Birthday Pics

Pimp My Ride With Baby Drai

The music isn't what I chose but Youtube won't let you use any music with your videos anymore due to copyright problems.

Slightly Excited

Christmas Pics

Some Videos For Grandpa

These videos are uploaded from my iPhone, so the quality isn't amazing.

His big Christmas gift.






He loves rearranging furniture.

Merry Christmas!

I haven’t talked to most of you in ages so I wanted to be a responsible adult and send out some Christmas cards this year. Alas, I didn't, so now you get to read about it on my blog.
2009 has been a roller coaster with the addition of Draidan to the family in January. He has made our lives a lot better but also a lot more tiring. We were hoping he would have turned out to be the quiet, reserved, unobtrusive child that I was but now we are starting to worry he is going to turn out like his mother. Drai started walking at 7 months and there has never been a dull moment since. He runs about chasing the cats, rearranging our furniture and opening anything that can be and often can’t be. He is freakishly strong for a baby his age and was able to do a chin up on the table by 8 months. He also can push around furniture that easily ways over double his own body weight. He is a lot like Bam Bam from the Flintstones actually. I might be worried that he has too much testosterone coursing through his veins if it were not for his favorite toys: A comb, a vacuum cleaner and a mop. Although, he now seems to be using the mop more as a ninja weapon. He is pretty damn funny though and quite popular with everyone in the neighborhood. I take him to the park almost every day and the grandmother’s taking care of their grandchildren are always shocked at how a baby his age can climb ladders, scale ledges and negotiate different obstacles. The only ones not impressed are the older children- as Draidan leaves a trail of drool everywhere he goes. Drool on the steps, drool on the rope ladders, drool on the slides… kids just aren’t diggin’ the saliva gym. It’s quite embarrassing when I hear the little girls shouting to their grandmothers that they don’t want to play on the jungle gym because the foreign baby drooled all over it. (Yea, they call him the "Foreign Baby')

We are really excited to have our first Christmas together. I bought him a Ferrari that he sits in and I can steer him about via remote control. It is awesome! It even has a sub woofer sound system built into the dash board and LED headlights. I am sure he will score tons of chicks with his new ride and it gives me a good excuse to play with remote control cars again! It’s times like these that I am glad I have a son. Girl toys are so lame!
Teaching is still going well The staff at my school are awesome and like a second family to me here. I still take any chance I can to torment my students and play practical jokes on them constantly. They are getting pretty good at doing them themselves. They used to be horrible at it because if I was setting someone up, the others would all stand around in a circle, staring at the intended victim, snickering as they waited for the joke to happen. (Which would of course always tip the individual off.) Taiwanese don’t play jokes on each other, so it is quite strange to them. Even the grade ones are now on program and will look away from the victim and pretend they are working when they come into the room. I scared the living daylights out of an adult class a few months ago as well. We were talking about ghosts. (Taiwanese are deathly afraid of ghosts.) I have a watch with a really interesting face plate that almost looks like a crystal ball. It throws off the light in different directions and for some reason gives off a blue glow as the light bounces off of it. I said to them, “Do you guys want to see something scary.” They all said, “Yes.” Then, I took off my watch, placed it on the table in front of them and said, “They say the crystal in these watches can capture the faces of ghosts nearby every time the second hand reaches the 13.” They were confused but then I pointed to the 13 second mark and told them to stare closely at it. “When the second hand hits it, you will briefly see a face. Now just watch…” The second hand was at about the 30 second mark, so we all stood around watching the seconds tick by. I could tell they were starting to get mesmerized by the way the light was shining off of the crystal. With ten seconds to go, the room was totally silent and you could feel the anxiety in the room. One woman was peeking through her fingers and all of them began to lean in a little closer uncomfortably. As the second hand touched the 13 mark, I threw my arms into the air and let out a horrible screech. Every person in the room leaped back screaming, some clutching their hearts. Two men actually ran half way across the room and the alpha male in the class actually pushed one of the women out of the way to escape the ghost watch. I of course, was in tears laughing at their reaction as I put my watch back on. All of them were looking at me wild eyed and then one woman asked me, “So… it really has ghost?” Which made me laugh harder. “No,” I replied. “ I made that part up.” Which got all of them laughing along with me except for the alpha male who was still shaking and wild eyed. They then began giving him the gears for throwing the women to the ghost. I don’t think teachers could do that in Canada.
Jenny is doing well, she is teaching out of our house a couple of hours a day and works in a trade company in the mornings twice a week. If I am not home when she is teaching, we have a nanny come in. Draidan really likes the nanny and she is studying pediatric nursing at university, so she is perfect for us.
Other than that, not much is new. We have had an amazing winter so far. It was 25 degrees yesterday and we have been averaging about 26 for the last two months. It is supposed to get colder later this week though. The mountains are even going to get snow apparently.
Anyways, we wish we were there to celebrate Christmas and ring in the new year with all of you. We hope 2010 proves to be an even better year than 2009 for you.
Much Love,
Danny, Jenny and Draidan

November 28th

Sandstorm

China's newest expert to wreak havoc on the health of the world at large...sand. Their deforestation and damming have caused vast areas to turn into deserts. We now reap the benefits with literally clouds of sand blowing across the city. I have honestly never seen anything like it. I washed my scooter yesterday under perfect weather. Today, I walked out of the university after teaching a class for an hour and it was covered in a film of dust. When I came out of my school tonight, it looked like I had taken my scooter off-roading. There is probably about a hundred meter visibility right now.
Jonathon even had to go home because he went swimming in it and figures he sucked in too much of it from breathing hard.
He was having chest pains and couldn't take deep breaths.
Stupid China.

Anyways, at least my baby is still cute.

In the Garden

Crazy Month

Sorry for the long wait between blogs but October has been crazy thus far. Draidan had a really rough weekend. He started getting a fever on the Wednesday, so we took him to the doctor and she ran some tests and found he had a urinary tract infection. So they put him on some meds and he seemed to recover quickly but then on Friday night was starting not to feel well again. Jenny had arranged for me to get my belated father's day present Saturday night, which was a tattoo of Draidan's name over my heart.
(The typhoon killed our original father's day plan.) But we didn't want to take him to the tattoo shop how he was, so I went with Andrew instead, who kept my mind off the pain quite nicely.
When Drai woke up Sunday morning, he was not himself at all. He was lethargic, quiet and running a really high fever. We took him to a different clinic and they said to take him to the hospital immediately. Which we did. They ran a ton of tests and hooked him up to an IV right away. Which was a horrible thing to experience. We were in a pediatrics ward room with three beds and thankfully there was no one in there with us. So it was at least fairly quiet except for the kids screaming outside. It was a very long day but at about 11:30 Drai finally fell asleep. At 12:00 am we got new roommates who were absolutely awful. They burst in the door turned on the lights and started talking super loudly. This woke up Draidan who began screaming. Their son was also screaming. After about an hour, we finally got Drai to relax and go back to sleep, only to have him woken up by their loud cellphone rings every thirty minutes for the rest of the night. If they weren't talking loudly on their cellphone, the couple was arguing. Or rather, the husband was trash talking his wife. So none of us slept at all the first night. Literally. The next day was much of the same but a single room opened up and we paid extra to move into that one. It was a lot nicer but Draidan was so worn out and over tired that he was just miserable. He is so active, so to have him sit in a crib hooked up to needles in his arm was making him literally go insane. He was smashing his head against the crib, yowling away, slamming his wrapped up IV arm into the metal sides of the crib and screaming so much that he couldn't even breath. When we would try to feed him, he would throw up and twice he threw up on his IV arm, which they then had to redo to keep it sterile. (Which meant poking him again.) So he went another 16 hours with no sleep and finally I had had enough. He was trying to tear the needles out and biting at them. So I called the nurse in and explained that if we don't take the IV out, he is not going to sleep and he isn't going to get better without some rest. She argued about with me, so I told her to get the head nurse. She came in and did pretty much the same. She didn't want to do it either because they would then need to give him a shot every 4 hours. I said that was fine though because Drai only cries for one minute with a shot. (A hell of a lot better than 36 hours of IV crying) They still wouldn't do it but said they would ask the doctor. Ten minutes later, he tore the whole thing out and his hand started bleeding all over. So we ran out to get the nurse again and she finally took the IV out.
It was so cute afterward because they left and he held his hand up to me to show me. So I gave it a kiss and then he showed his mom. He then gave his hand back to me and started to smile. Then he started clapping and was out cold 20 minutes later.
So we finally got about 6 hours sleep that night. My school was awesome and gave me two days off to stay at the hospital with him. On Tuesday morning, they told us they would let him go home in the afternoon.

Since he has been home he has still been pretty quiet but sleeping a lot. Last night he slept almost 12 hours, which he has never done before. And he is out cold again 3 hours after getting up. He seems to be getting back to his normal self though. He is smiling and breaking things again. The little jerk managed to break our digital TV remote and two AC remotes in one month, which cost us almost $100 to buy new ones for. (The cheap ones don't work for the fancy appliances we have.)

Austin Powers aka. Mini Me

We have been having a busy couple weeks since Drai learned how to walk. He started doing it about a week before he turned 8 months. He then pretty much mastered it a week later and has since then kept us on the run constantly. No longer can we plop him in a chair or put him in a Jolly Jumper. He isn't having any of that. He just tears off at high speeds until his legs can't go any faster and then belly flops. This doesn't deter him though and he is up in seconds to do it all over again.

Beds are no obstacle for him now. He can climb in and out as he pleases. Which makes it all the more easy to slap my face or body slam me when I am trying to take a nap. It's pretty fun for the most part though. I took him to the park yesterday and got him up on the jungle gym for the first time. He found that quite fun but was already finding the more dangerous ways to play on things. Why sit on this when I can stand? Why go down this when I can climb up? He's definitely related to me.
Doh!

As most of you know from Facebook, I also gave him a haircut. Things started going awry almost immediately. Trying to cut an eight month old's hair wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. He kept moving his head to see what the buzzing sound was and I kept accidentally shearing off more than I wanted to. (We had decided to cut it because he was always really hot and sweats like crazy.) Finally, one side was so messed up that we thought, "Let's shave it into a Fauxhawk for fun." That was going well until the battery died on the clippers. So half-shaved we had to wait for the battery to recharge. That night, we got back to work but I forgot to adjust the setting on the razor and ended up bucking a huge patch right off. Long story short, he ended up with a real mohawk.
My mom was pissed when she saw it. She was ready to cry. I thought he looks bad ass. After her comments, I was terrified to hear what my father would say when he saw it. Much to our surprise, it didn't seem to phase him at all. So he has officially become the cool grandparent. Actually, everyone here really likes it. When I walk into a 7-11 they all call him the "cool baby."

I surprised Jenny with a new bike a couple of weeks ago, so she has been taking him around on that lately. I roller blade next to them and Drai seems to love it. When he gets in new situations though, he looks really intense. Not scared but totally taking everything in. We go to this market once a week which is just insane. Even for me it often sensory overload. Drai just sits on the bike checking everything out. People come up to him and tell him in Chinese that he is cute and he gives them the most hilarious dismissive facial expressions. I have never seen a baby make adults feel so stupid. They make all these cute clicking sounds and noises at him and he just rolls his eyes, cocks one eyebrow and tries to see what is going on behind them. Or he will look at me with a look on his face like, "Who the hell is this clown?"

If he knows who you are though, he is all smiles and hugs. These pictures are of him wearing an outfit that the neighbor gave us. Apparently he thinks I am British.

Bang Bang Clang

Kittens!

The quality isn't very good on this video. I was experimenting with a different output format.

Swimming with Uncle Mike

Drai's New Ride

Cruising for chicks.

Drai's First Concert

We took Drai to his first rock concert at the high school today. The main reason we went is his new nanny was singing at it but her set was pushed back two and a half hours and we finally ended up leaving before she performed. A couple of the bands were quite good actually. One in particular was doing Santana covers almost perfectly.

These pictures are from him rockin' out...




And the bottom two are from when I took my eyes off of him for 2 minutes. He found Jenny's markers and decided to do some impromptu artwork on his face and the floor.

August

There isn't much new to report around here. Drai is doing very well. He is starting to stand up on his own a lot and can now climb up on the bed. He moves incredibly fast. We went out for dinner last night with Mike and his girlfriend Sandy. I had just finished commenting on how fast Drai's hands were. Then another guy showed up that I hadn't seen in about a year. After about two minutes of watching Drai grabbing things, he said, "My God that kid has fast hands." So perhaps he is destined to be a goalie. Or a card shark.

He has now mastered saying, "Mama" and started saying "Dada" today. He also can say the cats name, "Bao Bao."

Everyone told me I would be amazed how fast babies grow up but I didn't really understand until now.

Taiwan is still recovering from the typhoon. About 6-600 people died in it. Most were buried under mud slides. The majority of the people that died lived within two hours of here. It is pretty sad. Especially watching the news and seeing their president lie constantly about it. I was watching him give English interviews on Reuters and CNN and saying one thing; then turning around and saying something completely different to the Taiwanese media. For example, he said on English TV on the Saturday that they didn't need outside help and could handle it. But then, when everyone died, he asked for outside help. He then blamed his underlings for not bringing in outside help earlier and told the Taiwanese media he didn't know they had turned down the outside help. (Even though, it was he that did so.)Then, he told the Western media that he would take full responsibility as he was president. Then, the next day all the guys under him tailored their resignations but he did nothing. It's very frustrating to watch. All politicians lie but this guy really needs to start getting busted on it. Taiwan needs a Jon Stewart equivalent to expose the punk.

We lost our awesome nanny. She needs a full time job to help her family, so we had to find another one quickly as she only gave us a one week notice. I think one of my students is going to do it. Which will hopefully work out well. She doesn't know much about babies but we can teach her and Jenny is always just in the next room teaching when the nanny will be taking care of Drai. She is a hottie too, so Drai will be happy. I can't hire any ugly nannies. That would be child abuse right?

Typhoon Madness

The worst storm in 50 years. That is what they are saying. It was hands down the biggest I have seen. Two weeks ago, they were reporting that Taiwan would have to start rationing water because all of the reservoirs were reaching critical levels. (We haven't had much rain this year.) After 12 hours, all the reservoirs were overflowing. It rained for 48 more hours after that. The hotel next to the one were staying at in TaiDong fell into the river. You can see that here.

Our house was fine. We didn't leak at all but our neighbor was gone for the weekend and his balcony drain got plugged, so his whole apartment filled up. The elevators in our building stopped working, too. Thankfully, we live on the 3rd floor and not the 20th. The worst thing for us is that all the city's water supplies have been tainted. So we now will not have running water for at least three days. It has only been 24 hours and I am already itchin' for a shower. I usually have two a day and wash my hands obsessively. You don't realize how much you use water until you don't have any.
Dishes. Toilets. Brushing your teeth. Washing your hands. Showering. Cleaning. Laundry. Come Thursday, I am going to be going mad.
Thankfully, I have it much better than a lot of the people in this city. While driving to work today, many areas looked like a war zone. Soldiers were out helping people move all of their furniture out into the street to be taken away. Many of them had water two meters high on their first floors. My physiotherapist said he came downstairs to find his fridge and washing machine floating on their sides. His scooter and car are ruined. 1000s of pigs and cows drown in the floods. Which need to be cleaned up quickly to ward off disease. Actually, today I asked my junior high students if they had seen that on the news. They said they had. I then told them how I had gone there today and found that if you sharpened a stick really well, you could walk around and poke the dead carcasses with the stick. They all kind of nodded but didn't question why I would do that. So I then acted the next bit out while saying, "You can also just stab them over and over with the stick like this... but it smells bad." Total silence. I then started laughing and went on with the lesson.

There were pictures in the newspaper today of hands sticking out of the mud on riverbanks. It is pretty awful. I couldn't imagine being the people trying to clean their homes after that. I said to Jenny, I would just want to move.

Almost every area we visited on our 4 day holiday last week are destroyed. Every place we visited was the worst hit. We are so lucky we drove home when we did. I couldn't imagine being caught in that.

Anyways, I am going to go sit with my stinky wife now. And maybe poke her with a sharp stick.

Cutey

Back Home

Well we made it. Thank God we didn't decide to stay another day at the hotel, which is what I wanted to do. Jenny said that we really had to leave before it hit. We were going to take the long way back but we found out there was a faster, more dangerous but more beautiful road directly through the mountains. I chose that one!

It was awesome. The road was usually about the size of one and a half lanes or smaller and it winded it's way slowly up to the very top of the mountains. Every corner gave us another breath taking view of a valley or mountain top. When we reached the top, which is apparently the highest part of the highway in Taiwan, we were literally above the clouds. Then, the winds from the impending typhoon started pushing the clouds into the valley, which looked amazing as it silently seeped into the gorge. The air was perfect and it was probably about 25 degrees. We then started noticing that the clouds were getting heavier really fast and actually starting to surround us. It was kind of like horror movie fog. If I walked twenty feet from Jenny, I would disappear. We hopped back in the car and started heading back down the mountain but became completely engulfed in the cloud. I literally could only see a car length in front of me. Thankfully, there was hardly anyone on the road. We passed one area that looked more like the Swiss Alps than Taiwan but we couldn't stop because we literally couldn't see anything.
Long story short, we got back to Tainan it one piece. We turned on the TV and were surprised to see that the typhoon had been upgraded to a Super Typhoon and the whole island was to be shut down. I am so happy we aren't on the road today. The winds are insane. Some of the strongest I have seen in Taiwan. Signs are going flying by on the road. I went out to get some tea and was literally being pushed down the sidewalk. I stood on marble and the wind slid me along on it without moving. I wish I had a waterproof camera. I kept trying to take pictures but the rain is traveling at a horizontal angle, so even under cover, I get blasted.
The whole building is rumbling.

These are some more pics of Toroko and the trip home.

Some Vids

Toroko

We arrived in Toroko Gorge this evening. It is on the North East of Taiwan. I now fully understand why the Dutch called Taiwan, "Formosa" when they settled here. Formosa means "beautiful island." The whole trip up was absolutely incredible today. The majority of the drive featured desolate beaches with water shining every color of blue imaginable on one side and bamboo forested mountains on the other. Just when I thought the views couldn't get any better, we entered Toroko Gorge.

Toroko has the smallest, sketchiest, most stunning road I have ever driven on. The majority of the road is barely 1.5 car lanes big. The roads are cut through the marble and limestone cliffs. In the river bed below are massive bolders strewn about everywhere. On the otherside of the road is just a massive rock face. It looks exactly like the painted mountain schemes you always see in old Chinese paintings. Where waterfalls seem to drop forever and little pagodas sit perched on their ledges. A total dreamscape.

It took us 6 hours to get here because we stopped so many times to take pictures and look at the view. We haven't even seen half of it yet. We are staying at a great hotel in the middle of the gorge. It has an infiniti pool on the roof surrounded by the forest and on the bottom floor has a beautiful lap pool, sauna, work out room, bowling alley etc. I would have stayed here at least two days but we just turned on the TV and saw that the typhoon that was heading towards Hong Kong has switched paths and will probably nail where we are currently staying head on. So we now have to cut our trip short and race back through the mountain pass before it hits. I think it will be at least a 10 hour drive tomorrow. Not good for the back. These roads are the last place you want to be driving in a typhoon though. LAME! I am feeling good and really like it up here. Stupid typhoons. I guess I will just have to come back another time. Perhaps with YOU!

Kenting and TaiDong

Sorry, we didn't blog earlier but we were having technical difficulties. We have finally made it up to Toroko Gorge in Hualien County, Taiwan. It is on the North East coast of Taiwan. Toroko is definitely incredible but I will get to it later. Day 1
We borrowed Jenny's cousin's car and drove out of Tainan early Sunday morning. I was dreading driving a car for the first time in Taiwan but once getting out of Tainan, it was quite easy. Except for the odd insane driver, it was quite easy and we managed to not get lost once. We headed down South to Kenting. I forgot how awesome Kenting is. It is only two hours south of Tainan but I never go. It looks like Hawaii but way cheaper. They have lots of great food and amazing beaches down the coast. The first day we stopped at the Kenting aquarium. I wasn't anticipating anything remotely good and figured it would consist mostly of half dead fish swimming slowly about in algae ridden pools. However, it turned out to be the best aquarium I have ever been, too. The whole thing was basically a series of glass tubes that winded their way deeper and deeper into this massive tank. So the fish were swimming above you, below you and next to you. At the bottom of the tank was a massive wreck, which served as home base for the biggest variety of fish I have ever seen. Reef sharks, rays, whale sharks, tuna, the entire cast of "Finding Nemo" and one huge one that was about the size of a Harley Motorcycle. I have no idea what it was. The slightly weird thing though was that as you leave the aquarium, you see all the beautiful fish you just spent hours taking photos of again. Except they are dead and being served in all the aquarium cafeterias. Humans are weird.

We then headed into Kenting, which unfortunately got nailed by a thunder storm. So we ended up spending most of the night in the hotel. The next morning, we were up early and ran across the street to the beach. This was Drai's first time on a sandy beach and he promptly scooped up a handfull of sand and ate it. This lead to one really angry baby. He was also pretty scared of the thunder the waves were making as they crashed on the beach. It was pretty deserted and the waves were massive. Actually, the waves were the biggest I have ever swam in. At least taller than me. It was hard to swim out past where they were breaking and I got tossed a good number of times but it was quite fun. I then swam back in after about an hour because Drai was just not getting into beach time. Just as I stood up to get out, a massive swell blind-sided me and put out my back. (Not impressed.) So figuring our trip would be ruined, I sulked into a massage therapy place. Luckily, they managed to get me back into decent shape. We then drove out to other beaches and checked out the places we normally couldn't if we had taken a bus down.
The next morning, I woke up with an ear infection. Or the beginnings of one. Again annoyed that I just can't seem to catch a break from some sort of ailment, I said, "Screw it. I am not having my vacation ruined by this crap." So we drove across the island to TaiDung. Which was about a three hour drive. It was a beautiful drive but a little sketchy, due to the very narrow road and odd insane tour bus driver. I found a witch doctor at a pharmacy in TaiDung who managed to give me some sort of cocktail which pretty much wiped out any pain from the ear infection. Our hotel there had a nice pool but that was about it. The meals there (which were included) were totally nasty. Even Jenny wouldn't eat it, and she eats everything. The continental breakfast the next morning was even worse. It was huge and there was literally not one thing I would eat at it except white rice. So we ended up having breakfast at 7-11 before heading to Toroko Gorge. Drai has been traveling really well and except for falling of the bed three times, he is doing well. He did manage to bruise his cheek on the last fall though as he hit his head on the coffee table on the way down. My son is retarded.