Synergy 2010 Posts Index

(only tangentially related) On Events and Benefit Concerts

2010: Ode to Synergy

My Synergy Photograhy Odyssey

Conversations with Synergy

Synergy ‘10 Snippings

(also, Synergy 2008 stuff)

(only tangentially related) A Week in Taiwan 1: Shuangshi

A Week in Taiwan 2: Synergy

A Week in Taiwan 3: Snippings

Synergy Snippings

Yeah, doing this again just like last time.

* I’ll say it now and I’ll say it over and over again: either come back, or go to Taiwan. I’ll be the first to tag along. I hope you don’t mind.

* Friday. Slow day, yet I could hardly sleep, thoughts fraught with uncontainable anticipation for Synergy tour. As an attempt to suppress my overly excitable state, my sis and I saw the movie “Shall We Dansu?” (the Japanese one, not the remake starring Richard Gere) I liked it very much!

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My Synergy Photography Odyssey

To avoid feeling mediocre like I did the last time I traveled with Synergy, I tried to make myself useful to the group by doing two things. First, by being a useful guide. I wasn’t half bad at it. Though I do not possess the same encyclopedic knowledge as our travel agent Antonio Tan (he’s a pro in the business, after all), I’m well versed with its culture and I speak its language fluently enough to get by.

Second, I took a dSLR camera with me, effectively giving me the same duty as Dane Christensen’s back Taiwan, 2008 (he wasn’t on this trip as he’s serving in Denmark). What it boils down to is that I have to take as much photos as I can of this group. I might not have any gears – not even tripod; hey, cut me some slack, the camera is new – and I don’t have a telephoto lens, but with the camera being a Canon EOS 1000D (or Rebel XD as it’s called in the west) I thought I was well prepared.

The camera wasn’t the problem, and even if I had the gears I don’t think they’d make much of a difference. The one to blame? Me. I wasn’t even a photographer, but more of a wannabe with a dSLR. Despite lacking the experience, I volunteered to take concert pictures. Someone is overestimating his abilities!

Needless to say, it often yielded disastrous results.

(Hit the jump to see the pics)

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2010: Ode to Synergy

The worst part of writing this blog is the realization that it’s gonna take a while for this event to repeat itself.

A Voice to the World

What happened? I hinted at it in my previous post: Synergy, a performance group from Utah, came to perform in the Philippines for 10 days. They went back to Utah last Monday, leaving me feeling crushed and having yet to come to terms with returning to my daily routine. Hence, I write this post as a way to counter the stress the abrupt return to normalcy causes.

Personally, I don’t open up to people that much, and would not have been this emotionally invested with just about any tour groups. To be fair, I haven’t toured with other groups, but my sis has had with many, and she told me several times that she felt more connected to Synergy than most, a few of them having bored her. We are fond of Synergy because despite the enormous talents each member possesses, they behave like anyone you befriended in school or at other social gatherings. They don’t look at you with disdain just because they can do something you can’t. They’re down-to-earth individuals, who happen to have passion for singing and dancing, and rehearse 7 months so that they could go around the world and touch people’s lives with their songs.

Synergy’s song and dance numbers remind me of Hairspray, in that both are so happy and chipper that I can’t help but smile whenever I experience them. Synergy’s performances get me every time, with feelings of optimism inspired by the heartfelt and positive messages of love, friendship and peace. They also please the crowd with their acrobatic stunts that could land them roles in action movies. I’ve toured with them twice (the first time being 2008, which I also wrote about), and I’m still left craving for more. I will never tire of them, and I’ll watch and support them as many times as I want.

So thank you, Synergy. Though brief, our times together brought me nothing but joy.

On Events and Benefit Concerts

People led to believe that event organizing is an easy and worthless job should lose that notion, fast.

Yes, I understand why you write this profession off. You read about them in magazines and newspapers. You say, it’s for the rich and annoying. You say, you don’t need talents to arrange events, only connections. After all, compared to plowing the fields, sweating under intense heat, just how hard is it to band people together in an electronica club? You see feature articles of events with pictures of the indulgent lifestyle of the rich and fabulous, while the rest of the country get poorer. You detest people those self-proclaimed “eventologist” who made statements supporting all the partying from the elite class while calling the mindset that one should feel guilty about it passe.

My post won’t defend those eventologists, which I despise as much as I dislike watching the rich not reaching out to help the poor. On the other hand, what they do and what events they cover do not represent the whole profession. Did you know that you need event organizers for benefit concerts? How about distribution of goods from non-profit organizations? Or, just about anything where you need groups or individuals to get things done in a manner presentable to the public? While the difficulty of their job may vary, only a few would have everything on leisure pacing. Worse, they don’t always pay high.

My sister is an organizer of tour for benefit concerts, and last week I saw her at work for the second time, with the first being in Taiwan back in 2008. Those days I spent with her back then became one of the memories that I most treasure, having met some amazing people. After we parted ways, I wrote that I missed the tour group, Synergy, and wondered if they’d ever visit Philippines.

Call me a psychic, because Synergy fulfilled my “prophecy” by coming to the Philippines last week. Of course, I would give full credit to my sister for making it happen. Her planning of the tour didn’t go easy, though, for she had to do myriad things, which started with asking various contacts to let them perform in certain venues, only to be rejected by many (including the college I’m an alumnus of). She searched for travel agencies to help her with their itineraries, one time having to meet one while braving the merciless Ondoy, only for that endeavor to turn out futilely. When she eventually got everything planned out, with a few universities and a travel agent agreeing to accommodate her, she hardly saw the end of all troubles. What with life being unpredictable, the tour met many hurdles, incompetent airport staffs, uncooperative people, uncoordinated people, and bad venue surprises, like the mystery cafeteria food that tries even the hungriest. To add, she not only had to do this in Philippines, but also in Peru, China, Taiwan, and Japan, in the span of two months. Without the resilience, one would be quitting this job before long. Only the assertive, patient, and strong-willed ones press on.

So leave aside your prejudice for event organizers. They don’t have it easy.

What of the groups going all over the world for their benefit concerts then? They impact their performers significantly, especially when they take place on less-trodden venues. Many performers live every day spoiled by the comfort of their suburban homes, and yet they are discontented, seeking out greater material wealth. They’d think, wouldn’t it be nice if I get this new gas-guzzling SUV? Or that Prada bag? Without taking them to places where they perform in the presence of the homeless and the orphaned, they might never understand how fortunate they are, and might never feel compelled to help out. They look at this and it affects them on an emotional level:

In other packaged tours, all you get to see are the presentable, sanitized, gentrified parts of a country. A travel agent in the Philippines rather takes his/her tourists around the commercial areas like Makati or the beaches with pearly white sands, but not revealing the true state of the poverty existing within our soils. Few dare let foreigners see the people who live in house the size of matchboxes, breadwinners scraping the deepest recesses of sewers to put food on their tables. We don’t realize the impact that these sights bring to our tourists, but those who help make the benefit concerts happen reveal to the performers the harsh realities in many parts of the world, that many lives are lived in dire conditions. They learn to be content, to value the people around them, and, most of all, to reach out.

Travel Guide Links

So I realize that I wrote a travel series on my own blog and that they were very time-consuming. I don’t want my labor to be lost in the ether as I write more blog posts, so I placed their links at the sidebar, just below “Sponsored Links”:

Just to get your attention again, here are the links to my full guide to New York City.

• Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Getting Started
• Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Tourist Spots
• Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Shopping Destinations
• Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Food and Entertainment
• Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Miscellaneous
• Bonus! New York Days in Pictures 

New York Days in Pictures

Very picture intensive post. No chronological order. Some pictures are from 2005, others last month.

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Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Miscellaneous

AT LAST, this guide is coming to a close. This section is where I put general advices that I did not give anywhere else. Some of these may make you say “wow, Nightdreamer must think I’m really stupid!” but honestly, I don’t. It’s just that sometimes we need to be constantly reminded of what we should or shouldn’t be doing, and the last thing I want is to see or hear you going through trying times on what should’ve been a marvelous vacation (or whatever purposes you’ve come to NYC for). So if you want to make your vacation great, keep the following in mind:

• Unless necessary, stay away from the crowded areas. This should be obvious, but a lot of people still go to Times Square anyway and then they’d gripe about being harassed by obnoxious tourists.
• New Yorkers are predominantly liberal.
• Sometimes when you’re on a subway train, people will approach you and beg for money or food. They come in two types; the first would say that they’re homeless/jobless and would be grateful if anyone could give them money or something to eat, the second would sing/play a musical instrument either for themselves or for their causes (it’s hard to tell if they’re legit). I don’t think that all these people are tricking you into giving them something by playing on your sympathies; some does look genuinely in need of help. So it’s up to you if you want to give them anything, but for goodness sake, if it’s the second type of mendicant people, don’t give them anything unless they’re making good music. I once encountered a guy who tried to beg by playing Merry Has A Little Lamb on harmonica. Nobody gave him any money, and everybody got annoyed with him. Who wouldn’t? I could play Merry Has A Little Lamb with my telephone!
• Oftentimes you’ll see New Yorkers take their dogs out for a walk. While it’s true that some of them have dogs just to impress women, it’s not a good idea to touch their dogs without their permission. If I’m not mistaken, I think it’s against the law. Same goes for babies.
• Don’t be afraid to venture outside of Manhattan. The Bronx has a zoo and a botanical garden. Brooklyn’s foods may be better than Manhattan. Queens… well, okay, you can skip Queens.
• On a similar note, step out of your comfort zone. One of the biggest reasons for traveling is so that you can have experiences that you can’t have at home, or experiences that are off the beaten path of the average tourists for an adventure entirely unique to you. Too many people come to Manhattan to take the tourist bus, and then go to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building and Times Square. Don’t you find that really boring and unrewarding? Also, eat in places that do not have a branch in your own country. That means no McDonald’s, no Starbucks (seriously there millions of better coffee in Little Italy), no Burger King, no Wendy’s, etc. For a more thrilling adventure, watch the less commercial and sometimes avant-garde off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway plays.
• Food vendors are everywhere, and while the quality of food varies, I don’t recommend buying their beverages (except for homemade lemonade) since you can get them cheaper in grocery stores or in drugstores like Duane Reade. However, when you’re inside a Broadway theater and the show is on intermission and you’re thirsty, get out of the theater (but do keep your ticket so you can get in again) and buy from any nearby vendor. The beverages in theaters are even more overpriced.
• It really pains me that I have to mention this, but for your own sake, please cross the road only when the pedestrian signal light is green. This is truer for those of you Pinoys who have a heinous habit of crossing the road at whim. You don’t want to have to use your travel insurance, do you?
• Bike rental isn’t a very bad idea if you’re brave enough.
• Don’t even consider renting a car unless you plan to get out of New York. It’s an extremely bad idea because parking in New York City is a major pain in the ass, and costs a lot too.
• When you’re done eating in a fastfood or a cafeteria, clean up your own mess.
• New York City is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, so it’s not surprising if you find a group of people that you don’t see where you come from. If you can’t stop having discriminating thoughts against them, please keep those to yourself. Having an open-mind will do you more good than harm.
• So this may sound like I’m stretching the limits of how much I’m allowed to treat potential readers as naïve without coming off as patronizing, but this bears mentioning: do not ever call African-Americans the “n-word”. I’m saying this because I’ve encountered many Asians who have heard the word but do not know that it’s a racially offensive term. One of my Pinay friends once said it, and when I told her not to ever say it she told me that her teacher said it was okay. Ignorant college sophomores I can forgive, but what kind of irresponsible teachers instruct their students that it’s okay to say the n-word?!
• When you go to a store’s counter, the clerk will give you a “how are you” greeting. It may be awkward to us Asians because we don’t get clerks who’d ask us about our current being. Just give a brief and friendly response, like saying “I’m good. How are you?” One thing you should not do is to dump your own drama to them; don’t tell them that your dog just died and you’re really sad because you don’t have a financial support and your kid is dragging you to watch G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra despite trying times etcetera etcetera. They may be friendly, but they also have to serve the people standing next in line. If you’re finding a kindred spirit, strike a conversation with someone in the subway or in a bar.

Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Food and Entertainment

Traveling on an empty stomach is not fun. Monks and Muslims fast because it’s part of their spiritual cultivation, and not because they hate food. Unless you come to NYC to illuminate your being – in which case, what a bizarre choice – I’ll give you D minus rating on your intelligence if you don’t eat anything from NYC, and then I’ll take your lunch money. The rest of you more sensible (and hungrier) human beings may be delighted to know that because NYC is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world – people from all over come here and stay – it has immense varieties of international foods. It’s impossible for anyone not to eat anything here not to his/her liking.

Ok, a few words before I start. I am not a food critic and I don’t want to be one. I don’t ever try to get reservations on haute cuisine restaurants just so I can eat there all alone with fork on one hand and a pen scribbling my “critique” on a pad the other, like that guy from Pixar’s Ratatouille. I could do that, and it helps that I’m ambidextrous, but I don’t coz I’d look silly. For me, eating is just that, eating. Of all the things people write about, the one I least want to hear ratcheted up to a hardcore elite-level of ultra-academic dissertation is food (the second worst is videogames). Throw a bagel to a Somalian and they’d spend a lifetime thanking you kindly and they won’t say, “Oh I appreciate this bagel, but it seems lacking that much-cherished delicate taste of poppy seeds that would’ve made me reach a gustatory nirvana.” Food criticisms do not feed the hungry.

That said, I will still write a brief and practical food guide consisting mostly of what I liked from NYC, except that I won’t go into details and sound like I am meta-judging them like I’m reviewing a movie. Really, you should try any restaurant you find interesting and you think you can afford. First order of business is that you don’t starve; at a distant second, pleasure.

NYC Essentials

In any places in the world there will always be foods associated with it. Italy has its pastas, Japan its sushis, Taiwan its dumplings, Philippines its pan-de-sals, and USA its burgers. Not all part of US is best known for burgers though; foods that seem to be NYC’s specialty are pizzas, bagels, and cheesecakes. You can’t go two blocks in NYC without seeing them sold. Travel guides swear up and down that Brooklyn has the best pizzas and bagels, but those sold in Manhattan aren’t so bad, and they’re often inexpensive (for $2 you can have either).

Raw Fruits and Vegetables

If the place you’re staying at has a kitchen in it and you know how to cook, the best place to buy raw goods is Chinatown. Okay, it should be general knowledge to more than half of the world’s population that Chinese sell at the lowest prices, so it really shouldn’t surprise you that I keep mentioning Chinatown whenever I talk about buying anything. You can even go to the grocery stores to buy local and imported goods for lower prices than they are elsewhere. You wanna know what I was surprised to find? A box of Skyflakes with a “made in the Philippines” written so prominently on it.

And now for the good part…

Restaurants

Like I said a while ago, I’m only going to put in here those that I liked the best. If you really are looking for a comprehensive restaurant guide of New York, you should find a Zagat Food Guide, which is available in bookstores. Also, if the place you’re dining at has a Zagat Survey poster/tag in front of it, that usually means Zagat approves it.

One thing you should be prepared to do when you’re dining in restaurants is to add 10%. Not everyplace where you can eat in NYC requires tips (you don’t need to give them in some of the fastfoods from Grand Central’s dining concourse) but if it has waiters serving you the food, then that pretty much is a sign that you should tip. The only time you should refuse to tip is when you were given an extremely poor service. Expect to have a talk with the management whenever you do that.

Tavern on the Green – I consider myself really lucky to be able to have two lunches here and to be part of someone’s wedding. It’s great since I didn’t have to pay anything, as I don’t even want to imagine how much the foods here cost. Located at the west side of Central Park, Tavern on the Green is an ideal place for wedding, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s like a scene that jumped off the pages of a fairy tale. I think it’s more famous for wine than food, but would you care about that given its setting?

(photo from wikipedia)

Location: Central Park West and West 67th Street

Café Lalo – Don’t you just love how that name rolls off your tongue? Café la-LOOOW. *ahem* As I was told, this is the café where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks met in the movie You’ve Got Mail (I haven’t seen that movie). I’m not sure if Café Lalo was already frequented by tourists before then, but the movie sure made it very well-known. Ten years after the movie and I still hear people ask me if I want to eat at the place where You’ve Got Mail took place. But really, if you’ve been here you’ll see why it became a setting for a romance flick. It looks very posh (I can take pictures of this café all day) and the foods are priced very “posh-edly” too, but they taste great so it’s not all a waste of money. The coffee and desserts here are an absolute must – even if you’re not a cake-fan (as I surely ain’t) I defy you to look at them in the counter and not want to try them out. And did I say that it looks really posh? A pic of you smelling a cup of coffee while feeling all “ooh-la-la I’m so froufrou” euphoric makes for a spectacular Facebook profile photo for your friends to envy. See, what other travel guides cover your Facebook-egocentricity needs?

 Tempted?

Location: 201 W. 83rd Street

Asia Grill – At last here’s something more affordable (what, you expected Café Lalo to be cheap?). Just thinking about this restaurant alone makes me drool. I hope my keyboard doesn’t mind. Paradise is eating Vietnamese foods.

Location: 1239 2nd Avenue, Corner of 65 St

Lombardi’s – America’s very first pizzeria. Price is surprisingly inexpensive for a restaurant with a long history. As this is a world-famous pizzeria, expect to wait a bit before you get seated, but it’s worth it. There aren’t many other places where you can eat coal-oven pizzas.

(photo from wikipedia)

Location: 32 Spring Street

Vegetarian Dim Sum House – I’m sorry I couldn’t type Chinese characters in my PC. It serves Cantonese cuisine, and I recommend crispy noodles. Tea is free and bottomless, like how it should be in Chinese restaurants.

(photo from nychinatown website)

Location: 24 Pell Street

Entertainments

Man, I really wish I were done talking about NYC. The .doc file this guide is originally written is already on its 13^th page, and I still have a few things to talk about. I’m exhausted; I now feel like I have a jetlag again. But because I love you (and because every person who’s tired from writing needs to say he/she loves his/her reader so as to stay motivated) I’ll keep cracking.

NYC is a massive entertainment extravaganza. All year round there are new shows to watch and new concerts to attend. Since New Yorkers have a wide variety of choices of entertainment to choose from, it’s not a wonder that they can become very passionate critics of anything that less than satisfies them, while the rest of the world just kinda suck it up. It’s like what I was saying about food; the rest of us would be really thankful when we’re given food, but to New Yorkers eating isn’t simply a necessity, but also a work of fine art. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as New Yorkers will know much about any field of interest because of over-abundance of forms of entertainment, and be able to discern quality from garbage. The rest of us, well, we just wait years and years for the one big concert like the Eraserheads reunion tour, get ecstatic for about a week or so (and write blog posts about them), and then get bored for the next two months wondering when we’re gonna see another musician, solo or group, give an epic performance live. And so we settle to going to bars and clubs instead, partying, getting drunk or stoned, until the downer comes when we realize how rambunctious yet monotonous, thrill-less and meaningless these activities are.

If you’re feeling really thrifty you could also go to parks like Washington Square or Union Square and watch street performers do impossible stunts or hear soapbox preachers (sometimes cracked, admittedly) lash out against the system with the same passion as The Clash. They’re all a lot of fun. Sometimes you might want to attend to shows or concerts or speeches that are professionally organized. If you want to know when these events happen so you could plan accordingly, I suggest buying a copy of Time Out New York, or visiting event websites.

To further extend the point, I encourage that you have an internet access. With the internet you can find out about upcoming events. You can also use it to get the addresses of the various places you want to visit. It’s also useful for knowing what time any establishments open and close (this is vital if you’re planning your travel route).

Didn’t bring your laptop? Find the Wi-fi service of your hotel too expensive? No problem. Go to New York Public Library and you can use the internet without paying anything. Just present a valid ID and you’re all set.

The best time of the year to come for all these events is between June to August (summertime in America, that is) because there are all kinds of festivals happening. I dunno, is there ever a time in New York when there isn’t a festival? Anyway during these festivals you can visit various parks and you’ll be treated with open-air concerts from musicians of all stripes. Or notes or something.

Jazz – you’re crazy to not watch a jazz concert in NYC. When I talk to some Americans they tell me that jazz is America’s greatest invention. Some would even contend that it’s America’s only invention. Okay, I understand that not everyone understands jazz. Johnny hates jazz. Tunnel-minded rock listeners hate jazz (they hate everything that doesn’t have screaming anyway). But you know what, I don’t think you’ve truly experienced New York City if you haven’t attended any jazz concert. There, I finally said my version of that NYC experience tripe. If you’re in doubt, if you’re not willing to spend $30 to hear music that you might not like, then no problem. Just go to the free ones that occur all throughout the year (but mostly on summer jazz festivals). Check the event schedules of all the parks from NYC for more information on that, and they’re not only limited to jazz concerts.

If you’re going to jazz clubs, however, there are a few to choose from. The most popular one is Village Vanguard, the bar where the late Bill Evans (my all time fave jazz pianist) recorded his legendary Sunday at Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby albums. Other places to see jazz concerts: Blue Note, Smoke, Jazz at Lincoln Center, or, sometimes, Carnegie Hall.

Village Vanguard

Broadway Plays – this is another part of New Yorker’s way of life.  I won’t go into elaborate description of this one. Tickets to Broadway shows often cost more than a hundred dollar, so you might want to find ways to get discount tickets. One way is to go online and find discount codes for the show you want to see, and enter the code when you’re purchasing the ticket. This way you’d get around 40-60% off. Know that shows with discount codes are usually scheduled at least a week after. Another way, and this is more recognized, is to go to TKTS and buy the same day tickets. There’s a famous TKTS booth in Times Square, but because the line goes for very long it may take you hours to buy tickets. Instead, go to the TKTS booth in South Street Seaport where you only have to wait minutes.

Next: Miscellaneous

Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Shopping Destinations

When you’ve gone around NYC for a bit, you might notice that there are excessive varieties of stuff sold here, and they could tempt even the most economic crisis-embittered curmudgeon (try saying economic crisis-embittered curmudgeon 3 times fast!). Actually, I’ve gone to SoHo a few days ago, and saw just how savagely people spend their money there, and I thought: did the recession happen or what? Anyway, I’m not here to inculcate you on the virtues of thriftiness (yikes do I sound pompous saying that) but I have places to suggest to you should you ever want to buy the following:

Books

The largest bookstore chain in America is Barnes and Noble, but there are other chain bookstores, like Borders, Inc. If you’d like to imagine what Barnes and Noble look like, think Fullybooked (if you’re in Philippines) or Eslite (if you’re in Taiwan). Most Barnes and Noble carry a large selection of books and periodicals, and a decent selection of music and video products. As long as you’re not boisterous, it’s fine to sit on the floor and hang out with your friends while browsing for a few titles. I got to finish reading some comic books here like Batman Adventures: Mad Love and Strangers in Paradise Volume 1.

But if you’ve found books you’re interested in here, I urge you NOT to buy them just yet, unless if they’re computer books, in which case, go crazy. Write their titles down on a piece of paper (or save a message on your mobile phone) and then see if you can find it at Strand Bookstore (location: 828 Broadway and 12th St), where they sell new, used, and rare books at discount prices. Though it may be cluttered, it’s paradise for bibliophiles.

If you’re looking for compiled trade paperback comic books, you will be content with Barnes and Noble and, if you’re lucky, Strand. Those looking for individual issues should go to Forbidden Planet (located adjacent to Strand), which also has a great selection of toys, collectibles, and sci fi books.

  (photo from wikipedia)

Music

Sadly, I’m not very knowledgeable about where to get recordings. I saw a lot of independent music stores in Greenwich Village but I haven’t gone inside any of them, so I can’t say if they’re any good. Near Strand Bookstore (which is, near Union Square, which I haven’t listed as a tourist spot because I’m not a fan of that place) is Virgin Records. I guess the store is huge, which means there may also be a huge assortment of recordings, but I’m not sure.

So why did I bother writing a section on music? Well, I do have places to suggest if you’re into audio equipments. Go to J&R.

At the Broadway Street corner 49th, there’s a music store called Colony Record and Radio Center. It doesn’t sell lot of recordings in it, but if you’re a musician and you’re looking for sheet music, you’ll have a hard time finding another store with a selection as huge as Colony’s. I bought a sheet music of jazz standards there, which is splendid; now if only I can play…

Fashion

Before you start looking at me funny, I want to tell you that I know less of this than I do about books and music, so you can lower your eyebrow now. That said, you can buy designer clothes in Macy’s at affordable prices. The stores surrounding Wall Street (near the Ground Zero, formerly World Trade Center) also sell bargain-priced clothes. One that I favor is Century 21 Department Store (22 Cortlandt Street) for its large stocks of discounted shoes.

You’d also want to go to thrifts shop to hunt for secondhand bargain clothing (and other goods). Few of them can be found in East 23^rd Street, from 3^rd to 2^nd Avenue (or is it 2^nd to 1^st?). Their names are Salvation Army, Goodwill, and City Opera. It’s to your discretion whether or not the clothing, furniture, recordings, books, and artworks sold here are of good quality, but any store where I can buy a polo shirt from GAP for $5 is ok for me. Just remember to wash the clothes you buy there first before wearing them.

Lastly, if you’re buying I HEART NEW YORK t-shirts for your annoying souvenir-hungry friends, go to Chinatown where you can 7 of those for $10. Generally, Chinatown – and maybe Little Italy – is a good place to buy souvenir items at low prices.

Taiwanese readers, a little warning about New York City’s Chinatown (at least the one in Manhattan, at Canal St.; I dunno about the Queens one at Flushing) is that most of its residents are Cantonese and that some of them cannot speak Mandarin.

Electronics Store

Best Buy is known all over America, but, depending on your needs, that may not be the best electronics store. For everything that falls under electronics category, go to J&R, but if you’re looking for audio and video equipments, B&H (location: 420 9th Avenue) is even better.

Next: Food and entertainment

Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Tourist Spots

You may now breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, after having to put up with Nightdreamer’s ramblings about the most trivial things, he’s getting to the good part. Yep, that I am, but before I go on I have to say that I am not discouraging you from going to places not mentioned here; the beauty of Manhattan is that wherever you go, there’s always a place that thrusts itself into attention, be it churches with old-fashioned architectures, or stores that sell the most bizarre merchandises. I’ll only mention the tourist spots that I found unforgettable, for whatever reasons.

Museums

There are countless museums in NYC; I have read from one travel guide that says it’s entirely possible (and plausible) for one to spend an entire month going to every museums of NYC. What’s even more fascinating is that there are all types of bizarre museums here: there’s a museum of military equipments, museum of corpses, museum of sex, etc. Hmm, I wonder what the exhibitions are like for the lattermost.

Metropolitan Museum of Arts - or “The Met”, as New Yorkers like to call it. You know how everyone has his/her variation of “you have not experienced New York until you’ve been to _____”? In my book, you’ve wasted your trip to New York if you haven’t gone to The Met. Don’t bother giving me cries of “I’m not a museum type person!!!” Just do yourself a favor and go there at least once; I don’t care if what you do for a living has as much to do with art as soldiers with world peace. Can you imagine a vacation to Paris without a trip to Musee de Louvre? Same idea.

Met from outside (photo from wikipedia)

Its being one of the world’s largest art galleries may sound intimidating to people with no art bent, but don’t let that faze you. Most of the antiques aren’t too difficult to understand thanks to the informative placards near them, and they’re collected in orders that add to your understanding of the culture and the history of their places of origin. There are sections for arts from all parts of the world, and anyone is sure to find a favorite exhibit (mine is the section for India).

There is another branch of The Met called The Cloisters, which houses medieval arts. It is located at Harlem, which is far from The Met. Buses usually take an hour to go from The Met to The Cloisters.

Admission price: $20 is the suggested fee, but since it’s donation, you can merely pay $2

Location: 5th Avenue and 82nd Street

American Museum of Natural History - you can gain an encyclopedic understanding of world history from frequent visits to The Met, but you’d appreciate it more by seeing the replicated scenes of past days exhibited in American Museum of Natural History. It also collects replicas/preservations (I really couldn’t tell which) of animals from different parts of the world. There’s a planetarium connected to it too, and the shows are done in IMAX. An ideal place for both science and history buffs, but anyone can take delight in taking pictures of the dinosaur bones at the hallway. Like The Met, it’s an enormous museum, and I encourage multiple visits.

American Museum of Natural History from outside (photo from wikipedia)

Admission price: same as The Met

Location: Central Park West at 79th Street

Museum of Modern Art - the previous two museums can be enjoyed by anyone, but Museum of Modern Art requires a moderate degree of art appreciation. If you’re averse to intellectual-posturing visitors, stay very far from here. The exhibits can go from the contemporary art (which is splendid) to abstract art (which is, uh, interesting). Some of the most noteworthy exhibits are those from Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali and Frida. If those names mean nothing to you, though, then don’t visit. The abstract arts can get very abstruse, like they’d make you ask “How could anyone pass this off as art?!” There are “paintings” of a completely blue fill; how they manage to fetch millions of dollar let alone get exhibited is not a topic I’m willing to fixate on.

Museum of Modern Art (photo from wikipedia)

Admission price: $20, free on Fridays 4 p.m. – 8 p.m. when your only difficulty is fighting your way through a crowd.

Location: 11 West 53rd Street

Central Park 

If there’s something about the city that always bothers me, it’s the sense that the air I breathe there are nothing but assortments of fumes. Scenes of hulking skyscrapers may be nifty the first three times I look at them, but they don’t get any long term affection from me, not especially for trying to obscure the views of skies, replacing lively blues from beneath the cloud with drab grays made by nature-hating chemical factories. Cities look and smell like paint, and if they don’t have parks that momentarily drown out these joyless sights and smells, then I quickly grow weary of being there.

It’s no wonder I often have a desire to get out of Manila, even if only for a week. As for Manhattan, I may not imagine myself staying here for longer than a month without tiring of it, but at least I am content with the enormous park at its center, because it offers a brief reprieve from all the urban landscapes.

If you’ve been following my advice (bless you!) and have gone to The Met or Museum of Natural History, you might kind of notice that there’s a park connected or adjacent to it. Actually, you don’t have to go anywhere near both museums to see that there’s a park at the center of Manhattan, and it’s huge. Like, large enough to bury Godzilla and King Kong and their children huge. It’s impossible to miss unless you really suck at traveling.

There are various landmarks scattered all throughout the park, and they are themselves worthy tourist spots. Every part of Central Park is worth being lost in.

You know the movie Madagascar? It’s fictional in the worst sense of the word. There are no lions, zebras, giraffes and hippos in Central Park Zoo!

Times Square

I’ll let the picture do the talking:

That’s Times Square, one of the iconic images of New York City, where buildings double as projectors of very bright advertisement videos. It’s a very well-known tourist spot and, because it looks fanciful, has spawned imitators. After all, who doesn’t want to look like New York? Nanjing Road is Shanghai’s Times Square; Ximenting, Taipei’s. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there are many more Times Square rip-offs elsewhere.

Aside from all the lights, though, Times Square is also notable for Broadway theatres, hotels and restaurants. I would argue that Broadway shows should be your only reasons for going to Times Square more than once; you don’t want to know how much it costs to stay here, and it’s not like there aren’t good restaurants elsewhere in Manhattan (gotta say that there’s a really cool Toys R’ Us here though, and it has a giant-sized roaring Tyrannosaurus from Jurassic Park). Sure, Times Square looks captivating, who doesn’t love bright and shiny places? Of course I recommend going there once (except in New Year’s Eve, in which case, try to go elsewhere) and taking pictures there, but unless you can stand places that are overly touristy, don’t go there another time without the intent of watching a Broadway musical, lest you come to me whining on how I haven’t warned you about how badly you can be harassed by rude tourists there. Times Square being a crowded place means that the people, especially tourists, behave very rudely – I think it’s part of human psychology that we behave in a more hostile manner when in a cramped setting. You’d get pushed around without being apologized. Just to overstate my case, because I love doing that, a friend of mine once told me that he hated New York City because he found New Yorkers very impolite. Perplexed because that contradicted with my opinions of New Yorkers – I find them quite friendly; if you want rude, ask me about Hong Kong or Taipei someday – I racked my brains as to how he could’ve possibly formulated that opinion. So I said, “You stayed in Times Square, didn’t you?” Zing! I was right, and then I told him that he was wrong in thinking that most of the people in Times Square are New Yorkers.

Brooklyn Bridge

This is a bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn. It goes a little over a mile, and walking across takes around 30 minutes. It’s a great exercise, and you’d be rewarded differently depending on which way you go: walk from Brooklyn and you’d get a great view of Manhattan; walk from Manhattan and there are pizzas and other restaurants where the bridge ends.

Empire State Building

Like how Brooklyn Bridge used to be world’s longest bridge, Empire State Building used to be world’s tallest building. Its main draw is the two observation decks where you can get a panoramic view of NYC; there’s an outdoor one at the 86^th floor, and a smaller indoor one at 102^nd, which requires additional fee, and is not always open to public. It was closed back when I visited in October 2005, and I just learned today (through reading travel websites) that it re-opened a month later. Sort of a bummer, but I can live without ever going to the 102^nd floor of Empire State Building. As a tourist attraction, Empire State Building is only worth one visit, and it does not belong to my list of “places you must have gone to before you die”. It’s up to you if you want to go here; I would’ve given it a more glowing recommendation had the admission been cheaper, and had it not required at least an hour of queuing time.

(photo from wikipedia)

Admission: I dunno; in 2005 it was between $15-20

Location: 350 Fifth Avenue

Statue of Liberty

If you haven’t heard of the Statue of Liberty then you must’ve fallen from a distant planet. Welcome to planet Earth, alien, and I hope you like eating durians, a fruit that I believe comes from a distant irradiated galaxy (and tastes like it too). Anyway, not a lot of people know this, but Statue of Liberty stands on an island called the Liberty Island, which has nothing in it except for the statue and the shops selling overpriced souvenirs with the likeness of the statue in it. Going to the island itself is easy – you have to buy tickets in Battery Park (and don’t forget that Liberty is a touristy place, so expect long lines) – but going inside the statue is a hassle. You need a reservation to go inside, and then you have to undergo security procedures before entering the museum by the statue’s pedestal. Even if it’s really cool to take a picture of you standing below the statue, the only reason I would recommend a trip to Liberty Island is that a ferry ride here (which costs $19) will also take you to Ellis Island, where you can visit The Immigration Museum, free of charge. Grumble all you want about immigration procedures; after watching the documentary shown in The Immigration Museum you’d understand that we have it easier than our ancestors, even if immigration officials may not necessarily have become more kindhearted.

Ellis Island

Admission: $19 for ferry ride, not sure how much it costs to get inside the statue, as I’ve never gone in

South Street Seaport

If, while being in another country, I was blindfolded and earplugged and got abducted to South Street Seaport, by the time my eyes and ears get uncovered, I wouldn’t know that this is part of NYC (until I see the Brooklyn Bridge, of course). South Street Seaport doesn’t look like the rest of Manhattan; elsewhere it’s mostly a steady stream of corporate high towers, but here you’ll see warehouses and piers. Those warehouses have since become establishments for shops and restaurants – fancy places for all you pesky mall-rats out there. Ferries that travel different places and cater to different needs are available. You can take a tour around Manhattan, or a tour around Statue of Liberty, or a meandering tour around anyplace the captain could think of while you spend 2 hours partying inside a boat made specifically for partying purpose. I won’t say it’s a definite must-see, but you can do worse by going to less desirable places *cough* Empire State Building *cough* than here, and some ferry packages include free admission to select museums or tourists attractions in Manhattan (for $25). Not bad at all.

(photo from wikipedia)

Location: South Street at Fulton Street

Grand Central Terminal

Filipinos, have you ever been inside Makati’s Peninsula? The lobby of that hotel looks a lot like Grand Central’s main concourse, minus the clock. Grand Central is a railroad terminal that has the greatest number of railway platforms, but if you travel by subway you’ll also be stopping by here very often. More than just being a world-famous train station, it is also one heck of a glorious building, and you don’t even need to be a trained architect to see that (try looking at the ceiling too for added sense of awe). If you’re a history buff, you can go to its museum and see how many times it’s been rebuilt. In and out, it looks great.

And how could I forget the dining concourse? There are plenty of tasty foods you can eat there, and, with a few exceptions (like the Oyster Bar) they’re priced relatively low for NYC’s standards.  This is quite easily one of my favorite places in Manhattan. It’s a great tourist spot without being a touristy nightmare; it’s beautiful; its foods taste great; and it’s the base if you’re planning to travel interstate, or just go to a more remote part of New York State.

Location:  89 E. 42nd Street at Park Avenue

Greenwich, SoHo and TriBeCa

These three get lumped together mainly because I can’t be bothered to write writeup for each individually, and because they’re similar anyway. Greenwich is a residential area for the moderately affluent; in the earlier days it’s the heart of the beatnik hipsters, but then Greenwich gentrified, so they moved to SoHo, to TriBeCa, and then finally to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Greenwich Village is the quietest area of the three, and you can see that the residents here spend lavishly in decorating their homes. It’s also home to many high class restaurants, bars, jazz clubs, gay communities, and Off-Broadway theaters (Off-Broadway are plays or musical for a place with smaller seating capacity).

SoHo (South of Houston Street) is known for its many art galleries but has also become a shopping destination for the young. Because it is home to trendy fashion outlets, it can be very crowded on weekends. To the south of SoHo is TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street) where it is quieter and where trendy restaurants can be found. There’s also a film festival here called the TriBeCa film festival.

Next: shopping destinations

Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Getting Started

There are only a few other places in the world that requires as little introduction as New York City (NYC). We see it in media, especially movies, all the time. It’s one of the world’s most popular travel destinations, and people everywhere dream of setting foot here.

So imagine yourself holding a flight ticket to JFK International Airport (or any of the other two airports of NYC) and you’re bent to get the essential “NYC Experience”, but you don’t know how to achieve it or don’t know what “NYC Experience” actually means besides it being a phrase hipsters or posers habitually throws around. You can always buy travel guides, but they’re often expensive, and even if they tell you everything, they do it impersonally you don’t get very encouraged read them. What you need, of course, is someone who tells you where to go in a more relaxed, and more story-like manner, because that way you will remember what he says. That someone is me. Okay, so all that talk about travel guide is half-baked tripe, but I need a good intro, so there. Anyway, if you come here looking for travel or survival tips, keep reading.

 The real bird’s eye view of New York City

Yep, I just spent my previous two weeks there, in case you’ve been lying awake at night wondering why I’ve stopped annoying you through Yahoo! Messenger. This is my second time being in NYC, and the first time I went there (back in 2005) I stayed for a month. That totals to 6 weeks of my life spent there, which is enough time to get a good grasp of Manhattan.

My target audiences for this blog post are Filipino and Taiwanese, although I hope that it will be useful for anyone, regardless of their place of origin, their gender, their alignment (even chaotic evils) and their BMI. Also, this guide will only cover Manhattan. I don’t know enough about Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island yet to write guides about them. One last thing to add is that I do not know the hotel rates because I lived in my sister’s apartment.

Preparation

Know the season of the time you’re staying in NYC. From September to March you need to wear layered clothing – more so from December to March. Spring has the most clement weather, but it is also the least exciting season to come to NYC (no autumn leaves, less festivals, no snow). As for summer (June to August) don’t hesitate to wear shorts and tanktops only (as long as you’re not wearing shorts and tanktops that you use as sleep wears). Believe me, a lot of people in NYC dress that way; the movies may make it look like all people ever wear there are suits and gowns, but unless you’re attending an occasion that calls for formal attires (such as weddings or UN seminars) you’d look like a wannabe, and people here, more than anywhere else, can see past your disguise. Don’t wear hooded jackets on summer, please. I just can’t count the number of times I’ve seen pictures of Pinoy tourists being anywhere in Europe or America while wearing over-layered attires at the wrong season. That’s a lot like having jackets on in the Philippines whenever you take a trip to a coffee shop; you may have other reasons, but essentially, you look like a poseur.

And if you’re a Taiwanese youth and have one of those sissy effeminate Jay Chou hairdos, please style your hair differently lest you want to look like a tourist, because Taiwanese residents in NYC will adapt to New Yorker’s fashion. By the way, I hate those hairdos. They’re just like emo hairdos in my book of “sure signs that someone is laughably lugubrious”.

You need to have more than enough money as well, by which I mean if you could only bring a hundred dollar with you, forget about going to NYC. Everything, from products and services, to the mandatory 10% tips and taxes, will cost a lot. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t buy cheap stuff in NYC though, as I will devote a section talking about the best places for those.

Lastly, neither I nor my writing has the clairvoyance to know the purpose and the length of your stay in NYC, but if possible, try to bring only the amount of baggage that you can carry or move around. There are pushcarts in the airports, but you have to pay a whopping $5 to use those. I fully support depriving greedy bastards the money they’re lusting, and you should too. Fight the power that be!

Getting In

Unless you live somewhere in US, the best way to get to NYC is by airplanes; if you live in US, that’s debatable. Let me tell you now that if you’re from anywhere in Asia, the trip to NYC will be very long, and displeasing. Flights from Taiwan to US take roughly 17 hours; a couple more if from Philippines. The plane flies to the west and crosses the Pacific Ocean, and often has a stopover somewhere on the west side of America.  By the time you reach NYC, you’ll be exhausted.

And I’m not just talking about exhaustion that comes with jetlag, but also from long periods of not taking a bath, of being in a cramped up space that long, of sitting until your butt hurts, of watching awful in-flight movies just to kill time, of climbing over other’s leg when going to the restroom (or having others climb over your leg), of hearing wails from babies you secretly wish you could throw out of the plane, etc. Treat the trip as a mini-hike, meaning you should come very prepared. Bring a pair of slippers and wear them when in a plane. Have earplugs so you could sleep comfortably. And you might as well carry an underwear and a pair of socks because those you’re wearing will eventually stink. Be considerate to other passengers by not eating too much lest you pass gases their way. I will emphasize the last one because I once sat beside a granny who farted so often, I suggested that instead of buying plane tickets, which can be expensive, she should’ve blasted herself airborne by farting all the way from Taiwan to New York. She gave me the stink eye, and then stank the cabin once more.

As a small alleviation to the tedium of the flight, make sure to choose the airline that you’re sure has a lot of attractive flight attendants. Which means forget taking Philippine Airline, unless you’ve got something for old women. China Airline, on the other hand, has the cutest stewardesses, a word you could type with your left hand while your right does something else, but flight turbulence occurs quite frequently. Eva Air also has stewardesses that make you feel like you’re in clouds, which is appropriate since planes usually fly inside clouds anyway. Female travelers, ignore this paragraph.

Once you’ve gotten off the plane and left your baggage at your hotel or any place of lodging, the first thing to do is to go to sleep. Forget doing anything else for the day (besides eating and pooping), just go sleep and recover from your jet lag. Your body clock will need to be tuned in with NYC’s time zone. If you’re having a hard time sleeping, just cry yourself to sleep out of regret of not getting your favorite stewardess’s e-mail address.

Getting Around: Get a Metrocard

You’re probably reasonably well-to-do enough if you could come to NYC and have more than a hundred dollars with you, but don’t be a spoiled sucker by using the cab as your only mode of transit. Its minimum fare is $2.50, without the mandatory 10% tip. Take the cab only as your last resort, like when you’re in a hurry to meet someone and there’s no way taking the bus or the subway will get you there on time (then again, how would cab?), unless you really enjoy striking a conversation with cab drivers (in which case you should’ve opted to come/stay in the Philippines, where you can hear drivels that must’ve been borrowed from AM Radio hosts).

Instead, go to your nearest subway station and go buy a Metrocard, which is a card that you’ll be swiping if you’re taking the subway trains or the buses. Various types of Metrocard exist, but you’ll need the Unlimited Ride ones if you’ve come to NYC as a tourist (because you’re going to travel around a lot, duh!). Then head to the token booth and get a subway map, which is free. Lastly, you might want to go to any magazine stall and buy NYC’s city map.

Subway

The subway stations date as far back as, I think, the early 1900’s, and as for their appearances, nothing much seems to have changed. It even feels like it’s taken a hundred years since the last time any cleaning has been done. The mild way of saying this is that subway stations   have an exotic smell. Simply put, they’re sticky and gross. Yet, despite the appearance of the contrary, subway stations are safe and they’re the most convenient and affordable way to get around in NYC. Just get used to the dirty look and you’ll be fine.

Next: tourist spots

Taiwan Thingy

…but I don’t want you to think that everything has been gloomy in my weeklong Taiwan trip.

One of my younger cousins could at least carry on a decent conversation with me, or at least how much my limited grasp of Chinese permitted for decent conversations. As another confession - it’s in vogue lately, last I checked - I’m not really the best Chinese speaker you’ll encounter. I speak English a lot better than Chinese, and since my English is already clumsy, just imagine how much worse my Chinese is (I’ve never read a Chinese book from start to finish; the farthest I’ve gone was finish entire volumes of Chinese translated manga, like Ruruoni Kenshin and Slam Dunk). Anyway, back to that cousin. Having never been to the Philippines, she asked about how it’s like here. I told her about the weather, which can go as hot as 37 degree centi-grate-on-my-nerves. I also told her that you can buy firearms in some malls. She was shocked beyond imagining. I guess Taiwanese have their life way smoother than here, though it’s still funny how some people there whine about how their country is ultra-dire.

Also, a Taiwan citizen will receive cash coupons worth $100. My family received $400, and I used that money to buy my mom an ASUS Eee PC, and then to buy myself a few mangas and computer books. Btw, there are way too many computer books in Taiwan, more than in USA, and cheaper too. The only caveat is that they’re mostly in Traditional Chinese. I’m bummed by that, but I did eventually buy a few of those Chinese computer books to motivate me to polish my Chinese while simultaneously learning Illustrator and CSS.

The one thing I’m much bummed about with coming back to Manila is with how monotonous the sceneries here are. Every-freaking-where, I only see identikit malls. The bookstores are not big enough, and there aren’t as much computer shops here as there are in Taiwan (plus the technology lags, despite being pricier. That’s understandable, though, since Taiwan is one of the leading manufacturers of computer technologies. Acer, ASUS and BENQ are just some examples of companies from here). At least in Taipei, there are more things to do, like going to museums that actually have visitors in it, or to parks that actually give you senses of serenity. And if I grow tired of Taipei anyway, and crave for a more nature, I can always take the train. For just an hour, I’d already be by the mountainside or the riverside or both. In Manila, there’s no way to go to the mountains or beaches without using up more than 3 hours of travel time, much thanks to our lousy transportations.

With all these said, I’m going to put aside thoughts about my Taiwan days for now. Carpe diem, I hope.

Worlds Apart

My head’s still dazed from my trip to Taiwan, which has already ended for 5 days. I guess this happens because seeing the differences of the culture here (in the Philippines) and there can be a bit of a sensory overload.

I guess I never wrote this part about myself in any of my blog posts, but I’m a Taiwan citizen who has lived here in the Philippines for more than 20 years. Though most of my friends here are Filipinos or part-Filipinos, my parents are Taiwanese immigrants born and raised in Taiwan. Growing up this way, I’ve often been confused by the clash of ideals stemming from Filipino and Taiwanese culture, and by the not knowing of which one I prefer. As a result, I’m chronically laden with crises of identity, and somehow I’m a bit resigned to believing that I’ll never really belong to either, so I get my inner peace by observing their cultures’ strengths and weaknesses.

My father and his siblings (along with their spouses, so that includes my mom) have for long lived apart, but few days ago they returned to their hometown in Shuangshi, Taiwan. Some of their children - me included - also went to that place, but I only saw all (my father side’s) cousins on the day of my grandfather’s funeral. The last time I saw all of them together was also the first time I ever saw all of them together, and that was 3 years ago when it was my grandmother’s funeral.

It is funny how in all of my 25 years, I’ve only seen some of my cousins twice, even if the youngest among them are already on the fifth grade. I couldn’t even recognize some of them (as an aside, I actually have a friend who was on a similar situation, and it led him to having this awkward monologue: “Hey, [he/she] is cute! Wait, WHAT?! That’s my cousin?!?!?”). I was already 22 when I was first called 哥哥 (“ke-ke”, the Chinese word for “big brother”) by anyone related to me by blood. As of now, I’ve only been called that twice, despite having 5 younger cousins (and 4 older ones). It’s kinda obvious how much of a stranger I am to them.

Every time my older cousins open their mouth, they talk about work, such as how they get paid enough to own secondhand cars and apartments in the suburbs. What was really disheartening was their reluctance to connect with me on a personal level; instead the vibes I get from them is more like that of two job applicants haughtily comparing resumes - whatever happened to kinship? And maybe this is just my foible, but I could not bear watching them being so workaholic when the situation wasn’t calling for it: my cousins left our hometown - if they’ve even visited - immediately after the funeral was over. The same thing happened after my grandmother’s funeral, and some of them never came to visit in the interlude between the passing of grandma and grandpa. For goodness sake, my grandparents took care of them back in the days, and this is the homage they receive?

Yet this is the microcosm of what typically happens in Taiwan’s households. I see parents working the extra mile to secure brighter futures for their children, and I see children become ungrateful youths who can’t even be bothered to go out with their parents. Outside of Chinese New Year (that’s today, by the way) you won’t see Taiwan youths together with their parents. In some cases, it is already considered an achievement if they visit their parents a day a year. I once heard from my uncle that in the past 10 years, he saw my father, who lives in a different country, more often than his own daughter, who lives an hour of train ride away.

Whenever I’m in Taiwan, I’m happy to see that even people of lower-income ranges can enjoy much of the privileges that their elites enjoy, yet I grieve for the disconnect of the old and the young. In the Philippines, I’m glad that most people keep their families close, but I’m disgusted by seeing our elites living the “first-world” life while the proletariats become homeless. That gap between Taiwanese generations is the same gap between Filipino social classes. I do not know which one I prefer; hence, I just watch behind fences.

A Week In Taiwan, Part 3: Snippings

Some points of observations and some snippets of the things that happened when I was in Taiwan…

* Monday I was forced to stay home today because there’s supposedly a typhoon, and the government suspends works and classes even on the slightest hints of typhoon. Zoos, museums, schools, government-owned establishments and concert halls were all shut down. That sucked, because I was to watch a show today at National Taiwan Hall.

If I were studying in this country, and then there was supposed to be a midterm exam that I wasn’t prepared for, and then suddenly at the very last minute of yesterday I received an announcement of class suspension, I’d “yay!” and then make today another day of pretending to review my lessons. But I don’t study in Taiwan. I don’t even work here. I’m a tourist! And I was being deprived of ways to fill my wanderlust.

We decided to take Synergy (see: previous post) to the places that remained open for business. First we went to Xinyi District, and then to Shimenting. To compensate for their cancelled performance of this day (yeah, they were the ones who were performing in National Concert Hall) they sang on both places. They were able to delight quite a few passersby, including news reporters from Taiwan TV, and then a Siberian husky and its owner. This Siberian husky barked when a song Synergy sang ended, as though responding to the music. You want to hear something incredibly moronic? The news reporter interviewed the owner of this Siberian husky instead of the choir it was responding to. What kind of priority was that? Apparently, in Taiwan, you can get 15 minutes of fame by being the owner of a dog!

Taiwan news is the stupidest thing ever known to man, and that’s a scary thought considering how many stupid things man knows.

* Inside of Taipei 101 (the world’s tallest skyscraper) is a clothing shop called Dolce and Gabbana. Their products are so overwhelmingly expensive: a jacket costs 4000 US Dollars. Who in the world has the money for that stuff anyway?

Its dressing room is supercool because mirrors surround it. When you take pictures in there, this is what comes out:

* Wednesday I have nothing but admiration to all of our tour guides, because they were deeply supportive to everyone. One of them, Perlette, is also a vegetarian, like my sister and me. Last Sunday, as she was ordering dinner for everyone, she remembered to choose the foods that all three of us can eat. It was her treat. She’s sweet like that.

So this Wednesday while on the way to the venue of the concert, I saw a vegetarian restaurant. I wanted to act gentlemanly to my sister and to Perlette, so I sneaked my way there. I so lovingly handpicked the best-tasting foods and paid for all of them with my own money. Once I was done buying the foods I was so happy and smug about doing nice deeds that I swaggered back to our concert hall’s lobby. It was then when I was told something that made me want to fall to the ground: Perlette also bought all 3 of us foods. My flight of knightly fancy was all in vain. Bah!

* The tour guides and I took some members of the Synergy to the Feng Chia Night Market in Taichung. Accompanying three Synergy members, I took a taxi. The driver, a person who did not speak English and thus needed me as his translator, was star-struck by those Americans. He kept asking me who these people are, and then he kept telling me about the history of Taichung, and then he started to tell me about how hard his life as a taxi driver was. Some time during this conversation (though it was more of a monologue, since all I did was say “yeah” ad nauseum) those guys started to make some ear-splitting chicken noises. So, the taxi sounded like this:

“You know the standard BOK (chicken noise) of living now is so BOK high BOK-KOK. Gas prices BOK are BOK soaring BOK-KOK (taxi driver pauses briefly). Yeah (my response) BOK Tell them I wish I could BOK go to Utah BOK-KOK to visit them. BOOOOOOK”

It went on like this for the next twenty minutes, and then to them I eventually shouted, “What the hell, guys!” I was laughed at.

* Benjamin loved the Chinese language. Someone told me that, while flying to Taiwan, he would ask some Chinese passengers about how to speak certain words. He even had a speech translated to Chinese so that he could deliver it onstage without needing a translator. He loved practicing that speech so much he eventually memorized his lines and delivered them effortlessly.

I love it when people of other countries are curious of the languages from where I am (Philippines and Taiwan, in my case). It’s a sign that people are taking the rudimentary steps to accepting a culture different to their own. In a very sad way, Ben is more interested in Chinese than some of my Filipino-Chinese friends, who do not even bother to learn Chinese and treat it like it’s a pointless language. No language ever has to be put up with being called pointless, especially by the people born to speak it.

* Thursday As I was doing my laundry, a guy came near me. This guy looked very much like Barry, who is our tour guide. Unlike Barry, he looked quite angry. He even treated his washing machine with much violence, slamming the lid as loudly as he could. All along I was wondering if anyone pissed on his cornflakes, which would’ve been sad, because at 1 AM this was too long a time to cry over pissed cornflakes. He got issues, indeed.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who saw the Barry look-alike. On the next day, Lindsay told everyone that she thought this same wuss-pant was Barry. Because she liked teasing Barry, she kept calling his name aloud and commenting irreverently on what he’s wearing, as he was wearing only swimming trunks. When she realized she wasn’t talking to Barry but to a lookalike (doppelganger?), she went back to her room embarrassed, and then laughed inside like a loon (that’s according to her anyway). I imagine this must’ve been what angered the guy.

* Friday The concert in the park was over. I saw Jesse hovering around and I remembered him liking passion fruit juice, so I bought him a tetra pack of passion fruit juice. From there on I realized that I can be nice to the rest of them by buying each of them fruit juices. So I got a lot tetra packs of cranberry, grapes, apple, peach, passion fruit and orange juices. Giving them to the guys earned me thanks, but when I started giving them to the girls I was being hugged.

You know, you Asian girls should learn from that! I got a hug from these people by giving them a third-of-a-dollar worth of fruit juices; I can give the most expensive gifts to girls from Philippines and Taiwan and I still do not get any thanks! Where is the love, people?

* Saturday Somebody just pissed me off. I was inside National Taiwan Hall having dinner with all the stars that came to perform here this week. There was a waitress serving fruit juices. Being thirsty, I went to her to get a cup of fruit juice. She ignored me for more than five seconds, serving everyone else who came in later than I did and was not even in front of her. And when I finally spoke out about wanting a drink, she served me my drink without even looking at me.

Don’t you just love it when you’re being given such a poor service? I wasn’t asking to be treated like a VIP, but I didn’t need to be treated as an invisible man either, eh? It’s amazing how parties can winnow the people who keep it real from those who are fake and pretentious.

* Sunday It was way past midnight now and in only a few hours we will be departing from Taiwan. Every one of us was inside one room recollecting all of what happened. Tears were shed and hugs were given. All of the tourist guides were given a time to speak about what they’ve felt.

My speech sucked! I felt so stupid. I wanted to say something that’ll move everyone, but instead I got laughed at by saying that I was such a shy person who wanted to hide behind curtains. And then the rest of my speech was so full of incomplete thoughts, which, when you think about it, sort of resembles life.

* The foods that the Americans like are dumplings, meat buns, yakult, slurpee, man tou, and some of Taiwan’s indigenous fruits.

The foods that the Americans can’t stand are the stinky tofu, and the green beans ice popsicle.

* I miss them so. I wonder if they’ll ever come to the Philippines.

A Week In Taiwan, Part 2: Synergy

In Taipei, at the underground tunnels leading to subway stations, one can often see pedestrians - wearing busy if not dour expressions - walking briskly and fast, like they’re bent to, without delay, go someplace. Brummagem wares are ignored, bums are not spared any penny, and street musicians are paid no mind. But on one Sunday, July 27th of 2008, something strange happened inside the tunnels. Suddenly, people were not dashing out as fast as they could; but they were converging on a particularly noisy spot. They looked fascinated. They were watching singers and dancers from Utah who had come to perform all over Taiwan. Songs are sung, dances are danced, hands are clapped, and cheers are yelled. Synergy, as the group is called, was on a mission to inspire everyone with music, and this was the first day.

08 Set the Night to Music (Synergy)

I was one of the audiences, but what set me and another three apart from the rest of the spectators was that we travel with Synergy. We were their tour guides. Okay, a more accurate description is “Those other three are Synergy’s tour guides; Nightdreamer came along to pretend to be a tour guide like being a tour guide was a walter-mitty fantasy of Snoopy.” Meanwhile, I also felt stupid about myself. Yin Chu, tour guide #1, earned a magna cum laude in her college years, and she works in a UN-subsidized organization while moonlighting as a piano teacher. Barry, tour guide #2, is an international school graduate and is also a singer, and he is just about to go to New York University for college. Perlette, tour guide #3, is a singer/model/pianist and, despite being child of a French and a Taiwanese, can speak Filipino. Nightdreamer was tour (mis)guide #4 who, on most occasions, felt like hiding behind curtains; his greatest musical achievement is his playing a perfect “Mary Has a Little Lamb” with the 1-2-3 keys of a tone-dialed telephone (the lone audience of that performance is his own left ear). I was the only nonmusical person among the guides and the travelers. In a completely mediocre way I stood out!

Barry

Perlette

A random nobody posing with Yin Chu

The days went by like this: sightsee at daytimes, perform at nighttimes. We took Synergy from the north to the south of Taiwan, stopping to let them perform on venues that were both formal (like National Concert Hall [the Carnegie Hall of Taiwan], Sanchung Society Center, Churches of Latter Day Saints in Taipei and in Kaoshung, Sun Yat Sen Theater of Tai Chung, Yun Lin Theater, and in a Kaoshung’s park) and informal (like in an underground tunnel, outside the Shinkong Department Store of the Xinyi District, in a school of Kaoshung, and at a crossroad of Ximending). We also sent them to tourist spots like the Shilin Night Market, Taipei 101, Xinyi District, Ximending, Feng Chia Night Market, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, National Palace Museum, Long Shan Temple, Sun Moon Lake, and Holiday Jade and Flower Market.

Sorry for the name-drop overloads. I’ll atone by pictures!

THERE ARE A LOT OF PICTURES IN HERE! YOU’RE READY FOR THAT? THEN CLICK “MORE”!

(more…)

A Week In Taiwan, Part 1: Shuangshi

I was planning to post my Taiwan travel accounts the day I depart from that country, but I miss doing all these typing. Plus, my blog badly needs to show lifesigns.

I will begin at day 3, before I talk about my first to my last day here. And why am I doing that? No reason, except it feels so literary hence pretentious! Nah, I kid. The real reason is, I just think day 3’s events best introduces what happened.

July 29, 2008

Shuangshi Train Station. Yes, the picture gives a different spelling, but I still prefer “Shuangshi”.

My grandfather lives in a province, so I went there just to see him. Right now, he’s at the throes of a cancer, and, after not having seen each other for more than 2 years, I paid him a visit with the intent of lifting his spirits up in my little way. I’m sure you don’t want to hear all these dramas, so I’ll just go on to tell you what his province is like. It’s called Shuangshi, which is the Chinese for “Two Rivers”. True to its namesake, there are two rivers here and somewhere in this town they come to a confluence. Rumor has it that the exact place where the two meets is haunted, but I never bothered to find out. All I know is that they’re very calming to look at, and you can do some fishing and swimming on them. But rivers aren’t all there is to Shuangshi. There are mountains too. Shuangshi is altogether an ideal place to reconnect with mother nature, especially if you’re tired of Taipei’s frantic ways of living. It’s also a good place to bike.

A view from outside home. Yep, my grandfather lives by the riverbank.

Those two pictures show my favorite playground in Shuangshi.

Sadly, I couldn’t go to too many place here. Typhoons were going on in this part of Taiwan, and though it wasn’t raining, the winds were unrelenting. They were so strong, they can sweep you away and knock you off your feet better than love at first sight would!

This is a stray dog that followed me around. 

I would love to have taken that train.

Instead I got this.

Inside.

At nighttime, I went to Sanchung Society Center to watch a Utah choir. They were A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. How amazing? Like, behind me there were these fatass jerks who claimed they have mad dancing and singing skills (bum-looking fat guys dancing is not a sight I’d care to take to my grave). By the time the performance was over, though (with encores, by the way), these jerks were screaming like a chicken on steroids.

Everyone in the house (SLANG?! IN DA HAUZ) were very inspired the entire night. I can imagine that the next day they go to work, they’re going to make their coworkers jealous by telling them what a great show they saw the day before. So where does any of these leave me? Well, seeing that I traveled with this Utah choir (nearly) the entire week, I’m overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed by their talents, and it helps that they’re among the most amiable group I’ve ever been with. Their presence made my Taiwan vacation times very much enjoyed.

Galera Galera

My cold may have something to do with this, but I was not contented about our company’s Puerto Galera (PG) outing. I had fun, on occasions. I thought some of the places we went to were great. But for a vacation, this just wasn’t revitalizing enough, as I didn’t feel my stress go away as I would when I go elsewhere. Someone I like was missing too, and… 

Well, nevermind that.

The roads were big reasons why this PG trip was tiring. If you wish to go to different places in PG, you need to take the jeep, and that means you’ll spend hours sitting inside moving vehicles (and that’s without considering the boat from Batangas to PG, and the ride from wherever you’re from to Batangas) until your buttocks are sore. Good luck enjoying the PG’s roads too, as they’re rocky and they zigzag too often, and they can easily give you motion sicknesses. Some of my coworkers grew so sick of the traveling, they puked. I didn’t, but I was dizzied for a long time.

That’s the summary. You want to read the long story? Then have some coffee with you, for this may take a while to finish.

Around 10 AM, we were at Puerto Nirvana Resort. Because we guys were so gentlemanly, we chose the rooms that were cheaper (and worse) than the ladies’. Ours resembled a cabin, and the beds were double-decked, which meant that the person at the bottom bed will be disturbed by the movement of whoever was on the top. And I was at the bottom. Great, noh? The rooms were so cramped, that I half-believed that I was on a ship complete with a captain who’d bark us orders during the morning’s wee hours. The air conditioner looked old too, and when someone turned it on, he was shocked to find a mouse scurry out of its louvers.

The resort wasn’t bad though. It had a videoke machine, a table for table tennis, a small eatery, a swimming pool barely the size of a Honda Civic, a half-court basketball court, and a half-assed billiard table with torn felts. It was adjacent to a beach too, although that beach wasn’t a top-notched one. Still, it’s always soothing to hear the surfs, and I spent long time doing just that.

Anyway, we had our team-building activities. The instructor instructed very vaguely, and his English was broken like Janina San Miguel’s. We barely knew what was happening, but the good part was that the activities made us go to Bulabod Beach and Tamarraw Falls.

Bulabod Beach was an under-populated beach. The only people there were its few inhabitants and us. There were no other guests. Although the sands were more like pebbles, nothing else about it makes it different to all other beaches. I don’t know why, but I never went to swim. All I did was lie down and play with a few beach-comber dogs. They were unusually friendly.

Tamarraw Falls is a cascading waterfall. I liked this place. We goofed around while bathing under the falls. The water was very cold and very clean.

The rest of the day was boring. Everyone went to our resort’s eatery and then got drunk. I’m an exception. I never am much of a drinker and I prefer enjoying the night doing different things, so this was the part where my Black Boy came in handy. I also played a few rounds of billiards and I didn’t do so badly at that.

The next morning’s activity was exciting. We went snorkeling! Yay! Step aside, Kanye West, this is how we use our killer mouth-breathing skills! The snorkeling lasted long, and I saw many kinds of marine creatures: starfishes, fishes of different sizes and colors, and coral reefs. So I didn’t see Lochness Monster and Kraken; still, I was spellbound with the sights of the undersea. That’s something I wouldn’t mind seeing for a longer time.

And then the time just fast forwarded like it’s nobody’s business. Nighttime came before we were even prepared for that. To enjoy our last evening at PG, some of us went to White Beach to chill out there. I decided, what the heck, I was bored with reading, so why not follow along. So I followed along.

In White Beach, there were a lot of what looks to me like outdoor bars. I wasn’t crazy about them. The last time I went to White Beach, which was in the late Nineties, it was quaint, and you can, in quiet, enjoy the sceneries of the beach. I don’t understand why people think it’s a good idea to “develop” this beach into one establishment of bars after another, and then make the whole place a gaudy convergence for lonely Caucasian singles in search of “exotic” Filipina brides. Just imagine if the same thing was done to Mt. Everest. You have people climbing to the top, so they can peacefully enjoy the panoramic view from the world’s highest peak, but then it has this bar that plays LOUD ASS TRANCE SONGS BY DJ TIESTO, as if the point of climbing a mountain that high was so that you can par-tayyyy. Anyway, I don’t give a damn about all the crap hiphop and the crap trance music these bars blast on their speakers. I don’t give a damn about drinking too (why go so far from the city doing things you can do inside the city?). And since there wasn’t anything else to do in White Beach, I hated that place.

I went back to our resort, and in my room I went. I tried to sleep, but only twisted and turned. People in the room were simply too noisy in their sleep. The person beside me snored like an elephant with a cocaine overdose. The person my feet points to talked in his sleep. And somebody from farther away also snored like the yawling of an angry chimpanzee. I couldn’t sleep! I really couldn’t! The best I could do was steal a 30-minute nap only to be awakened by an unbearably loud snoring. Before I knew it, the sky was already bright.

So the third day came, and I went home sleep deprived and with a rotten mood. And sick too.

My Shanghai Travel Writing

I've meant to write about Shanghai for quite some time, but I've been procrastinating. Even just by recalling Shanghai from memory, coherent thoughts wouldn't form. That's why I've not written about Shanghai two weeks since I've left it.

Know that this is not chronological, so I won't write like "On day 1 I was here, and on day 2…". Rather, I chose the highlights of the trip. I think that's for the best, otherwise this would be too long-winded, that when printed it will be so thick that most will think this is supposed to be of the intellectual bastion. That's why people buy business books - the thicker the books, the more ostentatiously smart they are, right?

Shanghai. It's not China's capital, but it's among the nation's most prosperous cities. Think of New York to America. These two cities are quite alike in regard to their countries, and the architectures of some of their buildings resemble each other's. Just walk along The Bund, and you'll see.

The Bund: Nighttime

 An Impressive clock tower

The Bund: Morning. It's foggy.

The Bund is similar to Baywalk (Philippines), except The Bund is a river's walkway. When you go there, you'll see a lot of European Art Deco/Beaux Art buildings behind you. These kinds of buildings can also be seen all over Manhattan (or on our Roxas Boulevard, although they're abandoned and unmaintained and changed from Beaux Arts to Bulox Farts). So try to keep your ears open because language is their only discernible difference. Look opposite to the Huangpu River, that there's the Pudong district. See the many tall modern skyscrapers like the Pearl Tower, Jin Mao Tower and the soon-to-be-finished World Trade Center. Of course, you can go there, climb up, and have a panoramic view of Shanghai. They're among the top ten tallest buildings of the world.

Jin Mao Tower (front) World Trade Center (back)

Pearl Tower (hide your snark, please) 

You can go from The Bund to Pudong by subway. Or you can go by The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. The admission fee to it is expensive ($4), but try it once anyway. You'll move by an underground cable car through a passage filled psychedelic lights accompanied by weird sci-fi music, making the going from point A to B very much like traveling to another dimension (or at least the common notion of dimensional transport. I really wouldn't know). See the final scenes of 2001: Space Odyssey. The experience is alike.

By the way, Shanghai is enormous, and that means if you want to see its tourists spots, you have to do a LOT of travelings. While the subway is useful, it does not go to all places. Get used to being peripatetic.

Ok, some may moan that they hate walking. Fine, but if you're touring anywhere, do not expect to get your money's worth if you're walk-phobic. I'm saying this because there might be some who are so amenities-spoiled they couldn't even cross the road (I know a handful of people like that), and will choose the guided package tours. Don't. They're not worthy. Guided package tours will take you to the tourists spots very briefly you'll fail to absorb the sceneries. And they'll also drag you to many irritating souvenir shops and awful restaurants. My suggestion is for you to plan your own itinerary and be prepared to walk a ton. That rule applies anywhere, but I just need to say it because I know of some who always use package tours instead. Walking is a fact of life. Deal with it.

Maybe you will think that I'm sidetracking, but I'm not. Walk a few kilometers from The Bund and you'll reach Nanjing Road, a very popular shopping street. You can also reach here by subway. You will see malls, restaurants, department stores, hotels, and shops. It's almost like New York's Times Square, which, for better or worse, means it's very bright, noisy and crowded. But this shopping district extends farther than Times Square, and is divided east and west with People's Park in between, with each of the three having its subway station. People's Park is a good repose from all the bustling, and has a museum near by. 

If you can read/speak Chinese, then take the bus; otherwise, you can walk (very far) or taxi to XinTianDi, south of People's Park. XinTianDi is an impressive sight because it looks like Paris (and even New Orleans). It has malls, galleries and theaters, but it's not so much a place to shop as it is to dine and wine. Very expensively at those. So unless you're willing to barhop and to splurge, going here might not be worth your time.

Xin Tian Di

Back off, dude. 

So far I've been talking about places in Shanghai that are reminiscent of the West. But I'm sure you didn't go to Shanghai for something like that; rather, you came with mental images of Oriental temples, old towns or pavilions. Well, worry not, Shanghai has many of those! The only drawback is that going to there without using taxis are like having a pilgrimage: manageably tiring, but oh-so-rewarding.

Yuyuan Garden is EXQUISITE! How could I even describe it? Just look at these pictures:

Yuyuan

 Yuyuan

 Yuyuan again

 Ditto

He's being reprimanded by a lion-hybrid

And you won't only see impressive gardens, pavilions and pagodas, you can also dine here (without giving Trillanes an open invitation to your pocket). They also have an expanse of shops where you can buy junks for your needy friends whose "Bon Voyage" actually means "Pasalubong ha!" (translation: don't forget my souvenirs). My only gripe here is that they have two Starbucks that plays Kenny G. When I think of traditional China, I think of emperors, temples, erhus and teahouses. Coffee shops and muzak JUST. DON'T. FIT.

Thankfully, Qibao does not have Starbucks. Qibao is identical to Yuyuan Garden, except if Yuyuan is of the affluent ancestors then Qibao is of the ancient everypeople. Both of them are uniquely fascinating. You'll travel a lot in going to Qibao (and here's a warning: the wikitravel's tip on that is inaccurate) because it's far from central Shanghai. A temple is here, which makes this place more spiritual than Yuyuan. They also have narrow streets that are full of sellers of foods and ancient Chinese goods.

He thinks he's a Tang Dynasty poet

Once again… 

Streets of Qibao 

Same 

For a temple that's nearer to the urban areas, go to Jade Buddha Temple. It is sacred, but you can go here to see the sheer magnificence of the Buddha statues of Maitreya, Siddharta, Guanyin and many others. What I don't like is that its incense is expensive: at $2 for 3 sets when it's 50 cents for one elsewhere. Even more absurd is that their incenses are said to have "different flavors", so there's a kind for family prosperity, another for love, another for harmony, and another for fortune. I don't get it. They also have souvenir shops that sell jewelries, paintings and antique statues. But, by far, the best thing about this temple (and believe me there's a lot to like) is the foods. They're scrumptious, affordable, and vegetarian-friendly.

Jade Buddha Temple

Buddha shrine

Jade Buddha Temple's Backyard

That covers it for my short Shanghai travel guide. There are too many places here that are worth your time, and I'm sure I haven't gone to as many as 1% of China's tourist spots. All I can say is that Shanghai is fabulous. You HAVE to go there when you get the chance.

Before I end this entry, here are my few observations about Shanghai:

• Did you know that Yao Ming is from Shanghai? He is the most famous individual of this country. There's a poster of him every hundred meters.
• The authorities can do things to you if you say something that indicts communism.
• People from Shanghai think that Philippines is a more prosperous nation than China. Ha ha ha. *nervous laughters*
• Pirated DVD costs $1-2.
• If you're a vegetarian, let Happy Cow guide you to finding vegetarian restaurants of any cities.
• Sun Yat Sen is much revered.
• Chiang Kai Shek isn't.
• Be wary of how the people here drive because they're very undisciplined. They swerve at will and they very often beat the red lights. Kind of like in the Philippines.
• Sadly, you'll get used to being-bumped-without-receiving-apologies.
• A lot of Chinese spit anywhere, but I've been told that people who do these are not from Shanghai.
• Have you ever seen Chinese acrobats? My goodness, they're practically boneless!
• Surprisingly, the immigration office from China is very well-mannered and efficient. Quite unlike pinoy's.
• I hate going into this "we pinoys don't have that" diatribe-land, but we DO need to improve, to work harder, and to STOP relying on delusional government's "efforts" and buzzwords. Stop believing in institutions that overrate their achievements. Please. Philippines is a beautiful country; we're just not doing our part to make it stay beautiful!
• The weather wasn't very good when I was in Shanghai. A foggy day, in Shanghai town/had me low, had me down/I viewed the morning with such alarm/the vista from Pudong had lost its charm…