Good Weekend

This last weekend was pretty sweet. On Thursday I was able to meet my girlfriend for dinner and a walk around the Shilin night market (士林夜市). As part of a little deal I'd made with her I had to eat some stinky tofu 臭豆腐--if doesn't sound good just think that it smells even worse. The first stall we went to was overpowering how bad it smelled. So we went to a place that had fried stinky tofu. It wasn't bad.

I had Friday off for a Taiwanese holiday. So I went with the lady up to Danshui/Tamshui/淡水. It was pretty nice to get out and walk by the ocean with about half the other people who live in Taipei...it is a big local tourist destination. Well wouldn't you know it but the lady didn't think I had enough stink toufu the day before...so we had some more--bbq'd stinky tofu.

Saturday I was supposed to meet at 2pm to go to a Chinese style post-burial wake for a coworkers father-in-law. But when I called at 1:45 they were already gone. So instead I went to the driving range. I hadn't picked up a club for about 9 months. Funny thing is I hit better than I ever have. After that I went to a big park in the center of the city and laid out in the sun and listened to a Taiwanese concert.

Sunday I got up early and met my friend Tim and his friend Eddy for a hike. We started about 9:30am and finished about 4:30pm. There was only one steep climb. So the scenery was great, company was good, and the hike wasn't too hard. Lunch was some boxed stuff we bought at 7-11. After a good hike it tasted good at the top of a "mountain" called Miantian shan 面天山. Th two downsides to the hike was the last half was all downhill. And that killed my hamstrings and quads (a few hours of all downhill will do that). The other part was the clouds came and went so that meant the temperature changed a bit whenever we had cloud cover (it was 83+ without the clouds)

All in all a good weekend.