Fifi Singing her ABCs

Another YouTube cop-out today, but definitely worth sharing! Fifi just recently finished learning to recognize all 26 capital letters - I'll try to get a video of her reading letters up shortly, but for now, Grant's Pad proudly presents the ABC song, performed by Fifi!:

'Paperman' Animated Short

Wanted to share this short with my readers. Saw this when we went to see 'Wreck it Ralph'. Amazing and heartfelt! It's a toss-up whether this was better than the feature film itself (though Ralph was pretty good too!) Enjoy!

 

Some Videos from this weekend

A few videos from this last weekend!

Fifi's gotten reasonably good at counting in both English and Chinese:

Ever since Fifi was exposed to the kitchen playset at the library, we've been pining for a kitchen set of our own. As luck would have it, we came across this brand new set at a deep discount at Target and we couldn't resist! Fifi absolutely loves it - it's the first toy that she feels defensive about. She'll play with it by herself for hours, and when are ready to leave the house, she'll tell us, "Don't move it, okay?!" several times. As such, it's given me a bit of leverage when Fifi and I bump heads - I'll tell her, "I'll take away your kitchen set!" and she'll comply a lot sooner than usual!

Though the kitchen set is definitely the new hot toy in the house, Fifi's best friend these last several months has definitely been Stitch. It all started when Mom started letting her watch Lilo and Stitch videos during mealtimes to distract her. It was a vicious cycle, because after, she had to watch the videos in order to eat at all! Since then, we've weaned her off the videos, but she still wants to bring stitch everywhere. She usually takes pretty good care of him, too:

Interestingly, however, Stitch also seems to bear the brunt of most of Fifi's temper tantrums. When she gets mad, she'll toss him aside, or even try to throw him away! But at the end of the day, she'll always ask for Stitch at bedtime!

The Perfect Coupon Storm

I had to share this amazing coupon-ing experience!

I'm a big fan of those little Totino's party pizzas. They're not as good as delivery or pizzeria pizza, but when you're craving some pizza flavor, they do the trick. Plus, they're just about the right size for a grown person to eat!

Unfortunately, the price of these pizzas has gone up quite a bit in the last few years. It used to be pretty common to find them priced at a dollar a piece; nowadays, you're more likely to encounter them at about $1.50 each at Publix or about $1.35 or so at Wal-Mart.

So we were out at Wal-Mart today, getting our food supplies for the week, when I saw the pizzas on sale for the old $1 each pricing! I happily picked up five of them.

Then, Cherry saw something I missed - on one of the pizzas in the refrigerator, there was a sticker - a manufacturer coupon for Buy 3/Get 1 Free! I promptly picked up that pizza, then found another with the same sticker, and got one more for a total of:

6 + 2 free = 8 for $6

At this point, I would have been pretty pleased. However, another promotion caught my eye:

A $5 rebate when you buy four specially marked boxes of pizza! Let me think about this:

• Buy 3, get 1 free for $1 = four pizzas for three dollars
• Use the code on 4 specially marked pizzas, get a 5$ rebate

By combining the three deals (the discount, buy 3 get 1 free, and the $5 rebate), we were earning two dollars for every four pizzas we were going to eat! It's like getting hired to eat!

We promptly snapped up got a cool dozen of these babies!

Telephone call with Fifi

I just had the most cohesive telephone conversation yet with Fifi (translated from Chinese):

Fifi: Hi
Grant: Hi!
F: Daddy, glasses are broken!
G: What?
F: Glasses are broken.
F: Daddy, come back and fix.
G: Whose glasses?
F: Glasses.
G: Mommy's glasses?
F: Wufia's (Sofia's) glasses.
G: Oh ok, Daddy will fix them when I come back.
F: Ok, bye.
G: Kiss!
F: ::kisses::

Summer Trip to Wuxi and Taiwan, Part VII: Visiting Grandma in Hsinchu

Wow, time sure flies. This trip actually took place nearly six months ago, but I have yet to wrap up the travelogues for it! Well, it's time to put an end to that!

Our trip was coming quickly to an end, and we had a lot of relatives yet to visit. First up, naturally, was 外婆 (wai4 po2), or maternal grandmother. Fortunately, my mother's family all live within stones throws of each other, so, by visiting Waipo, we were able to meet up with a good portion of that side of the family in the same roadtrip.

Waipo lives in Hsinchu, about an hour's train ride from Taoyuan. As with any trip, some side antics probably will remain in our memories as long or longer than the planned aspects of the trip - Mom, Melinda, Cherry, Sofia, and I decided to eschew the high speed train that we only could only get standing tickets in favor of the slower train  full of empty seats that would arrive some 15 minutes after the high speed train. Apparently, Dad had wanted to take the faster train so as to not let Sarah wait too long by herself in Hsinchu...

Lot's of empty seats on the "slow" train

Hsinchu's retro-style train station

Upon arriving in Hsinchu, Uncle Yichao (my mom's oldest younger brother) and a friend of his picked us up, and off we headed towards Hsinchu's prestigious tech and university district, where we met up with Aunt Xingji (mom's younger sister) and her family. Hsinchu is home to one of the world's largest semiconductor companies, the Taiwan Semiconductor Company. In addition, Hsinchu is home to two of Taiwan's most prestigious universities, Chiaotung University and Tsinghua University, which curiously share their names with two prominent universities in Mainland China, Shanghai's Jiaotong University and Beijing's Tsinghua University. A brief, excessively patriotic history lesson from Mom (as usual) informed us that the originals are in China, but much of the faculty from the original institutions fled during the Cultural Revolution and founded their counterparts here in Hsinchu.

Waipo meets Fifi for the first time!

Some interesting reflective sculptures on the  campus (I think it was Chiaotung University that we ended up visiting - both schools are literally next door neighbors...)

Funny reflection!

Fifi meets Sarah's doggie

After a brief tour of one of the two aforementioned universities, we had lunch nearby, and then set off to visit an old friend of my departed grandfather's. This visit was quite interesting if for no other reason than to observe this guy's obsession with owls - his house was chock full of owl statues, big and small!

Owls...

Fifi trying some Mango Beer! Just kidding - it's just water. But it really did have mango in it before this shot...

Some jelly snacks

More owls...

Ed and Sarah left the group at this point to make their way to Penghu, one of Taiwan's island vacation spots. The rest of us drove out to Neiwan, a mountain bazaar of sorts that is popular with tourists domestic and abroad. It is a good place to sample various foods, like stinky tofu, Taiwanese sausage, and other local specialties, but also had some off-the-wall attractions like a Ripley's style museum, an old theater, and some virtual reality simulators. A very odd destination indeed!

Foot of the mountain bazaar

I remember toys like this from when I was kid!

An old Christian church

Yum! Mango popsicle!

The family

Uhhhh...

Glass artist

I got Fifi this "Talking" hammer - it squawks when you swing it

Anime/Gaming models, a mainstay of any self-respecting Asian marketplace!

Yet another stylish train station - this is the Neiwan station

It was pretty hot as you can see from Fifi and Melinda's sweaty faces!

We still had more relatives to visit, so stay tuned for the final installment of the Summer Trip to Wuxi and Taiwan series!

Happy 2013 from Grant's Pad!

Wow, another year has flown by! This year's holiday season featured less traveling than is typical for the clan, for a number of reasons. First, on our side, Cherry is now closing in on 8(!) months pregnant, so we didn't want to do much traveling. Second, Ed's new job as a photographer pays him more on weekends and especially on holidays, so he didn't want to travel much either. Third, dad returned on Christmas night from a trip to China so it wasn't very practical for him to do much more travelling either.

Still, Cherry, Fifi, and I made it back to South Florida to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with the fam, although for most of that trip the fam was just mom and Melinda. It's a wonder to see how much fun she has with her now, because it wasn't long ago when it seemed like Fifi didn't like Melinda at all...

On Christmas Eve, we went to dinner at the Chinese buffet with the usual crowd:

On Christmas day, we made a trip to Zoo Miami again, which was pretty good fun. We decided to rent a limo bike, which is definitely the best way to experience this giant zoo:

Fifi, who had just recently rode her first animal a few weeks back at the Christmas Extravaganza, got to ride another animal - this time a much larger one - with Mommy and Grandma:

More pictures in the slideshow below!

On the next day, Mom took me to see her Chinese massage therapist to take a look at my knee, which seems to have  a possible meniscal (sp?) tear. While he could not cure it, he did seem to loosen the knee up a little bit and also straighten out some of the vertebrae in my lower back. I may have to try it again in the future to see if more improvement can be made.

We went back home after the massage visit, with Dad, Mom, and Melinda following close behind as they were preparing to meet with a friend and Ed at Disney the next day. While at home, Fifi continued to kindle her blossoming friendship with Aunt Melinda as Melinda got a chance to practice for her aspirations of becoming a dentist:

Fifi also found a new way to play with her new tent!

During our intermission, Uncle Chris stopped by to visit with his fiancee (Congratulations!), Carrie. We caught up for a few hours, reminiscing about the old days in college (while boring the ladies, I'm sure!) before they went back on their way.

A few days later, we met up with the family again at Downtown Disney to see Cirque du Soleil: La Nouba! I was first exposed to Cirque du Soleil more than ten years ago, watching the special features on Bravo, but I'd never gotten a chance to see it live until now! It was an amazing show, though I contend that the actual acrobatic skills at traditional Chinese acrobatics shows is still a notch better. It's hard to argue with the sheer production value of Cirque, however! Unfortunately, as they have very strict rules on photography, I couldn't take many pics - just a few pics before the show itself:

Shhh... don't tell anyone about these sneaky snapshots!

Aunt Vivian gives Fifi a present

Unfortunately for Fifi, she came down with what I think was a pretty bad case of Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease right around this time. For a few days she had pretty intense fevers of up to 105 degrees, and even up to this morning, she has some sores in her mouth and her gums bleed when brushing her teeth... I tried to cheer the poor girl up on my last vacation day yesterday by taking her to the park:

Scaling a cliff to save Stitch

This looks almost like a real mountain from this angle!

Happy New Year! Here's to a new year of blogging!