TheLostSwedes hideout

As some of you might know, I’ve put together a list of eateries in Taiwan and made map links to Google maps. Then reading Forumosa last night, it struck me, why not do a map that links to anything and everything useful in Taiwan? So what I cam up with was the FindIT map (Find it in Taiwan, and yes I know there’s one i too many), a silly name, but hopefully this is something that people will find useful.

At the moment you can find it here or by selecting it from the How, where, what tab up top. I’m working on getting a front-end made that will make it a bit easier to use, but hopefully you can still work out how to use it. As long as you have a Google account you can also add your on bits to it, which was also part of the idea, as I only know where a fraction of everything here is located. Please let me know if there’s anything you think I can do to improve it and I hope this will become a useful resource for all foreigners in Taiwan, those living here and visitors alike.

Wow, time really flies and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The last couple of weeks made it seem like summer came early this year, but now it’s a bit colder and wetter again. There was talks about a draught here, as it hadn’t rained very much so far this spring which is unusual in Taiwan, but it looks like the next week is going to be wet, wet, wet, with a few thunderstorms to boot, which again isn’t common here. At least it’s been a long time since there’s been any large earth quakes which I guess isn’t a bad thing in itself, as long as it doesn’t mean it’s building up for a big one…

Right now things are just plodding along, nothing much new to report, just trying to get on with stuff and keep my fingers crossed that everything will work out in the long run. For those of you that live in Taiwan or are visiting, you might want to head to the Tavern this Thursday night, as the Taipei Tech Club is meeting up, if you’re interested in meeting up with some of the people that works in the tech industry here. We try to meet up once a month, although we’re not so well organised, so it happens a bit at a whim.

Well, I keep saying this, but I’m going to try to get better at updating this thing now when I have a proper host that makes it a bit easier. Until next time…

Why is it that every time you’ve just about made your mind up that you’re going to do something, the whole game change?

I thought I was ready to go ahead and take a job and now something else cropped up and all of a sudden the previous offer doesn’t seem all that interesting any more. But all this means that now I have to wait and see what’ll happen, as the new offer isn’t set in stone yet.

In the meantime I’m busy working on a project of my own, that again might not work out the way I wanted it to, but I guess that’s always the case when you have to rely on other people. Given some time it might still work out, but the question is how much time I have to get it off the ground before I get too involved with something else to not bother.

Sorry about being so cryptic, but I can’t really spill the beans until I know what’s going on and then I promise I’ll come clean.

A friend of mine has just opened up a new cafe here in Taipei and I’ll be adding more details about it later. For now you can have a look at www.thefairycafe.com for more details.

So, I had enough with my old host, they might’ve been dirt cheap, but it was just too much hassle everytime I wanted to do something with WordPress, so I decided to move the site.

I’m also busy working on another project on the site which will hopefully kick off in the not too distant future as things have finally started to move forward, albeit slowly.

Right now the site is in chaos, as I need to fix some stuff with the plugins to put everything back in the order it was. I’m also going to look at finding myself a more attractive design for the site. Stay tuned for a bunch of updates.

So, it’s the week after Chinese New Year and things are getting back to normal, more or less. We had a great 10 days in Boracay and if you haven’t been, I’d suggest you go if you get the chance. I highly suggest you try to make it there one day if you haven’t been. Although somewhat developed, its free from international chain restaurants, although a few of the bigger international hotel chains have made their way there.

We stayed on the “wrong” side of the island, but as the island is only about 1km wide at its narrowest point, it wasn’t much of a walk. We stayed in the Reef Retreat hotel and if you’re into wind or kite surfing, then this is the place to stay in, as Bulabog beach is meant to be the place for these sports. We did see quite a few surfers and some of them were quite impressive.

The main beach on Boracay is called White beach and the sand was indeed quite white. The water was really nice and clean and the beach was one of the best I’ve ever been to. The water wasn’t quite as shallow as I expected after reading up on Boracay, although I’m used to the shallow beaches on the west and south coast of Sweden which I guess doesn’t compare.

We had some great meals and if you’re going, make sure you visit the local Greek restaurant, Cyma and don’t miss the wet market, the seafood there is really cheap and tastes great, just make sure you pick one of the bigger restaurants to cook the seafood for you, as we had a bad experience with one of the smaller restaurants at a second visit. Don’t bother with the Ole tapas place, it wasn’t very good both in terms of the food or value.

Since we got back, I managed to find myself some active lactic culture and I’ve made my own Filmjölk and it came out really good. I’m now on my fifth batch from the first culture and it’s still coming out good. I’ve really missed this stuff as it’s been over two years since I’ve had it. It’s just a shame that most of the cereal here is overpriced or crappy tasting, but I can make do. If you live in Taiwan and want to know how to make Filmjölk, feel free to get in touch with me.My next project is to try to make cottage cheese, but this might not be as easy…

Wow, it’s already five days into the new year and I don’t know where the past few days have gone…

Loads of things going on, but nothing seems to happen fast enough to make any real difference, talk about frustration.
Even so, things are at least progressing forward, which is a nice thing. Hopefully something good will come out of it all in the end.
It’s less than two weeks until we go on holiday now and I’m so looking forward to spending 10 days in Boracay, although we have to spend one night in Manila as well, but at least it gives us a chance to do some cheap shopping.

Yesterday Brenda caught up with me in age, although it won’t be long until I’m older again…
We didn’t do anything special, went out for a meal and chilled out. It’s fairly cold here in Taiwan now, a warm day is 20 degrees in the day, the not so warm ones are about five degrees cooler and at night it’s dropped down to 11 degrees already at times. I guess it doesn’t help living close to the mountains as it makes it even chillier. The big downside here is that heating isn’t standard, despite the fairly cool winters, although our new AC units have built in heating, but it’s not exactly fantastic, but it’s better than the little portable radiator we had to make do with last winter.

I’m going to try to get some more restaurants added to the list, I just haven’t focused a lot on the blog recently, but I really ought to, right?

So, it’s that time of the year again, Christmas…

I can’t believe I’ve already spent over two years in Taiwan, time really does fly.

So last week I went to South Korea as my ARC has expired and I need to leave Taiwan every 30 days which is a real hassle when you live on an island. I meet up with a guy there that I got to know through work some five years ago and we’ve keep in touch over MSN, but until now, we haven’t managed to meet up.

Seoul looked just like any big city in the world, but cleaner and more organised on some strange way. There were some Japanese influence on the older buildings, but everything that was new looked like it could be slotted in in just about any big city. It was a great trip and I had a really good time, mostly thanks to my friend who was a great host.

I’ve been working with a French guy here on a project he’s doing and hopefully he’ll be able to help me out in the long run, we’ll see what happens, but he’s got some pretty cool ideas, he just doesn’t know a lot about computers which is a bit of a problem. It’s going to take longer than he thinks to do the stuff he wants and some of it is going to cost a lot more money than he wants it to. The other problem is that he wants certain things to be perfect while other things doesn’t seem to matter, but he somehow seems to mix up his priorities in terms of what is important to a consumer that would buy his products.

Anyhow, we’re off to Boracay for our first real holiday together for Chinese new year, although, we’re sneaking off a bit early as it’ll be cheaper that way. We got some super cheap plane tickets there which was less than a normal return ticket for one person would cost, so it’s kind of a budget holiday, but on a really nice beach.

To all my friends out there, have a great holiday and a happy 2009 if I don’t get around to posting something more on here before the end of the year.

So, nothing much have been happening as of lately, so I haven’t really had much to put on here. I’ve finally gotten around to adding a new restaurant review and should hopefully add another one tomorrow. That’s really it for now, although I might have some more news next week. It’s also IDF Taipei next week, so that’ll be a couple of busy days.

Sorry about the big gap in posts, but I’ve had a lot on and not really been in the writing mood. Anyhow, I’ve posted two new burger places to the list of eateries in Taipei and they’ve both got their own pros and cons, so make sure you check them out. The yearly Swedish crafish party (kräftskiva) was delayed from last weekend to Friday night thanks to typhoon Sinlaku that decided to stop by for quite a while and which produced a downpour of about 1.8m.

It was packed last night, but the scary thing is that since last year, I only knew about 5 or 6 people, which shows what a big turn-around of foreginers there is here. It doesn’t seem like most people come here for the long term, although considering the huge ammount of English teachers and what appears to be a big influx of University students, at least from Sweden, I guess it’s not so strange that there’s a bit turnover.

I’m going to try to get my finger out and update the site more regularly, as it seems like I have a fair few readers, despite the fact that it’s not updated on regular basis. If anyone has suggestions of places that we should go and eat at, please send me an email, you can find my email address in the contract me section at the top of the page.

Well, the move went… about as wrong as it could. The day before Brenda’s car broke, well, we were on our way to B&Q to get some stuff and the car started to run strange, but as lucky as it was we were right next to a garage that could fix it, although it ended up being an unexpected expense. The day of the move, we’d also arranged to have the AC installed and the cable and internet guy was coming. Yes, I know, we were trying a bit too hard to get everything done in one day.

Well, first off the guy who gave us the estimate for the move was off, way off, instead of the two vans he told us we needed, we needed four. Great, that bumped the cost up to twice what we’d estimated. The cable guy turned up and wasted loads of time mucking about and it turns out there was some kind of blockage in the holes from the basement up to the place and then he disappeared for about 2h, no idea what he was doing. Meanwhile it started to rain, for about 10 minutes, so the AC install guys calls up and say they can’t come, as it’s raining, so they’ll come the next day…

The cable guy finally comes back, manages to somehow bodge the wires in place and tells us that the place is wired “funny”. So he refuses to put in the internet properly, so now we have a cable modem sitting in a cabinet built into the wall, with a power and Ethernet cable coming out of it. All this because he claimed it wasn’t his job to put cables inside the house and we had to hire someone else to do that. What????

So the following day the AC install guys turn up, dump a load of stuff off and then goes missing for an hour, then one of them and another guy turns up and starts installing it and by now it’s already afternoon. So what happens, well, after they’ve wasted loads of time talking crap and mucking about, they manage to install the unit in the front room, but they’ve only got the wall unit up in the bedroom, but there’s a 15 minute downpour, so they tell us they’ll be back tomorrow to finish off the job… What?!?!?!

That night we ended up sleeping on the blow-up bed in the front room as it was so hot. By now it’s Sunday and the AC guys turn up, spends 20 minutes doing whatever they’re doing and they’re gone. All done, of sorts. Of course they left a huge mess for us to clean up and they forgot to put on some kind of protective thingie on one of the outside units, so lets hope it doesn’t break because of that. I really, really hate sloppy people like that.

So due to various stupid things, we had to wait two days before we could get the place in order after the move, which really is annoying. Most other things have gone smoothly and we had someone from IKEA turn up to put together some furniture we bought there as he was twice as fast as I would’ve been as he had all these fancy power tools. We also had someone come and put up some blinds in the front room, as I’m not really good with drilling straight holes…

This weekend we had a small moving in party, not everyone we expected turned up, but part of the reason was that about an hour before we expected people to start turning up, there was a massive downpour. I had made some tunnbröd with salmon and gravlax sauce, meatballs with mashed potatoes and sauce and for dessert semlor and apple pie. All in all it was a success and even Brenda’s friends seemed to quite like the food.

Sunday night I bought myself a second hand bike, a rather large Giant Yukon, as for some reason it’s not that easy to find larger bikes here. It’s the most advanced bike I’ve ever owned, it’s got more gears than I think I’ll ever use and it got front suspension and a suspension in the seat post. It rides quite nicely, although I had to take it on the MRT (which by the way is NT$80 no matter how far you go, but only allowed on weekends and holidays and then only to certain stations) and then ride it home, which was interesting. I haven’t really ridden a bike for a long time and I didn’t know the exact route, so I went too far, twice…

At least it should be nice to ride it along the river here, although we need to figure out how to get down to the bike paths along the river, but it’s not a long ride to get there at least. We figured it’s best to start on flat ground and there isn’t too much of that if you want to ride a bike away from traffic here in Taipei, but luckily there are some nice long bike paths along the river. You can ride all the way from Xindian in the south to Danshuei in the north, which is a very long ride, but we might manage to do it some day