Bellavita department store

I had a busy day today. For lunch my Taiwan family went to Koshiya for lunch. We had curry filled Tonkatsu, japanese plum Tonkatsu and Karage to name a few. They had a unique dipping sauce. You ground your own sesame seeds to mix with the Tonkatsu sauce. For desert it was yogurt drink and black sesame ice cream. After lunch, I made sure to purchase some japanese breakfast pastries :). Next we went to Bellavita which is a beautiful and very high end department store that just opened up next to Taipei 101. Philips had a show there to promote their new shaver, which companies do often. For dinner, i had Oyster noodles and "car wheel" (direct translation)cakes again. Going into a coma, good night!

Celebrate, my first week in Taipei!

Fan Tuan (糍飯糰) for breakfast! It costs about .80 cents. But I forgot, I could have gotten You Tiao Fan Tuan, much better. You Tiao (油條) is a long, golden-brown, deep fried strip of dough usually eaten during Chinese breakfast. It's crispy and has a great crunch to it when it's fresh. Definitely will have to remember to add that during my next Fan Tuan order.

Just discovered PPS.tv

I was just introduced to pps.tv which is an application for streaming video content to your PC. TV shows and movies, american, european and chinese etc. No buffering (for greater than 3MB bandwidth) and quality is good. Contains some movies that are still in theatres. However the application is only in chinese. Back to watching season 3 of Dexter.

btw. It's free but might be Taiwan IP blocked only. Kinda like how Netflix and Hulu is screwing me over now.

Starting a bank account is a PITA

First off they're extremely strict on the ATM use. 8 digit pin and if you get it wrong 3 times in a row, they cancel your account. Anyways, today I went to the Immigration office to get a temporary ID for foreigners. This allows me to start a bank account here in Taiwan. After 4 hours of lines, paperwork and signing my name, I have a Taiwanese bank account!

In addition, it looks like I can be a citizen and be exempt from draft. If i live in taiwan, i just have to leave the country every 4 months. If i live outside the country for more than 2 years, I just need to reapply for my "resident card" or whatever it's called. Oh and it looks like the draft age limit is 37. Wikipedia is wrong haha.

Getting a prepaid phone SIM is a PITA

Getting a prepaid phone SIM is a PITA. Requires passport, US driver's card, and a citizen's address and endorsement. And it's pretty expensive too.

Just arrived in Taiwan

I just arrived in Taiwan. It's super hot and humid here. And from what I hear it's going to be raining alot more. Arriving at my family condo, i realize it needs to be cleaned and organized since no one has living in it for a while. My goal for this month would be to clean and organize the condo and start settling in to living in Taiwan. So i'll only be speaking in Chinese, except for this blog of course ;)