2012 Travels – Taiwanese Street Food

The funny thing about traveling is that the idea of it is very nice and romantic and exciting but the actual experience of it can be a completely different thing. Most of the time, the experience is tiring and exhausting. That said, despite the exhaustion of not only the physical and mental self but also the bank account, the memory of it again is one of romance and nostalgia.

Taiwanese politics aside, I have never thought much about Taiwan but for some movie directors which I adore, Hou Hsiao Hsien being the primary one and also Edward Yang and Tsai Ming Liang, although Tsai is technically a Malaysian. I am also aware that Taiwanese street food is quite popular but have no idea of its extent.

When faced with a choice of destination for a short holiday, several places popped up but somehow or rather, we decided on Taiwan and the experience was a good one. We did not have enough time to really explore Taiwan but just a sampling of what it offers. Mostly food.

Street food like depicted above that sells a variety of internal organs, blood cubes, necks and other exotic animal parts litters the streets of Taiwan. The most popular street food spot is the Shilin Market where a huge variety of street food is available, from stinky tofu to barbecued squids and many novelty food.

The dish above is the famous Prince Noodle. It is very tasty and is decorated with an assortment of internal organs and such. It seems like the Taiwanese really likes to eat internal organs and necks and such weird parts. Any part except the meat. Haha.

Taiwan is also getting very big in patisserie and is up neck to neck against the Japanese in making really interesting cakes and such. The more traditional cake houses is now getting an antiquated feeling, overwhelmed by these much more interesting offerings.

The place above serves what is supposedly the best soya milk in the whole world. The queue can be very very long. It is hidden in a market above a supermarket. This place is called Fu Hang Dou Jiang. Besides the soya milk, it offers a variety of other food such as shown in the picture above. The food is pretty good and it is a good place for breakfast, if not for the long queue!

The picture above shows perhaps the most expensive bowl of beef noodles that I have ever eaten. It costs slightly more than USD30 per bowl but the beef is really very tender and melts in the mouth and the soup really tasty. It is worth a try. However, the bowl that I had was not the most expensive one. The most expensive one cost upwards of USD300 per bowl. This place is called 688 Beef Noodles.

Some more food pictures:

So as you can see above, there are lots of food and for anyone who loves food, especially street food, Taiwan is a wonderful place to travel.

But Taiwan is also a great place with interesting history and also natural surroundings. It was the place where Chiang Kai Shek retreated from a losing civil war with Mao Tse Dong, not to mention the Japanese occupation of the island for more than 40 years and thus imprinted in its history influences of Japanese culture and customs.

Its rich history is manifested in many movies, such as Hou Hsiao Hsien’s A CITY OF SADNESS and Edward Yang’s A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY. Watching these two movies before traveling to Taiwan will perhaps give one a perspective of Taiwan besides the street food and the extremely tall Taipei 101 building.

The Applers, or the suckers

If you do not believe in paying for things you use or consume, you may stop reading here and instead spend your valuable time surfing piratebay and be a thief.

Before I got the Apple TV, media is shared using the 2TB WD  My book Live which acts as a media storage server plus backup location for the Time Machine. Media is then streamed to all the TVs in the house using the WD TV Live connected to the My Book Live server via the D-Link Powerline adapters. This system works very well and I was happy with it. Now, I can put all the music, movies and photos onto the server and stream them to any TV in the house.

The problem is I have to physically rip those music and movies, and transfer those files out to the server and also the photos and slideshows to the server. There is an additional layer of work but once done, it is perfect.

Then comes Apple TV and Airplay. Wow!

Now, I can use iTunes as before to get all the ripped music in, buy albums off the iTunes store and have the music up in the cloud using iTunes Match for a mere USD25 a year and have all those music in each and every IOS5 device I own plus the ability to play those music via my Denon 1911 AVR system which has Apple TV connected to it via HDMI, and see all the beautiful album artwork on TV if I wanted to. This is mega convenient. And it just works. And all those music is now available on the iPad, iPhone, iMac, Macbook Pro. Everywhere thanks to iTunes Match.

On the movie front, it is not as convenient as the music front. Unless you have an American iTunes account (i.e. residing in USA), many movies are not available but a lot of those recent big Hollywood movies are. So you can have the 1080p HD movie played on the TV for a mere RM15 and can be enjoyed in the comfort of the home any time you want. And if you have an American iTunes account, things get better and better. The library there is quite good. Want to check out what the big fuss this Fellini guy is all about? Search for Fellini and you can watch NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, AMARCORD, 8 1/2 and such. Want to check out all the Oscar Best movies throughout all these years? No problem, they are all there for you to watch. Want to check out Independent and Foreign Movies such as A SEPARATION? Many of those are there. Oh, you suddenly decided to be a fan of Woody Allen after watching MIDNIGHT IN PARIS? Hey, you can check out HUSBANDS AND WIVES or ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN. They are all there. And affordable and reasonably priced.

And after you have purchased those contents they are available in every one of your device, so if you are bored, you can watch TAXI DRIVER on the iPad while on the road.

On the photo side, the cloud based photo stream is not as superb since you don’t have a cloud based album, just your photostream for photos taken via your iPhone, for example. You cannot have a photo album on the cloud and this is where Airplay comes in handy. My iMac is my base station and I use Aperture for all my photo needs, and I am not very demanding and I don’t need Photoshop. I can create photo albums, slideshows etc on Aperture and have them sync wireless to my iPhone or iPad and when I need to show the photos on the TV, I simply just need to use Airplay to mirror whatever that is on my iPad. Or I can leave my iMac on and have them stream from there. It just works wonderfully.

The thing is Apple makes it so convenient for you to acquire, manage and consume your preferred content and its Genius function can help you explore stuffs you might like and expand your horizon. Apple TV, Airplay, iCloud, iTunes Store and iTunes Match are just so superb and ecosystem that nothing comes even close from the competitors such as Samsung. Samsung now has some beautiful devices. The Galaxy S3 is beautiful but it is beautiful by itself and a few months down the line, it will feel old. Not so for Apple products. I still don’t feel my iPhone 4 to be old but the Samsung S2 is like a dinosaur. Perhaps it is just me.

Everyone is free to set up their own systems. But the Apple ecosystem works perfectly for me. Now I just need Netflix and Hulu Plus to be available in Malaysia.

Strategy and stuffs like that

A lot has been written about strategy and shelves of books have been published on this subject, especially so on business strategy. When I sit in a “strategy” meeting, it always annoys me when the participants do not know what “strategy” actually means, and started talking about visions and missions and stuffs, drawing up huge balance scorecards that has like two dozen items on them, draw up a humongous budget that will quickly be irrelevant in 2 months’ time, and talking endlessly on big topics using big and bombastic words, chic and trendy words etc. Sometimes it becomes unbearable.

Unbearable because I know after all these talks, nothing will come out of it and all it has done is to create big bureaucratic procedures and multiple reporting and tracking mechanism that does not really solve the problem or tackle the issue. Everyone has a good holiday, good talking session, good food, etc. except for the shareholders and owners who actually put up money to pay their salaries and expenses.

Not that I am any expert in strategy but for me, strategy has to be clean, straightforward and easy to understand. The actual tactical and execution part of it can be and is usually messy and detailed oriented but the strategy itself must be clear and straightforward, framing the issue at hand and tackle it head on. There is no need for high level language and busy looking charts.

During the course of my working life and studies, I have read numerous books on strategy but the one that I find closest to what I am thinking is this book called GOOD STRATEGY/BAD STRATEGY by Richard Rumelt. It is such a delightful book to read and it gives me the same sense of urgency, no-nonsense way to tackle challenges at hand. Roll up your sleeves and find a way to punch the opponent with your maximum force hitting their weakest spot. A good read and I recommend it to anyone interested in strategy.

Bunohan the Second Serving

Watched Bunohan the second time with M (Malaysian, Raja Yoga Instructor and Practitioner), F (Iranian, PhD candidate in Literature), S (Iranian, Documentary director) and Fern (Portuguese, Architect). And of course, K, my wife.

It was a Sunday evening, at Mid Valley. The hall was about 70% full. The weather was a bit cloudy but was otherwise fine.

This time around, I paid more attention to the architecture of the movie. I spent more time looking at the screen instead of reading the subtitles.

This post might contain spoilers. Perhaps some really serious spoilers. Read on if you do not mind.

From the beginning, the story is supposed to be a folklore. What happened in the movie is just “hearsay”. No one really knew what happened. This was made clear at the beginning where the guys sat in the dark chatting and we hear the real names of the actors being mentioned. That is the real world, or is it?

We are challenged from the beginning itself on what is real, and what is not. An existential question. Some discussions followed after the movie between us.

Essentially, this is a Shakespearean drama. F mentioned King Lear. Cain and Abel. Fern said the movie is very “European” in feeling.

Ilham himself is interesting. A cold-blooded assassin. But engrossed, throughout the movie, to relocate graves and to find his mother’s grave. And at the end, asked for his life to be traded with his brother, which he knew will not happened (I conjectured this romantic side of him). He knew his request to have his brother spared will not be honored given his experience in that dark trade. But he still asked. This is a great transformation for this character. Or perhaps he never changed. He was forced into the trade but how and why? He mentioned far-away lands, Paris, Marseilles. A romantic assassin who never left his mom and the memories with her. This is a painful man. A divided man. A romantic man. The magic realism moment with the talking bird is actually him talking to himself. His other half talking to the other half.

The use of local folklore, buaya jadian, hantu budak, etc. gave another layer to the movie, making the story-telling that much more interesting compared to a pure linear way of story-telling. It seems like the spirits knew everything. The spirits are themselves nature. I love the scene where Mek Yeh spoke to the hantu budak, on the songs, on love lost, on stories lost, etc. I read some critics saying the actress does not perform on par with the other actors who performed brilliantly but I beg to differ. I think the character suited her very much. She is the all yielding, earthy type of character and I think she played it well.

The cinematography is so beautiful, it is almost distracting the story and other more subtle elements.

This movie made me think of Yasmin Ahmad. I really miss her movies sometimes. Bunohan is of course not Sepet and Sepet is of course not Bunohan. Yasmin is like Ozu. Dain is like Kurosawa. But that’s just me.

1848 Australia

Initially, I wanted to start a whole new blog on 18xx games but decided it is probably too much work. I think I will just incorporate them into this main blog at the moment until I can justify a new blog by itself. The next one on line is 1861 but in this post, let’s talk about 1848 Australia.

1848 is an 18xx game set in Australia for 3 to 6 players. Designed by Helmut Ohley and Leonhard Orgler, it was published in 2007 by Double-O Games that publishes many interesting 18xx games such as 1844 (2003), 1824 (2005) and 1880 (2010). I will talk about each of these games in future articles.

COMPONENTS

The map is not very big, containing almost 60 hexes which is just slightly smaller than the map of 18TN which has about 70 hexes. The situation for 1848 is actually much worse because many of those hexes are desert hexes and the result is that the tracks are very much concentrated on the bottom part of the map. The map comes unmounted and printed on cardboard stock just as in 1844 or 1880 which is ok although I would prefer mounted maps. The map has bright and interesting colors and it is easy to read.

The tokens are 1cm thick and feels very good. The stickers are not on the tokens yet and you will have to do it yourself. There are no instructions on how to apply those stickers but the designer has clarified in the 18xx Yahoo group and the way to do it is to apply the company sticker on one side and the Bank of England sticker on the other side. There are two sets of white tokens. One set is to mark the par price. Apply the $70 on one side and the $80 on the other side. Then the $90 on one side and the $100 on the other. The balance of the White markers are the gauge marker. There are also 20 red markers to mark loans.

 

I usually do not play with the paper money supplied in 18xx games and use poker chips instead. I find it much easier to handle poker chips and also easier to estimate the cash holding of companies and players that way. However, in 1848, the publisher supplied a set of nice play money printed on cardboard stock and with bright colors. It is very attractive and also easy to handle and does not fly around if there is wind. But it is still difficult to get a quick estimate of the cash holding and it is still harder to handle compared to poker chips. I will stick to my poker chips.

The company charters, the stock market, train roster etc. are not laminated and is quite flimsy although they are nicely printed and the color is bright. The trains are printed on the same card stock as the play money and they are also attractive. So are the company share certificates. Track tiles are also not laminated.

 

The Rulebook is okay and made the rules quite clear. Perhaps this is a second revision and they also included a FAQ at the back which was helpful.

One sometimes really appreciates the quality of production of Deep Thought Games but this 1848 is still not bad although I would like my components to be laminated just so that those greasy fingers or the accidental liquid will not spoil my game.

UNIQUE SELLING POINT

There is something unique about each 18xx variant. The uniqueness of 1848 lies in the Bank of England and its ability to give interest-free loans and take in companies in receivership. Interest-free loans + a small map + companies with many tokens = a fierce tokening battle on the board.

Companies may voluntarily take up to 5 loans of $100 each and for each loan, the share price drops two steps to the left. If in the case of a compulsory train purchase, the company can take more than one loan at a time but for each, the share price drops 3 steps to the left instead. When the company’s share price drops to the left-most column, it goes into receivership. The company pays each shareholder (except the director) the par price for each share and if the company does not have enough cash, the director will have to top up.

The Bank of England will then take over the company’s station markers and adds to it the revenue for the city that the station marker resides, on top of a fixed revenue depending on the game phase. This total revenue will then be distributed to all shareholders and the amount can be quite big. Also for each loan taken, the price of the Bank of England’s shares will increase. This price will never drop because loans do not need to be repaid.

The timing of buying shares in the Bank of England and the willful manipulation of companies into receivership is one of the interesting aspects of the game.

The other unique selling point is the availability of “The Ghan” trains. These trains are available for sale after the purchase of the first 5/5+ train and its route consists of only 2 cities/stations. It always starts at the company’s own station and always ends in Alice Spring. It can skip any cities in between but it cannot pass through cities that has been tokened out (i.e. blocked by other companies). The Ghan does not count against the company’s train limits but it also does not meet the requirement that the company must own a train. The Ghan is really useful and also not expensive. It costs only $200. The sad news is each company may only own one The Ghan.

Finally, 1848 is unique in that historically, the Australian colonies were independent before the founding of the Federal State and because of that, each made its own decisions on which track gauges to use. There are three main types and these are reflected in the map as three differently colored regions. In the game, whenever there is a track that lays across these different color borders, a white token is used to mark a gauge change and this gauge counts against the train’s limit. Therefore, a 2-Train may never run from one station in one area to another station in another area because the gauge will count practically as one zero-valued city. However, companies may purchase “+” trains which will allow the train to pass through exactly one gauge change. In our example, if the train is a 2+ train, then it can travel from one city in one area to another city in another area through one gauge change. This brings about interesting decisions on which trains to purchase given the company’s plans and strategy.

THOUGHTS

I think 1848 is a very interesting smallish game. It takes about 4-5 hours to play and offers many interesting decisions. It is one of those games that I will want to play if time does not allow me to play a longer game.

The fierce battles on the board where companies try to token each other out which the help of free loans and in the hope of getting all the K-K bonuses provides tension though out the game. The timing in purchasing the Bank of England’s shares and the possibility of engineering the receivership of your own companies adds extra layers of strategic possibilities to the game.

For more information on this game including the Rulebook, visit this site: http://www.lonny.at

Bunohan, bunohen, bunoheh

It has been quite some time since I attended a movie screening, not to mention a premiere. Going to a movie premiere is like opening a letter from someone you have just sent a love declaration letter to. You do not know what is inside the reply. The girl might have rejected you and preferred to remain friends but the girl might also say yes and how long it was that she hoped you have written to her.

Hmmm… maybe that is a little dramatic but the point is that going to a premiere is very exciting. You have heard about the movie for some time, the hype is building up, etc. and now is the time for you to see it yourself.

This was what happened to me for BUNOHAN. The marketing and PR work was superbly executed, creating a lot of hype and anticipation. After months on end anticipating, the Malaysian premiere was last night and I was lucky to be able to watch it.

Not that many people cared about what I think about the movie but since this blog is a lot about what I do and what I think and since I do write quite a bit about movies, I just want to record down my thoughts on BUNOHAN.

Poetic. Complex. These are the two words that comes to mind immediately. The surface storyline does not sound extraordinary. In fact, if summarised to just a couple of sentences, it sounds just like any normal local movies. But as in all good movies, what is extraordinary lies with the execution of the movie itself.

At its core, it tells the story of a powerful conglomerate from Kuala Lumpur who wants to acquire a piece of inherited land and the things people do to protect that land and the things people do to acquire the land, by hook or by crook. Bla bla bli bla bla bla…..Yawn…..

But that is the McGuffin, nothing more. At the end of the movie, one wonders what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. As Lao Tzu said, what is beautiful is in fact ugly, what is ugly is in fact beautiful. The use of folk lore and myths, the supernatural, adds another layer to the movie in the Jungian sense. Myths and symbols, the collective unconscious.

BUNOHAN can be appreciated at many levels. At the most basic level, one enjoys the story, the fighting, the beautiful mise-en-scene. The deepest level, I don’t know what. I have not really fathom so deeply but it inspires one to think, if he or she is willing. It tells about the society, about our own inner demon, about what it means to be family, about what it means to have a tradition and such.

The acting is superb, especially so from Faizal Hussein. The tempo at mid-way through is a bit slow and the story does not develop much midway through. The curiosity surrounding the story of Adil’s parenthood can be heightened. The fighting scenes can be made more exciting.

Let’s perhaps look at this compared to Farhadi’s A SEPARATION. It is also a story of a family and their struggles. It also has a Hitchcock-like mystery. The shooting style and mise-en-scene is very different of course. The tempo in A SEPARATION is much faster. But at the end of it, it is also about confronting our inner devil, about the society that we live in and how we, as a part of this society, fit into it or fight against it and try to make some sense out of it.

But the million dollar question is will it give OMBAK RINDU a run for its money? The answer is perhaps it does not need to. Malaysia needs talented people like Dain to lift it up another notch. We need good substantial movies. Others can go ahead and make a lot of money but at the end of the day, what remains and will be remembered of a civilization is its arts and culture.

Things come in Circles

It is now almost one year that I have left this blog unattended. Besides spending most of my online social time on Facebook, some of you may also know that I have spent some time to write Go lessons published on a separate blog site. Those lessons do indeed take a lot of time and I am still struggling to find time to write more lessons.

So what happened during the year of absence? I am not sure if many people is interested in that but since this blog also acts like a diary, perhaps it is okay for me to just write.

2011 first and foremost, is the centenary of my favourite composers death anniversary. And of course my favourite composer is Gustav Mahler. To commemorate it, I bought two items. The first is a biography of him by Jens Malte Fisher. It was first published in Germany back in 2003 but took some time to be translated to English, and just in time for me to purchase and read in this meaningful year. The second item I bought is the 16-CD set 150th Anniversary Box set published in 2010 to mark the 150th anniversary of Mahler who was born in 1860. Although I have all the recordings on individual CDs in my collection, I went ahead and purchased the set anyways. Crazy. I hope my wife doesn’t read this blog.

 

Besides Mahler, I have also been very much into the 18xx boardgame series. Not to be confused with anything pornographic, the 18xx series is a game system where players invest in railroad companies. At the end of the game, the player that has the highest net worth in terms of cash and investment is the winner. The 18xx games are quite sophisticated games and involve many strategies. It has a stock market mechanism and also a map where companies can operate. In one of the variant, 1817, there are many financial tools that players can use such as short-selling, leveraging the company with loans, mergers and acquisitions, etc. In others such as 1841, companies can invest in other companies and this bring about very complex chain of command since these companies can merge and do all sorts of creative things.

There are, however, some more stable variants which does not allow outrageous stock manipulations. This is the kind that I prefer to play because you spend many hours on the game and the last thing you want is for someone to be able to trash you out to oblivion. In this variant, my favourite is 1844. 1844 has a solid gameplay where companies can have long term strategies. It has a very interesting map. The stock market aspect of it is slightly tamed down but is still superb because it still punishes badly managed companies.

I have played many games of 18xx series this year. Among the new ones that I have played, 1844, 1817, 1880, 1861, 1860 and 1841 stands out brilliantly.

     

Of course, besides all those, one of the biggest event for me, if not the biggest, is my participation in the 32nd World Amateur Go Championship in Matsue, Japan. It is my dream when I started playing Go to be able to participate in this event. It is like a pilgrimage. I believe it is every Go player’s dream to have a chance to participate in this. I represented Malaysia and have had a great time there, knowing many new friends. The organizers are superb and the locals in Matsue, together with the environment, made me wanting to migrate to this nice place. The weather is mild, the locals are all very nice and orderly, it is a very cultured place, with frequent musical and theatrical performances, not to mention Go related activities. It has a great castle and a very nice and soothing lake. The perfect place to live.

   

Then towards the end of the year, we went on a trip to Yogyakarta to visit the volcano mountain, the temples. It is a legendary place. The food is also very nice. We enjoyed the Nasi Gudeg very much.

The Borobudor is quite an amazing sight. It is huge and has such detailed carvings. It is said that it was the center for Buddhist studies and a site of pilgrimage. The carvings on the walls tells us the stories, of Buddha’s life, of the Buddhist philosophy told through many tales, such as from the Jataka tales.

Compared to Angkor Wat, it is a very different experience. Angkor Wat felt more adventurous but Borobudor is no less grand. Both places are must visits if you are in this part of the world.

   

The book at I am immersing myself in now is Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. Murakami is one of my favourite authors as some of you may know and 1Q84 is a monster. I like Murakami for his natural prose style and his vivid imagination. The events and characters in his novels are not only fantastical, it is often also historical. The contents are rich not only in its story and storytelling but also the cross reference to music, travel, books etc. I learn a lot through reading Murakami.

1Q84 is a fantastical novel which has a very simple premise. A boy and a girl held hands when they were 10 years old. And the story took almost 1,000 pages to unfold, to tell us how they meet again. It is amazing.

In terms of movies, the more interesting one I saw this year is A SEPARATION by Asghar Farhadi which won numerous awards including the Golden Bear at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the upcoming Oscars (the second Iranian film nominated, the first being Majidi’s CHILDREN OF HEAVEN).

The movie is at the same time a domestic drama and also a criticism of modern day Iran. Shot on handheld, it gives an immediate sense  and feeling of the characters and its environment. Brilliantly acted by the whole cast, it gives one a peek into the minds of the rising middle class of Iranian society.

Last but not least, this Japanese Whisky is incredibly delicious!!!!!

Sweet smelling, flowery with a slight hint of smoke. But it tastes really delicious. Fruity, slight honey and peat. It goes down very well and leaves some smoky flavour. It is wonderful.

Also, a new addition to the house. Dolby my Dobermann Pinscher has a new partner. Her name is Coco! Pictured below with my mom. She is now 1 year old while Dolby is now 2 years old. Got her from Dr. Sunny of the Sunny K9 Academy in Ipoh. Shy but very playful. Unbelievably fierce too!

 

Maybe this is good for the first post of 2012. I will perhaps start to write this blog again this year.

I wish you all a happy new year and all the best!