Behold!... the Taipei Toy Festival

The love of my life is in town! Yep, the Taipei Toy Festival (the bilingual Web site has information on designers, as well as directions), which runs until Sunday, July 12. I went to report on it today and, I know I said something similar after last year's festival, but the whole day was the most amazing mental joyride ever. This year's event is at Huashan Culture Park (華山創意園區, huà shān chuàng yì yuán oū) on Bade Rd. and there are a lot of new exhibitors. I have an article about the Taipei Toy Festival that is coming out on Wednesday, and I'll share more photos from the event after then.

Happy 4th of July!

Mike, me and Mom in D.C. twenty years ago. Boy, I wish I were still that tan!

I think one of the things about living in Taiwan and becoming increasingly aware of my family's history over the last eighty years or so is that I am now incredibly thankful I was born when and where I was.

Because I have family members who either lived in or had their lives profoundly (and often tragically) affected by totalitarian or authoritarian governments, I get really irritated when I hear people moan about how "fascist" the U.S. government is. I've written on this blog before that I am very wary of any political ideology that I think is too extreme, even if some of its tenets echo my own beliefs -- and calling the U.S. government "fascist" is pretty damn extreme in my opinion. For one thing, fascism has a very specific meaning. And for all of its many faults, the U.S. government is not fascist. You know how you can tell? Because you can call it fascist, in public no less, and not be summarily executed!

I don't want to start writing about my family's history on this blog, but suffice to say anyone who has relatives who were in China between the 1930s and 1960s has heard their share of unspeakably sad stories. I think the emotional consequences sometimes continue to reverberate for generations. I'm not trying to make it sound like I've suffered -- I haven't. But I think that one of the reasons I feel incredibly uncomfortable about making judgments about people based on their cultural background, ethnicity, political leanings, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or economic class is because I know what happens when people insist on dehumanizing others.

Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent. The point of this post is that I'm grateful I'm American. This puts me in mind of that Tom Petty song, "American Girl." I know that it's about some chick who had her heart broken, but every time I hear the lyrics "well she was an American girl / raised on promises / She couldn't help thinkin' that there / was a little more to life / somewhere else / After all it was a great big world / with lots of places to run to..." it makes me smile a little on the inside.

Fulong Sand Sculpture Festival

The Fulong Sand Sculpture Festival (2009福隆沙雕藝術季, fú lōng shā diāo yì shù jì) runs until the end of this month and I recommend it for a day trip when the weather is good (I can't imagine anything less fun than staring at sand sculptures in the rain, no matter how good they are). Click here for the article I wrote about the festival.

(Edited to add: It's been a very rainy June and I'm not sure how the sand sculptures are holding up right now... then again, with the weather we've been having (tropical storms and all), a lot of you have probably tabled your beach outings, anyway!)

Fulong is a great beach even when there aren't sand sculptures all over the place. Here are some more photos I took at the beach using my Holga 135BC toy camera:

Honeymoon in the Bay Area

I got to spend our honeymoon introducing Ron to the Bay Area, which was fantastic because not only is it gorgeous, but we also hope to move there when we repatriate. I never appreciated northern California much when I was growing up there, but now I miss it a lot. We spent our first few days as newlyweds staying by ourselves in San Francisco and then we spent some time with my parents and grandma, who had flown down from Vancouver for the wedding.

The private getaway leg of our honeymoon was spent at the Chateau Tivoli in San Francisco's Western Addition. It's a bed and breakfast that was built as a private residence in 1892 and enjoys a fascinating history (it was the home of the Tivoli Opera House's owner and a girls school, successively).

Exterior and room photo courtesy of the Chateau Tivoli

Staying there was so much more fun than if we had stayed in a hotel. It was as if Ron and I had managed to get into a time machine and then break into some rich person's house. The inside is absolutely gorgeous and filled with antiques and amazing reproduction wall paper and friezes, there was a champagne brunch on weekends (with yummy French toast, wine and cheese every afternoon in the parlor (which made me feel really refined) and friendly innkeepers. We hope that we'll be able to have a second honeymoon there one day.

The Sunday after our wedding also happened to be the day of the Bay to Breakers race. It passed by Alamo Square, where Ron and I went to take in the festivities:

A few days later, we were taking a look at Stanford when Ron and I ran into the Burghers of Calais:

We also introduced my dad and my grandma to Ethiopian food, which is one of the few cuisines you can't find in Taiwan (though if I'm wrong and there is actually an Ethiopian restaurant in Taipei, please tell me. Ron and I are going crazy with longing!)

The two weeks we spent back in California was everything that I could have hoped for. Even though our honeymoon was short, it was still perfect. It was wonderful getting some time to ourselves and it was equally wonderful spending time with my family. Ron and I also got to spend time with a some of our friends, including my friend Naureen, the origami queen (ha ha, that rhymes!). I thought that I would be really sad when all the craziness had wound down and we went back to our normal lives, but as it turns out, I'm just really happy that the two of us have all these happy memories. I know that sounds cheesy, and I am lactose intolerant, but it's true.

Blog redesign!

For those of you who read shu flies on an RSS reader, please visit the Web site. I made a new header and switched to a new template that will allow me to post massive photos and digital collages.

All this is thanks to some new clip art books I bought from Eslite a few days ago and some digital scrapbooking Web sites I've been checking out. I started working on an actual scrapbook for our wedding ephemera last week and when I Googled "scrapbooking" I found all these Web sites on how to make collages with PhotoShop. You know, I always made fun of "scrappers" and their tons and tons of crap and the multi-level plastic drawers on wheels that they store their tons and tons of crap in, but I take it all back. Scrapping is so much fun! It's a lot faster than knitting and plus I now have an excuse for never throwing away or recycling anything. Woohoo!