2/6/2015: Landed at Narita on time at 4:10PM, there wasn't may people at connecting flight security check point, I got to boarding gate (38f) in just 20 minutes, to my surprise though, there were more people waiting at gates 38 (d-g) than last time (a year ago), looks like more planes are arranged to take off from here. All passengers need to take shuttle to get to their respective planes, ours (NH1083) was about 5 minutes away. NH1083 took off a bit ahead of schedule but arrived in Taiwan nearly 40 minutes early. There were quite a few arriving flights at the time, but most of the passengers are non-ROC passport holder, only a handful of people were at the ROC passport holder lines, 5 minutes to clear custom, another 5 minutes to get my luggage - this is a record for me - and met Peilee and Tina just outside of the exit gate. Got to Neihu home by 9:40, happy to see mom before her usual 10:00PM bed time.
2/7/2015: Woke up around 4:00AM, got up and sorted out my luggages. The weather today was excellent, sunny with just right temperature. Did not do much today, tried to bring up TP-LINK TL-WR700N AP for Peilee's dorm room, the setup did not work even though I followed the procedures listed, found out the procedures they put in the pamphlet miss one important item - the DHCP server service has to be disabled manually for the device to function as an AP, I though this is automatically done since AP is just a pass through and DHCP server setting should be disabled by default, but anyway, it took me a while to find out. The new AP seemed to work intermittently, connecting to it also was problematic, only my MBP was able to connect to it and got online, I left it connected to see the result tomorrow. Tina left for her dorm in 三峽 as she has a volleyball practice tomorrow morning. Dinner was at a local restaurant - noodles, fried rices, scrambled clams, and fried shrimps.
2/8/2015: Weather today was cloudy and a bit gloomy, had buns (western and eastern) for breakfast. The connection to TL-TW700N was lost sometime during the night, not sure what caused it, suspecting quality of the device was bad. Noticed that the LAN port LED on the Hawkins router was off, the LED came up after I switched to a different port, started the test again, this time around, all 3 of my devices (MBP, iPad, and Nexus 7) were able to connect to the AP successfully, and online connection was also reasonably good - looks like the Hawking router is getting old and becoming less reliable. Started working on the TP-LINK range extender, configuring it was relatively easy, unlike the router/bridge/AP setup yesterday. After trying several different placement locations, only one showed acceptable performance, it is on top of the small chest of drawer near the entrance, placing a range extender there might not be a good idea, need to come up with a better solution.
Peilee left for dorm in 新竹園區 at 7:30, he would drop off Sharon at Tina's place on his way.
2/9/2015: My irregular heartbeat was getting more irritating, meditation has not made any difference yet. Blood pressure taken this morning was 126/75/60 average. Went for walk at 2:00PM at 碧湖公園, made 3 circles - two counter clockwise and one clockwise - in one hour, not a real workout but it's better than nothing. Stopped at 郵局 to check passbook balance - NT27000 + 42x2 interests. Had my eyes examined at 寶島眼鏡行 on my way back, the conclusion was that they could not do much for my eye sight, meaning new glasses weren't necessary, I don't know if I'll be able to renew my driver's license next year without improving my eye sight.
Got extremely sleepy and went to bed at 8:00PM.
2/10/2015: Woke up around 2:00AM, listened to 天龍八部 but dozed off from time to time, finally fell asleep around 6:00, got up at 8:30. Started to clean up and rearrange stuff in balcony at the back from 10:00 to 3:00 - break for lunch for about 2 hours. Will work on the balcony floor after getting some chemical stuff from 全聯 tomorrow. Went to bed at 11:00 after taking a hot shower - skipped shampoo.
2/11/2015: Woke up at 4:00, listened to 天龍八部 until 6:30. Had two different kind of buns, half each - I could eat nothing but buns all day :-) Went to 全聯 and got newspaper, cleaning sprays, NS a white turnip. Worked on the balcony floor, the cleaning spray I bought from 全聯 did not work - unlike CLR, hard scrub as well as scraping are the only way to remove the hard water deposit on tile surfaces. Had thin noodles for lunch. Went for walk in 碧湖公園, 3 circles around the lake, 2 clockwise and one counter clockwise. Purchased some grapes and dates, got some buns as well. Mom finished the floor with dish washing solution, seemed to work. Ah-Fen brought dinner home, two varieties of dumplings - cabbage and chive - all very tasty, I had 12 of them, the hot and sour soup was good too.
2/12/2015: Finished 天龍八部 while in bed and awake :-) Got up at 7:00. Went for a walk toward 大湖, stopped by 㨗運內湖站, learned that my 悠遊卡 still has a balance of NT330. Crossing 金湖路 on 成功路 maybe up to 2 minutes depending on your arrival time. Although there's a slope of about 5 degree uphill after the cross section, it's not enough for a good exercise. As was expected, the 松青 super market no longer existed. Cross 成功路 and walked back home, made a detour and visited 順意百貨, did not see the magnet hook I was looking for, got several small stationary containers instead. Threaded the turnip I bought yesterday - need to remember to get a couple of carrots tomorrow. Turned in around 10:00.
2/13/2015: Got up at 7:00, had the smallest breakfast - halves of each of the remaining two buns. Went with mom to 湖光市場 at 9:00, got back at 9:30, rushed to 全聯, all 蘋果日報 were gone already, got one bag of carrots, two bags of instant noodle, one bottle of 58˚ 金門高梁 and one bottle of 大麯, 4 bags of 可樂果, and 2 bags of 南瓜子. Had instant noodle plus left over dishes for lunch.
Walked 15 minutes to 松青 near 文德㨗運站, they don't have the kitchen wash cloth I had been looking for. Their grocery price is about 10% higher than 全聯. Didn't do much the rest of the afternoon. Peilee came home at 6:45. Since I am not a PCHOME registered member, a new member may not get order shipped within specific time, so Peilee helped ordered 2 table tennis rubbers - Butterfly Sriver (NT1180) and Flextra (NT650), not sure the delivery date though. Turned in at 11:20.
2/14/2015: Got up at 7:00, had 2/3 of a 糯米飯團, plus a small cup of soy milk. Cleaned up the kitchen a little more. Peilee's RAM purchased last night was delivered at 11:00AM - really fast.
Sis and Maggie came over around 1:00PM, as a tradition she did a flower arrangement for Chinese New Year. I handed her a bag of Macadamia chocolate, a can of Mocha Roca, and a box of Harry & David Moose Munch. Went for walk with Peilee, Ah-fen, and Sharon after hot pot dinner, my usual route except detour to famous 737巷 美食街, there were so many food stands along the street, we did not have anything, too full, maybe next time. We rode bus #紅2 back home.
2/15/2015: Got up at 7:00. Cleaned the range hood. Went and got stuff from 全聯 at 2:30 - wash cloth, beer, two varieties of sausages, 可樂果, 海苔小魚, and 山東白菜.
Working the menu for an hour and then a missed finger touch select all followed by a blank space wiped out everything - damn! The copy on MBP disappeared right after I did a sync, may have something to do with the time difference, I kept the San Jose time on MBP which is earlier than Taipei time, anything changed on iPad appeared to be newer and thus takes precedence. Turned in at 11:00.
2/16/2015: Got up at 7:00, had 2 small pieces of garlic bread for breakfast - less calorie. Visited 內湖
Costco at 10:00 - very crowded, got one bottle of red wine, white wine and 金門高梁 each, got one large bag of mixed 米果, and a versatile power strip. Irregular heartbeat bothered me more this morning. Finished up placing kitchen utility rack shelf cover.
The two home network files for 內湖 and 永和 are dated 2009 and locked, I don't remember adding passcodes to them, without access to the file for 永和, I won't be able to setup a new router for Anita, the only hope is that Kwanghua can somehow find username/password info for their Internet account.
Turned in at 11:00 - discovered that Mercury News still showed up on the driveway.
2/17/2015: Got up at 7:30 - considered lazy. Peilee started cleaning the floor while I started removing leftover glue goos from the rugs to be replaced, it did not work when using the regular cleaning agents, so I switched to the old goo-be-gone (not sure how old it was) and the goos gradually came off - amazing that it still performs. Went to 全聯 and got 香菇, 杏鮑菇, 小黃瓜, 米素, 培根, and 米酒. The new router TL-R841HP Peilee ordered last night arrived around 2:00, started setting it up but ran into problem, the WAN connection can not be established no matter what I tried, finally Peilee discovered that he had changed the password for his Hinet account, everything worked after the correct password was in place. Sliced a portion of the cuttle fish, fairly easy, mom will likely make the rest of the cuttle fish into 滷味 tomorrow. Went and got a piece of 湖南臘肉
from 新東陽 downstairs. Dinner was at a Ramen restaurant in 東湖 - 博多拉麵 is a chain store from Japan famous for its soup base (豬骨湯) - I gave it a 4/5 rating for its taste and price.
Worked on New Year's Eve dinner menu - 10 dishes plus soup.
2/18/2015: New Year's Eve finally. Got up at 6:50, Peilee and Ah-feng went to the market before I finished my morning 香功. Called Anita ahead of schedule since we are going to 慈恩園 soon. Took 㨗運文湖線 13 stops to get to 麟光站, after 10 minutes in line, shuttle bus took us to 慈恩園. Finished the whole process in 40 minutes. Consumed some of the food we brought before coming back to 內湖. Placed 清蒸海鮮 ingredients in six steel cans - to be steamed later, steamed 臘腸, 臘肉, and 肝腸 in rice cooker, sliced and placed them along with threaded turnip/carrot - 富貴拼盤II, cooked 花菇, 香菇, and 杏鮑菇, added special sauce and plating done - 鮮菇團圓. Peeled 烏魚子 after soaking them in 米酒, cooked them in medium heat for about 5 minutes but discovered they were not ready, went back and cooked them in high heat for another 5 minutes, appeared to be ready.
Finally set timer and steamed 清蒸海鮮 in rice cooker for 10 minutes, the shrimps in the cans were still raw - realized that even though the amount of time used was roughly the same as last year, the cans were placed at the bottom of the rice cooker which absorbed more heat and thus got cooked faster - the cans were placed on a rack instead this year; reset timer and extended cooking time 5 minutes more and it worked this time (a total of 15 minutes cooking time if placed on a rack in the rice cooker).
Dinner started at 6:30 and ended at 7:30, even though I tried to change dishes that require less preparation but it's obvious that it is not very popular - once again I was trying to view things my way - bad idea. Turned in at 11:00, I set up the tablet to watch our driveway so I can see Anita leaving the house but fell asleep and missed the event.
2/19/2015: Got up at 8:15, helped mom preparing 年糕 - our annual tradition. Finished breakfast by 10:00, over stuffed again - very sleepy afterward. It's 1:30PM, time for lunch but I don't have any desire to eat but mom still put out 10 dishes. Had the minimum I could take. Anita's flight 171 arrived more than one hour earlier, Anita called from NRT with Skype at 2:45, she also called her 永和. Went to 永祥西點麵包店 to see their gifts (拌手禮), nothing suitable for me, visited 美麗華 to examine Nexus 9, HTC is charging NT13900 without any additional accessories. Ended up getting two boxes of Hand Made Mochi Gift from 新東陽 (NT220 each with one additional Tea Plum Jelly [茶梅果凍]) instead - gift bags included :-). Got called twice today from 阿山 to setup a classmate dinner reunion, schedule has been changed a couple of times and just got an e-mail from him changing schedule to Friday (2/27) again, hopefully this is the final deal. Called 光華 to get 博愛街地址 - 35巷3弄1樓. Anita's flight NH1083 was delayed 33 minutes, actual arrival time was 19 minutes late (9:14PM instead of 8:55PM). Anita called at 9:50, she's already on 國光號 heading taipei, 堪慈 is already waiting at 博愛街 house.
2/20/2015: Got up at 7:35. Traditional wife's home-revisiting-day. Peilee still gave me ride to 永和 but I'll have to find my way back to 內湖 tonight since they will be staying overnight at Ah-Feng parent's old house in 苗栗. Left the house at 9:15, got to 永和文化路口at 9:40, walked to 博愛街 house around 9:49. After some preparation, Anita and I walked to 小妹/Y頭 house at 10:12. I could not setup the router as Y頭 could not find the Internet account info, maybe next time. Had lunch at their house, preparation was, once again, very time consuming. Played Mahjong for a couple of hours, I lost NT400 - everyone else won. Dinner was at 光耀/秀滿 house, Anita and I walked her mom there, took about 30 minutes - more than twice the normal time, her mom is also showing some recurring memory problems, hope it's not Alzheimer.
碧湖Left 光耀 home at 9:45, walked to 頂溪車站 at 10:00, 中瀘線轉板南線轉文湖線, got back to 內湖 residence at 11:00, waiting time was about 10 minutes in total.
2/21/2015: Got up at 8:00. Had coffee and a sweet 饅頭 for breakfast - not bad. Did not do much in the morning, had fast noodle plus shrimps for lunch. I only made 2 circles around 碧湖 park as there were a lot of people there - not sure if it's because of the New Year or weekend or the combination of both - a little difficult to focus on walking, had to yield and dodge constantly, at times also need to wait behind slow moving people. No pastry store was open but I got some packaged buns in 全聯 even though they only have a few varieties, also got another bottle of instant coffee as the previous one is running low. Provided Anita with her Yahoo as well as Gmail account info. Peilee and family came home at 10:38PM - nearly 6 hours on the freeway. Paid Anthem online at 10:40PM.
2/22/2015: Woke up at 2:30, got in and out of sleep mode continuously until getting up at 8:00. The buns I got from 全聯 were really big compared to ones from bakery stores, I had to finish it in two phases. Made sea food wrap with purchased mix (in fish paste) and 腐皮, steamed them first before lightly fried - not bad when consumed with cucumber pickles.
2/23/2015: Got up at 8:15. Had one mochi and coffee for breakfast - attempted to shed some weight. Watched Oscar live - possibly the first time here in Taipei. Found out how to download films from Funshion.com using its app also found out my new iPad Air has less than 15G storage remaining. Walked 碧湖 lake trail twice, very light but steady mist like rain throughout my walk, that may have caused some sweat. Anita called, will visit her tomorrow at 2:00PM - need to take 㨗運 for about an hour. Had hot pot for dinner. Watched several episodes of 射雕英雄傳, interesting to refresh what I remembered. Turned in at 1:00AM.
2/24/2015: Got up at 8:00. Visited 全聯, got newspaper, snacks to take back, a bag of bamboo shoots, and mom's 細關東麵. Anita called and changed dinner to lunch since she's canceled lunch date. Left the house at 9:50, took Metro and got to 永和 at 10:55. Walked with Anita and her mom to lunch restaurant - took about 40 minutes. The restaurant (name?) serves nice dim-song style dishes, moderate quantity but very tasty. Kwanghua treated us because she passed the ranking level test. Played Mahjong for 2 hours before attempting the router setup, it turned out that their Internet connection was Dynamic IP based, meaning no account name/password is required, I simply connected the WAN wire from the modem to the router WAN port plus LAN port on the router to the PC it worked right away - didn't even reboot the modem. Both iPads and the notebook got online after entering the default Wi-Fi passcode (as printed at the back of the router), this is the easiest router setup ever for me. Left their house at 4:30, got to 頂溪 Metro station at 4:45, got back to 內湖 residence at 5:35 - beats norm by 10 minutes.
2/25/2015: Got up at 8:15. Watched second half of "Letters from Iwo Jima", a fairly touching film by Clint Eastwood. Called 周大哥嫂家, 周大嫂 answered the phone but said she will call me back later as she was going out. 周大哥 called around 1:00PM, they seemed very busy the next two days and me the rest of my stay - or maybe it's not that important if we meet at all :-) So we will see each other at the end of April in San Jose. I waited 30 minutes from number 379 till 400 (my number) and deposited NT12000 at 碧湖郵局. Stopped by 百利金生活百貨 and found Silicon lids, got 3 different sizes of them - one each. Also got some bananas and 芭樂 (NT10 each), got several buns (2 small and one large) for breakfast tomorrow. Sharon called, she's most likely not coming home for dinner - at the library searching for info. Had some leftover dishes plus 8 dumplings Ah-Feng bought for dinner - not bad.
2/26/2015: Got up at 8:10 - did not fall asleep until after 2:30AM, didn't know why. Had buns from yesterday for breakfast and lunch (finished all of them), also had a small bowl of mom's noodle during lunch. Visited 全聯 and got some teas to take home, a small bottle of 101 高粱 for the next 3 nights. Peilee came home at 7:05, tomorrow is a adjusted holiday - 228 - new policy move holiday to Friday or Monday when they fall on Saturday or Sunday respectively. Got some medication from 杏佳藥局: 萬金油 - NT83, Mentholatum (曼秀雷敦) - NT105, Flur Di Fen Patch (富帝芬貼片) - NT100 each, bought 5 and got one free, and Teiria Gel (思舒酸痛凝膠) - NT75.
2/27/2015: Got up at 8:15. Left house at 9:55, got on Metro at 10:05, got to 頂溪站 at 10:44, got to Kwanghua/Kwanghui's house at 10:55 - exactly one hour. Had Pizza from a nearby local pizza house for lunch, a little disappointed at their 4-cheese flavor, the amount of cheese is pretty much negligible - an insult to the name, 大嫂 joined us for lunch. Played Mahjong for 4 rounds, made NT20, left for Metro station at 5:05, got there at 5:15, got to 市政府站 at 5:45, Walked to 三井 cuisine after correcting a mistake by crossing the street where I should have turn right at 5:55, found the entrance by 6:00 - it's a so-called low key high class Japanese restaurant. Had 刺身, 帝王蟹, 烤鯛魚, 烤干貝, 蛤蜊湯, 甜點, and coffee.
The only photo I could find online that represents the actual dish I had - 刺身.
2/28/2015: Got up at 8:45 - exhausted. Finished most of the packing by 11:00. Steamed/sliced/plated 臘味, sliced/plated bamboo shoot/ham. Need only work on scrambled squid and cucumber. Had lunch at 2:15PM as mom came home late due to medical exam. Anita arrived at 2:30 while we were still having lunch :-) Watched the last one hour of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, window shopped at Hangten and Net for Anita's short sleeves - nothing appropriate was found. Sister arrived at 6:45 with a birthday cake. Had dinner and cake plus some photos. Accompanying Anita downstairs, she is taking Bus 21 to 圓山 and connect Metro there. Still undecided on what pants to wear - 9:15PM. Decided to wear the microfiber sportswear along with the heavy jacket, put a light hoodie in the backpack in case it gets too cold, I will also be wearing the cargo style sports convertible since it has plenty of pockets to carry passports, wallet, and much more - and it's more comfortable.
3/1/2015: Got up at 5:20, got out of the house and went downstairs at 6:35, Tina came along, she's going back to school. got to Taoyuan airport at 7:15, there were tons of vehicles waiting to drop off passengers, it took nearly 5 minutes just for me to get off the car, there were even more people inside the airport, obviously it is now very common to take trips abroad, although it didn't take long to drop off my luggage but security check and custom took nearly half an hour, lines were similar to theme park. Flight NH1084 was delayed from9:15 to 9:35 but arrival time in NRT was 1:09, one minutes ahead of schedule. The fish meal on board was good, I had a bottle of white wine - French Chardonnay, not bad. the flight took only 2 hours and 34 minutes. Connecting flight security check at NRT wasn't crowded at all, it took less than 10 minutes before I got to the boarding gate. Now the only thing is that I need to wait 3 hours before boarding NH172 :-)
Called Anita using iPod Touch with ear phone, she's having dinner with Dora and Sharon at 101 tonight. NH172 took of at 5:40, 10 minutes behind schedule. Had a red wine for lunch, watched Kill the Messenger, The Judge, and Whiplash, tried but gave up watching Birdman after 20 minutes - either I was too tired or wasn't entertaining. Landed at San Jose airport pretty much on schedule. Took nearly one hour to get off plane and went through custom, first the line stopped in a corridor before I could see the custom gates, the line moved slowly for 20 minutes and only then I realized that the line was for non-citizen/PR, took another 5 minutes to get through custom in citizen/PR line, there's another surprise - all passengers must have their luggages examined by scanner, this had never happened before, not sure why. Called Yolly after getting out of the custom building, she asked me to wait at gate 4 by the exit and she's coming from Millbrae, I realized that something wasn't right after hanging up the phone, she was expecting me to be at SFO - what a mixup, took her 25 minutes to get back to San Jose and picked me up. Got home at 11:45.
