Hospital

Became really ill around 1h00 this morning and after I started running a fever, I went to the hospital by myself around 4h00. One anti-vomit injection, three bottles of IV drips and eight hours later, I was back home. What an agonizing night it was. The ER doctor said I had 急性腸胃炎 along with something else, probably because I was too tired and my immune system weak. Miserable. The soreness and fever really scared me. Thank goodness it was not H1N1.

Feeling icky

I think I'm ill after all.

The first day in Hualien, I was already not feeling very well. The second day, I woke up with one especially swollen eye, a painfully bloated body, nausea and a headache. When I got back from Hualien and came home, I fell asleep around 17h00 and didn't wake up 'til 7h00 this morning. I thought I was a little better until I went jogging tonight. On the way back, my stomach really wasn't happy and I started feeling like vomiting again. Ugh...

Theme for the next few weeks: sleep well.

I have so much on my mind though. My chief editor seems to be off her rocker again, spraying insults and profanity everywhere, including over here. I try not to take it personally, but it is still very, very annoying. Also, I'm trying to get something together between FTV, the Tourism Bureau and Mama. If it works, it would be a win-win-win situation. We'll see if it's meant to be. If it works out, maybe it can count as my "contribution" to FTV and I'll have something especially memorable to leave behind when it comes time.

Lukai wedding

Pictures from a Lukai (魯凱族, indigenous tribe) mass wedding for tourists I took during an assignment last year.

CKS Memorial run

Ran to CKS Memorial, around it and then back today. 10,2 km in 73 minutes, plus taking pix in between. Taipei can be a very lovely city. 自由廣場 (Liberty Square) is very meaningful for me. It used to say "大中至正," and I was there reporting when it was torn down, along with all the protesting and violence that happened all throughout. I will never forget that night and the nights that followed it.

The middle two pictures are of the National Concert Hall and the National Theatre. They are in the same park/complex. I love that area. The memorial hall is inside and since it wasn't lit up, I didn't go take a picture. Perhaps if I go running there in the morning sometime, I'll take it.

Still a little high on caffeine, but much better now. At least I will be able to sleep tonight. Been a long day - 4h00 to 20h00. Yes, I still love my job :)

Sorry for the low quality pix - I took them with my E66. At least it has GPS on it!

Go Gina! Be safe.

The Harvard nut on 2 wheels.

This is Gina, one of my very very very very bestest friends. She just graduated from Harvard Business School and decided to ride across America on a Vespa. Apparently my totaling her Renaissa and almost killing myself in Tokyo (which I felt very badly about) was no warning that biking is dangerous. Oh well. I still love her anyway.

This is her blog, chronicling her cross-country adventure.

(all pictures are from her website)

Go Jane!

Just found out that an old friend from high school is a professional singer, who plays various instruments and writes her own music too! I love her voice. She already has two CD's out and is performing to sold-out venues. Go Jane! I hope it is just a matter of time before she takes the world by storm. Go Jane!

Check out her Youtube channel here.

Hilarious wedding

Fun, but I think Dad would have a heart attack if one of us had a wedding like this.

(via A Cup of Jo)

GoogleTaiwanGeo - subscribed!

Thought this was cool.

Check out some of the favorite places of certain notables in Taiwan.

(thanks, Caroline)

Living among incompatibles

Article from World Hum on Japan and Japanese culture.

Interesting!

(thanks, Yoji)

Napa Valley of teas

An article from the San Jose Mercury from earlier in the month.

Funny how I'm reading and learning about part of my heritage in a different language.

Going through Facebook and seeing what everyone's up to these days, minus the games. It's as if in the last three weeks, half of my coworkers have discovered FB and are playing games on there nonstop... I ended up having today off because I had to reshuffle my schedule. Juggling the night shift, travel feature, anchoring and everything in between is a real challenge sometimes. If I'm lucky, I'll only have to work for 9 straight days after next Wed. If not so lucky, then 12. We'll see. Been feeling real lucky these days :D

Today, just a little bit of carving but no printing - my body hurts too much from (probably too much) running. I don't want to be on my feet at all.

Hanga afternoon

I finally started test printing. The boards, notes, photocopy of the original watercolor have been staring at me for more than 2 months, waiting to be worked on. After this afternoon, from the looks of it I need to shave a lot more off the edges, darken all the colors except for the yellow and orange and make the white more opaque. So much more work to do, but alas, it's back to work tomorrow.

Running and resting

The last seven days seemed to be especially long. Not unpleasant, but really tiring, traveling for the travel features, doing spot news and anchoring. Things never get any less relaxing, but at least they've gotten more interesting. I do still love my job :) Of course, I'm on the lookout for something new too.

I've also been running a lot more these days, party to teach myself discipline, partly to be healthy and partly because I'm having fun with the Sports Tracker, which doesn't track distance very well when I'm running. The time's accurate, but the distance comes out longer than what it really is. In the last 12 days, I've made eight runs, totaling 5,5 hours. I've been not listening to music, just trying to concentrate on the run and putting things out of my mind, kind of like meditating, and it works great. At the end of each run, I'll have worked out some of the things that have been bothering me. Like tonight, I figured out what to do when I'm stuck in an unpleasant lunch/dinner - drink a lot of water and eat only a little food. This evening, I had dinner and had to listen to someone vent for what seemed like an eternity, and by the end of dinner, I was close to vomiting because my stomach had become so upset. Also, I also figured out what was wrong with my latest salad - I should use thin strips of ham instead of diced ham. See? Running is good for the body and the mind.

And it's time for this body and mind to get some rest. They're both completely exhausted and hoping the office and no one else calls in the morning tomorrow so they can finally sleep in.

Tomorrow, it's laundry, writing and hanga. It will be a Me day, hopefully.

What a day

It started with almost getting hit by 2 motorcyclists on the way to work, then getting stuck in the lift with my bicycle because the coworker I so courteously let exit before me didn't hold the door open for me, and as I was trying to push my bicycle out, the door closed and back down I went, from the 16th floor to B4. When I finally made my way back up to 16F again and bumped into her in the office, she said "Sorry, I was going to be late, and I really tried pushing the button for you but didn't make it in time." Right, so I let her get to work on time and she let me be late to work. Great.

Reported on a trite subway story about the new Neihu Line making too much noise. On the lift back up to our offices, I offered and pressed the floor for a woman with her hands full of documents, then one second, two seconds, three seconds passed and she hadn't said anything else to me except for, "2nd floor" when she got in the lift on the first floor. I couldn't stand it anymore and said a little louder than usual, "You're welcome." Was this Bad Manner Day? Well, at least she replied to my "you're welcome" with a "thank you."

Then in the afternoon, I hauled derrier to get the Mandarin & Taiwanese versions of the weekly travel story out, put subtitles on them (Thank you, English News for helping w/ the English!) and off I went to the Department of Health, who was holding at press conference in response to the case of trace amounts of arsenic found in samples of frying oil from some McDonald's restaurants in Taipei County (an ongoing story). DOH officials were 45 minutes late, the answers they gave were less than clear and less than satisfactory. PC ended around 19h00.

On the way back to the office, on Civil Blvd (市民大道), I reported back to Solon about what was said at the PC, and before I could finish, he said, "I'll call you back, a tour bus just exploded." Well well well. We ran into the bus that caught on fire on the way back, and ended up making a U on the expressway, with cars coming at us at 80kph. We were literally running around on the expressway with cars zooming by us, filming the charred engine and the evacuated Japanese tourists it was driving, who were then on the tiny shoulder, standing in front or sitting on top of their luggage. Good thing no one was hurt, including us. What an adrenaline rush that was. I'd do it again any day or night, but hopefully not when I'm supposed to be at home, getting ready for bed to wake up at 3 tomorrow to anchor.

By the time I got back to the office and finished taking care of everything, it was 21h00 :(

So much for the run I was hoping to do with my new Sports Tracker. Tomorrow maybe!

Anchoring in Taiwanese (Minnan)

And for a good weekend laugh..... Actually, you can laugh this way almost every weekend. I'm usually on Saturdays. Not this Saturday though. For the first time in a long, long time, they're giving me time off anchoring, following my night shift.

Southern Link

We did this story June 2009. Yeah, we traveled a lot that month!

Discovering Matsu

We did this story June 2009.

Rafting in Hualien

We did this story last month.

Paragliding in Sandimen

Just got some of my stories converted to MPG1 and into my computer. This is paragliding and other fun in Sandimen, Pingtung, Taiwan.

We did this story last year.

Getting younger

After starting to treat my cameraman like a child, we began to get along much better. We're on the night shift together, and today's the last day of my stinking 10-day shift, but I haven't wanted to kill him yet. I think he's an adolescent with ADHD in a grown-up body. Something like a puppy who knows how to operate a news camera. He's 29, I'm 30, but these days, I feel 15. The upside is that I'm taking things less seriously, but the downside is that I'm eating junk food along with him and getting more and more 粗魯 (the opposite of elegant). I even had 雞排 (fried chicken) from a hole-in-the-wall tonight. Must find a balance!

I appreciate him much more these days. He's honest, doesn't hold a grudge, has a decent work ethic and is straight-forward. I'm tired, but I'm happy.