This past weekend was largely spent reading Les Miserables, a novel my friend gave me in grade 10 or 11. In spite of loving themusical, I'd never gotten around to reading the book I've owned for so long.

Saturday, I went downtown Hsinchu to a big mall called WindDance. 5 hours of walking around, buying a few things (my first clothing purchase in Taiwan: 3 pairs of socks), reading Les Mis at the food court, getting caught by a sudden downpour of rain, reading Les Mis at Starbucks, and then reading Les Mis at home.

On Sunday, I finally decided to go to the lake near my house. It's probably not man-made, but it's situated in the most unlikely of places... which probably meant construction went up around the lake. Again, read Les Mis by the water where parents brought their little ones to feed the fish and turtles. From the angle I was watching, only seeing the reflection off the water and no fish below the surface, the flurry of fish darting at the falling food reminded me much of the suspicious violence at a water's surface beneath which lies some kind of monster in some kind of thriller film. That night, I went home and was educated on what a real truffle was (on TV) -- a truffle of the size of two fingers curled goes for probably AU$800. Ouch. And it's basically a pick-n-sell kind of deal where you find them on the ground!

I saw Demolition Man that night. I used to love that movie -- Wesley Snipes' character in particular. He kicked ass. What's funny about this version of Demolition Man is that instead of Taco Bell "winning the fast food wars", it was "Pizza Hut". So "Taco Bell" was dubbed over by "Pizza Hut", and the signs were all placed-over by Pizza Hut signs... not so easy when it's a fast moving action scene and you notice a floating Pizza Hut patch trying to keep the Taco Bell sign behind it covered. They also missed one (suckers). It was fun to watch though.

Today, my coworker came around distributing iced mochas... in celebration of getting his stolen car back. Haha... such is life in Taiwan. Anything you can use to get from point A to B gets stolen... cars, scooters, bikes... shoes. His car was taken the day he was supposed to take me apartment shopping, which would explain why we went by scooter that day. I suggested to another coworker that we steal his car and return it weekly for free coffees. Not sure if that suggestion will fly.