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Taiwan to California to Michigan

Michael's Posts, Travel & Exploring, USA 4 Responses »

Jul 092009

Well we made it home for summer break!

We said goodbye to our flat-mates last week and boarded our Malaysia Airlines flight to California. We sat next to this guy who told us story after story. He was born in Taiwan and had been visiting his mother for two months. However, for the past thirty years he has lived in the USA and currently lives in Lacuna Beach. He’s a millionaire who made his money in one-hour photo shops and real-estate. Paul was definitely an entertaining guy. I love the fact that he was sitting with us in straight-up Economy (not even business class) and talked about how he just bought his daughter a new BMW.

Let me take a minute here to give my full endorsement to Malaysia Airlines. The seats go way far back, lots of leg room (seriously I felt just as good as if I was sitting in an exit row), and….drum roll please….the food was not only edible it was good. Just to rub it in, the dinner they served me was Seafood Ragout! Boom shaka laka! The service was fantastic as well with very nice flight attendants who were always bringing stuff around without any call buttons being hit. Finally I must mention the fact that even though they made Emily check her carry-on because it was too heavy they didn’t charge extra. I’d definitely use their services again!

We landed at LAX in the middle of the day and decided to try our hands at American public transportation after all our experience overseas because the alternative: the shuttle service to Pasadena where we were headed, was $25 a-person. YUCK! Emily and I read up online and discovered we could take the free airport shuttle to Parking Lot C, get on the 439 LA city bus and ride it to Union Station where we could catch the metro to Pasadena. The ride to the parking lot was short but the 439 ride was like 2 and a half to 3 hours long. The metro ride was only about 20 minutes. The bus was like $1.60ish per person and the metro was $1.25 per person so what we might do next time if we are in more of a hurry is take the $5 shuttle from LAX straight to Union Station instead of the city bus. It did feel great to cheat LA out of its reputation for being un-navigable with public transportation…I’m becoming my dad.

Even though it was a long ride its good that we took the 439 this time. 1 because we had plenty of time to kill before our friends got off work and 2 because we had a very nice conversation with a movie star. Carey Westbrook got on the bus not long after we did, came straight to the back of the bus where we were sitting with our bags and before long we were chatting away. He told us all about the movie, Blue Valentine, he just got done shooting with Ryan Gosling which is scheduled for release in 2010 and how he’s juggling his movie career with his two part-time jobs, one at a cemetery and one as a night-watchmen at the newspaper. The newspaper bit launched us into a conversation about where to get real news with Carey advising us that www.democracynow.org is where its at. We found common ground learning that he spent a few weeks in South Korea teaching English but decided to cut it short and instead of sticking around asked his students how to say “I want to go to the airport” in Korean. Before he got off the bus I was also able to squeeze some marriage advice out of him. Even though he’s not married his relationship with his long-time girlfriend has taught him a few things he told me. Carey advised me to remember three things when the woman in my life is talking to me. Every once in a while I should say “ya gotta watch out for that” or “thats what they do” or….sadly it seems the third one has already left me. If my woman then questions me on whether I was really listening or not I should quickly respond “I said thats what they do.” Carey was a really cool guy and thankfully I got a picture with him before he got off so that when he makes it big I can say I knew him when.

After the metro ride from Union Station we walked the 5 or so blocks from the metro station in Pasadena to our friends’ house and had a great few days visiting with them. Afterwards they took us to the airport and we got on our Frontier Airlines flight to Detroit. Nothing that good to say about Frontier other than they are cheap and got us to where we were going. I’d compare them to Spirit Airlines. Basic, cheap travel. One thing to remember though is that Frontier charges $15 for even the first bag so factor that in when you are buying tickets.

It was great to be back in Detroit and see my sister who came and picked us up. I was so revved up we stayed up late eating Taco Bell and watching a movie!

Since then we’ve gone to a July 4th party with friends from church, gone to church, and spent lots of time with our families!

Work should start on Monday!

Its the Simple Things

Michael's Posts, Our Taipei Life, University 4 Responses »

May 172009

Big & exciting news people: In PE class a few weeks ago we all had to take a test. There were several parts to this test:
1. Do as many sit-ups as you can in a minute
2. Do a flat-footed long-jump from a stand-still
3. Reach forward as far as you can sitting on your bottom with your legs out-stretched in front of you
4. Measure your heart-rate after 1 minute of stairs with 1 minute to rest
The results were written on a little paper with my name on it along with my age, weight, height, and BMI, calculated from height and weight. Everyone’s results were then fed into a computer program which calculated the bottom fifty-percent of my class and the top fifty-percent in terms of “physical fitness.” Those in the bottom will have to take a third year of physical education but I won’t BECAUSE I’M IN THE TOP HALF AND WILL BE DONE WITH PE IN A FEW SHORT WEEKS!!!!!! It truly is the simple things in life.

Everyone here in Taiwan boils their water (we do too) or has a water filtration machine. I always assumed it was because the water was not safe. However, this week in Environmental Dynamics class I learned that this is done because of historical habit and for better taste due to the water’s high chlorination. We’ve been living in Taiwan for over twenty months now and I just learned its safe to drink the tap water.

Its been a while since I posted about the cab-driver who pee’d on the side of the road outside our apartment while traffic zoomed by so how about a little culture shock for all of you. I just learned it is a common practice at Taiwanese weddings (not Chinese so this is common in the south of Taiwan but not here in Taipei) to hire strippers as entertainment for weddings. Not the night-before party or anything like that but for the actual wedding party dinner. CULTURE SHOCK!

And finally the Nonsense Shirts Store is still a blast. 2 months after opening we’ve had our first, non-friend (as in stranger to us) customer, schwing! Additionally with the help of friends here I’ve expanded the business to also include custom t-shirt printing service and bulk ordering of our own products.