The Bright Sail

Laguna Beach, California

Shot this while attending a wedding as a guest.

Who knew “Smells Like Teen Spirit” can be turned into a swing tune?! Kurt Cobain wouldn’t had killed himself if he heard this. Sooooo happyyyyy… Tune in HERE

The Green Has You.

Just took a road trip down to Philadelphia with the lady this past weekend. It is only about 2-2.5hours away from New York City and the weather was awesome for the drive.

The first stop we made at Philly was the Italian Market. There was a big crowd there on Saturday morning and it seemed like most of them were there to do their weekly grocery shopping. The price is A LOT cheaper than New York City. You can get a bucket of small green peppers (guestimated at about 3 pounds) for a dollar. However, the quality is somewhat of a Russian roulette — ranging from fresh to slightly bruised to down right rotten. As a rule of thumb, shop around for better quality and price.

While entering the market we saw a stand selling asparaguses at 4 bundles for a buck. It was inconceivable. Kelly quickly shifted into S (Shopping) gear, but I immediately pulled her back and reminded her that there were other stands to see and we could always come back. She agreed.

As we treaded deeper into the market, we were just being price shocked, in a good way. 7 oranges for a dollar? Got them. 3 bundles of scallion for a buck? Bought. Boxes and boxes of asparaguses for FREE?

Wait, FOR FREEEEEEE?

For free it was! Granted that the asparaguses looked lifeless, bruised and just plainly abused, still, it was free. There was an Asian lady there next to the boxes, looking like a local, and she was rather amused, too.

“Free! No money!” she exclaimed to the people surrounding her while fingering the asparaguses to see if they could be salvaged.

Standing there, watching the Asian lady probing the asparaguses with her index finger and thumb, shoppers roaming by and people vendoring their goods — I was rather perplexed by the whole situation.

Free asparaguses just don’t happen.

And then it dawned on me — Philadelphia is about anything and everything free. Freedom, freedom fries, Free Library and free asparaguses. Soon after, another thing hit me — the stand that was selling asparaguses at 4 bundles for a buck — they probably got their asparaguses here and for free!

Damn those scamming Phillies.

Other than asparaguses, another attraction in Italian market is the Philly cheese steak, Geno’s and Pat’s. I tried both and they were all pretty good, but I guess Pat’s is the original cheese steak stand, and the fact that the line was longer and we all know that the longer the line, the better the food — Pat’s gets the vote.

Later, I took Kelly to Morimoto’s, of Iron Chef fame, for dinner. Her verdict was that it is better than Nobu/Nobu Next-Door in all categories: price, taste and most important of all, amount of food. I’ve never tried Nobu, so I will take her words.

Following the dinner and hotel check-in, we were out and about to see what Philadelphia has to offer at Saturday night (which really wasn’t much), and had the following exchange at one red light with a passenger in the taxi next to my car:

He rolled down his window and yelled to me, “Hey, do you know where the ***** building is?”

With a smirk in my face, I yelled back, “I am from New York. I don’t know, man.”

“Meee tooooo! Philly sucks.” The fellow New Yorker replied with utter disappointment.

He then rolled up his window as the light turned green and the taxi sped away.

Other than that the rest of the weekend was spent touring around parts of the town, getting drunk on cheap wine. We even found time to swing by Atlantic City to donate our money to the casinos. All in all, we had fun and made it home safe and sound.

Go see more photos.

The following is not recommended unless you are familiar with Taiwan’s society and history.

This is sort of an old news and I kinda lost track on how this went down, but there was a huge hoorah about the renaming of Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei just a few months back. When this news got stirred up, I never paid much attention to it — thinking that it was just yet another political stunt from Democractic Progressive Party and I dismissed it as a non-issue especially when I am not too much of a political person.

Fast forward a few months.

I have recently been reading some blogs from foreigners living in Taiwan and my, is it eye-opening. It really altered how I view Taiwan as a whole, the society and politics. There is only one way to describe this ‘awakening’ and it is through reciting a famous quote from one of Keanu Reeves’ ‘classics’, the Matrix. He uttered the following famous quote after he found out the Machines were using human bodies as crops to power their world — “WHOOOA”.

So, get this, after Chiang Kai Shek — the generalissimo, the dictator — took over Taiwan and after his Kuomingtang butchered 20,000 Taiwanese civilians in the infamous 228 Incident, he still gets a nice swanky memorial hall in his name? This question may irk some of the “Out-Of-Provincials”, as Chiang did bring them in from mainland China back in the late 1940’s as they were his soldiers; however, the later generations should be supporting the renaming movement.

Why?

Because you were all brainwashed, including myself, an “Of-Provincial”. We were brainwashed under KMT’s education to uphold Chiang as one of the great leaders. And of course we were brainwashed — he was THE dictator of Taiwan. And what do dictators and victors of war do? They rewrite history. Not to be outdone by the Mao in China — the culture revolution and all, Chiang obliterated every. single. trace. of Japanese colonization where possible, even those of historical treasures. Very sad. And was there any mention of 228 Incident in history books? Before the martial law ended in 1991, there wasn’t much of a beep. Because if you let out a beep, you would be prisoned. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. So, upon knowing all these facts, would you still want to have a memorial hall (those that have been there know how big the building is) in your city? Exactly.

Now, I do support renaming of the memorial hall and perhaps even the destruction of the main hall, but I wouldn’t agree on the removing of the walls. The walls surrounding the grounds are well done and worth keeping, and the grounds itself can be easily converted to a regular and well maintained park which old and young can enjoy.

All in all, this renaming movement is definitely an DPP’s public stunt, but it also does make sense — for the modern Taiwanese people — as it is about “doing the right thing”. Besides, why in the world would you keep a memorial for a murdering dictator anyway? Hopefully, common sense will prevail and people can recognize that this is an issue on “why-are-we-still-having-a-memorial-hall-for-a-butcher” and not “DPP vs KMT” or “Out-Of-Provincial vs Of-Provincial”.