different country, same me

(i’m back-dating this entry to help keep the daily order going.)
i drank the juice milk. it was pretty good. it had a picture of milk with all kinds of fruit (orange, banana, apple, kiwi, grapes, peach, strawberry, etc.) but it mostly tasted like milk and orange juice. i also tried the formosa chang plum drink. ick. it tasted like prune juice mixed with sugar and salt.
since we are 14 hours off from houston, while ash was at work in the morning i got on irc during the radio show and had groove call me on skype and put me on the air. that was kind of cool.
for some reason, the second pair of jeans i brought smelled dirty when i got them out yesterday morning. and the ones i had been wearing smelled some as well. so i had to do laundry earlier than originally planned. when ash got back from work he helped me use the machine. you see, the washing machine is a hitachi and the menu is in japanese. i played with all the buttons but i couldn’t really tell what most of them might indicate.
once the clothes were in the dryer, we went to get some lunch. we picked up some hong-kong style food (i got some sausage and i think pork, rice, tofu, and cooked vegetables) to bring back to ash’s place, and i also stopped at a bubble/pearl tea place and picked up an iced milk tea with tapioca.
after we ate, we walked down to the school ash goes to. we sat outside in an outdoor park/rest area on campus and talked and read. i got kind of depressed about the future, because that’s what i do, and i’m in a completely different culture which gives me the opportunity to feel more isolated. (i’m sure it would be insanely worse if i wasn’t with ash. i’d have a hard time finding anyone to talk to probably.) i know i’ve written on here how i feel overwhelmed by going to a mall or places where there are a lot of people, how i sort of feel like i’m getting sensory overload. well, this is like that but insanely multiplied. although things are the same, so much is different, and almost all of the speaking/writing is so completely foreign to me (literally), it’s really hard to let it keep sliding off. i’m generally a mellow person, i tend to be willing to go with things and take it in stride, but being overwhelmed with sensory data is an area i don’t handle well. and this can be that in spades.
we sat there until it got dark, then we went up to the place where ash’s department is. he/we talked to a few people there. we talked to an asian girl who thought her english was bad, which was funny because her english was great. she spoke it better and with less of an accent than many of the foreign people i’ve worked with in the u.s. at my jobs. we then went outside to meet a dutch guy ash knows (i’d spell his name, but i probably can’t even say it right much less spell it). we walked through a busy market/shop area to go eat. ash knew of a macau (sp?) place, but it was already closed for the chinese new year. so we went to a thai place.
from the thai place we went to a bar called 45. it’s actually a lot like an american bar inside, as far as dark lighting, stuff on the walls, etc. the menu had a lot of similarities too as far as drinks and bar food, although they also definitely had some items you would not see in the states. i had a mojito. candy (the girl who cooked the food yesterday) showed up later, then one of the guys we talked to at ash’s school (a korean guy, who ash is good friends with) showed up. he brought some fried tofu and…chicken feet, cooked in soy sauce or something. i think on some level it was to be funny with me, but they also like them. i couldn’t bring myself to eat one. i did have a piece of the fried tofu though. and candy bought me a whiskey on the rocks.
when we left, the temperature had dropped a fair bit, so ash, candy, and i took a cab. i guess it’s pretty common to take cabs here for short distances if you need to get somewhere faster than walking. the price is pretty cheap compared to cabs in the u.s., i think. i’ve never taken a cab in the u.s. though, because they always sound expensive to me when i hear prices other people have paid. and over here i don’t always do the conversion to u.s. dollars in my head.
speaking of the temperature…the first couple of days i was here it was in probably the 70’s during the day and the 60’s during the night. but last night the wind started blowing and the temperature dropped and now it’s in the 50’s. just looked at the forecast and it looks like 50’s and 60’s and rain for the next few days.
and completely off the subject of my trip, evidently the person who owned leifeste.org put it up for auction a few weeks ago. i just happened to have it listed at godaddy as a site i was watching, so their system auto-bid on it, and i got it. so i now own that domain as well.