基隆港中元祭：放水燈

Day trip to Keelong - Festival of water lantern

今 天我也蠻晚才起來。兩點後就決定陪麗娟去基隆把攝影機還給一為潛水教練。我就跟她去松山火車站買了一些零食到車上 吃。車上看到各式各樣的人。一位少年在 我我旁邊穿著黃色「ナイキ」的 T-血在看中國日報。標題上寫「年輕人的國際館：留百」。我腦海理轉轉轉也才不出來留百的意思。麗娟坐在我對面。她旁邊作了一為穿白色 V-領的小姐。在他的左邊有時一個穿著像芭比娃娃的小美眉。臉甲打了粉紅色的紛。手指和腳指都油了紅紅的指甲油。再不到多久，麗娟右邊的「おばさん」就拉 著行李準備要下車了。我就趕快走過去換位置。Fine, enough with Chinese. I'm tired thinking in Chinese. Switch back to English. We arrived after a while in Keelung station. I called my coworker, Fiona who lives nearby to see whehter she's around while Vicky called the Trainer's to let her know that we have arrived. The trainer's daughter showed up a while later in a red sports car. A beach girl came out of that car handing some pictures to Vicky while her little puppy keeps barking in on the half opened window. After she left, Vicky told us that the girl said about a festival coming that evening in Keelung and want me to stay with her and watch. I okayed her as we walked down to Tourist information center and picked up some guidebooks. We walked further down to Miaokow and enjoyed all kind of delicacies. We had some octopussy meat, eels soup, and raw fish with wasabi at a sushi bar. I also had some 剉冰 [chuabing] which I enjoyed very much coz the 粉圓 [fenyuan] is really Q [chewy].

From 廟口[miaokou] we walked down 基隆市政府[Keelong City Hall] where they set up a makeshift stage to welcome international guest to celebrate this special event. We found a nice spot in front of a bank where we can watch the parade coming. Once after another parade show set in. The skateboardist, the drummer girls, the Chinese trumpet, the Dragon dance, the Lion dance, the Chinese Drum, the paper vessel girl throwing candies, what else? mmh...Oh hearsay all this shows are funded by those rich businessmen in 基隆 [keelong], and the first many shows bear the same 姓[surname] as mine. They are all 謝 [xie]. But after a while surname 許 [xu] take over the shows. I saw over twenty more shows contributed by the 許 [xu], Vicky said, the 許 [xu] is running over 謝 [xie], I told her it's alright. They are close to eachother, they both have 言 [yan] which to Vicky is a very cold joke. The fireworks were fired from the top of Keelong skycrapers. I haven't seen fireworks for ages and I must admit it looks much much better than in real and it gives the feeling of awe and wonder than looking it off the computer screen on some winamp or winmediaplayer's effects. Oh there's also this performance done by a group from Penang, Malaysia. They did this huge 15 meters high flag and balancing it on their forehead or their mouth. They are a group of Chinese, Malay, and Indian and they seemed to cooperate well with eachother. Hearsay the gave a lot of international performances worldwide. The show was contributed by China Airline and Malaysian Tourist Association.

We left 基隆[Keelong] before the performance finished to avoid stampede. We walked back to the station and bought some candies at 豆苗 [doumiao] shop. We arrived in 松山[songshan] at about 8:00 pm and still took the time to go to 五分埔[wu fen pu] for a stroll. I bought some new socks and we also had 甜不辣 [tianbula] nearby.

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ps. earlier while we're buying the snacks. I learned how to read Pringles in Korean. I guess it was transliterated as 프링글스.