Taipei Day 4 - 12 Sep 2013 (Thurs)

Had a very wonderful breakfast prepared by an old auntie from 天池御皇 hotel. Althought it's just a simple plain white porridge and some 8 ordinarily dishes, the meal was way above extraordinary. 

小杰， our taxi drive reached at 8am and off we go to our next destination. 

On the way our from 乌来，we stopped by an snapped some photos of this 吊桥。

Reached 十分 around 10am. Remember the famous Taiwan movie 那些年， 我们一起追过的女孩？Yupe. That's where it was filmed. 

We went there for 放天灯。

 

We ordered one (NT$200 each) , and wrote our wishes at all 4 faces of the lattern. 

After you r ready and satisfied with your artwork, they will help u fire off your lattern to the sky, just like a hot air balloon. 

Spent some time there for photo snapping, and that's about this place. Off we go to our next destination. 

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九份- 老街. A place to shop and eat, just like any other 夜市.

 We spent our whole afternoon there, buying lots of souvenirs like 姜母茶， 凤梨酥， etc...

There is something really special that we've noticed in Taiwan. People here have a very good awareness of equality and animal rights. You can see that the level of acceptance of the people here towards animals and pets is way way 197664x higher than those in .... Ehem....  *cough cough* ......

Dogs and cats are brought along together with their owner when they go to work. It's totally not a rare scene to see restaurants/boutique shops with the pets of the owner roaming around when customers are patronizing. 

There r even corners where stated that this is a place for feeding stray cats. And everyone will just walk up to the cats and  stroke or play with them. You never see a scene where people are kicking, or chasing after strays like they are owning their mothers NT$18364 million dollars. 

Taiwanese have the practice of catch-neuter-release program. All strays that are neutered will have their ears clipped, so that they can be easily recognized. It's  a very common drive in most of the advanced countries, but some of the countries ... *cough cough* still prefers to choose the easy path of exterminating the u lucky ones. 

Another thing 九份Is famous of is its yam balls （芋圆）. We rested at this special place or this dessert, where all it's tables are made of natural wood/stone crafts. 

On the way back, I just couldn't resist myself from getting on of these local musical instrument of Taiwan. It's call 陶笛, a flute made of clay. 

The top a made up of 6 holes, while the bottom consists of a variety of low numbered holes depends on the level of complexity. I bought the beginner level's with one hole at the bottom. Lets see how I progress with it when I get back to Malaysia. Hahaha. :)

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九份 was once a very huge gold producing place. Until recent years this stops after the depletion of that natural resource. Throughout the years of mining has causes some natural pollution to Mother Earth. 黄金瀑布 is one of the consequences of this. 

庙中庙 is another place we visited. 

As the name depicts, there is another small temple within this temple. 

We learnt something very important from 小杰. When we were about to enter the temple from the main entrance, he was so surprised and worried and immediately stopped us. He was surprise that we weren't aware of the unspoken rules when entering a temple, which was something really totally new to us. 

According to him, a temple normally has 3 entrance, the centre, the left and the right. As there is a Chinese saying , 左青龙，右白虎。we never want to enter into the mouth of a tiger. And entering a temple thru the middle (main) door is something very disrespectful. And as such , we should enter a temple from the left entrance, and come out from the right door. 

That's mostly about it. The day ended with us staying in a lousy hotel in 基隆, and had our dinner and night shopping in  庙口夜市。that's a story for another day. :)

Taipei Day 3 - 11 Sep 2013 (Wed)

We started our day by taking mrt to 台北车站 for breakfast. 

Walk around the station for an hour, and went back to our hotel. 

The taxi that we booked was already there waiting for us. Packed our luggage, and off we go to 乌来. 

It's a 45min journey from  台北. It's a place which is quite outskirt, away from all the busy and fast pace of city life. The hotel (or home stay , as how the locals put it. 民宿）is famous of its public jacuzzi (温泉), but not so with its accommodation. 天池 The condition of the rooms are quite under par considering the price that we have to pay for the night. (NT$2200). We found a lot of bugs/ants sharing our room with us. 

But one thing for sure, the scenery of the front entrance is really breath taking. 

The problem with it is, it is 30min walk away from the city, and the route is of peaks and valleys. 

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We walked out together. Weather was very hot. 

Along the street , we picked one shop for lunch. Ordered a famous veggie dish. 炒过猫。

And of course, not to forget was the famous local wine, 小米酒。NT$50 per cup. 

After lunch, we walked along the Main Street of 乌来。We bought some fried muarchee from a very friendly auntie, and had some chitchat with her. The auntie told us to take a visit to the conventional railway. 

Apparently, guantou and lianhan just reached the hotel from airport. And they were too lazy to come join us. And so me Danielle Laogu and Adele walked our way up to go visit the conventional railroad of 乌来。

 

A little background about the city of 乌来.  Years ago, back then, the heart of the economy of 乌来 depends on logging and tourism. There is no means of transporting these logs out. That's why these railroads were built. 

At that time, there is no chair on top of the platform. Only a simple flat piece of wood, and the logs are all put on top of it. And it's all human brute force which moves those thing. Eventually , they improved the platform from just a simple piece of wood, into a wooden chair, and then 2 chairs, and then when visitors start coming, they make it more comfortable. 

But still, in order to move that thing at tht time, people has to put in real effort to push it all the way from the base till the top of the hill of 1.6km distance. 

Of course, nowadays, everything is motorized, and you can reach the top of the hill is just mere fraction of the time of what they used to take. 

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乌来 Is a place which is the host of the oboriginal tribe of 泰雅族。How the city got its name have got to do with this. 

As 乌来 is a place with a lot of natural 温泉, the water produces a lot of steam during the winter. When the 泰雅族 came down to the river and tried to find out what's that all about, they found out that the water was actually hot!! And they said "uLah!!", which means "it's hot!!". Well, the rest is history. 

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Saw a lot of people playing beside the river banks and waterfalls. Some even take it a step further. 

Guantou and Lian Han walked down and meet us at the street, and we had our dinner in one of the shop. After that, did some walking along the same street, and then bought some tidbits back for supper for the night, before heading our way back for a 30min evening walk back to our hotel. 

As this place is famous for its 温泉, each of our room comes with our own personal private 温泉. And the rest of the night were spent in gathering in Laogu' room, playing cards, catching up, and supper and drink before we hit the sack. 

Very tiring but fulfilling day. :)

Taipei Day 2 - 10 Sep 2013 (Tues)

Journey starts at 10 am today. And since it was already a bit late, we went straight to 台北车站 and had our lunch there in the food court. 

Surprisingly, Starbucks are pretty popular in Taiwan. There is 2 even in the same single 台北车站 subway alone! 

We ordered a veggie sushi box, a charamel macchiato, and I tried the Tao hu faa of Taiwan. It's a bit different from ours. Theirs is not using the thick type of black/white sugar. It's diluted sugar water. But the Tao hu faa is really soft. 

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Went to 国父纪念馆 after brunch. 

It was hot today!! 

We walked around, but found nothing really interesting or special. 

Coincidently there was a 圆明园 展览 there. We decided to pay for it. T$250 per head. 

No photos from here because its prohibited from taking any photographs. All is say is, if u are a person who is interested in the history of Qing dinasty (清朝）, this is a place u definitely should not miss. Plenty of genuine artifacts and photos to be seen here. 

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Rushed to 故宫博物院 at 2pm.

http://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%8B%E7%AB%8B%E6%95%85%E5%AE%AE%E5%8D%9A%E7%89%A9%E9%99%A2

This is a 100% must visit place if you are a fan of china history. 

This was taken out side of the building. 

Entrance towards the building. 

Again. It's a place where photography is prohibited inside the building. 

The building is full of historical artifacts, which has the collection all the from 3000+ years ago. 

The building is segregated into sections of prehistoric artifacts, which includes religious, culture, art, calligraphic, sculpture, weaponry, pottery, etc.....

And most of them are the originated from the original author/creator. 

The place closed at 6pm. With a full 3 hour to spend there, we could hardly even finish touring the entire building.  You could imagine how rich the content of what the place is offering. With only NT$200 per person, it's definitely offering a lot of what you paid for. No doubt about it. A definitely must visit place if u are a Chinese history freak like me. 

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Meeting Laogu and Adele at 士林夜市 for dinner. As the usual thing. Ate a lot. Walked a lot. Shopped a lot. And saw a lot of interesting gambling games. :D

All in all, it's a travel back to china day for us. Tiring, yet rewarding :)

Taipei Day 1 - 9 Sep 2013 (Mon)

Reached 桃园 airport at around 3:15pm. 

The weather was clear and bright. Nice :)

We took a bus (国光) and headed towards the central bus station. It was T$120 per head. And then from that station we took another bus to 西门町. This was free. 

Our hotel is 立夏商旅. It's located at the central city. Very convenient. 

Something very special about it is that, the hotel is somewhat located in a SINGLE floor of a multi stories building. Yes. Only a single floor. Pretty unique from the perspective of a Malaysian. 

Ok. It was a bit pricy. T$2500+ per night.  But given the strategic location, and nice room, I'd say its reasonable. U could save quite some money on transportation as well as time, and that kind of makes up for the gap, I'd say. 

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Straight down from the hotel, right next to it is a very busy night street full of activities and hawkers. 

We headed straight to try out the very famous 阿宗面线 at 峨眉街. 

Honestly speaking , it was not bad. But really, not that really good. It's nothing quite near to Penangs Kampung Malabar's pork broth. At T$4.50 for a small bowl the size of an ais kacang, not really worth it. But if u are here, it's still worth a try la. 

Now this is something really interesting. It's call 花生卷冰淇淋. 

It's made up of a layer of pohpiah skin, wrapped around grinded peanut sugar, with 2 scoops of ice cream of your choice. The peanut sugar that I saw them grinding was of the size of at least a square cube of 30cmx30cmx30cm. It was HUGE. Wonder where they get that :p

As we moved on. Danielle spotted something that she have dreamt of trying badly. 大肠包小肠. 

We were already bloated at that time, and so we carry it along in our backpack. But the smell of it is enough to make anyone salivate. 

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Off we go to Taipei 101 building, the tallest landmark in Taiwan. It's some distance away from our current location. We need to take mrt(the blue color rail) about 7 stations, and some distance if evening walk to reach there. 

Along the way, we came across this building which is a famous book store. 诚品书店。its a chain book store, just like Popular or MPH in Malaysia. Just that, there is one of it that lays in somewhere of this city, which opens for 24 hours!

Anyway, we didn't enter that building as we were short of time. 

We reached Taipei 101 around 9pm, and its closing in 10pm, so we gotta hurry. 

Still the queue is long. 

We bought our tickets, and of we go. 

The lift that took us up to the 89th floor of this building is claimed to be the fastest lift in te world. From level 5 to 89, it took us less than 15 seconds. 

Honestly, with the price that we paid (T$500 per head), there was nothing really special about it. If you are for the introduction of Taipei city, I'd suggest that u go during day time. And apart from that, there is really nothing else that you can expect for. It does allow you to go to level 91, which is open air to enjoy the breeze though. 

Well. That concludes our first day in Taipei. 

Taiwan Here We Come

Coffee at airport. Waiting patiently for the flight ......

Autumn Leaves

Have been in love with this Jazz song for quite some time, but haven't really got the time to get around it.

Came across this today. Well, lets see how far i can get to this this time around :)

http://jazzguitarlegend.com/jazz-standard-lesson-6-autumn-leaves/

http://jazzguitarlegend.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/JGL_Autumn_Leaves_Melody_Chords.pdf

Working With Perforce -G (Python Marshalled Object) Option

Most common pitfall is to directly get the output pirnted in stdout and marshal it:-

#!/usr/bin/env python
cmd = 'p4 -G changelists -m 3'
mo = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
result = marshal.loads(mo)
pprint(result)

Nope. This won't work correctly.
You will only get the last data in the list of 3 items.

This is the correct way to do it:-

#!/usr/bin/env python
cmd = 'p4 -G changelists -m 3'
mo = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

result = []
try:
   while 1:
      output = marshal.load(mo.stdout)
      result.append(output)
except EOFError:
   pass
finally:
   mo.stdout.close()

pprint(result)