Love Boat Ignition

After two days at one of my uncles' place, the time has finally come to prepare for my little excursion at the Formosa study tour. After reviewing some old information, I found out that I'm in a group of fifteen (@ Camp II), with peers ranging from 19 to 27 years old. Unfortunately, that makes me pretty much the youngest of the young.

I recall wanting to be in Camp III, with ages ranging from 16 to 27. I can't explain it well, but I simply like having diversity... in this case, diversity amongst the ages. Then again, Camp III only has four people, while Camp I has ten. Fifteen people in Camp II may be too many, four is too little, and ten is about just right. Again, unfortunately, Camp I is only for people between 16 and 18 years old, inclusively. Honestly, what kind of gap is that? Camp I is for ages 16 to 18, Camp II is for ages 19 to 27, and Camp III is for ages 16 to 27. Why not make it 16 to 20, 20 to 24, and 24 to 27, respectively, for all three camps? I guess I can go and find out tomorrow.

And with other random news, I've come to the conclusion that I have far too many family members here to keep track of. To add to that, my aunt here gave birth to her third kid not too long ago. Let's see what that adds to the list of family members here in Taiwan:

3 uncles. 4 aunts (3 from uncles' wives). 1 grandmother. 3 great aunts. 4 great uncles (3 from great aunts' husbands). 8 first cousins. Uncountable number of second cousins.

I'm not even going to attempt to try and find out who my second cousins are. I've met two before in the past, but that was many years ago. At this rate, I'll probably meet a bunch of other people, young and old, that play some role in my family in the next month and a half.

...Fantasy Baseball Standing (league: Binghamton Pride)
iPwned: W-L-T: 113-57-12 (0.654)

Temporary Stay At Relatives'

Not often do I get the chance to take some pictures of the sky. I think these three turned out pretty well (given the fact that I took these through a semi-clear window). From New York to Hong Kong, the plane ride lasted a good 15+ hours. Ask yourself this: If you were to remain seated in one little space for fifteen hours, what would you do?

Here's what I did:

• The way God blessed me with a power outlet on the plane simply told me (actually, blatantly triggered me) to take out my laptop and toy with that for most of the ride.
• As I showed before, with a camera, I can play around with that to when the time comes.
• The unnecessary amount of stewardess' running around the economy cabin with carts full of airplane food made me hungry. Yes, I actually pigged out on the plane.
• And because I pigged out, I had to visit the potty several times.

Here we have an aerial view of Hong Kong. It sort of looks like it's on fire. But, I'm lying... those are obviously clouds.

And from another perspective...

This brings up another interesting bit of info! Prior to this flight, I have never stepped on the Chinese mainland before. Actually, I have never touched mainland Asia's soil before. The closest I've gotten was obviously in years back when I visited Taiwan.

So this leads to something funny, too. The sole purpose of stopping in Hong Kong was to transfer flights to Taiwan. Since the plane I took from New York was delayed a good twenty minutes to half an hour, my ride to Taiwan was already making its final calls by the time I struggled past the security checks and the infernally slow Chinese crowds. This all adds up to my very first visit of China lasting approximately a grand total of 40 minutes. Such great memories made.

Getting up early in the morning after not sleeping the entire night before, plus getting no sleep on the 15-hour plane ride (I'll explain why), and finally passing through multiple time zones... my entire sleep schedule has been brutally raped. Right now, as I'm typing this, I figured I should still be asleep if I was back at home. A few hours ago, I ate dinner at a random Taiwanese restaurant. Had I been back home, that would equal dinner at approximately seven in the morning.

All right, let me explain why I chose not to sleep (or rather, forced to not sleep) during the 15-hour long plane ride.

I chose to play The Sims 2: Nightlife instead of grabbing some much needed sleep. I chose to waste my time designing imaginary characters to put within unrealistically large, utterly fake, and expensive mansions that probably took me four hours to completely finish (as seen above). Maybe I should have picked an architecture major instead.

If you check out the mansion from that angle, you might say: "Oh, wow, what a big house..." See, I'm much too lazy to take screenshots of the first, second, and third floors, as well as the humongous patio in the backyard.

At the moment, I think I'm running on about three scattered hours of sleep - or nap - within a 48-hour time frame. Showering is tough at my uncle's (one of three uncles here). It's like some traditional method of hygiene, apparently. The bathroom has an exposed showerhead that juts out of the wall about two feet away from a sink. A hole in the middle of the bathroom leads to the drainage system. Talk about saving space in a small island. I guess it's efficient in its own primitive way... for one thing, I can brush my teeth and shower at the same time.

Four more days until Love Boat. All things said... first, I need sleep... and some solution to avoid getting attacked by my uncle's ill-tempered dog.

Taiwan-Bound

In approximately ten hours, I'll be on my way across the Pacific to Taiwan for the first time in about a decade... I'm feeling both overwhelmed, ecstatic, and eager, as well as somewhat reproachful and unsettled.

Why? Well, as I mentioned before, it's been about ten years since I've returned. Back when I was a ten-year old, my eyes were different then. Because of that, I can't wait to see everything. I heard Dunkin' Donuts spread its fat, artery-clogged fingers to the tiny island. Mmm...

Then again, I'll be thousands of miles away in a place that I'm completely unfamiliar with. Although I'll have a certain purpose for being there, plus I have a ton of family members there that I can talk to, hang out with - hopefully get along with - and get to know better, there's still that feeling of, "Man, I wish I can stay back home and be with people I'm comfortable with in a place where I'm comfortable in." Oh well, you can't have everything.

On the bright side, I can follow the policy of living and learning. As much as I'm divided between wanting to go overseas and wanting to stay home, the greatest thing about getting out is freedom. I bet I get more chances to do whatever I want on the streets of Taipei than in... Suffolk County... groan.

Day II: What Now?

Now that I've officially settled in, no home is complete without some furniture and appliances. If I'm going to make the most out of this blog, I'll have to reduce the blandness of this page. Of course, walls of text are always fun to see (cough), but I'll probably find some way to add a little something here and there to kick everything up a notch and add a little bit of essence. Sorry, Emeril fans.

While I sluggishly move everything in, what can I possibly talk about on Day II?

Maybe I can take a look at one of my many Fantasy Baseball teams. To be honest, 2008's only my second year getting involved with fantasy sports. I've tried baseball, golf, football, even auto-racing (which I am not embarrassed to report that I've performed atrociously in), with my first-year golf team getting on the top 50 leaderboard. Too bad I'm not all that interested in golf...

Anyway, here's a custom Yahoo! league between twelve people from school. Each team has a pretty packed roster (a total of 26 players), so good players are in high demand.

And, yes, iPwned is my team name. Creative? No, not really, I'll admit... but it's fitting. At a 102-55-11 record (0.640) as of the twelfth week, I would say the team's doing pretty well. Plus, I think the team's on its way to another good winning week:

A couple of reasons why this team began to surge forward and hasn't lost its burn since. I missed the live-draft a few months ago and I had to stick with adding a bunch of players who were simply mediocre or even crappy in the 2007 season. Obviously, I had to take a lot of gambles, going with players who I hope would rise in 2008. Talking about offense, other than Alex Rodriguez, I pretty much had no one who would more or less guarantee me some nice stats.

So currently, my offense lays out like this:

C: Ivan Rodriguez - one of the sole disappointments for my team. However, since I missed the draft, I was lucky enough to at least have a catcher with a name. At least he's leading the AL in stolen bases for a catcher... hmm. Maybe if I added him a decade ago, it would've been a different story.
1B: Kevin Youkilis - a lucky catch. I predict 20+ home runs from this guy for 2008, and hopefully I'm right. All the typical high-tier first basemen were all gone by the time I first looked at this team. No Pujols. No Berkman. No Morneau. The guy had 16 homers all of 2007, and with 13 already before the All-Star break, I'm seeing stars... not to mention a nice .300+ batting average.
2B: Dustin Pedroia - well, the Red Sox were high on this one, so I decided to give him a shot. 2007's Rookie of the Year had a great start for 2008, but he sort of poofed out at a point. Lately, he seemed to have started to come back, so I'm confident I'll get something decent from him this year. I wanted Robinson Cano as my second baseman, but those who follow the news don't really see all that much production from Cano this season (though I'm pretty sure Cano will light up sooner or later, maybe not .300 though).
3B: Alex Rodriguez - apparently I had first pick for the draft, since there's really no other explanation for me nabbing this stacked player. There's no way that ARod will pound out 156 RBIs this season since he missed nearly a month from injuries (and if he does, I'll chance my religion to ARodism). There's nothing else I can ask for when I get my third baseman: average, power, speed - all in one package.
SS: Ryan Theriot - not much here besides average and speed. Don't get me wrong, I like that, that's why he's on my team. Originally, J.J. Hardy of Milwaukee was my starting shortstop. But because of his unproductive stats this season, I had no choice but to dump him and add Theriot to my roster. I had to decide whether or not Hardy would go on fire sooner or later, but I chose to drop him after the month of April and pick up Theriot. A good decision, since it really paid off.
OF: Josh Hamilton - holy hell! Did anyone see this character explode on his way to an MVP-style season? Already with 19 homers, tying his entire count for 2007, and currently leading the AL in both homers and RBIs, I'm a happy manager. I can't even recall how I obtained him. Possibly because most of the other teams were busy trying to hog the "supposedly" stable players (who we now witness as actually unstable for 2008).
OF: Nate McLouth - now this guy was one of the gambles that I was talking about. He was simply mediocre in 2007, but this season, he's one of my main offensive players. McLouth already topped his home run and RBI counts for all of last season and 2008's not even half over yet! A miniature ARod, maybe... since he has average this season, power, and speed, as well.
OF: Milton Bradley - and yet another gamble that I took when I added this player to my roster. He more or less just bounced around different teams, serving different roles. I simply checked his career statistics and figured, hey, why not, I have an open space on my team, let's give him a shot. What an add... leading the league in batting average with some power, too.
UTIL: Jermaine Dye - after an okay 2007 season, I still could not resist adding this powerhouse. I know he can at least crank out 20 to 30 home runs a season, with a chance at triple digit RBIs. Another good choice on my part.
UTIL: Jeremy Hermida - I'm not exactly sure what I was trying to do when I picked up the Marlin's Hermida. Only recently did he start lighting his bat on fire, thus I can still keep this player around for a bit. He had decent records for 2007, maybe that's why I decided to take a gamble with him.
UTIL: David Murphy - maybe you think I'm a Ranger's fan or something, but I'm not at all. This guy was a late addition to my team (added him around late May or early June). I might go all the way with him, seeing that he just might be on his way to a triple digit RBI season.
BN: David DeJesus - a temporary character. He has the ability to hit for average with some pop here and there. Plus, he has some speed, making DeJesus a good guy to have in case one of my starting players decides to skimp.

So there's my offense and pretty much all the offense I need for this team. I see about five of my players listed to possibly reach 100+ RBIs this season, which is more than what I ask for. Still, who wants to complain about that?

Moving on to my pitching:

SP: Cliff Lee - so after getting sent down to the minors last season, who would've expected this guy from having a possible All-Star appearance for 2008? I sure didn't, but I grabbed him out of sheer luck. Obviously there was no way that he could've maintained an ERA less than 1.00 for the entire season, but if he finishes with something below a 3.00, I can smell AL Cy Young balloting.
SP: Roy Halladay - managers tend to know what they're getting when they add Halladay to their pitching staff. Same reasons for me, I guess. I wanted someone who's consistent in having winning records, along with respectable strikeout counts and ERA, so here we go: Roy Halladay.
SP: Ben Sheets - I didn't exactly think he would be an ace in the hole, but this pitcher has respectable numbers over his career, thus I decided to give this player a chance. What a pick-up, 9-1 before the end of the first half of the season with an ERA below 3.00.
SP: Daisuke Matsuzaka - aside from the mountain of walks he gives up, I have confidence in this one. On the currently dominating Red Sox team, I can expect him to win many games. On a side note, I was so relieved when I chose not to start him for his first game back from the DL. Giving up seven earned runs over one inning isn't exactly the best numbers in the world... but I can excuse that. If I had started him, I can kiss winning the pitching categories good-bye for that week.
SP: John Lackey - too bad he started off the season on the DL, but as soon as he came back, I had to start him right away. For a pitcher who led the AL in ERA in 2007, there was no way he was getting by unnoticed. So far he has not given up more than three runs (and only given up three runs once) in nearly ten starts, so I can expect this guy to be a safe keep for the remainder of the season.
RP: Billy Wagner - I purposefully ignored the couple of blown saves he had during a somewhat dismal span of games played by the Mets. But since then, he hasn't done anything other than get the saves when saves are needed.
RP: John Rauch - I received the Nationals' closer in a trade. I gave up Francisco Rodriguez and Erik Bedard for John Rauch, Ben Sheets, and Nick Johnson. Johnson was the only player that I really didn't need (who I dropped later on anyway). However, I have many closers, and giving up an unproductive Erik Bedard was the better move for me, though I had to sacrifice the league-leading closer K-Rod. It turned out that Rauch and Sheets combined worked wonders for me.
RP: Matt Capps - not exactly an All-Star or Hall of Fame closer, but a closer who can keep his job, nonetheless.
P: Justin Duchscherer - a lucky grab for me. Someone who can win games, has an astounding ERA (currently below 2.00), the ability to keep players off the bases, and usually strike batters out is a definite keep for me.
P: Salomon Torres - recently added since he took over the closing role for Eric Gagne (who's pretty much garbage for a closer recently). I'll probably keep him until he loses the closing job... if he does.
P: Mike Gonzalez - and so the Braves' closer returns! There's nothing wrong with having multiple closers, so when this guy returned from the DL, I made a grab for him as quickly as I could, dropping the injured and somewhat unproductive J.J. Putz in the process.
BN: James Shields - although he has not been winning as many games as I want him to, Shields still retains the ability to strike out batters. Plus, Tampa Bay has been winning a lot, surprisingly, thus I'm keeping this pitcher until I find a sure reason to remove him.
BN: Vincente Padilla - another 10+ game winner before the end of the first half of the season, I've had my share of luck with good pitching.
BN: Jair Jurrjens - I'm not all too familiar with the Braves' pitching. However, I do know that their pitching is limited, thus having one of their better ones is a good keep for me. Unless an even more impressive pitcher shows up (with enough long-term numbers to prove it), I may be keeping this one for some time.

As one can see, in a league where players are in high demand, there's no need for players like Jake Peavy, Johan Santana, or C.C. Sabathia on my pitching staff. Surprising 2008 pitchers include Cliff Lee, Edinson Volquez, and Brandon Webb. The fact that I hogged many of the productive pitchers usually clinches the weekly pitching categories for my team. At least half my pitchers belong in the top 100 rankings for pitchers, according to Yahoo! Sports.

That's it for Fantasy Baseball. I tend to give each player that I add, drop, or offer for trades a lot of thought. Time consuming? Even a waste of time? Simply silly? Oh yeah, definitely. Don't ask me why I do this, since even I don't know the answer.

Just Starting Out

I think my primary reason for setting up a typical blog like this is to simply record anything that may be remotely interesting that may occur in the near future. And anything remotely interesting may include going overseas to Taiwan from June 27th to August 15th. That's like, a good whopping ten weeks. Sorry, that's just an estimate, I'm not really in the mood to use my fingers and toes to count out the days.
It'll just be my little brother and I, trapped in a 15-hour plane ride to Hong Kong and then a good ol' transfer ride to Taiwan. Still, I look forward to seeing a huge portion of my family that I have not seen for almost a decade. The 2008 Formosa Study Tour in Taiwan... or more notoriously known as Love Boat. I really had to laugh when I did some research about the program. By research, based on today's standards, means visiting Wikipedia. So here's the best part about the program.

"It is rumored that some participants engage in sexually promiscuous activity although several eventually end up marrying each other (hence the Love Boat nickname). Several unplanned pregnancies were documented on the 1996 study tour which resulted in more stringent rules for subsequent tours; including rules against the opposite sex being present in the same dorm room and more strictly enforced curfews. The tour is currently overseen by a dozen or so counselors whose responsibilities include rule enforcement, event planning, herding the program participants around on outings and rousing them from their sleep in the mornings. However, repeated violations of the rules sometimes turned some of the counselors apathetic; without choice, they often had to turn a blind eye to inappropriate minor misdeeds as the sheer volume of these violations became simply unmanageable. People have been sent home if the violations are significant enough."

Well... I don't think I can handle getting married at the age of 19 and causing unplanned pregnancies isn't really my thing. Other than that, I might just make it through. Plus, it's a 4-week long program. I bet I can find other ways of keeping myself busy for four weeks, like writing, eating (lots of it), and definitely taking in the sights.

I constantly fail at keeping track of time, thus maintaining a blog will be tough. I gave this a thought and I figured this will be good for me. I want to write, I want to chronicle anything interesting that I go through, and of course... I want to take and upload pictures! I'll be sure to bring a camera when I head for Taiwan at the end of this week.