I Mean What I Say

I’m sorry people, but I can read Chinese, at least a little. While I may not be able to read something as difficult as a novel, things like advertisements, menus, and text messages are usually quite understandable. Therefore, when I say things like: “Hey, look at this!” I am not asking you to translate it, I am not asking you what it says. No, I am saying to you: “Hey, look at this!”

Sunrise over the Mountains

After her breakfast (150cc of tasty formula) and after she had burped, I decided to take my daughter outside for a little stroll. I was very glad I did, as I got to see the sun coming up over the mountains in the distance:

I just wish I had a better camera (this was taken with the 1.3 megapixel camera on my cell phone), that it was clearer (it was a little hazy in the distance), and that I had another hand to keep the phone steady (one arm was needed to hold on to my daughter). Nevertheless, the pictures turned out okay considering, it was a beautiful sight. This is one of the reasons I enjoy living here.

I don’t have access to the EXIF info for these pictures, so I can’t tell you the difference in time between the first picture and the last picture but it’s probably only a minute or two (two at the max). I think it’s interesting that you can stand there and look at the sun in the sky and it doesn’t seem to move at all, but when it’s rising up over the mountains, you can almost see it move. Notice that the sun is higher in the last picture than it is in the first. As I said, there was only about one minute or so between the two pictures.

My Giant Rincon

I used to always refer to this as my mountain bike. My wife -- who doesn’t really understand the difference between road and mountain bikes -- calls it “Little Yellow”. (My road bike is called “Little White”.) Well, I am going to have to stop calling it that and either call it what my wife calls it or refer to it by it’s brand and/or model.

Why? Well, partly because even though it is a mountain bike (a Giant Rincon), it has never been used as such. I have never gone on single-track or anywhere else off road. (I don’t think a section of road back in the boondocks that was under construction and not paved at the time counts as off road.) This bike has only ever been used on the road.

Some background information then. This was my first “real” bike, but back then I didn’t know what a real bike was. I got a mountain bike because bikes based on mountain bikes (but of low quality) were what I -- not knowing any better -- had always ridden. Once I learned more about bicycles and cycling and then got myself an actual road bike (at the time a Specialized Tarmac E5, later my current bike, a GT R Ultra), I rode this one less and less. It came to the point where I hardly rode it at all.

I knew I should be riding it and I tried to ride it. Quite often before rides I would decide that I was going to ride my mountain bike but when I got down to the garage and looked at my two bikes, I pulled out my road bike. It was hard to ride the Rincon because it was just too darn uncomfortable. I could do a seventy or eighty kilometre ride on the GT and not want to go home just quite yet. After thirty or forty on the mountain bike, however, and I just wanted to get home and finish.

I then discovered that my discomfort was coming from two places: my butt and my upper body. To rectify the first problem I changed saddles, going to a leather one. (I now have leather saddles on both bikes -- I put one on my road bike first. I don’t think I will ever go back to using a more modern-style -- that is, not leather -- saddle again.) The second problem was harder to diagnose and I had always assumed it was just the bike itself or just the style of the bike, in the sense that I had been riding a road bike for so long that I was just used to the positioning and geometry of a road bike.

If that was the case, what could I do about it? I then realized that my arms didn’t like the position they were in while riding. The decision was then made to switch from a flat handlebar to drop handlebars. And now the process (here, here, and here) has been completed. And looking at these pictures you will hopefully understand why I might have to stop calling this bike my mountain bike. It doesn’t much look like one anymore, does it?

Now, you may think I’m crazy, but to me it just makes sense. It’s always used on the road, isn’t it? So why shouldn’t it have drop handlebars? I was initially worried that putting drop bars on it would make it look funny, but, at least to me, it doesn’t look strange at all. I like the bar tape too. Yes, I could have picked a different colour, but I liked the apple green. I thought it would look very special on the bike. There was a silver that just about matched the silver detailing on the frame, but I thought the contrast of the green would look good. And, I think I was right. But, once again, you might think I’m crazy. (By the way, when the time comes to change the bar tape on my road bike, I’m thinking of going with purple.) (Update: As you can see from the picture above, this is no longer the case. I have since switched to Brooks leather bar tape in raspberry colour.)

I took it for its first ride last night and other than having to adjust the tilt on the saddle, it felt and rode very good. Before I didn’t really want to ride this bike at all, but now I find myself wanting to ride it. Right now I’m itching to ride it up to Alishan to try it out whereas before that was a ride I would only dream of doing on a road bike.

Being Different

I’ve always felt that I was a little different from most people. By themselves those differences didn’t make me that unique, but when added together I do think they make me quite special. For example, I’m left handed, most people are right handed. I was goalie in hockey, most people choose not to play that position. I played soccer, most people in my home town played softball. I refereed minor hockey, most people choose not to subject themselves to such ridicule. I use a Mac (and Linux on my laptop), most people -- still -- use Windows. I left my home country to live and work, most people I know don’t move too far from their home town. And here’s the kicker: Most road cyclists use drop handlebars. In that, I am the same; there is no difference there. But some cyclists decide they don’t like or want drop handlebars for some reason and put flat bars on their road bikes. Me, I go the other way. I am attempting to put drop handlebars on my mountain bike. Let’s hope it works out. Stay tuned.

Stuck in My Head

Why, every time I hear the Counting Crows song “Mr. Jones”, does it get stuck in my head for days and days? I only have to hear that song once and I keep singing it to myself for at least a week after I have heard it.

Impromptu Birthday Party

The call came earlier than expected, but it was perfect timing as we had just finished lunch. A student of mine had called to say that she was coming to our house to give me a gift for my birthday (which is in two days). What was the gift? A very delicious cake.



And so, we were able to have a short and unscheduled birthday celebration. We had a candle (apparently she didn’t know how old I was as the candle was a question mark!) and my wife and son sang “Happy Birthday” to me. My son and I blew out the candle and then he helped me cut the cake.



The cake was very good. My son really enjoyed it, but then again he enjoys all cake that isn’t chocolate! Thank you, Meco! Thank you for the gift and thank you for remembering.

My Son's Amazing Ability

I don’t which surprises/upsets me more: Those here who seemed surprised that my son can speak Mandarin or those that question whether or not he can understand what I am saying.

First of all, why would he not understand -- or be able to speak -- Mandarin? He is living in Taiwan. Everywhere he goes he hears people speaking Mandarin. It’s all around him. Also, do they think he never speaks to the people on his mother’s side of the family? (I do realise that they might not know his mother is Taiwanese, but sometimes they see us all together.) Even if they wrongly assume that we only ever speak English at home, they must realise that he is going to hear Mandarin every time he steps out the door to go outside.

Now, about understanding what I am saying: Let us not forget that most people in this country believe that if you are white, you are too stupid to learn Mandarin or Chinese. They think that if they see a Westerner, they have to speak English, because that person is only capable of speaking English. It is inconceivable that someone from a Western country can actually speak Mandarin. Therefore, do they think I never talk to my son? Or that he hasn’t been listening to me the whole time he has been here?

I might - if I try hard enough -- be able to fathom the idea that some people are going to wonder about the language-capabilities of my son. But when I get some people who think one way or some people who think the other way, I really don’t know what to say. All I can say is that I get tired of people asking if my son can speak Mandarin, I get tired of people being surprised that he can do it, and tired of people exclaiming that he speaks Mandarin so clearly. I’m sorry, but there’s no reason why he wouldn’t be able to speak it any worse than they can. And there’s no reason why he wouldn’t be able to understand what I am saying to him when I speak to him in English all the time.

My Road Bike

                                        2008 GT R Ultra

Current incarnation:

Details:

Frame:

        2008 GT R Ultra, white with yellow and grey detailing

Wheels:

        Front:

                Mavic Ksyrium Equip

        Rear:

                Hand-built (built around DT Swiss RR415 rim, 28 spokes)

Groupset:

        *SRAM Rival (Force rear gear shift lever)

        *53/39T, 11-26T (11-12-13-14-15-17-19-21-23-26)

Saddle:

        Brooks Team Pro (Team Professional Copper)

                (MacJournal Entry)

Handlebars:

        Ritchey Logic II Comp (white)

Handlebar Tape:

        Brooks leather bar tape (honey)

Pedals:

        Speedplay Zero Cro-Moly (red)

Computer:

        Garmin Edge 500

Previous Incarnations:

My Mountain Bike

Well, I have a post in here for my road bike, so I thought I should put one up here of my mountain bike as well. Here it is:

The date of this post and the actual date are not the same. I am posting this on August 6, 2011, three days after I got the leather saddle you see on the bike. I’m setting this post to a date before the post of my road bike so that this post doesn’t show up first. See my road bike first, then see this one.

I bought this seven years ago before I knew anything about cycling or bikes. I didn’t really know what a road bike was and didn’t know that mountain bikes are not for riding on the road. My life as a cyclist, therefore, started on this bike. I rode this exclusively from when I really started cycling in the fall of 2005 until the end of 2006 when I got my first road bike. Since then this has been regulated to being a second bike, something that gets ridden once in a blue moon. For example, in 2009 I did 56 rides, and 52 of them were on my road bike. In 2010 those numbers were 57 and 56 respectively. (September 22, 2011 update: due to my road bike being mothballed, I have now ridden this bike more this year than I have my road bike. Overall, however, I still only ride this bike 14% of the time.)

In case you are wondering, yes, I did change the tires. I run thinner slick tires on this, not the fat, knobbly things that come standard on mountain bikes.

Update: September 2, 2011

Thanks to the donation from a cycling buddy of a steel rigid fork, I swapped out the heavy and pointless (for riding on the road, at least) suspension fork that came with this bike. Notice the difference in colour between the fork and the frame. As I write this, I’m also looking at getting better -- and better-looking -- bar ends. It’s time to give this bike a little bit of love, as I really, really should ride this more often.

Update: October 22, 2011

I’ve put drop handlebars on this bike meaning that I don’t think I should call this a mountain bike anymore. The details of this change can be found here, here, and here. An updated version -- complete with more pictures -- of this bike can be found here.

This is how this bike has looked through the years and the changes, even though most of the changes are very recent.

Boy or Girl

Back when we expecting Wen BB, I would often have a conversation with someone else that went exactly like this:

Me: “We’re going to have a baby!”

Other Person (OP): “Wow, boy or girl?”

Me: “Boy.”

OP: “Congratulations!”

That always struck me as being a little strange. Shouldn’t things be the other way around? Shouldn’t people say “Congratulations” and then ask if it’s a boy or a girl?

I haven’t had a similar conversation yet during this pregnancy, so I can’t tell you what has happened, but I have often wondered: What would have happened if I had answered “girl” instead of “boy”? Would the OP have said something like, “Ohh, I’m terribly sorry. Better luck next time!”

Me, I am very happy to have a girl. There’s nothing wrong with a boy, but I have always wanted to have a daughter. And, Wen BB is a boy, so I have already have a son. This way, I will have both a son and a daughter. Perfect. And, she will be my parents’ first granddaughter.

Cold Weather

A lot of people in Canada might be thinking that the weather in Taiwan isn’t cold. Come on, it’s only ten degrees. That’s nothing like the sub-zero temperatures we’re getting here. Yes, that is true, but the problem is that people in Canada are prepared for the cold. People here are not.

In Canada, houses, stores, schools, office buildings, buses, et al are all heated, heated so much that it is only slightly uncomfortable walking around in a T-shirt. If there’s a roast in the oven, it’s darn hot in the house. Well, my grandfather thought the house was always cold, but he was special. In Taiwan, other than department stores and big supermarkets, the only heating we have is closing the window to stop the wind and drafts from coming in. These cement walls don’t help either as they don’t retain any heat. I often find it’s colder inside our house than it is outside.

Also I don’t see people in Canada riding motorcycles or scooters when it gets even remotely cool. If the temperature gets below, what, twenty degrees, people are putting their bikes away for the winter. Here we have to ride scooters all year round, and that includes times like now when it is ten, eleven degrees and raining. That, I tell you, is cold.

I almost prefer the winters in Canada. Yes, it’s much colder, but only outside. I can put on a heavy coat, gloves, cover my head and my ears, and I’m fine. I go inside and can take all that off and sit in comfort with the central heating we have. But here I can’t do that. I have to ride my scooter in the cold and wet and then go inside where it’s not any warmer and try to eat or type or wash dishes or clean up, all with very cold hands. Thank god it only lasts for a couple months. By the end of February or so it will only be slightly cool and by the end of March I can get my shorts out again.