Aiee! A mountain is following me!
Originally uploaded by beuk

Baby G went to Daddys office today. A bike ride, an elevator ride, in
the 101 and a look from on high at Toys R Us and all the fountains at
the same time. What fun!

It is raining again in Taiwan.

So? Its an island. It rains all the time, but today this means G comes home with wet hair. I don’t care, I love it when she runs down the hall and gives me a big wet hug. While we were discussing the days events (baking bread, singing songs, brushing teeth…) the Nanny practically ripped her out of my arms to dry her hair. “She will get sick!*” No, I said you do not get sick from wet hair. (You have no idea I am tired of hearing this theory!) The Nanny persisted and I help onto G more now to spite the Nanny than anything. Then when “I” was ready, I let G go to get her hair dried. The war began!

I proceeded to SPAM the mess out of the Nanny (as she does to me) with links stating over and over how wet hair has no correlation with getting sick! I even asked her, “What happens when you jump in the pool?” No? That is different?… Oh… I (sic) see. (rolling of eyes)

Her email back to me (you knew she would email me back, right?) was the following:

“If there is a chance,after swimming or wet by the rain,try to make the ginger boiled by water and add some brown sugar(powder, not crystal-will show you another day),will keep you out of the cold,keep healthy-some disease won’t show up untill you’re weak-never judge a book by it’s appearence.”

What? RULE #387 for Crazy Nannies – DO NOT feed my child any of your voodoo syrup drinks without my explicit permission and supervision! I understand that Asians think ginger is the cure for everything, but please be reasonable. Everyone liked Mary Ann better anyway.

Next she sent me a link to Gary Wu’s Blog.
That was a mistake.

The referenced article states:

“When a person wakes up in the morning, he is feeling refreshed and full of energy. As the day progresses, the person loses the energy, or chi, and he becomes tired as the day approaches night time.”

Uhmm, I don’t. I am quite tired in the morning. This is why God invented “Sunrise Breakfast” and Starbucks. This is also why it is important to eat as it gets your metabolism moving. Ask the U.S. if I am full of energy on 5am conference calls. The point is we are humans, we have to sleep. If you sleep you feel better, but don’t give me this “feel refreshed routine.”

Next Gary hits another sore spot I have:

“The more Xie that the body has, the more capacity that the body has to carry Chi.”

Ok, if you say so…but one minor point: this is obviously a Taiwan author as the Chinese word for blood is Xue not Xie as in:
血 xuè – blood
吸血鬼 xī xuè guǐ – vampire; bloodsucker
Taiwanese change the word (as they do with a lot of Chinese words) to be Xie3, but it is the same character.

“Human body generates Xie through quality sleeping.”

What? I generate blood through sleeping? So, explain why I did not die from lack of blood on my trip to Italy when I did not sleep? I also guess the first hit on Google for “Where does blood come from” is wrong. See ya liver…All I need is sleep! Why yes, I would like another drink, It is not like that liver of mine is going to help me generate blood. Just a quick cat nap here on my desk will do me just fine! Bone marrow transplant? Why sure I can! This is ridiculous to suggest that blood comes back from sleeping. I know he is trying to dumb it down for the masses and sleep probably allows the liver to generate plasma, but come on. We don’t have to operate at the lowest common denominator all the time. It is called the LOWEST common denominator for a reason.

The sidebar states:

“Many people achieved a healthier lifestyle through following the methods described in the book and the book gained fast popularity through recommendations amongst readers.”

Really? With advice like “sleep when you are tired” how could he go wrong?
My comment to Gary:

“You know I tried following the advice of sleep when I was tired. Then the bills did not get paid, my boss got angry and I lost my job for sleeping at work. Now I am homeless and you know what “I get to sleep when I am tired!” Thank you for helping me have a healthier lifestyle. Where would I be without you?”

(sigh) So, I went on a lil rant here. It drives me crazy to be surrounded by all these crackpots with their crackpot theories and their crackpot protagonists. We certainly have heard some doozies:

• “Don’t feed the dog ice cream, he will howl from the cold.”
• “Carrots must remain in their own dirt IN THE REFRIGERATOR to stay fresher longer.”
• “If the panties are wet, put a diaper over them.”

My biggest complaint about this email that the Nanny sent is…

WHAT THE HECK DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH OUR WET HAIR ARGUMENT??

* – We have also heard another story about how if you go to sleep with wet hair you will get sick. Not right away, maybe like 20-30 years later!!! That flu you are having now? Blame Mom for putting you to bed with wet hair.

The news this week reports that Taiwan

“has stalled a proposal that would see cyclists in Taipei City fined for carrying passengers or riding at speeds greater than 15kph”

NOTE This is for CYCLISTS. NOT the scooter seen here. Some of the offenses include:

• NT$180 (~$6USD) for failing to install brakes, lights and bells.
• NT$300-$600 (~$18USD) for those who carry another person, fail to ride in bike lanes, break traffic regulations or park their bikes illegally.

By my account I am guilty of all of these except fail to install brakes, lights, and bells (How far do you get if you fail to install brakes?). The “other person” is Gioia who I often carry to and from school on the bike. I am not sure the government has their priorities straight here. I know they “stalled” it and that is good, but why is it even being considered in the first place?

We haven’t owned a car in 3.5 years and are darn proud of it (sorry GM)! This means, no fuel, no insurance, no car taxes, no repair costs, and most importantly no pollution. Taiwan is super easy to get around on bike, foot, and taxi and it just makes no sense. When we need to we rent a car and go a lil farther out of town.

Now Taiwan would also have you only ride on approved (cough, cough) bike paths.
The problem is unless I want to go to a river, a river, or a river, there are just not too many “approved” bike paths. Fortunately Ren-Ai Road (where we live) IS an approved stretch so we don’t run into too many problems, but come on. Share the Road!

I guess it makes sense that they “Stall” this week, especially since they just started the U-bike system where you can rent a bike and ride it around town. Only problem is you need to be rich and own a credit card. (Dear Taiwan, here’s a tip: The rich aren’t riding their bikes!)
Taiwan is also currently holding Taipei Cycle 2009 this week. Guess it would have looked bad to fine everyone you were trying to get excited about riding bikes.

So, in short:
Bikes with babies and no pollution = BAD
Families of four on scooters = GOOD
…and we will “un-stall” later and fine bikers. Great.

In the mean time, don’t get your testicles in a bunch ;)

Street Model
Originally uploaded by beuk

Somebody was a pill today even though we went to a park, played on the
slide, ate noodles, rode bikes, and saw fish. At least she looked cute!

Yes, I broke down and bought the iPhone. “Broke down” is not quite the right phrase. In truth all other phones were merely a string of waiting rooms until the iPhone arrived. Let me back up a few months. I used to be a die hard Sony Ericsson fan. Buying the latest and greatest camera phone each time. In truth the K750i was the last great phone from Sony, but I upgraded anyway. They were all nice phones, but the they were just that and some took nice pictures too. I ~wanted~ to get the Sony X1. This phone looked like the sleekest most powerful business phone on the planet. The problem is I wanted it in Jan, 2008. Come November? Still not available. My next decision was one of my worst.

I purchased the Nokia N96. It is loaded and does everything, or so Nokia had me believe. That purchase has now made #3 in my list of life’s regrets. The phone chose what time it would take a call. People (namely B) would call and the phone would decide “not today, I’m tired.” No problem, I thought, why does a phone need to be a good…phone? I does other things, right? Well it played games. Brothers in Arms was actually pretty cool in NGage. Large game, install on large memory card right? Wrong. You must install it on the phone memory thereby decreasing valuable space AND (get this) turn the sound off to get it to play smoothly. Lame. even worse, why are there three memories? It is just a phone. Worst was the wifi/3g access. I had to answer a SAT practice test each time I wanted to connect to anything. Couldn’t the phone… er… device simply just serve up my data?

Enter the iPhone (to choruses of angels)*. When comparing phones EVERY site out there seems very focused on specs. Is this camera better? How does this game play? What is call quality like? Battery life? I say phooey on all of this and call for a a total rethink in how we measure devices. None of these “tech” sites seem to have a valid measure on usability.

The only problem I had with the iPhone 3G is that it was SIM locked. This meant IF you managed to buy it, it would be locked to a contract and a provider in a certain country. When I was in Australia I looked into it and they wanted: driver’s license, 2 bills, proof of address, copy of passport, work visa, first born, the usual. Even then I would have had to setup a contract, cancel it the next day, and pay an additional fee to unlock the phone. Waaaayy too difficult and costly. Other options like grey markets in Taiwan just scared me. Who knows what they pre-installed. Finally, it hit me. Hong Kong. Hong Kong and Italy are the only two countries that sell unlocked iPhones. I ordered 3 to my office there (for others, and no not your Christmas present) and 1.5 days later they arrived. Once you tell the phone where your iTunes is (a requirement) the phone is just… AWESOME. The simplicity is amazing.

The touch screen works flawlessly and is crazy fun to drag, slide, squeeze and even dial a combination lock. Each app runs as the focus for the user. You never have to worry about other apps running in the background. They seem to go into some sort of stasis and await the next time you need them. This helps me tons. I often have Chinese characters in email that are addresses, names, book titles, etc… Queue them up in email and lock the phone. W you need it, it is one button slide away from showing a person. The wifi is as simple as it can be. Your options are on/off (take that Nokia) and it simply connects, no asking “Do you really want to?” The simplicity and responsiveness is beyond anything I have seen in a phone. It also happens to be a full ipod, but that is the least of what it does. A search for “free” apps in the App Store and you are a kid in a candy shop. I now have 5 pages of apps. Rather than run down my list of favorites, let me share some of the ways my life has been changed in the past week:

• Tweets are more consistent than they ever have been.
• Exchange integration is flawless. I have returned my BlackBerry.
• Cooked two meals for B based on recipes that can sync online and I can read/store on the phone.
• Reading the Bible daily
• All passwords sync wirelessly with computer password app.
• Longer walks and bike rides just so I can track my progress in iMapMyRide
• Increased treadmill time from 20 to 40 minutes watching TV shows
• No more dropped calls
• Looking up Chinese words on the fly and…
• Beat TapDefense

In short, my life is considerably better and to say, “I love the iPhone” is an understatement. I know Matthew 6 says, “Lay not upon yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt” ’cause the iPhone told me so, but I’ve got to believe Apple is working on the rust bit.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I am not an Apple fan boy and do not normally gush about technology, but this warranted it.

Rebecca took off to the US today for 8 whole days! G and I are both very sad. G walked around asking for “mama” all morning. Funny thing was, I was asking for the same thing. So, to bring us out of our slump I got the bike out and we went riding. We paid bills, rode around, walked through the park, and had lunch. There were surprisingly few people around. Maybe because it was noon and it was hot. We had a blast. As usual the park had all kinds of silly games and random stuff for sale. We had a blast playing the little games and Gioia won all kinds of prizes. I scoffed at the silly arcade games when I saw them a few days earlier. Now I realize they were not made for me :)

We miss you already mommy!