Obviously they haven’t seen my photography skills!
Category: General
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Fortune Cookies
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How Many Ways Can You Spell “Eugene”?
Once upon a time I was thinking of making a web page listing every ridiculous misspelling of my name I encounter at fast food restaurants.
By far the worst offender has always been Fuddrucker’s. It seems they hire people who are both illiterate and deaf. I’ve had variations from “Ugee”, “Ujeen”, “U Jean”, “Yougin”, “Uji”, “Ujin” to my favorite “KC”.
I never got around to the page and then the miracle occured: For the first time ever, they spelled it right!
I had to at least commemorate that!
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La Vecchia Pizza
La Vecchia Pizza
4432 N 19th Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85015
(602) 241-0527 -
Ducks In A Row
Irene and James got their US passports back from the Taiwanese embassy and we are now a fully documented and approved traveling family.
With only 10 days to go till our flight, Michelle is rapidly coming down with a cold. Unfortunately, this evening, I’m beginning to feel the tell-tale onset of an earache that usually precedes a cold. I can only hope we pass through it before the flight, and especially hope James doesn’t catch it.
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What’s a Rusk?
Irene brought home some more poorly-named baby crackers today. “Baby Mum-Mum” – gotta love it!
Hot-Kid®
Baby
Mum-Mum
Original
100%
Selected Superior
Rice RusksWith marketing like that you know it has to be made in China – from the ever-popular Want Want Foods Ltd.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering:
Rusk, n. a light, dry biscuit or pieve of rebaked bread, esp. one prepared for use as baby food.
Bet they had to dig their dictionaries out to find that one!
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Chinese New Year Video
In 2003, Irene and I took Michelle back to Taiwan for her first trip. Now, we’re preparing for James’ first trip to Taiwan.
As part of my preparation, I’m reviewing the video footage from the last trip to see if anything will be useful for this trip. I’m posting this video of the fireworks firefight that was held in Taipei near my in-laws’ home. (You can see the 7-11 I always go to in the background.)
Two groups of people line up on either side of the street at midnight with cases of fireworks and the mayhem begins.
(This video is about 6 minutes long and used H.264, so you’ll need Quicktime 7 or VLC to watch it. On this upcoming trip, I’ll also be posting videos of my travels in this same fashion. This file has been attached as a “podcast” for people using an RRS reader or iTunes and also as a direct link if you’re not.)
Video ==> Chinese New Year Video 2003 – Taipei
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Things I See On My Way To Work
This morning, I pulled into the Quiktrip (my favorite convenience store) and as I park, I see the manger come out the front door with a slack-jawed gaping look on his face, staring across the parking lot.
Curious fool that I am, I follow his gaze until I spy a 50-60 year old woman walking across the lot, away from the store.
She was wearing what I can only describe as a Shirley Temple dress – sort of a frilly child’s dress with puffly sleeves and rows of overlapping cloth forming the skirt portion. The first problem with this picture was that the dress was too short, and only reached to just slightly below her waistline.
It was so short that her underwear would have been completely uncovered – had she been wearing any!
Instead, she was wearing a diaper – not a modern diaper, either. This was an old-style cloth diaperwrapped around and pinned up.
It was not the best sight I could have started my morning with.
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Themed-Restaurant Dinner
As can happen this time of year, tonight we had a terrific downpour in the evening.
We went out to run an errand and have dinner. After running the errand, it was apparent that the freeway underpasses were flooded, so we changed our dinner plans and went to Mimi’s instead.
I suppose it was somehow appropriate that it was flooding outside and we were in a New Orleans’ themed restaurant. I think our waitress’ name was Katrina, too.
Anyway, their French Onion Soup was really good.
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Going to Taiwan
In about a month, we’re going to take James to Taiwan to meet the rest of the family.
As I’ve done in the past, I plan to post a regular journal of what happens on the way. In a way, it’s quite funny, I was doing the complicated, pain-in-the-rear daily post thing before they came up with the whole blogging software thing. I can’t say it has done great things for the authoritative content on the net, but it sure makes writing up a travelogue easier.
This time I’m going for the whole multimedia thing. I’ll be posting videos, stories, pictures and even producing a couple episodes of Ninja Team Video Project while I’m there. All because I bought this new iBook for the trip. I’ll post more details as the trip begins and progresses.
In the meantime, Irene has been planning our exciting sightseeing excursions. So far, in addition to a return trip to Alishan (my insistence) we’ll also be going to see a sheep farm and a cow farm – apparently major tourist attractions in the land of Taiwan. At least the sheep farm is 10 minutes walking distance from a 7-11.
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iBook
Got my new iBook yesterday! Yippee.
OK, I didn’t have anything to say about it, I just felt the occasion shouldn’t go unmentioned.
