My Favorite Taiwanese Foods

Hi Readers,

I noticed that I devoted a category of my blog to food, and it has only 2 posts! What an atrocity, since food is one of my passions. Therefore, let this post be devoted to food!

No matter what people say, Taiwanese people will maintain that they have the best food selection in the world. I truly believe that Taiwan is probably the only place in the world where it is cheaper to eat out than eat in. An average meal costs US$2-3, and "gourmet" meals such as 5-course meals go up to exorbitant price of US$10. Oh noes, who can afford this? The answer: EVERYBODY. And everybody does, as every single high-end restaurant is always packed with people wanting to eat like a king. In fact, there is so much demand, that most high-end restaurants don't take reservations. It's first come first serve.

I live across the street from one of Taiwan's best (and most expensive) restaurants: Ding Tai Fung. This is fortunate, because we can walk across the street, take a ticket, go home and wait for half an hr to an hr until a table becomes available, and all the while chuckle at the people who are being baked by the scorching sun while they stand in line. Ding Tai Fung's specialty: the Xiao Long (Tang) Bao. These are little steamed buns/dumplings that come in little bamboo baskets. The "tang" in brackets means "soup", and it is a variant on these steamed dumplings in the sense that when you bite into them they are filled with delicious broth along with meat! Yum! I'm getting so hungry just thinking about it. Argh.

Taiwan's national food: the Stinky Tofu. THIS IS MY FAVORITE DISH IN THE WORLD. Most non-Taiwanese (and even some Taiwanese) people hate it, but I love it. I love it like Thai people love durian (look it up if you don't know what durian is). Stinky tofu is pretty much what it sounds like: it stinks. But it tastes great! Experienced stinky-tofu-eaters maintain that the more it stinks the better, and I am of the same opinion! Stinky tofu comes in all shapes and forms, whether deep-fried, grilled, steamed, stir-fried, cold-mixed, or more. I love it it all. If you diss this dish it will actually annoy me quite a bit, so don't do it!

Another great food item: Bubble Tea. Now, probably 90% Americans who think they know the variety of flavors that bubble tea comes in cannot even imagine all the flavors they can get. There are literally over 50 flavor combinations + 2 choices (amount of sugar and ice) per combination. Even if you drink a different type of bubble tea everyday it would take you a year to finish all the possible combinations. This is probably the biggest reason why I gain 20 pounds in Taiwan every time I go back. Last summer I averaged 3 cups a day. I gladly added the 10 pounds lol.

When I go back, there are some things I never fail to make a pilgrimage to get. One of these is the Rou Yuan / Ba Wan / "Meat Rounds" of Shuili, in the remote mountainous Nantou county. I am not sure how to describe these. It is like a gelatinous-ball surrounding a bunch of meat in the middle, fried in oil. It is simply amazing. Everytime my grandma drives us there, assuming we survive the drive (she is 82 years old after all, and those mountain roads are not exactly like the interstate through Illinois), I get at least 5-6 of them. And eat and eat and eat. And then after I'm done there's free soup! It's amazing.

I remember one time we almost got in a fight with some other family at the "meat round" place. We were in line behind them, and the dad said to the cook, "Hey give me 30 of them." The cook said that there's only 20 left and that since we were in line he would make sure we got some. The dad begin to argue with the cook and he shouted: "Hey we drove 4 hours from Taipei just so we could come here! Give me all of them!" And then my grandma shouted at him, "SHUT YOUR TRAP YOU DOUCHE, MY GRANDSON FLEW 15 HOURS FROM CHICAGO TO COME HERE!" And that shut him up pretty quickly. Good times! Did I mention that I love my grandma? =D

Shuili's Clear Ice is also pretty well known, and another thing I make the perilous pilgrimage to Shuili for. (On a side note, maybe next time I go back I will request that I do the driving, because I would actually like to live to taste these things). Anyways, the clear ice is sold at a Popsicle factory. Although it's only a popsicle made from pure sugar water, it tastes great on a summer day. Of course, I don't stop there - I quickly move on to passionfruit, peanut, red bean, mango, lemon, and whatever other flavors they have there. As these popsicles only cost about 10 cents US each, I usually get upwards of 10 every time I visit. Oh gosh I am hungry.

So hungry! I will probably stop there and continue another post on Taipei's restaurants some other time. OMG I AM SO HUNGRY! I want those meat rounds now. STINKY TOFU! ARGHHH I miss Taiwan =(.

-FCDH

Zombies

Hi Readers,

So anyone that knows me well (or at all) knows I have somewhat of an obsession with zombies. I live constantly under an irrational fear of zombies. Ok, maybe that's not completely true, I'm not expecting the apocalypse to appear out of thin air anytime soon. But buried deep in my mind I have an unease that it will happen one day, and that we'll all have to fight for our lives. Wouldn't it be great?!?

Sometimes I'll just be walking and then I'll think: "what would I do if a zombie mob came at me right now? What if they are "night of the living dead" zombies that amble towards you and you can basically walk away from? What if they are "28 days later" zombies that you can't even run from? What would I do and where would I go?

Weapons? What can I use around me? Right now I'm in the computer lab, and if zombies came I'd probably have like 5 mins before they figure out how to open the door. I would probably see if I could pry off these metal panels at the back and use them as a bat. That's only if I can't break the window and run out the back first.

What if I am inside a building and zombies surround it? I thought about this when I was walking through the tunnels that link Chem Annex, Noyes, and RAL. Tunnels would be a good thing to have in case of a zombie invasion, so that people can move from building to building without need to go outside. At the same time, what if the zombies get inside the tunnels? We'd have to fortify the tunnels against zombie intrusion.

Would I want to go home? Grab some canned goods and my hiking backpack and hightail it out? Where would I go? Zombie literature always say go north to Canada, because zombies would freeze in the winter and you might be able to live safe-ish lives there. I would probably think about starting my walk north. But what about food?? Even if I do fill my backpack with food I'll probably still only last a few days. Money? Would it even be worth anything? Water??

This is pretty much the point when I would say to my self, gosh I probably won't survive the zombie apocalypse if it ever happens. That's why I hope it never happens. But then a small part of me will think: maybe I do want it to happen, so I can challenge myself to survive in a situation like that. Granted, a failure would mean death, and there are no checkpoints or saved games that you can reload from. (or is there?)

-FCDH

Silent Support for a Friend

Dear Friend,

I will not disclose your name, even your initials, in order to respect your privacy. Let our midnight chat, during which you spilled your deepest secrets to the two of us, be the only inkling of who you are. I am sure you will read this, and I am sure you will know that I am talking about you.

Your story, and everything you said that night, touched my heart to the very core. Words literally cannot describe how I felt, and how I still feel. I never thought I would meet someone as strong as you are. Even just listening to your story, I had to stop myself from crying right there, because I was afraid it would make all three of us cry. I wanted to take you in my arms and to hug you tightly. To let you know that you would always have people that love you in the world. To tell you that I love you dearly as a friend, and that you can always count on me to be there for you.

The issues you are facing are not insurmountable. You are a strong person, and I am sure that you will be able to work it all out. To work out how you feel, which path to take, what your values are, and where you will go in life. Most importantly, to work out who you are.

It will not be an easy journey. But life is an important journey for all of us, whether we must walk on hot coals or shards of glass for part of the way. I don't want you to ever seriously consider death as an option again. You are much too important for the world to lose, for all your friends to lose. It gives me shivers to think that you came so close in the past, and that we could have lost you before we ever knew you.

Whenever you are feeling down, remember that I am thinking of you, wherever we both are. Let's both put our pasts behind us and try to live bravely for the future. Friends forever. Deal?

-FCDH

Corporations vs. Startups

Hi Readers,

So one of the things that really stood out for me during spring break was the differences in the ECE/CS alumni that we talked to. To be honest, before that happened, I never really thought that it was that useful to meet with alumni. Sure, it was fun chatting and talking with people who have graduated and are now in the real world. However, the importance of student-alumni relations really struck me during my spring break visits.

When we were in San Francisco, we met with a venture capitalist named Paul from I/O Ventures, which is a startup company that provides resources and guidance for new tech startups. We talked with him for an hour about startups, and I left that meeting just KNOWING that I wanted to join startups. It just sounds so cool: you'd be choosing what you would be doing, the success and failure of the startup is solely dependent upon yourself, and you'd be your own boss. The independence sounds so appealing, plus the risk you're taking keeps your life exciting. It would be an adventure, and I will probably learn a lot from it, if I ever choose to go down that route. It is the "American Dream" for businesses.

Fast forward two days, at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. Corporate to the core, completely opposite of the experience at SF. There are few hints of the startup spirit here, the same way as the lack of corporate spirit in the startup. But after talking with different Microsoft employees throughout the day, I left those meetings just KNOWING that I wanted to work in a giant corporation. (I actually left with a giant inclination to work for Microsoft. Man do they know how to sell themselves to other people.) It just seemed like such a stable and regimented life, knowing exactly that your hard work will always pay off in the form of promotions and raises, not having to worry about your job disappearing the next day. It is the "American Dream" for individuals.

How can such a dichotomy both provide such persuasive arguments? It does not seem right, to the rational person. These are fundamentally two different career and life paths, yet these are both valid paths. The only thing that is different is the risk and rewards that are involved with the paths. Does bigger risk come with a bigger reward in this case?

I have been brought up to believe in the way of the corporations. Stability was always of the utmost importance, and it always used to trump any individual developments. But I'd like to think that college has changed me. That, if the opportunity were to present itself one day, I would jump at the chance of being a part of a startup.

The future of engineering is glittering and awaiting. I can't wait to embrace the future.

-FCDH

An Uber Long Spring Break Recap

Hi Readers,

Ok, I've been putting this off for awhile. The past two weeks have been very hectic for me, mostly because I spent an awesome spring break actually doing fun stuff, and not just cooped up at home! =). Unfortunately this means I do have a backlog of stuff that I was catching up on. I also have a backlog of things I want to blog about, which I will start doing now because I kinda drank a lot of caffeine today and it has not been good because right now I am super alert and hyper and probably will not be able to fall asleep until 5am.

So this spring break was probably the best spring break I've ever had, hands down. For the past couple of spring breaks I have been stuck on campus, working at the study abroad office. Last spring break was very enjoyable too, going to the EWB conference in Denver and hanging out with Lauren. But this spring break added a whole professional dimension to it. Here was what went down.

So on the Friday that spring break started, I unfortunately did not get any sleep at all because I was up all night doing laundry and packing my things. At around 1pm, KL and I hopping into his car, and KL drove me to Indianapolis Airport, where I was supposed to catch a flight to Los Angeles. Here was the first excitement. Because of some storms in the south, American had delayed my flight by 2 hours. Well, this would have meant that I would miss the last bus of the night that I was supposed to take from LA to Santa Barbara. So...I pleaded and pleaded with the Asian lady behind the counter to do something, anything, to right this wrong. She put me on an alternative flight through Chicago, which was supposed to arrive 15 minutes AFTER my bus was supposed to leave. Slightly hopeful, I called the bus company and pleaded for them to hold the bus an extra 15 minutes until I arrived. They acquiesced.

Well, thanks to headwinds, I made it into LA 15 minutes later than I should have. It is now 10:30pm and the bus was supposed to leave at 10. I'm thinking, there's no way the bus is still here. Damn it. But, I managed to call the bus company (cellphone records show I called them 10+ times that day), and they said that the bus was still there! Albeit it was at the last pickup stop before it left the airport, and this stop was very convenient located - at the farthest terminal from my location. So I ran for it. I sprinted the entire way. And made it as the bus was getting ready to pull out. Success! I made it onto the bus 50 minutes after it was supposed to have left. My friend JJ later told me that he had never heard of anyone making the bus so late. I made it to Santa Barbara at around 1am, and my friend JJ picked me up from the bus stop and took me back to his place. Along the way, he gets stopped by a cop (2nd time that night) because his friend's car (which he was borrowing) had no headlights. None. The cop laughed at his story and let him go with a warning.

JJ lives in a dorm on the UCSB campus. It's a nice place! On Saturday morning, we wake up early-ish, and walk down to the beach. We arrived at low tide. It's nice! Exactly as I imagined, except for a little cloudier and colder, but that's fine! We walked along the beach for about half an hour, just talking about life in general, before we head back to his place. We pack some food, and go hiking in the hills surrounding Santa Barbara. It was really beautiful, and we managed to snap some photos, climb some rocks, before the rain started. Those were the highlights of SB. For the rest of my stay, it didn't stop raining, and we mostly just hung around at home and watched TV. We did go to a ECE pulled-pork party though, where there was good food, beer, and Wii. It was fun times. At the party I met this guy who was heading up to Stanford the next day (Monday), so I readily ditch my Greyhound ticket (9.5 hour ride) for a ride with him (4.5 hours) in order to get to San Francisco earlier.

Monday morning comes. I wake JJ up (6:30am), say bye, and hop in car with random dude from party. He's a cool guy, a physics grad student at Stanford. He tells me many great things about Stanford, which is somewhat of a relief for me. At around 11:30, we arrive in Palo Alto. I say thanks, part with $10 for his drive, and hop on the CalTrain to go into San Francisco city. I switch to the BART and head to Berkeley, where I meet up with SL for lunch. Haven't seen her in a year, so it's exciting! After lunch (pizza), we get ice cream, and she shows me around Berkeley. It's an awesome campus, and would definitely in serious running with Stanford had I gotten in. We part ways after 3 hours (she has to go to a lab meeting) and I go shopping in Berkeley. I then meet up with TS for dinner, and we talk about his dislike for grad school and life in general. I then bid TS goodbye and head to the CalTrain station, where I miss the train by 10 minutes and must wait 50 minutes for the next train to San Jose. Arrive in San Jose at 11:30pm, walk 15 minutes from train station to hotel, checking behind me the whole time to ensure I won't get mugged, check in, iron shirt and pants, and crash on bed.

Next day I meet up with ECE crew (SH, BP, and MG). We eat breakfast with an ECE alum who works at Intel, and then drive up to San Francisco to meet with a venture capitalist. We spend the rest of the afternoon doing touristy stuff in SF, before heading to Google's headquarters in Mountain View for the ECE alumni event. At the event, I meet a whole bunch of alumni. It was an awesome experience. Plus, open bar and free food! Could that night get any better?

Wednesday, we wake up early, and take the flight to Seattle. We don't have anything planned for that day, so we go do some more touristy stuff! We visit the fish market in downtown Seattle, where we ate awesome clam chowder. It was so good. I'm hungry. Back on topic. After that, we visit Boeing's plant in Everett, and get a tour of their production facility. It was AMAZING! If I wasn't already an electrical engineer, just visiting that plant would make me want to go into aerospace engineering. It was so cool! Seeing and hearing about the production process for all of the Boeing planes, especially the 787, was awesome. At least for me and MG, since we are both engineers. SH and BP looked slightly bored this entire time, lol. That night we ate at this seafood restaurant. It was awesome! The table was covered with a clean cloth, they brought a bucket of seafood, and dumped it right on the table. We tore into it with our hands. It was the best dinner I had in a long time. Hungry again.

Thursday, we wake up early, and tour the Microsoft offices in Redmond. Now I have to say, I did not have a good impression of Microsoft before my visit there. But MS's campus is absolutely amazing. It is so huge, with so many amenities and facilities, that it is mind boggling. The tour guides (all ECE alum) told us that there are more than 80 restaurants there! During the afternoon, we meet with different MS employees, and we talked about how the team structure of MS is setup. That night, we host another alumni event, this time at MS. There were significantly less people at this one than the Google one, but it was still fun. I especially liked talking with a Bing developer and learning the search algorithm that is implemented by Bing. After the event was over, the ECE crew drove me to Seattle's airport, and I flew out on the last flight out of Seattle to Louisville.

Louisville was where EWB's international conference was being held this year. Having left Seattle at 11pm, I arrived in Louisville at 11am, very deprived of sleep. The rest of the time spent at the conference in Louisville was uneventful, apart from us all driving to an awesome ice cream place to eat some ice cream. Along the way we listened to some radio-soap-opera thingy, which I had no idea about. It was a hilarious contemporary rendition of Madame Butterfly, and KA and I laughed the entire way to the ice cream store. On Sunday, we drove back to school.

This was truly the best spring break I'd ever have. It was so much traveling, for both business and pleasure, and I got to visit the West Coast again. After getting a more extensive California experience this time (compared with my short 2-day trip to Stanford the week before), I am completely sure I love California. I am so excited to be going there next year!

Anyways, that's a long enough post. Till next post!

-FCDH

Reflections on Stanford Visit

Hi Readers,

I am currently at the airport in Dallas, waiting for my connecting flight back to CU. Literally just 5 seconds ago, I ran into AX here, which was a nice surprise. AX flew out of Champaign on the same flight as me on Wednesday, except he was going to Intel for an interview and I was going to Stanford for my visit. What a coincidence that we ended up on the same flight again on the way back!

Anyways, back on topic. I visited Stanford on the DiscoverEE visitation trip for Electrical Engineers these past 2 days, and it was very, very eye-opening. Now I understand why people are encouraged to visit a campus before making their decision. My experience was a very mixed pot, and I am now feeling slightly stressed out about going to grad school (already).

Because Stanford couldn’t find a student host for me, I ended up finding one for myself. I crashed at my friend NJ’s place, where he had graciously taken me in and set up an air mattress for me. It was comfortable and he had a really nice studio (certainly much nicer than the studio that I used to live in). It ended up being really nice, because I could see the living conditions of the grad students, and NJ also took me around and told me a lot about things that I should expect and look for when I do come here.

Since I visited Stanford with JC and we had mutual friends there (including NJ), we ended up going out to dinner afterward at a place called the Straits. It was actually very nice and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here’s a short summary of the positives and negatives I felt about Stanford.

Positives – Research

-I am really excited about the research opportunities that will be available at Stanford. There are so many professors there, and Stanford is really unique in that they encourage multidisciplinary and cross-discipline research. So I could literally go in and join a professor in the school of business, or agriculture, or physics, or any other major, as long as it is even tangentially related to Electrical Engineering.

-Stanford professors really encourage students to “hop” between different research groups in their first year, until they find a group that suits them. They even go as far as to say, “No I will not take you into my group immediately upon your entrance to grad school. But you can join my group temporarily to try it out first, and if it is a good match then I will take you.” This was really a big relief to me, because one of the things that I worried about was choosing a group that you are not compatible in, and then being miserable for the rest of your years while you try to battle out your research project and graduate. I always thought that it was a huge risk that I would have to take, but Stanford really minimizes this, which makes me feel better.

Negatives – Living

-Stanford’s campus seems somewhat boring. When I arrived at midnight on Wednesday, I did not see a single other person on the street apart from NJ, or cars as well. Though others told me that parties did happen in the dorms, it is still a big change from Illinois.

-Where are the restaurants and bars? After the student union closes at 10, the closest places to eat/drink are like 15-20 minutes away. No more Green St. and its bars and restaurants that are readily accessible and stay open till like 2am.

-HOUSING PRICES?!?! It seems universally agreed that at Stanford $600 is the lowest you can get, while on average it is around $1000 and can go up to $1600. And here I'm paying $320 a month. Ahhh that monthly rent payment will be so painful now!

I'm still pretty sure that I'll end up going to Stanford (since UC Santa Barbara seems to have rejected me, from its lack of response), despite JJ's attempts to convince me to go to UCSB. I'm just hoping that I won't regret it, since I turned down a full-time job at National Instruments to go to graduate school. It seems like the research is positive while the living is negative, which should balance out to neutral. I hope it'll all be great in the end.

Toodles for now! Next post on Japan earthquake.

-FCDH

Easy Cruising USA

Hi Readers,

So after my Canadian driver's license expired on my birthday, I finally decided to take my Illinois driver's test to get my license. Couple of reasons for it. I didn't want to leave Illinois without getting my Illinois driver's license (as kind of a souvenir). Also, I don't have a valid ID now for going to bars, and I'll be damned if I had to bring my passport to bars (another post on this some other day). So those were incentive enough for me to brave the crowds at the DMV (ugh).

It's been on-and-off the process for awhile, starting in my sophomore year. I took the written test during the fall of my sophomore year. I remember braving the elements, and taking the stupid buses to the DMV. Thankfully, this year I had someone who would drive me there, as well as let me borrow his car. I'm very thankful to JW for letting me borrow his car, and waiting with me at the DMV.

Several things I learned during this process:

1) The DMV's website sucks. A LOT. I swear I read somewhere on the website that the written test will remain valid for 8 years, so I went to the DMV expecting to take only the driving test. And then I was very rudely informed by the lady sitting behind the desk that my test had expired, and that I would have to re-take it.

2) The written test is really easy. Not having looked at any materials in the past 2 years, I was kinda freaking out when I walked up to the testing machine to take the test. I had forgotten how easy the test was. Apart from messing up on 4 questions, I passed with flying colors (90%) within a 5 minute period, and promptly left the booth feeling victorious.

3) The driving test is REALLY easy. Oh my god. I was definitely freaking out before the test, and during the test I made several errors. Errors that would've led to me failing in Canada, but errors that the examiner shrugged off in the US. I forgot to turn on my turn signal like 4 times, I forgot to stop at a red light when turning right, and I did my downhill parking incorrectly. So after 5 minutes of driving, when the examiner told us to go back to the DMV, I was thinking: "Crap I failed. ARGH. I have to come back again to re-take this crap? AHH THIS SUCKS." And then when the examiner said "Park in the far space" and I accidentally parked in the near one, I though for sure I had failed. Then he said "ok you passed" and I was like "OMG WHAT DID HE JUST SAY?!?!?"

I can't describe how ecstatic I was about passing my US driver's test first time, and not having driven for the past 3-ish years. I was so shocked at how lax the US driving exam was. In Canada, the test is definitely much longer, and the examiners don't shy away from failing people. I had to parallel park 3 times in my Canadian test, in different situations (no car, in front of a car, in between 2 cars). In my US test, I had to "parallel park" once, which might as well have been called "pulling over" because there were no other cars on the side of the road.

The 3-point turn in Canada was conducted in an alley dead-end where, if you went too far forward or backward, you would fall into a ditch on either side. The US 3-point turn was done in a parking lot.

I wonder why the US puts such a lack of importance in driving. Letting teenagers get their licenses so early, and having such a lax system, is probably problematic for combating drunk driving efforts.

But as of right now, I'm just happy that I have a license. Yay! Though my hair looks bad in it. Ugh. I need a haircut.

-FCDH