Had a wonderful CNY down here in Taidong, though the weather was pretty miserable most of the time. It was the first year my wife and I were the “old folks”, so we hosted everybody. My three sons (two back from college, one from the army) and their girlfriends , wife’s family, some of the surfer crowd from Dulan- a great time.
My oldest son’s girlfriend is a student from Darjeeling studying Chinese in Tawan: this was her first CNY with a family, and her first trip to Taidong. She loved the ocean views, but seemed less impressed with Dulan Mountain and the tea farms in Lu Yeh. Can’t imagine why.
For me it is usually just my wife, her sisters and their parents. They all live together except my wife who lives with me now (and we live just a few minutes’ walk away). There are no conflicts and everyone is jovial enough although I know my wife and her sisters would often like to be doing something else. After all, they do spend almost every single day of the year living and eating together. But they go along with whatever it is their parents want. This year we missed the most of CNY because we were in Sri Lanka so upon our return we had to ‘make up’ for the days we ‘took off’. There was no time for us to even recuperate from our journey - it was straight into a makeup reunion dinner. This is kinda funny actually - we had a 3.5 hour train journey in Sri Lanka (I had no seat), a few hours souvenir hunting in Colombo, a late night flight, then we landed about 5am in Kuala Lumpur, waited a few hours in the airport, caught another flight and finally landed back in Taipei mid-afternoon. We were exhausted. We’d had very little sleep over the previous 36 hours. I’d been lugging most of our luggage around everywhere. After arriving home I really, really wanted to just have a shower and lie down for a while, then get an early night. I’m sure I must have looked like I needed rest. But no! :no-no: A massive hotpot dinner. Mahjong. Cards. Television.
This one is about my worst New Year. Why? I spent more money than ever in hotels and shit, and to find them ate a lot of time. Other years we slept in crappy places like temples or even camping here and there, and we got to see many places. This time we were moody, the weather was shitty, and I felt again (but more stronger) that I’m fed up of Taiwan.
We made some epic rides in the mountains but again that was tiresome… and I lost my cellphone (well, my gf left my pokets open when riding, and I guess it fell down… as I told her it would happen).
Nah… it was functional… slow as fuck, but functional. I’m against generating more electronic junk… the planet has already plenty, thanks to our consumer habits. But yeah, it will be good to have something a bit better…
Don’t need to tell me that story again. I actually keep all my old phones, I mean, how much space can they really take up? I still have my old Sony Ericcson W800 phone, a classic.
I’ve read articles about the toxic waste that all of our thrown away electronics produce, makes you wonder how old phones and electronics get “recycled”.
If you think about it, your phone won’t end up in one of those toxic dumps since it’s on the side of the road.
I think the east coast (on some days) did not get as great weather as we did on the west coast.
Thanks @Marco for tidying this all up and making it readable.
I wonder if @cestmoi is still using the same email address as back in 2010, and what the notification settings are. They may be very confused about the sudden influx of email.
There was no time for us to even recuperate from our journey - it was straight into a makeup reunion dinner. This is kinda funny actually - we had a 3.5 hour train journey in Sri Lanka (I had no seat), a few hours souvenir hunting in Colombo, a late night flight, then we landed about 5am in Kuala Lumpur, waited a few hours in the airport, caught another flight and finally landed back in Taipei mid-afternoon. We were exhausted. We’d had very little sleep over the previous 36 hours. I’d been lugging most of our luggage around everywhere. After arriving home I really, really wanted to just have a shower and lie down for a while, then get an early night. I’m sure I must have looked like I needed rest. But no! :no-no: A massive hotpot dinner. Mahjong. Cards. Television.
