Oh, Taipei.

Yesterday was the last day of the winter quarter. We finished up class by watching a movie, The Postmodern Life of my Aunt. It was funny at the beginning and got really depressing towards the end. Chow Yun-Fat was in it, really stole the show, and had an admirable mustache. This coming semester I won't have class with any of my current classmates, so that will be a little different. I'll miss them, but I didn't really hang out with them much at all outside of class so I might have a chance to meet some new people.

Yesterday evening I went out to eat at a Japanese restaurant with my friends Kyle and Albert. I had eel and squid, both of which were very good. While we were eating, Kyle gets a phone call from a guy he had met on the bus. Kyle was supposed to meet him for a "cooking class" that night, but forgot about it. As fate would have it, we were about a 10 minute walk away from where the cooking class was. So, after dinner, us three went to check it out.

We go into a small room and take a seat. The guy in front is speaking Chinese pretty quickly and I can pick up quite a bit of it. Every once in a while the audience all says, "you" (yeah) or "dui" (right) at the same time. I'm asked to come up to the front of the class. They have me say a few things (I get a lot of "wow, your Chinese is very good!"s) They have a series of pots on the table and they take one of them and put it on the ground vertically. Then they ask me to stand on it.

I think after I get done standing on it, I realize: They're trying to sell us this cookware set.

They cook all the food while going through a chart of how all other materials are inferior to their pot. We eat the food and then get assaulted with a barrage of business cards and requests for my MSN name so they can chat. They also invited me to karaoke on Sunday but I don't think I'll go out of fear they'll try to sell me something again.



The clams were really good.



Kyle is on the left, and the guy who invited Kyle (I think his English name is Greg?) on the right.

Afterwards we went to 45, a bar near my school. Kyle went home first (he lives nearby) and when he came he said that one of our kickboxing friends, Michael Toy, was coming later. Toy got attacked by a machete-wielding man in November (story here) and took the last semester off to go back to the US and recuperate. Despite getting three of his muscles damaged he should be back in prime shape in no time (which in this case is prime, the kid's a beast in the weightroom). It was really good seeing him.

I was planning on a quiet evening of cleaning, but I got invited to dinner in the fancy area of Taipei tonight, so I'm heading over to do that. Later!