Giving thanks

The last time my entire family came to Taiwan, it was the summer after I graduated college. A whole eight years ago... I can barely remember anything we did - it was really just a stop before we embarked on our group tour to China. This time it feels like an actual tour of Taiwan. Instead of searching for a last minute guided tour deal for whatever other Asian country we had yet to visit, we stuck to exploring parts of Taiwan that some of us or none of us had ever experienced.

As our time here winds down, I can honestly say that this probably ranks as one of the top family vacations my mom has planned yet. Every day was exciting and a different experience, from visiting and paying tribute to all the lives lost building the road through the natural Taroko National Park in eastern Taiwan to pushing through the crowded streets of olden day Jiufen with its hundreds of dangling red lanterns to ascending the heights via Taipei 101 using the Guinness world record fastest elevator and via the 2 mile long Hello Kitty-themed Maokong cable car.  Every day was a different food experience. My mom found the CNN article for the "must eat foods" for Taiwan and made sure we had hit most if not all of them by the time this trip would end.

The unique thing about Taiwan is that it is the one country where there is the right combination of several factors that have the potential to make a great family vacation. At a time when mobile phones make it very easy for individuals to become lost in their own worlds, the lack of a local sim card and intermittent wifi service forces us to contribute to conversations with each other. Having subpar reading and speaking skills (at least upon first arriving) makes me and my brother very reliant on our parents instead of trying to do our own thing. And having parents who grew up in this city and who visit every year provides us with excellent tour guiding with how to read the bus schedules to get to the Taipei zoo or the Taipei fish market, or how to add money to the metro Easycard. My mom's such a history buff she'll add her tidbits about how the small canal by my grandma's house was installed around the 1940s when the Japanese occupied Taiwan during WWII when the whole area of Xindian was still farmland (it's hard to believe it because housing in this area is now 2-3x more expensive to buy than in DC or Seattle), or my dad will point to another district of Taipei when looking at a map of the city and recall how as an eight year old he used to walk home for 2 hours through rice plantations on a nice day, and see urns filled with ashes of ancestors sitting under trees. But if it had rained for days, the bridge to go home would be submerged and kids had to use ropes to pull themselves to the other shore. Stories like that make you really appreciate how developed Taiwan has become. No other country I ever visit can feel the same way.

Don't get me wrong, we've had our share of little frustrations and 2hr spats but I feel like that's normal after 13 days together almost 24/7. I'm very appreciative of how my entire family is with their little eccentricities, from my mom's very opinionated conversations, to how kind my dad is to us but also easily nervous about our health and well-being, to how easy-going my brother is about things even though he isn't a fan of some next event or doesn't even know what's going on. Here in Taiwan, Thanksgiving is still an uncelebrated holiday nestled between the growing popularity of Halloween and Christmas, but this year I realized how thankful I really am of my mom, dad, and lil brother.

Bubble bubble. Bubble bubble.

When it comes to selecting the best bubble tea joint, several factors come into play. First and foremost (though some argue differently) is the consistency of the tapioca bubbles. They must have that right amount of "Q-Q". Some equate "Q-Q" to be similar to al dente in pasta but in Chinese, it's the level of chewiness that makes the food bounce inbetween the molars. I've observed that places that provide the best "Q-Q" in bubbles use a slow cooker to keep them warm. If they get saved from the previous day and refrigerated, they get very hard in texture, and the only way to soften them is reheating them to the precise amount without making them smushy soft. Many times I've left a cafe with subpar tapioca bubbles. Good bubbles are key to "bubble tea".

The second and often argued more important factor that weighs into a good beverage is the quality of the ingredients. The original "bubble tea" comes from Taiwan. Back in the early 2000s, I had my first bubble tea in some shop in Taipei that my cousin declared provided the best milk tea. These days bubble tea is in the form of the original milk tea but sometimes with fruit flavors like passionfruit or durian or mango. Then you can have the non-milk varieties, like honey green tea, passionfruit black tea, lychee green tea. Further expansion includes the slushie or snow bubble teas where the beverage is more like a frozen smoothie.  Such extensiveness opens businesses up to various solutions for their customers. They can choose powders or syrups or use fresh fruit. I think this is what makes people debate what should make a good drink good.

Given the wide variety of options, it makes it hard to ask where to find the best bubble tea in the Seattle area.  People in LA might argue there is no good bubble tea because they can't find one that uses fresh fruit for their papaya bubble tea. Others may say that the best bubble tea is one that provides a good depth of tea flavor. If it doesn't get lost within the milk or other added flavor. Or it could be dependent on the cost-benefit analysis of the drink. It all depends!

Recently we asked a bunch of people at a meetup about the best bubble tea in the area and they neither said Oasis, Ambrosia nor Pochi's, which are places we frequently go to, but instead declared Drive Thru Boba as the best bubble tea in Seattle! We checked the place out (originally an actual drive through like many of the express coffee drive throughs, but now a storefront in Bellevue) and wow it was good. Only 4-5 flavors to choose from instead of the 20+ options you usually find but the tea really stood out, the bubbles were very Q-Q and they didn't skimp either. In addition, if the sweetness level is a concern, this places offers 25%, 50% and 75% sweetness options!  The only drawback was that this bubble tea is quite pricey, at $4-6 per cup.  But if you're ever in the area, it is still worth checking it out.

Goals and Obstacles

Hello there!  It has now officially been eight days since my relocation to Seattle.  Time as flown by quickly, but now that I'm finally permanently in the PNW rather than all of my 2013-2014 seasonal trips, I've been really trying to embrace my time here.  I had a few things in mind that I wanted to accomplish:

1) volunteer at an animal shelter
2) meet new friends
3) brush up on some foreign language skills
4) become more fit/active

First things first, I wanted to start some volunteering.  When my parents took a brief hiatus from their previous professions, they both started spending time at the local hospital- once or twice a week they'd do a few hours of shifts pushing wheelchairs and helping nurses.  It was a little strange to me to hear this, because for me volunteering was always a high school resume booster kind of thing, definitely not something I'd think of doing on my own time.  They explained it as wanting to give a little back to society now that they had some free time.  Because of that, I decided I wanted to look into volunteering for something I felt like was a good cause... aka animal shelters!  Lo and behold, 5 miles away from where I live is a rabbit rescue!  So before I even moved over, I had contacted the volunteer coordinator, filled out the necessary forms, and scheduled to volunteer for a few hours the day after I arrived.  I gotta say, I have never scooped and cleaned so many litter boxes in two hours.  This shelter houses about fifteen rabbits, all of which are saved from euthanization from local shelters.  That results in a lot of hay and a lot of poop.  The litter boxes must be changed every other day to keep the odor under control and keep the rabbits happy because they enjoy being cleanfreaks.  Lucikly I'm used to it from years of every-other-day cleaning with Tommy so it's sort of a desensitized methodological process.  But in between boxes, I'll spend some time petting each rabbit.  Some are bonded (aka they've found a bunny friend to become besties with) and must be adopted together, some are humongously large (2-3x larger than Tommy was) but all are incredibly... rabbit.  I got used to giving Tommy really intense head massages and ear rubdowns and it's nice to know that all rabbits enjoy them too.  After volunteering again today, I can say that not all days of volunteering involve litter box cleanup.  Today I got to make a rabbit salad!  It involves three bunches of romaine lettuce, one bunch of green leaf lettuce, one bunch of cilantro, and one bunch of parsley.  Tear it all up, toss it, and give one handful to each rabbit, one handful to every two guinea pigs, one small piece of romaine for each rat, and one tiny piece for each mouse.  It's been pretty fun so far.  The rescue shelter also sells all sort of supplies and food for rabbit owners at a lower price than normal pet stores and this helps fund the shelter, which I think is really cool.  I wish there was something like that in VA when I was shopping for supplies for Tommy!  I'll take some pictures of my favorites next time I go in to volunteer!

The second thing I wanted to do was really try to get out and make some friends.  Being in a work-from-home occupation, there isn't really a water cooler gathering or a HH opportunity to go to after work hours.  Instead, you really have to rely on going to church or meeting friends of friends or join Meetup.  I chose the latter two.  I've been meeting plenty of guys who are friends with my roommate and Christine's cousin, and who make every Sunday a funday with it being football season and it's been really fun watching a whole day's worth of games on two different tvs at the same time.  We even have NFL Network in this house!  But I had heard of friends using Meetup back in DC, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  I've signed up for a few outdoorsy/active groups, a few Asian groups, and a few language practicing groups.  Yesterday I attended my first Asian group meetup with Christine, at a bubble tea joint for just the ladies.  It's funny because the organizer commented that whenever there's a mixer, not many ladies show up but when there's a "sorry, guys" event, then more than a dozen show up haha.  I met a lot of very interesting backgrounds, some work in PR and you can really tell just by the way they carry themselves in their appearance and coax the conversation, some are fresh out of college looking for jobs, some have very strong personalities and work in professions that are primarily male.  Meetup is like an Okcupid, except it's for interests, though I'm sure some people sign up to these things with a more personal intent.  More updates to follow with other meetups!

Not much to say about the third goal- I wanted to brush up on my Chinese but that meetup doesn't really schedule too many events and I haven't quite found the time to bust out my old school books or try to watch any dramas or movies so it's still a work in progress.

Also, I am rather shockingly proud to say that I have joined a gym!  It's really Christine's doing if I'm to give anybody credit.  I joined a bouldering gym, which I do not do, but it's a gym that has a very spacious and well-equipped workout area and even offers numerous yoga and fitness classes.  Plus, with me being carless at the moment, it just makes sense for me to join the same gym Christine's part of, especially if she's going to be climbing daily.  Gives me a little push to think about being active daily as well.  Thus far, I've had fun trying out the different yoga classes,  and an ab workout, and I've been trying to become more proactive about rehabbing my right shoulder, which I dislocated once while playing flag football.  Sports are another activity I'd like to pursue.  Once the weather gets warm again, I'd like to join a VERY CASUAL league.  There's actually a meetup called 30s flag football, specifically for those who don't want to be quite as physical as the reckless 20somethings which is right up my alley!  I'm also considering bowling more regularly, and I've been playing ping pong like CRAZY because this house has a ping pong table!  So far I've been lucky and have beat all of the boys who come on Sundays because of all of the rallying that Christine and I do during the rest of the six days of the week hehe.

And lastly, I'd like to end with an evaluation of the traffic of the Seattle area.  It sucks.  It's worse than DC.  Here's a map of all of the interesting areas around Seattle:

Ignoring the annotations for the time being, what do you see?  A freakishly large amount of blue, equaling a freakishly annoying amount of obstacle.  I'm currently in Kirkland, as indicated by the red circle.  The gym I frequent is indicated by the green arrow.  Because of Lake Washington, I cannot take a direct hypotenuse route, but must attack it at a right angle.  There are restaurants, cafes, bubble tea joints I like to go to within Seattle- places in Capitol Hill and University District.  But route 520 (blue arrow) is a toll road.  Being the cheap person that we are, we then drive all the way down to take I-90 which takes up a considerable amount of time.  Other points of interest is Ballard (purple circle) which is a trendy yuppie area, Bothell (orange circle) which is where Christine's family lives, and Mercer Island (purple squiggly) which is where a bunch of rich people live, not many of which believe in immunizations.  Redmond is to the right of where I live and houses Microsoft, and Amazon and Google are somewhere nearby too.  Costco, Starbucks, Nintendo and T-mobile are somewhere in the mix too.  All this just means that people live all over the place, drive all over the place, and make up tons of traffic because of the limited number of routes to get to these places.  It drives me nuts.  I love having all sort of route options but here, it's a headache!  It makes me very glad that I have the flexibility to choose what time I want to leave the house to run errands or go to the gym, and what times of the day where I'm better off staying at home instead of spending an extra 40 minutes in traffic.  It's time to invent flying cars!

The dilemma of free will....

I've become enamored with the idea of journaling again, mostly because it seems like more and more of my friends are recording their escapades in the new cities that they've moved to.  I'm not quite at my new city yet, but I've wanted to write about this topic for a while so I've resurrected this blog spot to do it!

This past year, two rather monumental events happened.  One, I decided to voluntarily move to the west coast and two, I decided to voluntarily become vegetarian/vegan.  "Voluntary".  The definition when you search for the term is, "done, given, or acting of one's own free will."  When I see the term "free will", I instinctively jump back to a religious viewpoint, where it is stressed in Christianity that people are given free will.  I'm also certain that other religions and the non-religious also embrace this idea of freedom of choice.  But then, why are certain decisions, made entirely on free will, so heavily criticized?

I have come to the conclusion that unless an individual has no choice in a matter, that individual's decisions will always be placed under scrutiny.  I believe that if I were involuntarily relocated to the west coast because of a new job, family, marriage, school, becoming a refugee of mass destruction of the east coast, I would be met with more understanding from some friends and family.  I think it would suck less for them.  Whatever thoughts they might have in their heads about not being good enough friends to keep me here, or me not loving my parents enough to want to stay closeby... all of those would be lessened because, hey, I HAVE to move away.  I don't have a choice.  But if I make the voluntary decision to move away, then speculation starts- suddenly character traits get tacked on that weren't there before.  Selfish.  Irresponsible.  Uncaring.

I read an article recently about Jennifer Aniston and her response to criticism over not having any children.  Here's the article:  Childfree Jennifer Aniston
Based off of her interview, is it wrong for me to jump to the conclusion that if she was physically incapable of having children, she would endure less criticism for her own life choices?

Then, there are some choices that strangely, are accepted over others.  Dislike peas and carrots?  Don't worry, I won't cook them.  Hate mushrooms?  Don't worry, I'll leave it out.  Don't want to eat meat?  WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY ARE YOU DYING A SLOW DEATH OF MALNUTRITION.  When I go home to visit my parents, that's the reaction I get.  My mom will cut a sliver of pork chop and coax, "just eat a little" as if I'm on a hunger strike.  I assure you, I am actively eating more food these days because I have actually lost weight after becoming vegetarian.  It's such a negative connotation associated with someone who voluntarily chooses to be different.  Even this past weekend, hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones, this one guy just started referring to me in third person as "the Vegan" after hearing I didn't eat meat, which I feel is quite unfair because I didn't refer to him as "the Bigot".

Sometimes when I'm eating at restaurants or meeting new people, the topic of me being vegetarian will come up.  People will usually ask why I became vegetarian.  There are three mainstream answers, though there also appears to be a small population of people who are allergic to meat, but because they are involuntarily unable to digest the food, that answer is more acceptable.  My two choices, however, are either "for dietary reasons - to lose weight" or "for moral reasons - I watched a documentary/read a book" or "for environmental reasons".  In the past, I've always told the truth, I don't agree with the industry's treatment of animals- how they are born and raised just to be slaughtered for our benefit, and how even the labeling of Kosher doesn't mean too much better for these animals.  I try not to eat too much seafood because of the fishing industry's netting techniques or their elimination of the actual natural predators of ocean prey for the sake of profit.  It takes a enormously large amount of energy to grow one pound of meat versus one pound of vegetable.  But whenever I try to explain this, I see the listener's eyes rapidly glaze over, they cross their arms and slowly inch away.  This reaction reminds me of multiple other examples in life that have desensitized many people from caring for moral reasons.  Next time you're watching TV with friends and Sarah McLachlan and her "Angel" song shows up on a commercial to talk about shelter animals, time how quick the operator of the tv remote changes the channel.  Or next time you're stopped at a traffic light and a guy holding a cardboard is walking past all of the cars waiting in front of you, watch how each car tries to inch further up right as the guy passes the driver-side window.  I'm starting to realize that my own boycott of meat is going to do squat in terms of changing the industry because other people will always just give a curt nod to my moral reasoning and then try to explain, "I just couldn't do it, I love it too much" or "I would offend my spouse's parents if I refused to eat the food they cooked".  Instead, I'm beginning to entertain the idea of lying to strangers, saying I was 240 lbs before I became a vegetarian, and now I've dropped down to half that weight.  I think with our society's remarkable ability to turn a blind eye to morality and instead, focus more on their body image insecurities, I may actually get people to become more conscious of how much they ingest.  Not to cut out meat all together, but to be more observant of what exactly they're eating.  Afterall, one of The Biggest Loser tips for losing weight and keeping it off is to keep a log of what you're intaking every day.  It is an old tip that I had learned years ago from reading "French Women Don't Get Fat".

Anyway, as usual, I've digressed quite a bit, though in my mind I feel as if all of these separate topics are related to the idea of free will.  I have extreme admiration and an "aww" feeling for all of the friends who have surprised me with their support of me moving (spare bedroom to come visit!) or have even changed their restaurant choices when I visit and drop the bombshell that I may only just eat the hamburger buns at a river side barbecue.  By the way, if you're ever in Asheville, you MUST try this vegetarian/vegan restaurant called Plant.  It is top notch.