Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Dec 22 2003

‘Twas a weekend of Christmas parties. Saturday nig…

‘Twas a weekend of Christmas parties. Saturday night I met Harry and James at Kunyang Station to go to Brett and Alan’s party out in Xizhi. We do this every year, but this time four of the guests got together to sing acapella for us in Mandarin, Taiwanese and English. It was astounding how beautifully they sounded. The food was excellent, too, including Virginia ham, a pot o’ yam stuff and cheesecake. I ate too much, of course. I’ve been getting quite a few comments about how much more ‘bearish’ I look these days (translation: I’m getting fat again). Well, that’s what New Year’s resolutions are for, right? I’ll start right after I eat everything in my refrigerator.

On Sunday Harry, Mark and I went tremple-touring again, this time to the Taiping Temple across the river near the Sandcastle. The Taiping Temple is huge, with several floors and courtyards. It’s only 30 years old, but seems much older from the amount of incense-related grime on the walls and ceilings. I took some video and pictures of it that may turn out quite nicely. Hopefully I’ll be able to gain ftp access to my new webspace (I got poagao.com, btw) soon so I can start putting up my little videos.

That night I took the train a few stops up to Jingmei for a tree-decorating get-together at Darrell’s and Judy’s place. They got one of those plastic trees that remind of the plastic tree I grew up with (my parents are still using it, I believe). It ended up looking quite nice, even if we weren’t able to string popcorn due to the presence of the dogs. We did learn how to get dogs to floss, however, and that’s always good to know. Later we watched a Very Special Muppet Christmas Darrell downloaded. Maybe on Christmas we can watch the Star Wars Christmas special. Talk about vintage holiday programming.

I’m working full time again this week, taking over for a friend at my old company. When I got there this morning I was surprised to see a line of people spilling out the doors of Warner Village, even though they weren’t due to open until much later. On a Monday, no less. I suppose they’re waiting to buy tickets to the Return of the King. I would love to see it right now, but I dislike frenzied crowds, so I’ll wait a while before I see it. Part of me doesn’t even want to see the non-extended version, but it’s a small part and easily outvoted.

Speaking of votes, I got an email, obviously part of a mass email campaign, last night from Corbett Wall of 3q2u.com. He is urging everyone to vote for his blog in the Taiwan category of the Asia Weblogs Awards:

Dear Friends,

Sorry for this awful email intrusion. The reason I am writing you this blatant SPAM is to ask you for a big favor.

There is this silly internet contest going on called “Asia Weblog Awards.” I think the winner gets the choice of some free bandwidth, a beer, or a night with Uma Thurman. Something like that.

Anyway, I would really like to blow away the loosers who are competing for the distinction of being Taiwan’s best Weblog, and I am asking all of you to vote for me. VOTE FOR ME!!!

If I win this contest, I’ll throw a party and invite all of you!All you have to do is go vote for 3q2u!! (The contest ends on December 28th.). If you are curious about what you are voting on, you can go to

www.3q2u.com and see! “3q2u” is my personal web log, and means “thank you to you” in Chinese*.

Thanks a million in advance, and 3q3q3q2u!

Corbett sure has a shipload of friends, because he shot up to the number 1 spot almost immediately. This doesn’t surprise me at all, as it was destined to be all about who has the most friends, and not about an objective judgement of the quality of any one website. That’s just the way things work, especially on the Internet. In any case, it’s not worth losing any sleep over. I thought it was funny he would email me about it, though.

The weather today has been brilliant, in sharp contrast to the gloomy, shivering cold of the last week. Judy was nice enough to make some curtains for my bedroom, and it really makes quite a lot of difference. Namely, it’s harder to get up in the mornings as there’s much less light spilling in, but they look really spiffy.

See, isn’t this general list of mundane matters much better than me ranting about politics and giving you all upset stomachs? I figure there’s not much point in political discussion on this journal, as most of the people who read it have a hard time digesting my point of view; I’ll probably just try to keep that stuff more in the Chinese-language blog. It’s just going to get worse as we approach the elections in any case.

*’3q2u’, if the ‘3’ is read as the Chinese ‘san’ comes out sounding like “Thank you to you”. I’m not sure if this constitutes being “‘thank you to you’ in Chinese”, though.

posted by Poagao at 8:49 am  

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