Taiwan update

Okie dokie. It's Monday morning here in Taiwan. I'm typing this on Notepad because I actually DON'T have wireless in my room. I'm also watching TV. There's a movie on called "Snowboarding Academy." It stars Corey Haim and Jim Varney. So far... it's odd. The dialogue in this movie is... BAD. REALLY BAD. "I kind of like the idea of you winning. IN A PARALLAL UNIVERSE!"

Anyhoo, the last 2 days have been fun. Between the two big ass family lunches we've had, my cousin's managed to take a gig worth of pics. I'll try to sort through them and find 1 or 2 to exemplify the 2 days.

So, Saturday was Grandma's birthday thingie. It turns out it's a lunch, not a dinner like me and my cousin assumed. I guess the idea was that a meal of this size would take a long time and we didn't want to force ppl into staying and talking until midnight, especially with the older generation.

[Movie note: Jim Varney's yodelling is apparently able to make skiers crash at the very noise and ppl seem to have uncanny accuracy with throwing their ski poles like javelins. I'm... this movie is bad. And somebody speaks like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted's for which they put subtitles and the line "What is he saying? Nobody really knows..."]

Sorry, anyway. The thing was a lunch in a fancy hotel's fancy restaurant for 30+ ppl. So, suffice it to say, it was massive. This picture is a good indication of how the room was:











We managed to fill up that table and the second table on the left too. Unfortunately, having this many ppl on a single table (or 2 in this case) meant isolated conversations but it's cool. We managed to keep ourselves entertained.

A lot of these ppl are ppl I've never met, actually. Well, haven't seen in over 10 or 20 years in some cases, which is pretty much the same as never met. But it was good meeting them, however briefly.

The food was... massive. They had a ridiculous amount of food which was pre-divided for us (because reaching across the table on a lazy susan 5 feet in diameter would probably hurt). The duck was particularly good. In addition to the food, the restaurant gave us cakes. Yes, there's an "s" on that word. They apparently made a deal that they'd give us a free birthday cake for every 10 person table we had. We ended up with 3 birthday cakes. Very rich creamy chocolate cakes. We also brought a bunch of cakes (it's a birthday, after all) so we gave every family a cake (some families more than one) and also a gift bag. This would come back to haunt us the next day.

[Movie note: this movie's so bad, it makes me wanna buy it and watch it repeatedly.]

So, this lunch ended up taking 4+ hours. We got back to my uncle's and we sat down to play... mah-jong. We played 9 HOURS of mah-jong and ended up going back to the hotel at 1:30 (my parents and my cousin's parents were all peaced out already. My cousin and I got a ride back from our uncle). That was the day Saturday: lunch and Mah-jong.

Sunday morning/noon we had a dimsum lunch that we were invited to by family friends. This time it was only a 15 person lunch.

[Movie note: Ok, I don't understand how sabotaging the skiers/snowboarders competition for control of the ski lodge will help the evil Russian wife and her dimwitted boyfriend stop the insurance agent from re-insuring the ski lodge and cost the owner his lodge. BUT, the ski pole/snowball/catfight duel at the end in the pro shop was slightly entertaining.]




Anyway, after lunch we picked up the glasses we ordered on Monday and then headed home for some dinner (lunch ended up being a 3 hour ordeal and then another hour for picking up glasses meant that by the time we got home, it was after 4). We headed to the night market after that...









and then back home for... you guessed it: MAH-JONG! We only played for a couple of hours (not 9, like marathon-night) but this time, my cousin surreptitiously documented most of the games with his camera. I'll post a couple of mah-jong pics because... frankly, because I find them interesting.





This is my "hm... what do I throw" face.













This is my cousin's "I hate jetlag" face. (She lives in L.A. and flew back for Grandma's birthday as well. She's my uncle's [um... uncle who's house we're in in the pic] oldest daughter and went to California for high school and college. She now works as a kindergarten teacher.)














This is my other cousin's "What the hell am I looking at" face. (also, note my other cousin's tiles and the fact that the numbers are upside down.)





I'd show you a pic of my cousin who's taking the pics but, for some reason =P, he didn't take pictures of himself.

Ok, that's it for now. Today's a new day! and hopefully a day of rest. this vacation's very tiring.