Quick Update 2

The family and I returned from the southern part of Taiwan where we did some sightseeing with some of my parent's friends. To get down there, we took the new Taiwan High Speed Rail, which was very quick and quiet while going at speeds up to 300 km/hr, so it's able to get to the southern part of Taiwan in about 90 minutes or so. After eating at a nice seafood place, we headed to the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, and I took plenty of pics which I'll be posting when I get back :) At the end of the day, we stayed at a really nice hotel in Kenting, and our room was literally less than 50 feet away from the beach!

Quick Update

Since the wireless internet that I've been "borrowing" has been sort of sporadic, I'll just post some quick notes of what's been going on.

-I flew via United Airlines for this trip (the last two times I came to Taiwan, I flew via Northwest), and my flight path actually got changed when I went to check in on the 7th. The original plan was to go from Columbus to Chicago to Tokyo to Taipei, but it ended up that I went from Columbus to Washington DC to Tokyo to Taipei because I guess the inclement weather in Columbus and Chicago resulted in some flights being rerouted. I didn't think much of it at the time, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I had a window seat all to myself from the flight out of Chicago to Tokyo :) I flew in a Boeing 777, and each seat had its own little LCD screen where you can watch whatever movies were being offered at the time, but the coolest part was the "Map" feature that displayed where the plane was relatively in the world and gave updated statistics about how fast the plane was traveling and how much longer the plane had yet to go to reach its destination. As for the airplane food, I thought it was actually "decent", but then again, I hadn't had airplane food in a while and both my mom and brother said the food was pretty terrible. On the way over I had some chicken and noodles, lasagna, and curry chicken. I didn't pay much attention to any of the movies that were on at the time (I watched a bit of "Man of the Year") and rotated my attention between Elite Beat Agents and Sudoku on the DS and read a bit of Stephen King's Cell.

-One of the immediate things I noticed is the abundance of 7-11's. In fact, there's one right next door to my mom's house!

-I haven't eaten out that much yet except to get some breakfasty chinese-type food in the morning. Again, next door to my mom's house is a place where you can get soy milk and sao bing yo teow (I don't know the english words for it -_-) and other tasty food for teh win!

-My brother and I hit up the Taipei game show today (2-11-07) and man, it was crowded!! Although it was fun to look around and see everything, my brother and I probably would enjoy myself more had we known how to read chinese -_- There were also an abundance of attractive booth models in the various sections, but I felt sort of creeped out taking pictures of them since they all looked so young -_- One of the cooler exhibits was for this game called Hellgate: London. The exhibit had probably 40 PCs all loaded with the game, which I can best describe as a 3D Diablo. There was a guy working there that was cool enough to show me and my brother through the game since we couldn't read any of the menu options or dialog. There was a lot of free shwag to be found as well as many of the major booths had their models tossing out bags, pens, posters, and other various shwag. My brother and I probably ended up getting 2 game demos and a bunch of free online trials, but they'll end up going unused because of our illiteracy -_-

That's all for now. I'll have some pictures later when I get back home.

Made it....

After some loooooooong flights, I just wanted to let everyone know I made it safe and sound. Now to get some sleep -_-

On sort of a funny note: Everything on blogger is in Chinese -_-

Heading to the far east...by flying west...

I don't remember who I told, but this Wednesday I'll be heading over to Taiwan along with my mom and dad. My brother will also be joining us later, but he'll be coming 2 days later since he didn't get tickets earlier. It's been like over 10 years since my last trip to Taiwan, and for now all I have planned is to visit my grandparents, but apparently my mom has a bunch of friends that want to show us around, so I guess I'll be looking forward to that. My mom said Internet is prevalent in Taiwan, so I'll try to keep everyone posted about what's going on. If you have any suggests of things to go see, I'd like to hear about them in the comments :)

Super Bowl Extra Large + 1

Congrats to the Super Bowl XLI champions Indianapolis Colts. In sort of a sloppily played game due to the continual rain, the Colts withstood the elements and executed better than the Bears to give Payton Manning his first Super Bowl win. For those who don't follow football, Payton Manning has pretty much established himself as maybe the NFL's best QB of all time since he holds so many passing records, but a lot of critics branded him as one of those people who can't win the big game. But now with wins over his rival team New England and this Super Bowl win, he has gotten that giant monkey off his back. Strangely enough, it was probably the Colts defense that was the unsung hero by limiting the time of possession for the Bears and not letting them get into any sort of rhythm.

The commercials this year weren't that good as a whole, but CareerBuilder and Bud Light gave us some laughs. You can check the commercials out on Youtube. Also, Prince put on a pretty good half-time show compared to half-time shows of the past.

More singing will commence...

After showing David the awesomeness that is Karaoke Revolution, he decided to go out and get the AI edition for us to play with. This'll end up as a present to his sister/mother back in Iceland, but we'll be doing a lot of sing testing in the meantime ;)

The sing system is exactly the same as in the party edition. The one big change of course is the addition of the American Idol mode where you can start from the audition room (where apparently instruments are allowed now :P) and work your way up to the finals. In between songs, the judges (Simon, Randy, and Laura) will give their opinions. David and I haven't really explored all the different things that the judges say, but I'm sure when we have people over, we'll discover some classic quotes from the game :P As for Laura, she basically acts like Paula in always giving out positive feedback. The song choices are also just as good as in the party edition as well. Overall...the American Idol aspect just adds an extra layer to an already polished series of KR games. However, I've yet to find "Yo, Dude, Rock!" in this game :(

Happy Groundhogs Day!

It looks like Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow this morning, so hopefully spring will be coming soon! I'd more than welcome it since it's been brutally cold here in Columbus the past week -_-