Prangster in Chicago

The place around the corner

This restaurant is so good it would make me cry if I wasn't so cool. I ate there with Mum and Dad earlier this week.

Taipei catch-up

I've been teaching Mum camera and laptop stuff for the past week, but also I've been eating a lot of meals with extended family. Yesterday I had Japanese for lunch (yes, again, and it was delicious, again) with my great-aunt and her kids -- my aunt and uncles, who are all in their 30s. After lunch, we went back with my uncle Jay, an interior designer, to see his recently renovated place. He's big on Chinese tea culture so he made tea for us. He's also big on alcohol, so we drank some absinthe too. I'm not kidding.


Absinthe to the table.


And some tea too...


I like his bookshelves a lot.

Frantic scribbles

Earlier this week, I bought Mum her first digital camera. It's a Canon IXY 860. (In turn, she bought me a new digital camera. It's a Fuji F50.) So these past few days she's been pulling her fancy Canon out during meals to take snaps of food and show it off.

This morning I spent two hours teaching Mum how to copy photos from her camera to her new Toshiba notebook. She was scribbling notes like a maniac the whole time. Now she also knows how to resize the photos, save the baby versions to her desktop, and attach them to emails so she can send them to friends and my dad.

Tomorrow I'll teach her how to use the 1GB flash drive she bought months ago. She said saw her computer class teacher use it and thought, "Wow, that's amazing." So she went across the street to the computer store and bought one too. This was back when she didn't even have a computer at home to use it with, and no files of any kind to store on it. But she liked having it anyway. Funny, huh?

She's been dying for me to show her how to integrate the flash drive into her every day computer routine, which largely consists of using Skype to call her friend -- while they're also chatting on the home phone. (They call each other to say "Turn on your Skype!") She wants to put photos on the flash drive and take it around with her when she's out and about, just in case she has the need to show someone photos. And there happens to be a computer to plug the flash drive into. I told her that's probably not going to be very often, but okay...

Taipei malls with Mum: episode 1

Location: Food court of the new Sogo mall.
Time of day: Lunch. (You won't believe how delicious it was...)

Sometimes I like to look like an idiot because it makes Mum smile. All it takes is doing something like this. But to be honest, most of the time I like to look like an idiot even if no one's watching.

7 and counting

I'm packing.
Yes, still packing.
Days after I first began packing, there is still more that's left to pack
to squeeze
to wedge
to repack into my bloated suitcases.

I seem to be taking a lot of things.
Things such as seven scarves
and Muji pens
and a small cup I bought in Tokyo.
If you are asking why
then you don't know me at all.
If you say, "There are pens and cups in America, you idiot!"
then you are a stranger to me.
Because I like these ones
...okay, Dad?

Haha, Dad

Me: What would you do if you were bald?
Dad: What?
Me: Well, would you grow the rest of your hair long and then sweep it over to cover the bald part?
Dad: No, that looks ugly.
Me: Yeah, it does.
Dad: I would shave my head.
Me: Would you really?
Dad: Of course. I would shave it all off...and then I would wear a toupee.

My face is lost

Janice is disgusted that I haven't updated the blog in however long it's been. I say it's because I have ten or so days until I fly out to Chicago, and I bet I'll have a lot to post about then. These past few days have been pretty ordinary, to be honest. I've been apartment hunting online, downloading TV shows, watching downloaded TV shows, sleeping, working and killing mosquitoes.

Sorry Janice.

No, sorry to everyone.

Especially myself. I'm disappointed in myself most of all.

Frown.

Inconvenient truth

I have two tall stacks of glorious magazines on my shelf here in Taipei. I am proud of them. They are special to me. But as someone living in a very small room with limited space for dust-collecting objects, I need to get rid of them. Yes, so I have space for more magazines in the future.

I should just throw them into the recycling box, I know. But what a waste. There's still a lot that's readable and entertaining in these magazines. I want to pass them to others. So what if the issues are from last year, or maybe even last last year? They can still be enjoyed. The writing is still good. The articles still interesting. The humor still in tact. But you know how some people can be...

"Ew, this magazine is from 2005! Information from the past! I'm going to vomit!"

When I was in studying in Paris, I lugged a ridiculously heavy canvas bag filled with issues of GQ and Details from my dorm to Amsterdam so I wouldn't have to throw them out. (I was visiting a friend there. I'm not completely insane.) I gave the magazines to that friend. I don't know if he ever read them, but I felt better knowing they were being passed to someone else. Or at the very least, someone who was a guy and could read. The rest was out of my hands.

On my last trip to the States, I brought back just over 20 magazines. I've lent them to friends, old co-workers and my dad. (Dad read the Fortune and the 2007 issue of People's Sexiest Men Alive.) Next, these magazines will travel with me back to Sydney so I can lend them to other friends. So yes, Simone, you'll have the People in your hands soon.

Considering the amount of paper used to print them, I think magazines deserve a longer lifespan than just one week or one month. And each issue should be read by more people instead of most buying their own copies. Maybe there could be a concept like magazine carpooling, so if two people co-sign one magazine subscription, they get a discounted rate. That said, however, subscriptions prices in the States are dirt cheap as it is.

I understand the point of magazine publishing from a business perspective is to have high circulations, but that's in conflict with the environmental obligations of media corporations. I recently came across an article about the magazine publishing industry that was pretty sad. I can't find it right now, so I found another article on the same topic that's even more scary.

Here's an excerpt:

The amount of paper wasted each year by the magazine industry is truly astounding. Of the 4.7 billion magazines sent to newsstands every year, only 35 percent of them are actually purchased.  That means 2.9 billion magazines are thrown out without having been touched by a reader.

"Most of the magazines are printed on virgin wood paper," explained John Anner, Executive Director of the Independent Press Association.  "The trees are cut down, turned into magazines, immediately sent to the newsstands, and then go directly into the waste stream.  Whether they are recycled or not doesn’t matter that much if all this waste is for no other purpose than cutting down forests," he added.

The study offered other sobering figures.  Of the approximately 12 billion magazines printed annually in the U.S., over 95 percent are printed on 100 percent virgin paper. That results in more than 35 million trees being cut down each year. 

Approximately 90 percent of those magazines are discarded within a year of publication, and only about 20 percent of these are recycled.  That results in over 9 billion magazines being incinerated or landfilled yearly.

Knowing all this, the right thing to do would be to only buy magazines that are made from recycled or partially recycled paper. And I guess, to just read everything else at the newsagent or bookstore. 

I was just thinking a few days ago that if I move to the States, the first thing I'd do is subscribe to a dozen magazines. Now I guess I better rethink that. Maybe I'll start or join a magazine co-op instead. A group of people who share magazine subscriptions. Or I'll live with people who like the same ones as I do.

There must be a better, guilt-free and environmentally responsible way to read print magazines. Someone's got to think of something sooner or later.

The Peacemaker

Came across this "graffiti" in an alley off Zhong Xiao E. Rd. The panda seems to have some kind of patchy skin condition.

Mum is...54!

Dad and I have decided to make it a tradition to celebrate our birthdays at the unreal and fancy Mitsui japanese restaurant. Actually we've done it for a few years already, but now we are setting it in stone. Or actually, I'm setting it in stone myself and Dad supports my decision to do so. Oh, I just thought of something: if one of our birthdays is accidentally spent out of Taipei, the three of us must have a make-up meal at Mitsui. I'm going to bring this up tomorrow.

Here are photos taken when we ate there on Wednesday night for Mum's 54th birthday. Sitting behind Dad was this couple who ordered two servings of gorgeous uni nigiri. But when the girl put the uni into her mouth, she had this expression on her face like she'd just bitten into a sweat-soaked sports sock. That made me really want to kick her in the face.

(Actually it's the girl in the far left of the above photo. Her face totally looks kickable, doesn't it?)