the taipei zoo

been wanting to take olivia to the taipei zoo for the longest time, but we felt that she was too young to really enjoy it. however, since she's been able to say most of the animals in both chinese and english earlier this year, we finally decided to take her. she did really enjoyed seeing all the animals in person and was shouting out the name of each animal she saw or asking us what it was called.....


you know you are near the zoo when you see the giraffe smokestack.


the main entrance to the zoo.


and the shouting begins. olivia started shouting "monkey, monkey" as soon as she saw those fake monkeys on the ledge above the taipei zoo sign.

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tricycle ride at the levee park in wugu

the weather is now finally hot and sunny like its supposed to be, with temperatures hovering around low to mid 30's C. i say finally because it has taken longer than usual this year for the warm weather to make its presence consistently. the past couple months have been fairly cold with temperatures reaching as low as under 10 C. the rain and overcast dominated most of the days during that time, while the sun rarely made an appearance. well, we took advantage of one of those rare appearances by the sun and went to the levee park in wugu and rented a tricycle to ride around.....


this is the open plaza where most kids ride their bikes or rollerblade. at both ends of the plaza, there are some tents and kiosks that rent out bicycles and tricycles by the hour. you do not necessarily have to stay in this plaza. there are paths all over the park in which you can ride along. in fact, there are bike paths that connect most of taipei county along the river so you can definitely ride quite a long ways if you wanted to.


we opted for a tricycle. this is where you rent them.


olivia excited to get the ride on.

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olivia watching & dancing to wonder girls' nobody

the wonder girls' "nobody" and super junior's "sorry sorry" are so popular and hyped up in asia that everyone and their mamas have been singing and dancing to them for quite a while now. well, so it was only a matter of time before olivia caught on with the hype.....

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food testing & tasting for justin's wedding

my bro-in-law justin and his now wife miffy got married last month on 4/17; and a few weeks before their wedding, we got to test and taste the food that was going to be served at their reception party.

i got a shot of most of the dishes with only a couple missing, so here goes.....


lobster salad


the lobster salad dish with slices of dried fish roe in the middle.


a closer look at the dried fish roe.

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