This is the sequel of Mah Taiwanese Birthday. If you didn't read that one yet, go ahead and click the link. Really, such a special day.

Okay. And so... If you remember, I promised to tell you about the birthday party at Davids house.

I think the Taiwanese people, at least in the circles I am meeting, are very happy about documenting important things such as certificate givings, present giving, club meetings, job/title promotion of a person of any sorts, birthday and in reality pretty much anything that can be documentet. So that's why we lined up cake, presents (both the ones worthy of notice from my 15 liter snack surplus I got in school and some of those I received from the family already.)

Some presents from my classmates that Joni found cute.

Receiving more mooncake from ama while the television is babbling about super typhoons attacking Taiwan and Japan.

And all of a sudden, I was transformed into a real chinese between the picture takings! WTF?

Yeah. Keep sitting there on your butts doing nothing and thinking the world is all easy. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I've already taken over all of china, even though I'm in my royal dresses already. Also, you probably wouldn't take your time to zoom onto the eyes of my vietnamese terminator model here. I promise you: Your days are numbered.

More mooncake!

I can pour up real chinastyle tea too. Although I'm actually doing it wrong here. You have to use your nails, otherwise you'll get burned since the ~95 degrees C water inside transfers the heat pretty fast through the tiny teapot.

Finally's done. That was really much more of a birthday than I had expected. I was actually afraid it was going to be one of the most unspecial 18 year birthdays for a dane in a long time, but I'm actually quite sure that this was much better than attempting to drink 18 shots of straight hard liquor on a night and what's worse or whatever.

Thank you to all the people who celebrated my birthday so much.

Today it's finally on for real. Lately it's been raining first a little bit in the afternoon now and then, later also a few times during the day, and since yesterday night, constantly and quite strong. So strong, actually, that some parts of Yilan, which I visited earlier, has already been flooded amongst a bunch of other places.

In Taipei it's not really too dangerous, althout your umbrella can take damage. If it's made in China it might even break over on the middle so that you have to grab the top part to not have it hit someone else in the head. That's what mine did last week. Retarded. But I have a better umbrella now. Umbrella is btw called Y San around here, where Y means rain and San mean umbrella or cover, essentially. (So what is meant is, these are Rain Umbrellas.) This naming always get me to think of Japanese when they put ~san at the end of peoples, animals or even items names (althout ~tan is the more correct suffix for objects as far as I've understood)...

Usually the schoolgrounds are pretty lively during the breaks, (and also during classes). Now you can just spot people with umbrellas, sometimes sharing with each other.

This is just outside my school. And of course there's a seven eleven just around the corner.

Actually the news just told us this evening about the typhoons condition: It's currently a little south of Taiwan but not really far out in the sea. Because of high pressure around the typhoon, it's not moving, so it's probably going to stay there for some time. This way, it will just cause a lot of rain, which is a big problem for the southern part of Taiwan where the earth is very loose and causes mud-floods. For Taipei residents this just means that you have to use your umbrellas all the time and that more people will take the car. Plus it's getting much colder now, so that you can almost feel a little cool when a strong wind is blowing on you. But still just almost.

Here's another cultural perculiarity. This was taken in Taipei Mainstation while I was tranfering from the beitou line to the danshuei line on my way back home from school. Maybe not a super bad idea since this is a place a lot of people change trains. This way perhaps less kids will drive you crazy with screaming when you're in transit? (Not that I thinks it's ever really used. I've only seen someone taking their baby with them through the MRT about 4 times so far. And funny thing was, it was the babies fathers all four times carrying them around.)

Nagato is quite smart. She chose to put on a raincoat. This way she won't have to struggle with her umbrella in the typhoon windgusts like everyone else here in taiwan. (But then again, she's a Japanese, so that's probably where the culture difference lies.)

This is also mooncake. I'm eating a lot of these right now, because my birthday was just before the mid-autumn festival. So of course, a had to give me a bunch of those, so that I could eat them the next day. Not that I got the chance, because I got a lot of mooncake from the family on that day aswell. But they taste quite good, really.

The last week, Joni has been commenting every time the sun was really strong, that she thought another typhoon would come soon. Yesterday it rained a little here in Taipei but today it rained a bit more. Much like the danish weather, it rains a little now and then, sometimes light, sometimes very heavy, but still just for short periods, and later up the day it has been more and more.

Yesterday, some meteorologists said on television a typhoon might come soon, but remarked they will still be watching the weather for two more days before they will confirm if it's another one. Today, though, it seems very unlikely that a typhoon wont come, because as Joni tells me, the rain at the current time indicates a typhoon is coming, because it rains the way I explained above.

I can't show you any pictures of typhoons ripping Taipei apart yet, so here's another subject: 

This evening, Joni bought these. She likes them a lot. They're little nori snacks, seaweed with a little seasoning that you just eat without anything else on.