Typhoon Teatime

Some of you may have heard of Typhoon Champi, currently bearing down on Taiwan and then expected to head north. 

The good news is that we are on the opposite side of the island from landfall, with a nice barrier of mountains between us and the typhoon. Also noteworthy is that Taiwan is not expected to get the hit by the eye, so we at least are spared the worst (but of course, keep your fingers crossed for those in Taipei, Japan, and everyone else likely to get a harsher hit).

Though our area isn't likely to get slammed, we still have an at-home learning day for Teacup. The work was completed fairly quickly, so we had some free time.

So what to do with the rest of the rainy, windy, stay-home typhoon day? 

Our brand new tradition, typhoon teatime!

('Imposter,' grumbles Clover)

Spooky style, because Halloween is approaching. 

Followed by LEGOs to the tune of Unicorn Academy audio books (Teacup's current audiobook series of choice) all afternoon, for a LEGO haunted house. 

I don't expect anything exciting this weekend, as we'll be waiting out the storm. 

I did explore more over the week, so here's a handful of interesting pictures from around the city:

A very green building. Why so stuffed with greenery? Is it that no one lives there? Or is it that there's a balcony plant quota? Maybe it's an office building? 

These trees are blooming all over right now. A closeup of the flowers shows they're little lanterns in shape.

Cool building and statue, a hotel/mall mix and a another random statue. 

More street art

Pretty tree-lined path 

Dragon fruit! 

Water wheel and birds of paradise

Brown tussock moth caterpillar (I think....)

Bonus:

No, you may not work!

Snowy plums, cheesy chive bread, stir fry of  kabocha pumpkin, bok choy, and chicken in ginger with nutmeg, garlic, ginger, and soy sauce

Verdict: quite tasty!

Earthshaking Tofu Rocks (Wait, It's Not the Rocks!)

 Time to rock my world at Tofu Rocks!

Actually my first real, noticeable Taiwan earthquake was a few days before Tofu Rocks. I was very confused, sitting at the kitchen table, as to why it felt like the boat was rocking, and everything was moving back and forth. But it was a minor quake, just a couple of minutes of gentle swaying.

Speaking of earthquakes, they're very common in Taiwan. All the buildings are therefore required to be quake-tolerant. This includes the power line infrastructure, whose poles are built on stilts, as shown. 

I'm so flexible! (says utility pole on a stilt)

I got this picture while checking out a cool bike/walking trail in the area. 

Following it, I discovered it went by Tofu Rocks, a local landmark!

Tofu Rocks: Named because they look like chunks of tofu.

Tofu Rocks at sunset

Tofu rocks not at sunset

Lookin' at you, Zhubei City

Mostly I just enjoyed hopping rock to rock, and went back with Teacup over the weekend, wherein she dragged me across and back twice before I got all tuckered out hopping over the uneven parts of the rocks, and had to ask for mercy (and also it was getting dark). I'll hopefully return to the biking path often, as it looks like a really nice place for a walk or bike.

If there's anything truly ground-shaking in the metaphorical sense, it's probably the pineapple. Holy cow, I never realized how sweet and flavorful pineapples could be! I don't think I can pineapple in the US anymore, and if you know me, I used to go nuts for it.

Nah, that's an exaggeration. If it's all I can get, I'll still eat the blander US version.

Dragon fruit, too, is sweeter here, and so flavorful. The red dragon fruit especially. I'm also a big fan of persimmons, which look like orange tomatoes and taste like cinnamon apples. Taiwan has got a lot of delicious fruit, in other words! I enjoyed wandering around the local fruit market quite a bit.

Speaking of wandering around, a couple of cool city features I've passed on my explorations:

These pudding cakes are super delicious, and only $4-$6 USD for an 8" cake.

Stone statue, with a lighting feature from the building behind it

Honeydew melons, apparently, from a nearby fruit market    

Bonus:

Passionfruit, and a stir fry of a local cabbage, water spinach, pineapple, pork, garlic, and soy sauce.
Verdict: Passionfruit: The seeds are a little crunchy for my tastes. Couldn't quite appreciate it fully.
 The stir fry: A waste of perfectly good pineapple. T.T I'm sorry, poor pineapple, I truly wronged you; I somehow turned you bland and flavorless. What did I do???

Fresh pineapple. Also noodles stir fried with red amaranth, pork, pineapple, thai basil, garlic, and soy sauce. 
Verdict: Much tastier. And the red amaranth made the noodles pink, which was pretty fun.

Why are you writing this post instead of petting me?!
(Ensuing deletion of much cat typing)

Crabs on the Tidal Flats

 Teacup wanted to go to the beach. So this past weekend, I searched for closest beaches, and got a cab.

We wound up at Happiness Beach, a locally-known tourist spot. It was actually more of a tidal flat than the kind of beach I'm used to (I'm more used to short sandy beaches!). I'd never been on a tidal flat before, so this was really cool to me!

Huuuuuge wide beach before you get to the sea

We got there not too long after low tide, too, so we got to see the water so far away it seemed unreal. Also unreal was how crabby the beach was. As in, herds of tiny crabs (Gemini called them blue soldier crabs) about the 1-2" across scuttled in groups over the sand, burrowing in whenever we got close. The sand itself was not at all flat, but rather scattered with tiny 'pebbles' of sand where the crabs had done their burrowing. In some areas it was just piles of mud with no flat sand visible. 

Evidence of crab burrows

Crab herd! Or, given they are soldier crabs, crab army!

We splashed around in the shallow tide pools for a couple of hours, with me keeping an eye on the water. I have never seen tides rise before, but here I could physically and literally see the water encroaching closer and closer. Teacup took off her shoes a few inches from the water line (there weren't really crashing waves, as a couple of sand bars smoothed those out before they reached us). Within a minute I had to tell her to grab them before they floated away.

Since I wasn't familiar with the area, and I know things can get dangerous fast when strong currents form behind sand bars, I kept Teacup and me above the water line and refused to let any sand bars get behind us. So, we didn't actually get down to the waves themselves. But we had a plenty fun time, and the water of the tide pools was between warm and hot, great for splashing around in. Plus there were a ton of tiny fish that nibbled at our toes. The can't-hurt-you kind of nibbles, super cute.

Toe nibbler. Very ticklish!

Bike path and stairs

Happiness Beach is along a bike pathway, so I want to return at some point and bike along it. It also has some wide, flat stairs that are apparently popular for photo purposes, though people were just using them for stairs while we were there. And there were some 4-seater motor bikes, rather like golf carts but more bike-looking, that people rent nearby and use to go down the bike path. Sometime I want to try one, as they seem like a fun way to enjoy the seashore. I really want to head back for a sunset there, too, as it is on the westward side of the island and should give us some stunning sunsets. We'll see if I get back there.

In other, non-beach asides, I took a couple of pictures of things around town:

Random sculpture of two orbs. The first is smaller than the back one, but from this angle the perspective makes them almost the same size.

Lake guy playing with metal duckies

Malay Night Heron (its mate also lives nearby)

Zhubei City waterway in a random park

A very blue and curvy office building in Zhubei City

Random pretty tree

And the bonus pictures I know y'all are really here for:

Cat! I got the automatic feeder working

Kabocha squash and water spinach over rice, stir fried with five spice blend, nutmeg, garlic, soy sauce, and a kumquat-jam I made because the green kumquats were too sour and I couldn't think of any better way to use them before they went bad. Last time I had kumquats, they were orange, and though they were lemon-sour, these green ones were more sour than that.

Verdict: Actually very tasty! I love kabocha squash, and five-spice and nutmeg bring out the nutty flavor nicely (kabocha makes me think of a smooth, creamy, nutty butternut squash). Kumquat jam really goes well the water spinach, too, giving it a citrusy kick that pairs nicely with the soy sauce. Might separate the squash and the water spinach next time, since they didn't quite complement each other, but they didn't clash badly enough to detract from each other either.

Mooncakes on a Roof and More Malls

Last weekend was the Mid-Autumn Festival (or Moon Festival) in Taiwan. Or as a local new friend joked, the BBQ Festival. We had a 4-day weekend between the holiday and a teacher work day, which was quite a lot for what my in-laws tell me is usually a pretty low-key holiday that most people don't do too much for. 

We did not have any BBQ, unfortunately. But Teacup and I did have mooncakes and pomelo! 

Mooncake with lotus seed paste
Wikimedia commons, bc we ate all ours, and in the dark

Also Wikimedia commons, because it was very messy to eat,

and I didn't want to splatter my phone with pomelo juice

These days most people apparently barbeque instead of eating mooncakes and pomelo fruit (which is like an oval grapefruit in flavor and shape, but with very little of the bitterness). But we didn't have a BBQ to attend, so we went up the rooftop to stare at the full moon, and eat our small bounty of mooncakes. Teacup LOVED it. She also loved that I let her scooter around the park after dark until it was time to go to the roof. 

Otherwise we visited a couple of malls. Big City Mall is a huge mall in Hsinchu, which I got us to by the cab service 55688, which is basically the Taiwan version of Uber (without being Uber). The idea was to find a kids play area and wander around some, but after losing a few dollars in Tom's World (an arcade chain that is reminiscent of Chuck E Cheese mixed with a token-operated casino), we couldn't find a real play area in the mall. I know there used to be one, but it appears to have since left. Ah well. So instead I let Teacup steal my camera and take some flower pictures outside, and of course we had bubble tea and a truffle donut. She got some pretty good pictures!

Astrophotography on the mall overhang

The other days we went back to Far Eastern Department Store, one day making a 'lantern' with Teacup's grandmother. Traditional lanterns are made of paper; this was more like a nightlight with a moon theme. But it was cute and fun. Bonus note, I finally figured out one of the uses for that Hakka educational area in the food court: it serves as an activity center for events.

Not a traditional Mid-Autumn lantern

Teacup, of course, modeled her clay cat after Clover.

So our Mid-Autumn festival celebration was a bit nontraditional, a bit traditional, and lot of low-key relaxing. 

Food Bonus:

Stir fry of lotus root, celery, water spinach, bok choy, and leftovers with kumquats, with soy sauce, sugar, and ginger.
Not terrible, definitely edible, not fantastic. I want to do more trials of cooking with kumquats.

Oolong tea, guava, banana, grapes. I'm not sure I love guava. Tastes kind of like a bergamot-infused apple to me. I like both flavors individually, not in love with the combo.