Missing You

今天听到电台播了"Missing You" 这首巫啓贤N年前的歌，回忆马上一一湧现。

这是我大学时期很喜欢的曲目之一。没有复杂的歌词,只有贴近人心的情感，这就是这首歌特别之处。

人何尝没有思念?哪怕是那么一刹那，某人某景或会不自觉窜进思绪里。

思念真也不必说出口，或许摆在心里也未尝不是件好事。有好多好多的人、事、物，不是因为没有提起便表示是忘了。我想时间是会淡化一些不那么美好的记忆，但所有在生命中遇到的真、善、美，又岂会轻易从思念中抺去呢?

Take a stroll down memory lane - 1st Computer experience

 The passing of Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs has triggered me to dig into the history of Apple and its first computer dated back in 1970s.
It is incredibly impressive to see how computer has evolved over time and how the world has become hooked into the technology so seamlessly.
Today, computer is no longer a computer. With the advancement in technology, it is indeed "devices" that we are talking about. Devices that are no longer confined to a box with CPU, a monitor screen, and a keyboard for input.
My first experience with computer was back in late 80s when I was in secondary school. Back then, computer was synonym to luxury item with not many people could afford, so do I. As an initiative to foster computer literacy among students, my school back then had organized "Kelab Komputer" which students could enjoy usage of computer and some instructor led classes with a nominal fees of RM5 a month. I was fortunate to be able to participate in the club and have had my first ever experience with a computer.
At that time, the lab was equipped with the Commodore 128  - a computer with white color body, a type writer like keyboard, and a mouse.  Obviously the Commodore is no longer in operation now (company went bankrupt in early 2000), but the design and UI of the computer was as good as Apple's Macintosh at that time. Guess what, the computer did not have MS-DOS and as far as I can recall, I have to type in the instruction is BASIC to get the computer to work! Yes, I wrote a couple of programs in BASIC (ranging from hello world to some graphical patterns looping).
I still remember the name of my teacher, Mr Lee Foo San. He was a very knowledgeable person in computer and I considered that to be scarce at that time as many did not know what computer was let alone using it.
Quite an interesting memory to me comes to think about it.

Artistic Works

Wen Jia has developed her art skills substantially over the last few weeks.
She used to have the fear of picking up a pencil and start drawing something, most probably due to lack of the concept of shapes and dimensions. But who cares? We didn't even bother to send her for a "training" just for that. No, I don't think she need that. And i know what she needs. She just need more time from both her parents to encourage and nurture her as she gets along.
We observed and noticed that she felt excited when seeing her cousins did painting work with water color. There she goes, we bought a box of Buncho water color for her and did her first ever drawing and painting with her. I was proud to see her producing her first painting with very minimum help from us.

Besides, her coloring skill has improved so much and she has indeed exhibited a fair bit of creativity when comes to choosing her own color. Below coloring work with color pencils has seen her using colors of her choice without even following the pictures on the upper side which are pre-printed as a guide.

She has also started some paper art as part of her class work in Purity Learning session that she joins twice monthly.
This one is a paper art of a dinosaur that was created in recent class.

Overall, art works train her patience and concentration which is the key to learning.

天天好天

上星期日和妻小去看了“天天好天”。对的，又是一部本地制作贺岁片。这部电影的宣传可说是排山倒海的。自己也是因my fm 的广告之故而去捧场的。宣传归宣传，但自己观看后还算觉得还蛮不错的。 
论题材，它不算是传统贺岁片，反倒是环境写实片多一点。重点是，故事平实不取巧; 煽情得来又不娇情。
故事中的人物，分分钟会有一两个能让我们及身边的人对号入座。
像林风娇这个人物，是典型城市职业女性的写照。每天为生活而忙，抽时间给孩子变成一件奢侈的事。女儿连写对联都得kakak 教。是不是讽刺中又似乎极贴切?
老人家对孙女的隔代情，似乎是对于自己女儿父女情的一种折射。
还有那最引人深思的"一年见父母一次＂的现代都市人生活惯例，几乎是贴切中带有点讽刺。
我们是不是也该反思，电影中的一些情节是不是特别触动自己心灵某一部位?

A fruitful year for Wen Jia

This year marks the 3rd year since Wen Jia was born. She has been doing wonderfully in terms of physical and intelligence growth.
Physically she is a healthy, tall girl with improved physical strength - a natural process of growth.  Like most of the grown up kids, she doesn't like to eat vege.  We often mixed meat or fish with finely cut vege so that she could  get a better combination of nutrients as much as possible.
She likes most types of food especially oranges, and grapes.  Her taste on fruits has changed a lot. Her old time favourites such as banana, papaya, and apple have now become part of the list of food that she will avoid.  Well, I forgot to mention that she likes pineapple - the one cooked together with pork rib, or even in pineapple fried rice. 
In terms of learning and games, she has started to pick up interest in puzzle. We started with some simple puzzles (the 12 pieces one) and slowly moved to 18 pieces and 24 pieces.  She still need some guidance when come to the more complex one but overall it was a good start.  My friend in Singapore was right, always start with some character that she likes the most and she will slowly build interest in whichever games associate to those characters.  In Wen Jia's case, she likes the Mickey & Minnie, and also the Disney Princess puzzles the most.
On flash card learning, it has been reduced significantly. I have started to show more on the computer than the hand-made ones.  Also, she has started to explore more online learning such as the ones in sesame street, Nick Jr, etc.  The important part is, I selected the games for her to suit her age and development. 
She started rhythmic gymnastics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmic_gymnastics) class early this year.  Possibly due to her yong age, the results have not been significant. Anyway, as our objective wasn't for her to be a gymnast or the sort, it is fine for her to play and have fun in the class once a week. 
She joined a mandarin word card lesson under a "Teacher Yap's" program.  It has been very good that she managed to pick up 20 over charcters over a period of 1 month but she has lost interest in the class soon after her 3rd month.  Our observation (having personally sit in the centre to wait for Wen Jia to finish her class) was that the teaching quality has deteriorated so much so until her actual time spent in the lesson was merely 20 minutes out of 1.5 hours in the centre.  We stopped the lesson for a while and would decide in next year if she should continue. 
I started Hooked on Phonics program with her since early this year after been introduced to this material by a friend in Singapore.  She has just completed Pre-K Level 1.  A bit slow but I think it was partly my fault for not been able to spend more time more frequently with her on the lesson.  Overall it was a fun program to follow, and I took it as an oppotunity to foster bonding with my girl.
Wen Jia will be in Pre-Kindy when the school opens next year.  Seriously we will have to observe more on her progress and most importantly to understand more about what is going on in the kindergarten.  It is really not about how good she can cope with her homework but it is very much on how well she enjoys a new learning milestone.

台湾自游 9/15- 9/25 （后记）

这是我们此次台湾行的一点观察：
一，说台湾美食多，还蛮见仁见智的。可能是囗味方面不一样，我还是觉得美食还真不容易找的。
二，到台湾不懂华语华文真还不容易行走。其一，告示牌基本上以中文书写。其二，广大民众对英语的掌握其实非常有限。
三，台湾尤其是台北的人文素养堪称很不错。比方说，地铁及巴士人潮总会规规矩矩排队上车。像在KL般插队的现象几乎不可能在那里发生。还有，地铁里的博爱座是不会被年轻人霸占的。就算是在人多没位子坐的时候，那些博爱座绝对会是空着的。
四，夜市见不到垃圾。这是自己留意很久的事。不只是此行，在前几次因洽公而偷闲逛过夜市，情况和这一次一样。街上有好多食档供外带，奇的是街道上却是完全找不到垃圾的踪影。更怪的是，几乎所有夜市都不提供垃圾桶。垃圾到底去了哪? 我怀疑人们都不将垃圾当场丢弃，而是把它们带在身上，待回家时才丢。遇到此景，我这个游客想随处丢垃圾都深感惭愧。
五，台湾的餐馆，小吃店极不环保！到处都是用即用即弃筷子及杯子。想必是比较讲究卫生以及清洁工成本考量，现在要在台湾找一间没用即丢型餐具恐怕很难。

My Trip to Taiwan 15-25/9 2010

This is a long anticipated trip which had been planned for six month.
We booked the Eva  Air ticket in March with a pretty good price. All-in returned fare costs only RM 791 per person.

Since it is a DIY tour, we have made it a ten days trip to have more time to enjoy the places of attraction of Taiwan.
Yes, this is a family trip with Siew Wei and my princess Jia with us.
September 15 afternoon, we took the EVA Air flight to Taipei. Arrived at Taipei at around 9:30pm. Checked in into Hope Hotel. It is a fairly good hotel with proximity to the Taipei Main Station.

September 16 trip is as follows:

10:00 am - 12:00 pm National Palace Museum
12:30 pm - 4:30 pm Sing Yi Rd - Coconut Grove spa cuisine restaurant
5:00 pm - 8:00 pm Tamsui Old Street, Fisherman's Wharf.
It is worth mentioning that the Coconut Grove Japanese spa food package comes with a 45 minutes private spa, kind of a new experience for us.  It costs us TWD1980 for the entire package.
 
The hot spring water is piped into the room, with a separately run cold water from mountain spring water. It means better regulation of hot and cold water only by adjusting the water lever.

 

The night view of  the Fisherman's Wharf.

September 17's trip is as follows:
9:00 am - Check-out
9:30 am - 11:30 am Taipei 101 Mall
12:00 pm - 3:30 pm Hsimenting district
5:40 pm - 7:46 pm take train to Hualien 
8:30 pm Checkin -Qian Hao Home Stay
9:00 pm - 11:00 pm Night Market

This is the famous Ah Zhong noodle in Hsimenting . I think it tastes well, but my wife was not so impressed.

Have you seen white colour bitter gourd before? The species can be found everywhere in Taipei.

On 18 September we hired a taxi driver for the Taroko Gorge tour. Program is as follows:

Taroko arches - Visitor Center - Shakadang - Changchun Shrine - Swallow - Tunnel of Nine Turns - Mother Bridge - Yuewang Ting - green water Trail - Intertek - Liufang Bridge - Seven Star Lake -back to hotel
Taroko Gorge is a must visit for Hualian.

As our visit coincide with the Fanapi typhoon attack to Taiwan, the entrance to Liufang Bridge, and Changchun Shrine was closed.

Jia showed her smiling face! The background is Qixingtan. The name Qixingtan suggests that it is composed of seven lakes. The original Qixingtan or Seven Star Lake has been occupied by Japanese soldiers, and now the Air Force base. The place where I stand now, is a seaside near the Pacific Ocean and it is named  Qixingtan after the request by the original Qixingtan  residents
The tour guide told us the ancient story of the cross-island highway. This road was built some 50 years ago and can be considered as the first of its kind in Taiwan. The road cut across mountains, and it was a time-consuming construction which required huge man power. There were a lot of unsung heroes who sacrificed for the constuction of the road.

One of the attractions of the Eternal Spring Shrine is a place to commemorate those who were killed during the construction of the road.

The picture above shows TianXiang, is a rest stop with accommodation, service stations, and traffic check and interpretation services. We climbed up from here for the Cheung Tak Temple, of which the world's tallest golden statue of "Di Zhang" Buddha (36 feet high) is located.

Also in this photo - Xiao Gu, our taxi driver and guide for the day.

Hualien famous dishes are fried oysters, Bian Shi (dumplings), potatoes and so on.
As the Fanapi typhoon will hit Taiwan tomorrow, and Hualien is exactly the point where the typhoon landed. In order to not to get stucked Hualien for a few days, we then changed our plan and travelled back to Taipei as Taipei is believed to be of less impact compared to Hualien.

9 / 19, Typhoon day.
It was declared Public Holiday for Taipei.  Most of the shopping malls are closed for business. We went to Shilin night market at night though.

9 / 20 schedule is as follows:

11:30 - 2:30 pm Yehliu
2:30 pm - 5:00 pm Juifen town
7:00 pm - 9:30 pm Din Tai Fung and ZhongXiao FuXing.
Yehliu is a geological park in Taipei with the well-known lion head formation.

The famous lion head. Photo taken by a middle-age security guard, who volunteered to shoot for us. 

Juifen sterrt.  Used to be settlement for the gold miners during the old days.

9 / 21 schedule as follows:

8:45 am - 9:40 am Taipei to Taichung (Kuo Kuang Bus)
11:35 - 1:20 pm hired a private car to Sun Moon Lake
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Sun Moon Lake Cruises

Sun Moon Lake attractions:

Shueishe Visitor Center - Asagiri Pier - Man Mo Temple - Peacock Garden - Centre -" 達邵依"- XuanZhuang Shi- XuanGuang Shi- One Tunnel - Tou She- Water Club Pier - Water Club Dam - Water Agency Visitor Center

4:55 pm - 6:22 pm back to Taichung.
8:30 pm - 10:00 pm Feng Chia Night Market

Sun Moon Lake is Taiwan's largest alpine lake.
I personally think that this place is not that interesting.



9 / 22 and 9 / 23 two-day tour to Alishan

We joined a local tour from Jiayi to Alishan which happened to cover accomodation in Alishan with meals, entrance to the Alishan National Park, and transportation.
9 / 22 mainly travel Alishan Forest Recreation Area.
9 / 23 viewing of sunrise in the morning, and FenQiHu in the afternoon.

Shenmu railway station

It is a must do in Alishan - sunrise in the early morning. Fortunately, we managed to catch a good view of sunrise due to good weather.

Zhu Shan Railway Station. We took this train up to the mountain for sighting of sunrise.

9 / 23:

4:25 pm-6pm train from Chiayi to Tainan

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm ChiKan
8:30 pm - 9:00 pm - Garden Night Market
 
 

It is worth mentioning is that managed to enjoy the best food in Taiwan at Tainan Garden night Market. Among the food are fried oyster, hot plate noodle, bean curd, etc.



9 / 24 Heritage Tour of Tainan
10:30 am - 12:30 pm Anping Fort & De Ji tree house
4:46pm - 8:20 pm train back to Taipei

Anping Fort

Anping Fort

The Tree House

9/25 Good bye Taiwan.  Back to home sweet home.