About a week or so ago, I was in Taipei. Here're some of my impressions of restaurants that I ate at. (They don't include some of the neighborhood hole-in-the-walls that serve some very tasty stuff.) Pictures will follow in a later post.:
Name: Very Thai
Style: thai
Website: www.verythai.com.tw
Phone: 2546-6745
Location: About 2 blocks from Sherwood hotel, around the corner on FuXing (Fu Shin?) N. Rd.
Dishes: Best: softshell crab with sweetened, slightly spicy fish sauce with cilantro
comments: Open late… slightly dressy… background music was a bit intrusive (contemp. R&b with hip hop beats)
Name: Las Vegas
Style: buffet
Website: www.splendor-tp.com.tw
phone: 8913-2222
location: South side of city (actually seems to be in XinDian city, near the Da Pinglin subway station)
dishes: Best: fish – raw or cooked… for locals, best thing is unlimited Hagen Daz ice cream
comments: Too much to try in one sitting… avoid the awful red wine… the little dishes containing custards and puddings are cute and manageable quantities after stuffing oneself
Name: Yishang Garden
style: Shanghainese based
website: ?
phone: 2871-7755
location: Tien Mu area, a little north of the baseball stadium, on Tien Mu E. Rd.
dishes: Most dishes ordered had subtle flavor, except a shrimp dish (maybe it was the only one of non-Shanghainese style?)
comments: Smelled stinky tofu from another table. (At first, I thought someone in our party had let loose a really smelly fart.)… wondered if our tomboyish/butch waitress was lesbian
Name: Goldmine (or Gold Mtn.) Trout
sytle: fish
website: www.goldminetrout.com.tw
phone: 2408-0678
location: Yamingshan park (north side, near coast)
dishes: Good: grilled, small fish (shaped like miniature salmon, but white meat) comments: Be careful not to overcook your fish at the table… didn’t try trout but other species… the place also seems to be a freshwater fish farm, so you can buy them to bring home to cook
Currently in a gaming room in northern Taipei, checking email.
Just walked through the National Palace museum.
Hope to check out The Wall in the coming week, and hear some local live music.
Plan to visit Taiping City, east of Taichung, to see A Moving Sound (contemporary music and dance group) perform at National Chin Yee (sp?) Univ. of Technology (NCUT).
Not sure if my schedule will permit me to ride the High Speed Rail (shinkansen).
More, later.
I'm definitely out of the loop. I just learned about this in a calendar I received in the mail this weekend:
National Conference on Establishing a National Collection on Asian Pacific Americans
The Asian Division of the Library of Congress will host a National Conference on Establishing a National Collection on Asian Pacific Americans at the Library of Congress. The Conference will be held on October 4-5, 2007 at the Whittall Pavilion, Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Attached are the tentative program of the Conference and a list of advisers, co-organizers and consultants. The Conference has the following main objectives:
-To review the current status of Asian Pacific American studies in the U.S.
-To review the existing Asian Pacific American collections in various forms in the U.S.
-To develop national and regional strategies for a coordinated effort in collecting and preserving research materials for Asian Pacific American histories and communities.
-To discuss the need for LC to establish an Asian Pacific American collection and to work with other Asian Pacific American collections in a cooperative and coordinated way.
Although the Conference is open and free to interested individuals only 50 spaces are available for anyone who has pre-registered online. This is due to the limit of the conference facility and other logistic considerations.
Pre-registration is accepted on a first-come-first-served basis until the 50 spaces are filled. The website for pre-registration is http://www.loc.gov/rr/asian/APA_Register.php
For more information about the Conference, please see the Tentative Program of the Conference and the List of Advisers, Co-organizers, and Consultants. If you have any other questions, please contact Dr. Anchi Hoh adia@loc.gov of the Asian Division.
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The conference seems like a good idea, but it seems to feature an overabundance of high profile names in Asian American studies.
Did the organizers really need so many to make the case for an APA collection? (And to add even more prestige, they included speeches by Asian American politicians. But, when I think about it, that's pretty convenient for the politicans. Heck, the Capitol building is only across the street.)
Is there such reluctance or inertia or lack of funds at the Library of Congress that a collection has never been considered until now?
(Is there even a catalogue or database?)
I know that for many decades there've been Asian collections at the LC.
Well, no matter. I've never really had high expectations for the LC.
I've been more a DIY-type. Lately, I've been working on my own library. I've been trying to unbox books, stacked in my garage, and organize them a bit in my personal library.
I probably should devote a bookcase or two to just Asian American stuff.
I'm not sure how I'm going to sort and store the boxes of periodicals and loose paper.
Of course, I've also got lotsa cassettes and reels of tape. Not to mention some vinyl and cd's. (In fact, I just bought some old records and used cd's at True Vine music store in Hampden, yesterday.)