not to talk to strangers.
"It's dangerous. You should come down here." I tried again. The kid was still silent.
"How old is he? He can obviously walk very well, but can he talk?"
The sun was burning my neck. I contemplated going up to get him, but I didn't want to be mistaken as a kidnapper.
"Be a good boy and come down here," I pleaded. He just stared at me from up high.
A big dude came around me with his eyes on the kid. "Come to daddy," he said, never acknowledged my existence. "Come over here," he raised his voice. "Get down here or the police are coming to get you," he threatened.
I can't stand it when Taiwanese parents use threats to get kids to behave, so I walked away.
The kid never said a word, and I never found out if (and how) he eventually came back down.

Milk

As Dr. Motormouth ordered, I started a diet journal. She wants me to do it for a couple of weeks first so she could help me adjust my diet before we start the actual fertility treatment. It's only been 5 days, but I've already become a more conscientious eater.

One thing I've noticed since I started the diet journal is that I now drink a lot more milk (granted it's only been 5 days so it hardly qualifies as a permanent change in diet). However, I was never a big milk drinker. No. Let me rephrase that. I didn't drink milk at all.

I had ulcer when I was 16 (all that stress and burning the midnight oil studying for the National Senior High School Entrance Exam). After a stomach endoscopy, the doctor put me on a strict "soft food" diet and told me not to drink milk as it turns into clogs once mixed with stomach acid. Whether it was a load of crap or it actually had some scientific reasoning behind it, I was more than happy to oblige since I, like most people in Asia, grew up on soy milk or milk tea. Drinking milk by itself was just not a part of my diet back then. The only reason I buy milk is... okay, there are actually two reasons. One, Bill quite often has some cookies and milk before he goes to bed. Two, I put milk in my coffee.

So as you can understand, I've never felt the desire to have some milk.

For about 2 days now, however, I actually want milk. As extreme as it seemed, the desire to have some milk drove me to drinking two glasses of milk last night, and I just finished two coffee mugs of milk in the last hour. While it may not seem much for some regular milk drinkers, it's quite a lot for someone who didn't use to drink milk at all.

I have two cartons of milk in the fridge: one at work and one at home.

At 36, I wouldn't be surprised if my body starts to need more calcium. We'll have to wait and see how long this milk-drinking behavior lasts.

Nuage Chillin' Out

The last few days have been cold and wet, and Nuage has been avoiding walking on the cold tiles. He spent most of the time on a blanket or my lap.

This morning, however, after playing tag with me up and down the stairs and batting a paper ball around, Nuage needed to cool down a bit.

First the belly.





Then the back.











One more shot just 'cause his mom adores him.

Happy 2009

Dorion invited a bunch of friends to spend New Year's Eve at his place because of the great view of Taipei 101 from his rooftop.

Around 9pm, almost everyone was there, and Kyle suggested a game of Catan.


Harry has never played Catan, so he was studying the rules.

Meanwhile, everyone else was getting the board and all the cards ready for the game.









Shannon and Sam were also new to this game, so Trevor explained the rules to them.

By this point, Harry had thrown the rules away. He decided to team up with Kyle.





Bill is a veteran Catan player, and he's all about "following the rules".

I was feeling under the weather and hardly had any voice, so I "benched" myself in this game.











While the game was going on, Dorion and Sharon brought plates of yummy barbecued food to the table. We had steaks, miranated chicken, and mushrooms. All of them were really good.

The game was paused at 11:40pm, when everyone got ready to go to the rooftop for the fireworks.

We brought everything but a clock (or a radio), so we actually missed the countdown. All we saw was fireworks going up Taipei 101 and all of the sudden, it exploded.












According to the news today, the firework display this year lasted 188 seconds, longer than previous years.

However, it seemed shorter and lamer to us.













Have a fan-fabulous 2009!!!