Janet Jackson!

I still need to post the rest of my photos from my trip, but in the meantime I wanted to mention last weekend's events.

On Friday I got to see Janet Jackson during her one-night-only concert in Taipei. I had 12th row seats--I could see the sweat flying from the dancers!

Janet was amazing; she's 44 years old and still as talented and sexy as ever! I took some photos and videos, but unfortunately my mobile phone camera doesn't do very well at dark, loud concerts.





This is the view of the stage from my seat in the "VIP" section.

And this is the view behind me. They're all jealous!

See? I was there!

Unfortunately, that photo of me is much clearer than this one of Janet :-(

Fortunately, here's a shot from the Taipei Times. I don't know how she managed to sing, dance, and continue to breathe in that outfit. Hawt!

I have a (lame, Lame, LAME) video that I shot here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XoSsmUyt1c

There's a better video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTgxAczM9c--check out Janet's interaction with the guitar player during "Black Cat" at the 1:30 mark (!)

Local Mid-Autumn Celebration

Some friends invited me to their neighborhood community's Mid-Autumn celebration (aka Moon Festival). The actual holiday isn't until next Saturday--October 3rd--but they were celebrating it one week early.

It was fun. There was a ton of contributed food. I can't remember all of the dishes, but it included many kinds of rice, veggies, meat, soup, and traditional snacks. It's especially popular to BBQ at this time, and I feasted on all kinds of dishes including barbecued fish and 烏賊 (cuttlefish).

The traditional fruit is 柚子 (pomelo), which many folks enjoy eating while gazing at the beautiful moon. What to do with the peel? Well, you can see the humorous custom in the photo.

Here is a video that captured some of the events. Sorry about the poor quality.

Susan Boyle does it again

If anyone thought that Susan Boyle was a one-hit wonder...think again. Here is a link to her hauntingly beautiful rendition of the Rolling Stone's song "Wild Horses". [Lyrics]

Note: Hopefully the above link will work by the time you read this. Originally I had posted a YouTube video with the song, but it had been pulled within an hour!

Susan's debut CD goes on sale on November 24; pre-orders on Amazon.com [order CD] have already outsold Whitney Houston's comeback album and other pre-release titles, including the Beatles remastered Abbey Road. [New York Times]

You go girl!

I'm on TV in Taiwan

Here it is: My 15 minutes seconds of fame.

Back home in Humboldt

I saw this strange fruit the other day at Safeway. It's called a Buddha's Hand, and is similar to a large lemon, but without much of a pulp. It's used primarily for its zest, and for perfuming homes and closets in Asia. I was tempted to buy one as a table decoration until I found out the price: $14.95/lb! I'll wait until I'm in Asia.

Life is rolling along. I completed the TESOL course on Februrary 1st. We got together at a nearby bar (The Cellar) and celebrated our graduation. As soon as I can figure out who took photos and how to get a hold of them, I'll post some here. I gained a great deal of valuable teaching skills which I'm looking forward to implementing (as soon as I can get a job!)

BTW, The Celler is next door to a relaxing coffee house, and guess who we saw there? Yep, Mrs. Kevin Bacon.

When Theresa and Amanda picked me up from San Francisco, they surprised me with a trip to the Winchester Mansion in San José. I've wanted to see that crazy lady's house since I was 9 years old, when I first saw pictures of it on my Viewmaster. Let me tell you, after seeing the bizarre house that Nutty Sarah designed herself, you'll feel proud of any poorly designed dog houses you've built in the past.

By the way, I got the Amazon problem resolved. I have reservations about ever buying anything through them myself.

I sent my application to Hess on Monday. They wrote back on Tuesday saying that they're going over applications this month for the June 1st intake, and will be contacting me shortly regarding an interview. I'm very excited, but trying not to get my hopes too far inflated.

I came upon contact information for two people with whom I performed the Rocky Horror show back in the early '80s. Greg played Riff-Raff, and now is a very popular morning DJ in Las Vegas. Bonnie, who played Janet, has a MySpace page, but not too much information on it. I wrote to them both yesterday; we'll see if I get any replies.

The spellcheck isn't working on Blogger for some reason, so just ignore my typos.