Last week, my family and I had ourselves a three-day mini-vacation. We took a 1 1/2 hour boat ride to Penghu, which is a small group of islands just off the west coast of Taiwan. Though we had various excursions (documenting photos can be found in the photo album), one of the main highlights was fishing for squid at night.

We went squid fishing our first evening. In order to do so, we took a boat to a big floating platform out in the middle of the ocean. By the time we arrived, it was already dark. Good thing the platform was all lit up (which was quite a site), otherwise some people might have fallen into the ocean. Mainly though, the lights acted to lure all the squid and whatnots to their doom. Muahahaha.

This was my third time ever really fishing for something (trying to catch little fish in a bucket using paper paddles doesn’t count). My record at the time was 0 for 2. I had never caught anything yet. Little did I know, I would haul in three squid in that one night.

You can tell it was quite exciting.

Afterwards, we had ourselves a little feast. Some of that night’s catch was prepared as sashimi, but some of it was also cooked. After partaking of both, I decided that I preferred the cooked squid. Don’t get me wrong. I like sashimi and the squid sashimi was very fresh (considering one of them had only squirted me with water as I reeled it in half an hour ago). But because it was so fresh, it was somewhat lukewarm. Personally, I like my sashimi cold, like how they serve it in Japanese restaurants.

Another highlight of the trip was riding a motorcycle around the main island. Learning how to ride the motorcycle was fun. It picks up pretty easy, kind of like riding a bike, but faster and heavier. It was a wonderful feeling to ride down an open road at full speed, feeling the breeze in your face and watching the beautiful landscape pass by.

This post may be a little bit late, but last Monday and Tuesday, I was helping out with a local childrens’ summer camp, teaching the little kids how to sing childrens’ hymns in English. It wasn’t too bad. Surprisingly, the kids picked up the songs pretty fast.

During the two-day camp, we also devoted a solid chunk of time to crafts each day. One of the childrens’ moms taught us how to make stuffed animals out of a pair of socks. It was quite fun. Below is my personal attempt at making my own stuffed animal. They kids thought it was pretty cool, but I’m still not quite sure what I made…

The above also means I figured out how to upload and post images in WordPress, despite the fact that the Image/Media Uploader is having problems.

Last week after the training ended, I spent the majority of my Sunday and Monday cleaning the house and boxing my belongings. As part of that process, I took some time to sort through my mail (snail mail, not e-mail), which had been allowed to accumulate throughout the term. Of course, during the weeks, I would take a look at anything that seemed important. But most of the time, I don’t receive anything in the mail except bank statements, credit card bills, and junk. If I know something is junk, I’ll toss it, but I usually just file everything else away in a drawer.

You wouldn’t think that it requires too much time to go through the mail. It should probably only take a few minutes right? Or not. With a large stack like the one I had, the minutes add up. I think I wasted between 1 to 2 hours working on it.

One issue of my hard labor was a collection of organized statements arranged neatly by account and date. (Yes. I just might have OCD.) A second issue was a small mound of torn-up credit card offers.

Sometimes I wonder if credit card companies have a thing against trees. Think about it. I get a notice that I’m preapproved for a credit card from the same bank/company every two weeks or so. (It’s like they don’t know when or how to stop.) And assuming I’m not the only person receiving those offers (which I believe is a very high probability), that’s about six pages of paper and two envelopes per month multiplied by the hundreds of thousands of people in the US. (I assume credit card companies want every single person to own a card, including your average toddler, so they can slap them with a hefty interest charge whenever they fail to make a payment on the $1,000 pacifier they bought with their Visa.) That’s a whole lot of wasted paper. And that’s just one credit card company.

At this rate, a small forest is probably dying every month.

I’ve flown back and forth from Taiwan so often that I think it’s become something of a routine to me. I probably could pack my belongings, drive to the airport, check-in my bags, pass through security, navigate the terminals, and board the plane all with my eyes closed. Actually…I couldn’t.

Anyways. What I’m saying is that these long international flights (13 hours in the air) just don’t faze me anymore. It used to be that making sure I have the right documents at the check-in counter and passing through security seemed like a big deal. Not anymore. I consider the entire process the equivalent of taking the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from Berkeley to San Francisco, except much, much more time intensive.

Ease does come with practice. I’ve even gotten better at occupying those 13 hours, so as to minimize the amount of time I’m sitting in my seat bored out of my mind with the unpleasant feeling of cotton mouth from the dry air and dozing off too often. In my recent travels, I’ve found that one thing really helps. Read the ministry and the Bible. Praying over hymns from the hymnal isn’t too shabby either.

On this past particular flight, I was quite cherished by Hymn #676, which goes:

“All they griefs by Him are ordered,
Needful is each one for thee;
All thy tears by Him are counted,
One too much there cannot be;
And if while they fall so quickly
Thou canst own His way is right,
Then each bitter tear of anguish
Precious is in Jesus’ sight.

Far too well they Savior loves thee
To allow thy life to be
One long, calm, unbroken summer-
One unruffled, stormless sea;
He would have thee fondly nestling
Closer to His loving breast,
He would have that day seem brighter
When alone is perfect rest.”

I outgrew my wardrobe.

Allow me to explain. Because of the strict dress code in the training, for the duration of these past two years, I have been storing the majority of my clothes at my aunt’s house. (She’s actually my mother’s cousin, but in the Chinese language, “aunt” pretty much refers to any female who is about your mother’s age.) But now that I’ve already graduated, I figure I better stop occupying all that closet space in her house.

So today, I went over there and moved all my clothes out of there…only to pile them all on my bed. As I was looking over them, this thought crossed my mind: “I don’t think I can wear most of these things anymore.” It was at that point, then, that I realized that I had outgrown my wardrobe. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up.

Okay. So usually, people will phase items in and out of their wardrobes gradually over time. Under normal circumstances, the wardrobe will grow with the person as they mature. But, because of the special circumstances in the training, my wardrobe was, in a sense, placed on hold. Looking at the items occupying my entire bed is like looking at a snapshot of a bygone era frozen in time. All in all, it’s quite fascinating.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all these clothes.