Meet at Emerald Park (park at the back)
Its going to be cold and windy? wtf.
Here is the route. 6 miles total down and back.
1 loop around the park is 1 mile
PRE-EASTER 6 Miler with the ELITE
Taiwan Summer 2019: arrived. reunited
Finally!
Adventure to Taiwan 2019: intercontinental
Not much here. It’s sad not traveling with Vivi and Juju as planned. Though inevitably a crapfest, I was looking forward to it. I had packed a whole roll on bag of snacks. Once I found out about my passport snafu, that obviously was not going to work.Luckily, the girls got to each pack their own. Roller carry on. We upgraded them to these nicer ones (real luggage vs the plush bear backpack).
Looking back at last year’s trip definitely leaves a sense of melancholy.
Made it to the SFO Unite club lounge. Complementary beer and snacks. Should not have had that beer.Now for the 14 hr flight to Taiwan.Fast forward 14 hrs and the 
Awaiting customs.
Waiting for the checked bags is always the worst.
Finally got it!
Adventure to Taiwan 2019: Prologue
I like to document my trips abroad mainly because what else would I do with all this free time?
I am currently sitting here alone at CMH awaiting the 24 hr journey. I really hate flying alone.
This trip will definitely be memorable, but probably more in a negative way.
Today is June 4th, 2019. I should already be in Taiwan with my 2 little penguins and their Nainai. We had originally planned to go together May 30th. MommyMD was to keep watch with Combo back home. Well that didn’t go as planned.
2 days prior to departure, Combo passed away (more on that later, it’s too hard to write about that now.
Suffice it to say this was fairly distracting, while packing, but in reality has no bearing in the next debacle. Our flight was slated to leave at 11am. I was nearly done packing and without sleep, I figured I’d check the passports out at 2am.
Juju and Vivi’s checked out as expected. I came to mine and noticed something seemed off. Expired 12/18. Hmmm… That was 6 months ago. Well crap. Panic mode sets. After maybe 5 minutes of paralysis and rereading the passport. Maybe I misread it the first 5 times… Nope. Confirmed. I am an idiot. I am not sure how I booked this flight without reviewing my passport.
So here’s another thing I never knew. For many places abroad, in this example Taiwan. Your passport had to be valid for at least 6 additional months beyond your arrival date, or they won’t let you in the country. I suspect Taiwan doesn’t want visitors stuck there.
So even if my passport was valid and expired in 3 months, I likely would not have bothered renewing my passport. Lesson learned.
Never have been in this situation, I figured the only thing to do was to Google “I have a flight tomorrow and my passport expired” to figure out what to do. Surprisingly. I’m not the only idiot that has done this. I obviously had to reschedule my flight, but I found out about these emergent passport expediting services with 24 hr turn around time.
I spent 4 hrs searching flights and researching the passport expediting companies.
So here are a few thing to be aware of. These companies are not open on weekends. They are usually 9a-7p.
Now you can book an appointment with the local passport agency and get an emergent renewal (as long as the passport had not expired >5 years), but the turn around is stated to take 7-8 days. According to people online they have been able to get a passport same day.
The special expediting companies specialize in doing this and will act on your behalf. The speed in turnaround appropriately reflected in the cost. They claim the 24 hr turnaround time. That’s 24 hrs from submission of your documents to the passport agency to get the renewal done. This does Not include the transit time to the expediting agency and the return shipping.
In my situation the closest passport agencies were in Chicago and i Detroit.
I opted to trust in the expediting companies.
Next caveat is that each company is allowed so many “time slots” with the passport agency each day. Being Thursday, I would have to overnight all my paperwork and expired passport. The first 3 companies I prepaid were unable to accommodate as they had no Friday slots. Now takeaway here is that each company had so many slots. I kept calling, and finally came across http://www.apvi.com/
They had ONE slot left. Of course I took it.
It was fairly seemless and they rep walked me through everything. They even do a document review where you send pictures of everything for them to make sure there are no hiccups during the actual review process.
I overnighted the documents. They got it them next morning and went straight to the passport agency. They kept me updated the whole time.
By 430pm they had my renewed passport in hand. They overnighted it back. Being a weekend and how late it was when they could finally send it back, Saturday delivery was not an option. Now this shouldn’t be a big issue but I took a gamble and rescheduled the going to leave Tuesday (today June 4th). Luckily I received my passport Monday morning.
The next step was not to get to the airport by 440 am. As I will be give during MommyMd’s birthday, my gift to her was to not have her drive me at the asscrack of morning. (Is that a saying?)
So today was also my first foray with hailing and UBER. It was fairly seemless and not too costly.
Now I am here
Half asleep awaiting to board.
I’m going to take a nap.
TBC…
Day 5: Taipei, in the city
Today we go to Taipei! Only reservation I havevis we will drive there and it’s about an HR drive. Ugh.
Need to work out first. Still doing the 60 day challenge and it’s hard not to eat all the good food.
So after working out I came across this at the local store:
It looks a little familiar
Right Dan Kim?
This “lion’s teeth” seems to be a knock off of Formula O2 devloped by 2 local Ohio guys. It also claims to be a recovery drink of sorts. I tell you it just tastes like diluted juice.
I really do like formula O2, esp the mango. (Go try it)
They waste a lot of sunscreen
After a dizzing car ride with cars cutting us off, sudden stops, we make it to lunch. We have dimsum at brothers hotel (one of my dad’s favorite).
Juju is sad about the dead duckies
We then visit my Grandma’s apartment. Since it’sin Taipei, it’s a ridiculously expensive condo, but as you can see definitely different compared to the on in Tamsui. Frank and I spent many summers here.
Now to the Living Mall
Vivi has been having about going back here. It used to be a fairly upscale mall, with lots of stores. Over the years it apparently has not done well. Most stores are gone and now replaced with many child play areas.
Check out this massive bounce house.
It was a little sad seeing this place. It was remiscent of what City Center looked like.
The girls were exhausted after 2 hrs of crazy bouncing.
The trip back to Tamsui was rough, long car ride with exhausted kids make for irritable angry kids.
We took a stop at this massive fruit stand
The rest of the night everyone pretty much passed out.
Day 4: swim and still recovering
I was thinking the jet lag is over. Wrong.
Still up early at 6am. Plan is to take the girls swimming and to go check out the local community center.
Unfortunately didn’t get any ohitos swimming or or at the community center. They didn’t allow photography for whatever reason.
On the way back tried out a local establishment.
Promptly pass out for a few more hours.
Then get ready to eat some more traditional local cuisine.
The girls got to ride the bus for the first time.
And end the day with one more stop at the mega grocery store CarreFour (Walmart like place)
Taiwan Day #2: arrival
After 24+ hours of travel, we arrive in Taiwan.
Touchdown. Juju’s first time in Taiwan and Vivi’s second
The girls love their Yeye. They only hey to see him a few times a year since he only come back stateside a couple times a year.
It’s nice having T-Mobile overseas. You get free international data, but it’s at 2g speeds. Good enough to look something up or post a few pix.
At Home (in Taiwan)
60 Day Challenge: The weight out- start to finish.
I have finally reached the end of my 60day Challenge.
People likely don’t really want to see this, but I will post it anyway.
My journey started Last July 2017, where I realized that I was becoming unhealthy and developing the “dad bod.”
With the sleep apnea getting worse, and with MommyMD getting more fit, I figured, CRAP! I gotta fix this. As in my previous posts, what right do I have to tell patients to lose weight if I was just gaining more weight and not eating healthy and not working out?
By the time I started the challenge I was already down about 10 lbs from 7/2017
Below is the essay I had to submit in order to get my “money back”
The 60day challenge was 60$ to participate in, but you can get 60$ credit in “lifetime bucks” to use at the gym if you submit an essay at the end.
This is my essay. I figured I was going to blog about it anyway.
So one of the cools things would be that you could potentially win a fairly large cash prize if you were the “grand prize winner”.
In order to win, people have to vote for you. I think it is based off your before and after photos, before and after stats (weight, body fat), and maybe the essay.
Either way I obviously won’t win that, but I definitely won my goals!
***
“As a family physician, I tell patient every single day that weight loss, healthy diet, and routine physical activity will significantly improve their lives and prevent future health complications. It may seem like an obvious concept, but it is truly a challenge in practice. With life, children, and work, I also had fallen into the trap of contentment. Slowly gaining weight. Making excuses not to work out. In the pursuit to find a better way to motivate my patients to seek health, I realized that I needed to lead by example.
I had started to track my food intake and started to exercise routinely and was slowly losing weight, but like my patients, I had my share of setbacks. It is very easy to skip a workout day, or not log that donut during lunch. The 60day Challenge gave me an opportunity to engage with a trainer and have a better understanding of what I needed to do in order to attain my goals.
The routine weigh-ins and communication with our trainer helped keep me accountable and motivated to not give up. It was gratifying to see my progress each week. The 60day Challenge introduced me to other group fitness classes, that I would likely never had tried. The “try it” sessions helped acquaint me with the other gym equipment that I would never have braved to try. The other benefit was making new friends. This just makes going to the gym that much more enjoyable. The next big challenge is to stay motivated to sustain my new found health. The problem with most “diets” is that the results are not long lasting. The consistency each week helped establish my workouts an integral and entertaining part of my daily life, rather than just another chore that had to be checked off.
The 60day Challenge helped me make my health a priority in my life, and realize that have no excuse to not be healthy. With this experience, I am better able to relate and appreciate the obstacles that my patients face. I can sincerely tell them that “it’s easier said than done.” I have been trying to utilize the knowledge and experience I gained to motivate others to actively seek health.”
***
So this is my final END result here:
Overall, I have to say I am pleased with where I am at. I just need to make sure I don’t fall back into the poor diet habbits.
As mentioned in my prior posts, I think I will avoid snake jucing it now. I have found that fasting works well. If you dont eat you will lose weight (duh), but I think my main goal now is to stay healthy, eat healthy. Maybe get amazing abs like S. Devor. #Goals. #noexcuses.
So I did sign up for the next 60 day challenge, which will start in May. I really dont think I am going to lose much more weight, if I do, it is going to fairly hard.
Maybe I will look like this:
60 Day Challenge: weigh-in day
So yesterday was weigh-in day. It just got real!
I’m officially participating in the 60-day challenge at Lifetime.
Kickoff Week Weigh-in:
WT 180.3#
BF%: 19.7
A perk if the challenge is I got to meet with a personal trainer (Leeanne who is awesome) to discuss my goals and they gave me be some good insight into what I need to do in order to obtain my goals.
My original goal was just to get down to 170 pounds (prewedding weight), but at this point apparently I should be doing more strength training. This was never my strong point.
Back toward the end of July I saw my weight was trending up toward 192-196#. That’s the heaviest I have ever been. I realized something had to be done. That was when I forced myself to start going to the classes at Lifetime Fitness Dublin.
One important thing to sticking with working out is to not get bored. Luckily the instructors at Lifetime are awesome, and very nice. It compels me to go. I feel guilty when I don’t, which I guess is a good thing.
I plan on posting the before and after photos, but then again, I don’t think anyone really wants to see that right?
Add me on MyFitnessPal: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/profile/alphapenguin
Getting locked out sucks. Might as well do something.Â
got locked out today figured I had to go do something about it