Posts about Moblog
February 07, 2004
Sodami is cute...
I noticed this on a friend's kitchen table when I was looking for a piece of scratch paper.
February 01, 2004
Friends at home
Serious hot pot going on here.
January 31, 2004
No translation needed...
Even the local spicy hot pot diner is on the anti-US beef campaign.
January 13, 2004
Spicy Wei-ya!
We decided at the last minute to have a spicy hot pot (ma la huo guo) wei ya for the Living Room staff. A wei ya is sort of a year end dinner for staff. The scary red stuff in the foreground is one of the pots of spice we were about to dive into. (The guys are sitting at the other table.) With ma la there are usually three levels of heat. We went for medium (level 2), which usually gives your sphincter some serious morning workout. Fortunately, it wasn't that hot today.
The girls can usually go through twice what the guys can. I bonked after about 3000 calories and six scoops of ice cream to cool off.
January 03, 2004
Ben & Corbett on Peak 95
Ben called around 1pm and asked if I wanted to hike Elephant mountain. Sure. Exercize is good. Imagine 3 hrs of Stairmaster, and you'll get the idea of a hike in Taiwan. (I think the real fact is that no female-on-the-horizon wanted to do the climb on a Saturday, so I was called in as the ringer. This is a cool hike because it's only five minutes from the city, and you can measure your progress against the 101 building. You begin to gain a little respect for how damned tall the 101 is when you get to the top of a peak, and it's still towering above you. Peak 95 is a good vantage point for a complete S.E. Taipei vista.
December 31, 2003
Jerry's birthday
A few of us got together to celebrate Jerry's birthday. He cooked some up decent curry for us. Irene and I got him an antique table. This will be a good year for him. His place is finished, he's figuring out what he wants to do, and his career is blossoming. He just finished a big movie where Andy Lau co-stars, which may propel him into another level of stardom. We'll see. Either way, he's still Jerry, and kept complaining about the way I manhandled him on the basketball courts. He said I played like a gangster [liu mang]. I told him he was a wimpy wuss. I grew up with Mexican and black kids, and basketball was always considered a contact sport. You were always jostling for position, bumping into people. leaning in with a shoulder.
Anyway, I was happy to see his new place finally finished. A very cool bachelor pad. Obviously AV is a the most important thing to him. His place is essentially a private screening studio with a place to sleep and a place to eat. We're talking Mark Levinson amps, Meridian CD, JBL K2 monitors, a 60+" flat panel TV built into the wall, satellite TV, and the final touch, a 10 foot pull down movie screen with one of those awesome JVC DLA projectors.
We all cramped onto the oversized white sheepskin couch and watched "Pirates of the Caribbean" on DVD which was as good as going to the movies. I'm sold. I want a bachelor pad too after my next movie.
December 30, 2003
Protein breakfast!
Actually no. This big guy was in my driveway, and didn't want to get out of the way. I had to stop the car, talk to him, nudge him over, and get back in the car. Irene thought he was "sad" because one of his kids had been squashed next to him. Maybe he was guarding it. Who knows.
December 21, 2003
Standing noodles in Hsinmen Ding
December 19, 2003
Xmas cigar
December 17, 2003
The Wicked Witch of the East
December 15, 2003
Mobile entertainment?
Alcatel was celebrating their 30th year in Taiwan, and their new offices in Neihu, and JP asked if I could perform an opening song for them as a favor. It was tough getting up in the morning after a 4am close of the Living Room, and treating the staff to some late night ma la huo guo. But I managed to drag myself out into the cold morning, stumble into my car, and arrive at Alcatel in time to see balloons, dancing girls, and horses with Alcatel banners on them. I didn't have a banner on me, but I played a funky little tune called "Mine Tonight" which seemed to fit the happy digital feeling of 3G mobile content.
No, I'm not the guy in the white socks and the French revolution gown! I was huddling between some CHT staff and the free coffee.
December 13, 2003
Great stress relief combo
December 06, 2003
Why would someone cut a Whopper?
Question: Why would someone cut a Whopper with a knife?
Answer: Because Tiff has a monster blister on her lip and can't open her mouth wide enough!
Map for Jerry
1.6K after McD's. First left.
5.0K after McD's. Parking across the road.
Nice paths that goes up to Chi-san.
Unfortunately, no big trees.
December 05, 2003
5 hours
What a lousy way to spend the entire day. First the tax office boogaloo, then five hours waiting around for a piece of paper in a police station just in order to rush to another police station to pay some money and get a little stamp in Tiff's passport, so that she can leave the country. This is common practice here in Taiwan, a country with no immigration service, which is dumped on the tax bureau and foreign affairs police to deal with. I shouldn't complain because it is a million times better than 15 years ago when we had to fake attendance to some language school which didn't exist, so we could stay here as "students", then take our NT dollars to a dubious guy with a green visor sitting in a cage behind some dimly lit jewelry store front in order to exchange to greenbacks before we left the country.
It was nice chatting with the cops. It turns out that I played at the police academy graduation ceremony for one of them, and the others all liked my music. One of them raises cats, another bakes biscuits and muffins and dabbles in sleight of hand, and another of them is a budding jazz guitarist, and is eager to attend the next week's jam session at the Living Room. I couldn't imagine how long I'd be sitting there if we didn't at least have music, cats, and magic to blab about.
December 03, 2003
Collecting fruit from a temple
I was walking the dog around a temple near Shi Lin, and saw these folks trying to knock down some oranges from a tree. I would have to calculate the ROI as a negative. 5 people to collect one orange.
November 06, 2003
Celebrating Best Actress
Tonight was the Taiwan Golden Bell awards, which are like the Emmys in the States, and our friend 6Mao was up for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. 6Mao is also my godson's mother, and we were all routing for her since she had been nominated 4 years in a row but never won. Tonight she won both! So we all got together for a late night party.
Today was one neverending social event. First there was a Japanese buffet lunch with Elizabeth at Jogoya, which is like a weird cross between a hi-tech Japanese hair salon and a buffet. They even have their own fancy website. Two hours later there was the huge Flintstones steak dinner with Argus at Formosa Plastics. During the dinner I got a call from Jerry who was back from Japan for a day between shooting his movie and wanted to say hi before he went off to the Philippines to do some promo and meet President Arroyo (Celebrities get to do the weirdest stuff). He was also bringing Vivian over to the Living Room to check it out since she'd never been there. (I couldn't miss this.) I had a few minutes to see him and tease him on his Japanese, chat a bit with Vivian (who is unreal), before running off to check out the Matrix premier. After the movie, we're checking our phones, and that's when we get the news that 6Mao won, so off again to some private karaoke piano bar, where we hang out until 4am. I also shared some of my Argus steak bones with Eric, who has a beagle named Chappy.
November 05, 2003
Steak with Argus
Argus invited some Fitel group friends and me to have steak with him at the Formosa Group building. Steak and plastics? Don't ask. They have their own dining room. Argus is the son-in-law of Y.C. Wang, and heads the Automobile and Plastics corporations for Formosa. Good guy. I like meat and all, but this was way too much meat. Flintstones style. I collected all the bones to take back to my dog, Cho-cho.
November 02, 2003
Olive oil madness
Everytime I go to see a movie at the Breeze Center (which has the best seats in town) I stop by the basement grocery store for a quick snack, and am amazed at the incredible selection of non-essential items like olive oil. There must be forty different brands.
September 30, 2003
Arkadi and me and Sapporo
Arkadi is my good friend. He's from Belarus, and teaches cello at Tunghai University in Taichung. He drives fast, likes spicy food, and drinks espresso anytime of the day. Today we were hanging out at in the Min Sheng district with our Japanese friend, Mr. Sapporo.
Mr. Lin and Mr. Gao
Lawrence has this funky restaurant in Tien Mu called Puffy Dog Cafe, which caters to dogs and dog lovers. Be careful where you step!
September 27, 2003
A French lunch at Chateau Tien Mu
JP invited me over to have a real French lunch. Besides some excellent French roast coffee with condensed milk, and Napoleon's favorite wine, a Gevrey-Chambertin, I found out that a good cheese meal needs to consist of cheese from three different animals. There's milk from a cow, a goat, and a sheep. Also, the blue stuff in Rochefort cheese is a form of penicillin (penicillum roqueforti), and is mined only in caves near the village of Roquefort. Cool.
September 20, 2003
big guy, me, jg & sg
September 07, 2003
Mr. Oolong Teapot Head
Ok. So I get off the plane, make a left after customs, and there he is waiting for me: Mr. Oolong Teapot Head. I've met a lot of different kind of heads before in my life...let's see...deadheads, dickheads, pinheads, redheads, potheads, squidheads, prickheads, buttheads, and even a chicken mcnugget head, but i've never met an oolong teapot head before.
September 05, 2003
Chinese Dunkin' Donuts
Better selection than in the US. No cops parked out front. Counter girls don't look like they will mug you. Don't feel like you will be shot by a drive by El Camino. And you can watch zillions of bikes pass by.
September 04, 2003
O'Malley's in Shanghai
Jean-Francois and I are enjoying some smooth Kilkenny's on the patio at Tim's bar in Shanghai. Good conversation about the future of mobile media in China. And GPRS roaming actually works through China Mobile!
August 28, 2003
Do we really look alike?
August 27, 2003
Roger is moblogged @ the living room
August 22, 2003
Taipei Cigar Club
The other side of the negotiation table
August 21, 2003
JP @ the living room
August 18, 2003
Big birds in your pants...
August 15, 2003
Lisa has a secret
Jerry @ the living room
August 13, 2003
Me and Tiff
August 12, 2003
Brett wants his own blog
Oh yes, it finally works!
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
