today was pretty mellow. ash and i got up and talked for quite awhile about all sorts of things. eventually we walked over to the big park we had walked by with the german guy chris. it’s called da-an park. it’s a pretty nice park. we walked around in there for probably at least an hour or two. from there we walked over to a starbucks (a different one than we’ve gone to in the past…they’re all over the place here too). we sat there for an hour or two, then we went to the night market area near ash’s school (ntnu) to find something to eat. the first time i went there it was packed and really busy, but since chinese new year started it’s been almost completely dead and almost all the places are closed. we ended up finding an indian food place that was open. man, it was good. we had some naan and i had a mango juice and chicken coconut curry. on the way back to ash’s place we stopped by an electronics store and i helped him get a router/switch with built-in nat. i helped him set it up so he could have a local network for all of his systems, as well share his internet connection. as an added bonus, i can now get online without having to disconnect his ethernet cable from his desktop. i also configured my macbook air to serve up an ad-hoc wireless network and share its internet connection. that way i can use it to get my iphone online (and thus download mail, use the apps, etc.). it’s chinese new year, so pretty much everyone has left the city. the traffic is way less than the last days i’ve been here, and almost everything is closed. i’m not sure how much of this is normal for a weekend, and how much of it is specifically due to the new year holiday. oh yeah, and the holiday actually lasts for a week. due to lack of choices for this reason, we ended up eating at a familymart. which is a chain of convenience stores, evidently all over the place in asia from what i hear. i had some pork dumplings and some rice vermicelli with vegetables and small bits of meat. there were a lot of fireworks going off as it got later, but i didn’t stay up too late (for me).