So I finally posted a video tour of our apartment. Warning: 25MB. There are more pics up in the Taiwan gallery too.
In other news, we’re getting fully settled in. Work is going well but keeping me extremely busy. I like walking to the office tower every day, even when it’s raining, it makes me feel like a grown-up for a some reason; apparently my brain didn’t think I was a grown up before. I’m really learning to appreciate the location of the apartment, everything we need seems just a short walk or ride away. I got my first Taiwanese haircut and it looks good – at a high end place down the street, only about $13 with a hair wash. Like Costa Rica, I’m starting to get annoyed if I spend more than $3-4 on lunch. My lunchtime tighfistedness had eroded in Folsom, I had worn down to paying $8 without a second thought.
We’ve started Mandarin lessons – 4 hours a week. I’m building a mental map of the city in my brain. Food is still great – I’ve found a lot of good local places near work, and were sticking pretty faithfully to a different style every time we go out (which is about half the time). You can’t count Chinese food as one genre for this to work, however. My running joke that Cynthia finds unamusing is constantly saying “Hey, why don’t we go out for Chinese food?” . Last night was mala hot pot with visiting US work friends – made with a Szechuan spicy broth. Szechuan is shaping up to be my favorite Chinese food variety overall – it has the best sauces and it’s almost always spicy. Taiwan style beef noodle soup is a very close second. We’ve been sneaking American food at Yuma (Tex-Mex) and today friends took us to The Diner. We will return to all of these places, and also break down and have pizza.
I’m not feeling homesick yet, probably because time is flying – its already almost November. Cynthia and I are spending a week in Shanghai in early November and we’ll be back in the US for Xmas and New Years. Let me know in the comments what you guys want to hear about. For now, I’m going to thaw some frozen sauce and have pasta and garlic bread for dinner.
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I’ve posted up some crazy pics I took over the weekend . . .
This is a man-eating tree snail crawling on a sidewalk planter, almost as big as Cynthia’s hand
They were doing underground work in front of the apartment this week, and repaved it over the weekend. Instead of moving parked cars with a tow truck, they used a forklift. It was surprisingly efficient, though I don’t think either car nor forklift are intended for this application.
There are more pics from the week in the Taiwan gallery. I’ll continue to post there as new experiences occur.
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You want to make bean dip in Taiwan? Need some canned chill? Well, the pride of Eden Prarie has made it’s way to the Wellcome (we’re thinking of you Paul and Rachel).
Oh, also I changed the blog theme. I may bring the old one back, but I can’t figure out how to manipulate the style sheet to make it look better on wide screens.
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I can post from my new blackberry storm now. Adding a pic
This is a shot of my office. Cynthia is asleep and I don’t have anything else to shoot. A beta test for more interesting things to come . . . I can post life in real time now.
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Pat and I knocked down a few more cuisines the last 2 days. We had delicious indian food at a little place called Tandoor. We must have been there early because we were the first people in the restaurant, and it was friday night. We ordered a selection of awesomeness including lamb dahl (lentils) and a spicy chicken tikka masala. We skipped rice and plowed through some killer butter naan. yumyumyum. I want to eat more right now.We checked out of our hotel and moved into our apartment for good on Saturday morning. Noticed that our master bath smelled of sewer gas, and pat had not even been in there yet…had to do some “who speaks english and is in town that we can call to talk to the landlords” juggling and were informed that a plumber will be around on monday, and that the other floors were experiencing similar complaints. Another couple has moved into our nearly empty apartment building, on the 4th floor.It has been grey, annoyingly drizzly (but not really raining) and windy for the last 3 days, the rain finally picked up last night with some seriousness, and I had to send Pat off to his first day of work with my nice umbrella because the 100NT ($3) one we bought on the street is so cheap and crappy (who knew?). I hope he isn’t soaking when he gets there!Last night we braved the spitting clouds to head out for dinner at a sushi joint that we read about on “The Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei” (a really useful site written by a taiwan native who splits her time between here and cali, she puts maps and cost info and gives you helpful tips, like whether they have english menus etc.). The tea that they served us was amazing. It wasn’t sweetened, but it was light and fruity and smelled almost like plums. We ordered a tomato salad, a small sashimi platter, a tuna and avocado roll, and grilled asparagus. Everything was delicious. The sashimi platter had about 8 pieces on it, and the fish was so fresh and creamy. We paid our bill and left feeling like we stole something. $23 bucks for sushi dinner! Then we went to have a celebratory beverage at My Other Place to cap off the weekend. As we easily navigated back home through the winding alleys, we realized that the we were already scuffing off the *new* polish and breaking in Taipei.
 We’ve moved to Taiwan.
This implies some changes. I will enumerate some of them:
1) Cynthia is going to officially blog here now. She’s a better writer than me anyway, and given the time I expect to pour into my newly Taiwan-based job, my impressive (cough) blogging frequency was bound to suffer. She can help fill in the gaps, because . . .
2) Interesting stuff is going to happen. Not that interesting stuff wasn’t happening before . . . but there’s a new level of novelty when you move to a new continent. I think the travel journal concept previously employed on this blog for sabbatical and other trips has been a success, and I’d like to carry that over on this more extended trip.
3) For the next couple years, we won’t be seeing the people we always used to see. This was the hardest part of leaving; we’d truly built a new friendfamily in and around Folsom. We hung out with our friendfamily on a practically continuous basis. Leaving our friendfamily sucked. When we come back, everyone’s kids will have stopped toddling and started playing soccer and it’s not going to be quite the same. Even my family in Michigan – for whom I keep arguing the experience of Cynthia and I living in Taipei objectively won’t that much different from Cynthia and I living in California (i.e. we aren’t there but twice a year and we have to talk on the phone instead) – seemed to feel like they were loisng something. So, in an effort to minimize the separation for all parties, writing about our lives hopefully helps everyone (including us) feel a little more connected.
Now, on to the travel journal. I think I’ve write to many Powerpoint slides, because I feel like using bullets:
- Melotoin is a miracle jet lag cure with no side effects – just take 5mg before you are supposed to be sleeping. I slept most of the flight, the first night on the ground I slept soundly till 7am, and my stomach has been calm. This is not something my body has been capable of previously.
- Cell phones are stupid and my research on cell phones destroys money. Despite assurances it would be lower, AT&T charged me $175 per phone to break my contracts in the US which had 2 months left on them. Despite assurances they would work, the pre-paid T-Mobile phones I bought to maintain my US phone numbers don’t work in Taiwan. Despite assurances that she could, Cynthia couldn’t get an iPhone today until our government ID cards show up in two weeks. Plus my new Blackberry doesn’t get activated by work until Monday. In summary, we basically are without cell phones because I paid extra money to break them. Jeff, I should have just gone with the original plan. At least the land line phones at work and the apartment are working.
- The new apartment is excessively nice. Everything is brand new ceiling to floor. I spent half an hour yesterday peeling protective plastic off things. The “new smell” is so strong I think it may become annoying. I’ll post pictures once we have the place totally put together.
- California on the day we left: high 97F, low 60F, 17% humidity. Taipei tomorrow: High 80, low 77, 89% humidity.
- We bought a bunch of house stuff from IKEA yesterday, and food from Costco today. How’s that for embracing the local culture?
- Since we can’t really cook yet (no pans, not enough pantry stock), we’re going to eat as many different cuisines as possible until our air shipment arrives. So far: USDA steak at Ruth’s Chris, and Mongolian BBQ. I will keep you posted on this.
- Cable doesn’t get installed at the apartment until the end of the month, but I don’t think I have much interest in TV here anyway. This is mostly because my Folsom-based Slingbox PRO-HD seems to be working awesome so far (knock on wood).
- We sold both our cars, and now take taxi’s everywhere. I don’t miss them because, even though half of them were great cars, they weren’t the kind of cars you love. They’d be expensive and useless here anyway given the traffic. When I was a kid, I subscribed to Car and Driver and used to salivate over cars. When I own a car again someday, I hope it is salivation worthy.
- I’m starting work on Monday.
- I’m tired and going to sleep.
One more thing – you should be able to leave comments on the blog again. I’m not sure how this got turned off, but now it’s fixed.
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Pat and I took a 2am flight from SFO to Taiwan yesterday, or was it the day before yesterday…somewhere in the air up there we lost Sunday (and sleep). Immigration and customs was a breeze, and by 6am we were in a sleek black BMW speeding towards our hotel in the heart of Taipei. We checked in, showered, ate at the amazing international buffet (with the entire towering Ukranian deaflympics team) and then met our relocation specialist promptly at 9am. We were escorted to a black Mercedes. With our guide, we toured the city, stopping to walk through the train station, crowded traditional markets and along the river. Hordes of scooters swarmed and dodged around the taxis and delivery trucks, horns beeped and pedestrians wove their way around the hazards. We were shown around to theaters, the government buildings, parks, shopping centers, and Costco. The sun was hot, the humidity cloying. We stopped for sushi, our guide ordering for us in mandarin. We had tea, and a short-lived reprieve from the hectic pace of Taipei. We headed back out again. 9 taxis, 1 real estate agent, 2 blisters and 8 apartments later: mission accomplished. Wearied, we trudged back up the noisy streets to the Sherwood. We collapsed at Henry’s bar to discuss the days events and enjoy a salty dog (or two). Decided to go get some dinner before we were too weak to resist the siren song of sleep.  Again we threaded our way up the crowded streets. Italian for dinner, Pat’s choice. Stuffed and sleepy, we succumbed to the inviting bed. Monday: 0, Casslemans: 1. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re moving to Taiwan.
I just returned from spending a solo week in Michigan to do some fly fishing and figured Iâd post a trip journal. Pictures are also up.
Day 1: Sailing
I landed in Detroit late Friday night, then spent Saturday afternoon sailing with my Dad on the boat. It was a nice warm day (by Michigan standards) and the wind was strong, which added up to a really nice time. Back at home we had grilled pork loin with the family. At midnight, the brothers and I made a White Castle run. Mmm . . . sliders.
Day 2: Travel
Packed up, Dave and I visited my Grandparents and Aunt for a few hours and had a traditional pasta dinner with my Grandmaâs red sauce. My grandparents are 87 and 92, and so dinner on Sunday is at 3:30pm, but regardless of the hour I always try to sneak in a pasta dinner on any visit home. The pasta sauce I make in Folsom is intended to emulate this recipe, and though Iâm quite pleased with results itâs never exactly the same as the real thing. We left around 5 and proceeded âup northâ to the Hook and Horn in Baldwin, pulling in about 8:30 just as Aunt Ellene was leaving. The party for the rest of the week was now set: My other grandparents, Dave and I, and our host Uncle Chris. Unlike last year, the H&H has satellite TV, so we watched the Red Wings Game 2
Day 3: The Muskegon River
Dave sleeps on the college schedule, and my west coast orientation had a similar effect, so we were up about 9:30. Grandma, in storybook style, had eggs, sausage and pancakes ready. There are a lot of different fishing options in and around Baldwin, and we settled on the Muskegon river as are first destination because Uncle Chris expected some good hatches and would be able to fish dry flies.
Itâs about a 45 minute drive down to the river, and the filies were indeed rising as expected. Dave, Uncle Chris and I stayed in the boat while Grandpa fished from shore. My casting was mediocre but got progressively better throughout the afternoon. The fish were rising to the hatching caddis, and you had to cast to just the right spot and in rhythm with the fish. Both Dave and I each snagged rainbows in the 7-8â range (this by the way, was my very first trout). Uncle Chris mostly provided helpful coaching tips, but would occasionally take up the rod and immediately hook a fish. I have a long way to go and a lot to learn.
We returned back to the lodge and had Cabbage Wraps, for dinner, and Dave and I fished at dusk in the Pere Marquette, right in the front yard, catching nothing.
Day 4: More Muskegon
Basically a carbon copy of yesterday . . . same schedule, same breakfast, same river, same hatches. My casting and technique was noticeably better, and I was rewarded with two fish this time. It rained on us for just a minute or two and these proved to be the only rain of the whole trip.
Day 5: The Pere Marquette.
The Hook and Horn is a really unique place, the front and back of the lot touch the meandering river at different points which sets up a great wading stretch that takes a few hours to fish and is packed with holes and riffles. At breakfast (again pancakes, eggs and sasuage) we decided to stay put and take advantage. Unlike the Muskegon, there were no hatches, so Dave and I set off and fished wet flies (i.e. under the surface of the water) instead. This was a much different style of fishing . . .youâre in the river in waders by yourself instead of in a the boat with others, and the river is much smaller so you get away from the basic textbook casting and have to improvise with sideways and roll casts. I get my line tangled and caught up in the trees a lot and lose a lot of flies to this as well as underwater snags..
On the Muskegon with the flies on the surface drag is your enemy â any unnatural movement of the line pulling on your fly tips the fish off that something is wrong and they wonât strike. With the wet flies on the PM, the same drag emulates a minnow or insect nymph swimming against the current and the fish are attracted. I get two trout: a brown and a rainbow. The rainbow is the smallest fish Iâve ever caught, at a comically small 3 inches long, it’s really more of a minnow,.
We throw all these fish back â this stretch of the PM is flies only and catch and release by regulation. But this isnât true on the Muskegon, and even then we didnât keep any. Every night on the phone, Cynthia would be puzzled by this since on the surface all this fishing seems to be a significant waste of time, energy and money. But the fishing for me is not about the harvest, although in the right place and time I donât have a problem with taking fish. The hours spent on the river are for me really something like a Zen exercise. Iâm not thinking about anything except my cast and the river. Getting a fish is a pleasant surprise that interrupts the flow.
Day 6: More of the PM
Today is much like the previous (more pancakes and sausage for breakfast but we’re out of eggs), but I fish a lot more effectively. I catch two fish in the morning, and get six in the afternoon most of them in riffles but some in holes. One of them is 13 inches, the biggest of the trip for me. My eight fish for the day tops everyone, even Uncle Chris, though he spent much less time on the water overall (he got 6 in 40 minutes in the morning). My improved technique helps but a big part is finding a nymph pattern the fish really like and not quickly losing it to a snag. Eventually though, inevitability catches up and it’s gone to either a huge steelhead or a really odd hang up and things slow down.
I finish the normal loop around the river but decide Iâm not quite ready to call it done, so I head upstream instead and run into Grandpa. Heâs got one fish for the afternoon, and asks me how Iâve down. I tell him Iâve been pretty lucky and as I cast say âIâve usually been catching them on the swing, right about hereâ and at that moment I hook the final fish . . . and this on a nymph, like the third one Iâd ever tied all by myself at the fishing club tying jam a few months ago. This proved a fitting end.
Iâd absorbed a mountain of information from Uncle Chris, Grandpa and Dave over the past 4 days and will able to carry this forward as a real fisherman going forward. I started this having never really known what I was doing on a river but now feel like I at least know enough fundamentals to be somewhat effective. Thereâs still a long way to go . . . my casting can get a lot more efficient and I can get better at picking fly patterns. Loyal readers will recall that my first H&H trip last year involved sinking the drift boat. All in all, this trip fulfilled the goal I started with last year â learning to fish a river, and defintively proved that I wasnât cursed as I at first feared.
Day 7: Back to GP
We woke up Friday morning and cleaned the H&H top to bottom, then said our goodbyes and headed back home at about 9:30. We were back in Grosse Pointe by early afternoon. That evening, I went to Louis little league game and treated Dave and Louis (everyone else was gone) to a Jetâs Hawaiian pizza and some buffalo wings. âTwas delicious (as befits my favorite pizza.
Day 8: Party
Saturday morning I visited my Aunt and Grandparents again for a pesto lunch (every meal over there these days seems to involve pasta), and then headed over to Tonyâs for his Michigan based wedding reception. Cynthia and I had joined Tony and Rachael for their wedding on the Carnival Glory back in March, it was just lucky coincidence that I was in town to celebrate all over again. Tony had the grass planted, with a catered bar, BBQ, bounce house and cotton candy machine, and I got to chat with all his friends and family I met on the cruise. Marissa was there as well, massively pregnant (in fact, Sloan was born a little more than 24 hours later). I said my goodbyes around 8pm and was back in GP in time to catch the last two period of the Red Wings game and get all my stuff repacked.
Day 9: The return
Sean and I woke at 6am (3am Pacific time) and he drove me to the airport. By noon, my feet were back on California soil.
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In honor of the inauguration, I made a poster featuring my sabbatical look.
Megan, I used one of your photos from Bev’s wedding, please don’t sue me. You can make one of your own at obamicon.pastemagazine.com
(HT: EDSBS)
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. . . driving in Folsom yesterday. I’d just done the front brakes on the Jetta, and immediately tested them with a panic stop as I was making a left turn from one 6 lane divided highway to another not half a mile from my house.
Some idiot blowing the stoplight? No.
A oblivious cell phone driver merging into my lane? No.
A kid chasing a ball? No.
A mule deer running straight at my car in the middle of this developed suburb at midday? Yes.
It got so close I checked the front bumper for fur when I got home.  We have turkeys, but we do not have deer. At least until yesterday. Crazy.
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