March 24, 2007: Day trip to Jou Fen, Part 1

Sophie, Angela, Stacey, Tsai and I had an excellent day in Jou Fen two weeks ago. Jou Fen means 'nine knives' and was thus called as there were nine families who lived there. So the story goes: if anyone went to town (a long trek as the roads were almost non-existent) they would get nine of everything, one for each family.
Later, when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule, there was gold mining here and it became a bit of a boom town.
After the Mainland Chinese took over (1949-ish) Jou Fen became like a ghost town. It is beautifully situated on the coast and rent was cheap, so after a time artists started to move here. Later, the movie 'City of Sadness' was filmed here and Jou Fen became 'in' again!
Jou Fen is very touristy but lots of fun! We go about once a year to our favorite tea house for a day of eating, brewing and drinking green tea and playing games.
BTW: I *may* have a fact or two wrong here--if you think so please let me know in the comments section so I can correct it. Thanks!
First, we had to choose what to eat.

Our menu was written on leather. Cool, eh?

Jou Fen is built on the side of a mountain with stairs to go up and down. Phew, hard work getting to that tea house!

And stairs going down.

To get to our favorite tea house you have to walk through a narrow tunnel. Not so great if you are claustrophobic.

Sophie made it!

Inside the tea house you are greeted by all these pretty lanterns and charming staff.

Feb. 28, 2007: Still working on the floor

Angela and Andy came over to help me (almost) finish my floor. They were fabulous workers and we got lots done. Hopefully I'll finish on Saturday. On my way to bed but here's a couple of photos:


On the white wall you can see the peeling paint and bare patches of concrete. They are because this house was poorly constructed and leaks. The water seeps through the wall causing puddles down the stairs and the paint to bubble and peel on some walls. This all adds to the 'atmosphere' of the house. Though perhaps not in a really positive way. :o)

Thoughts of the day (Repost January 18, 2007)

This is a photo of inquisitive Mower--same colour scheme as Little One, but a much fluffier (and crankier) version!

On being (or not) bitchy
A few weeks ago Angela made an interesting comment about my blog: ‘If I didn’t know it were you, if the names were changed, I might not know it was you. It’s like, there’s something missing.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘I’m not generally bitchy on my blog.’
‘Er. Well, yes. You’re all cute and happy.’

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An overcoat hides nothing.
Gents, I hate to break this to you, but masturbating in public under your overcoat fools no one. This also goes for a tray table on an airplane, and a blanket on a sofa. The distinctive repeated pulling action combined with the occasional squirm and shortened breath gives you away. While I am a fan of masturbating, (yea!), I do believe it is something that is best done behind closed doors. Doing it in public merely demonstrates to the world that you truly are a sad and pathetic being. A briefcase is also insufficient cover. Remember: Behind closed doors, not in public.

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Strawberries in January?
Now is strawberry season here in Taiwan. Does it seem strange to you to have strawberry season in January? It strikes me as very odd, but quite wonderful all the same. I tend to buy a large flat of strawbs, eat some fresh and freeze the rest to turn into fantabulous frozen strawberry-gin cocktails in the summer.

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Happy Birthday!
I arbitrarily decided that January 11^th was Little Fella’s first birthday. Wonderfully enough, the splints I ordered for his back legs arrived that day. I was very excited and hopeful about these splints. In fact, they have NOT miraculously cured his semi-paralysis (rats), however they mean that he can walk on the road without scraping the skin off his feet as they drag. I still take him for his long walk (usually in the morning) using his cart, but the splints mean he can potter around relatively unfettered. A couple of days ago he started making his way down the river bank. I found him by following the ‘click, clack’ noises of the splints on the rocks. Hm, closer supervision required! Soph says he sounds like a horse when he is wearing his splints.

Blog hack! (Repost, January 14, 2007)

The X-indian Princess Meta-Blog

(Guest blogged by Angela. Inspired by the tag-cloud and a large delicious starbuxx Signature Hot Chocolate drunk much too close to bedtime. Which guest blog Gael will find either insulting or hilarious: if you’re seeing it, it’s because she found it the latter.)

Hi! I’m Gael! I’m a princess! Just ‘cuz! And I have pets! Pets are animals. And animals are CUTE!! See? Look at my pictures! You can see my cute animals! Yes, cute! So, my animals are good at being cute, and another thing they’re good at is excretion! Yes, my animals love to be cute, and they love to excrete! Because excretion is not as cute as being furry, I make it sound cute by calling it PEE and POO. My animals pee and poo a lot. How do I know? There’s a wonderful useful thing called a TAG CLOUD provided gratis by the lovely yahoo, which shows the words I use the most on the site. If a word is bigger, it’s been used more often. Do you know what the BIGGEST words are, besides the names of my lovely adorable pets, and the name of my wonderful adorable friend, Tsai? [But not, you notice, the name of my wonderful adorable friend Ang? ed] Why yes, it’s the words pee and poo! So you know I use these words a lot, and so you also know what my animals’ favorite activity is.

See, actually, even though I’m an amazingly supersmart sexy interesting woman with an enormous range of activities, the thing I like to talk about most on my blog is my pets. This is because nobody can talk too much about their pets, EVER. Take my friend Ang, for instance. Even though she only has one cat, named Kitty, she talks more about this cat, Kitty, than my two hundred, (er I mean six (seven? ten?), it just feels like two hundred sometimes) cats combined! Yes! She talks about Kitty so much that my friend Simon, who lives down the street, once limited her to THREE Kitty stories per conversation. This was incredibly generous of Simon, who really never wanted to hear about Kitty ever again. The point being, given a chance, any human being will go on ad-infinitum about their pets, and every human being wants to keep their friends, and so: Voila! The cat blog is born. That way everybody who wants to talk about their pets can talk about their pets, and everybody who wants to read about pets can read about them. This is why the internet was created. But you see, my blog is special. You can read any number of blogs about how cute their various owners’ pets are, but only my blog talks about how they PEE! And POO! And leave various forms of life half dead around my house! Which forms of life are exotic! And interesting! And large! Because, and here’s the other twist, I live in Taiwan! An interesting and exotic semi-tropical country! That’s more interestingly and exotic-ly not diplomatically recognized by the world, even though it’s clearly an sovereign nation with all the bells and whistles attached to same . . . [we here cut off the guest blogger, as she has dropped her assumed character of ‘Gael’ and resumed her own ‘voice’, and obviously seriously needs to start her own non-pet related political blog, which is the other reason the internet was created, so that people could vent about politics and not lose their friends, and this blog here is only, can only, be about: my cute pets (although sometimes I let it be about what I’ve done today and how wonderful it is to be living in Taiwan) But thanks for the amusing post, Ang! ed.]