Main Event Entertainment

Main Event Entertainment, which is a bowling alley, miniature golf course, arcade, and laser tag all in one building, is located all throughout Texas. Since we got a coupon in the mail for "$10 off one hour of bowling", we decided to check it out. I began to wonder, if they are giving us a $10 discount, how much would an hour of bowling actually cost? I hadn't gone bowling in the US since I left for Taiwan in 2004, and the last time I went, I don't remember it being particularly expensive. The website for "Main Event", doesn't mention their prices, and now I know why.

An hour of bowling now costs $29. Times have really changed. Even with the coupon, $19 even seems a bit pricey to me. They say they have "$10 bowling" Monday through Friday from 10am to 4pm, but who the hell can go then, except for the unemployed and the slackers?

Still, we played anyway, and about 30 minutes into the hour, I realized that this wasn't a very good place to take the kids. They can't even pick up a ball, let alone play. I thought maybe they'd enjoy watching me and Christy play, or trip out at the giant disco ball on the ceiling. Sure enough, they liked it, but only briefly. By the end of our 60 minutes, both Sara and Kyle had become a pain in the peegoo.

So, unless you have a coupon, Main Event is just not worth it. Too overpriced. If bowling is your thing, stick to the less trendy bowling alleys, where disco balls are nowhere to be seen.

(Pictures: Main Event Entertainment)

The Continuing Search for Good Chinese Food

My wife seems to be on a quest to find a decent Chinese food restaurant in the city of Austin. It's turning out, however, to be very elusive.

This past weekend, Christy suggested we go to a place called "Dynasty." She had read somewhere online that Asian people who lived in Austin thought this was the best place for Chinese food, and the best place to find "Kung Pao Chicken." Now, being a fan of Kung Pao Chicken, I thought we should give it a try.

In Taiwan, there are countless places where you can get good Kung Pao chicken. Even places that look like total crap on the outside, often have pretty good food inside. American Chinese restaurants are different, though. Even though the place may look decent, the food is usually mediocre at best.

"Dynasty" was really no different from most American Chinese food restaurants. Their "hot and sour soup" (swan la tang - in Chinese), was good, but everything else was pretty typical of what you can get anywhere here.

Christy's review of "Dynasty"? - "So so." she told me. So there you go. I should come to the realization that it's unlikely I'll ever find great Chinese food in Texas. The best Chinese food I've had here is the food that we've made at home.

(Picture: the "famous" Dynasty restaurant)

Kiddie Acres

In our ongoing quest of finding something fun to do for the whole family, my wife found out about a kids amusement park in Austin called "Kiddie Acres." Unlike other places, it's free to park and to actually get inside, and tickets for each ride are $1.85. The rides, naturally, are pretty lame, and any kid older than 6 would probably think the place sucked. But...this place wasn't meant for them. It was meant for 2 to 4 year olds. We're planning to check out Six Flags Fiesta (San Antonio) sometime in the coming month. I imagine that will be a little better than this.

(Pictures: Sara and Kyle on the various rides of "Kiddie Acres")

Escaping the Mundane

Some of my small handful of readers have mentioned that I haven't posted anything recently. Yes, I've been giving the blog a little break since nothing particularly exciting has happened in the past couple of weeks. The most interesting thing was probably the visit of Christy's colleague from Taiwan, Dexter Wen. Christy and Dexter worked together at Elan, in Hsinchu. We had no idea he lived in Texas until Christy suddenly discovered found him on Facebook, and he was living in Houston. He came out to visit us a couple of weekends ago, and told us that he's quitting his job and moving to Toronto. Oh well, that's too bad. It would have been nice for Christy to have a friend that's fairly close.

The weather is getting hotter and hotter out here. It's now lingering around 100 degrees every day. It can be a struggle sometimes to think of something to do on the weekend. We've been going to different parks, hoping to find something nice, but most of the local parks are pretty bad. It's mostly just a space for people to sit on picnic tables and bar-b-que. And the weather is so hot, I start to feel uncomfortable the minute I step out of the air-conditioned car.

Christy has told me that she wants a better job, and I don't blame her. She's completely overqualified for the job she's doing now. She wants to get into the health care business and learn how to operate an "ultrasound" machine. So she wants to be an "ultrasound technician." I think it's great for her. There's always demand for that sort of job. Healthcare seems to be the one industry that's hiring, and not firing these days.

So that's the latest news. Our second summer in Texas is upon us. I'm not looking forward to it.

(Picture: Christy, the babies, and her friend, Dexter.)

Dragon Boat Festival

Yesterday, the family celebrated Dragon Boat Festival for the second time here in Austin. What is Dragon Boat Festival? Here's a brief summary:

"The best-known traditional story holds that the festival commemorates the death of poet Qu Yuan (c. 340 BC - 278 BC) of the ancient state of Chu, in the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty. A descendant of the Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the king decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance. Qu Yuan was accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry, for which he is now remembered. Twenty-eight years later, Qin conquered the Chu capital. In despair, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth month.

It is said that the local people, who admired him, threw food into the river to feed the fish so that they would not eat Qu Yuan's body. This is said to be the origin of zongzi. The local people were also said to have paddled out on boats, either to scare the fish away or to retrieve his body. This is said to be the origin of dragon boat racing."

We didn't go to any dragon boat races, but we did buy several "zongzi", which is basically rice, pork, and mushrooms wrapped in bamboo leaves. We bought some last year from the Chinese supermarket in Chinatown, but they were awful. Somebody simply mixed rice and peanut butter together and called it a "zongzi." So this year Christy went to a Taiwan restaurant called "Wok On Fire" (also in Austin's Chinatown) and bought six. The restaurant charged $3 for each "zongzi."

"Very expensive." Christy told me. "In Taiwan, you can buy three for what they are charging for one."

She's right, but she has to realize that she's not in Taiwan anymore, and if you want a taste of your homeland food, you're going to pay more. I paid a small fortune on one Thanksgiving just trying to get turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. And I frequently had to overpay for American soda as well. While horrible soda like "Heysong Saspirilla" was a mere 12 NT per can, Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper were always anywhere from 35 to 50 NT a can.

At least the "zongzi" was actually pretty good this year.

(Picture: Kyle, examining his zogzi (rice cake) )

The Formosa Art Tea House

The best tea house in Taiwan (in my opinion) is a place called "Chun Shui Tang" (春水堂 in Chinese, the website is http://www.icetea.com.tw/). Every tea that I've tried at this restaurant has been good, and I particularly like their green tea and their "jen ju nai cha" (bubble tea).

I was a bit surprised when Christy informed me that there was a "Taiwan-style" tea house right here in the Austin area, just a 15 minute drive north in a city called Pflugerville. She told me that the owners were Taiwanese, and they even had their own website (doesn't everyone these days?). I scanned their website, http://www.drinkarttea.com/, and I thought the place looked kinda cool, like the tea houses I used to go to in Taiwan.

So, this past weekend, we decided to check the place out. My first impression was that it seemed out of place in the suburban city of Pflugerville. It was located in one the many small strip malls you see everywhere, next to a haircut shop and a Mexican restaurant. When we walked in, we were the only customers (this was a Saturday afternoon). If they had set up their tea house in Austin's Chinatown, the place probably would have been packed.

The place itself was pretty nice, and had the look of a real Taiwan tea house. We all decided to order the "jen ju nai cha" (bubble tea). Since I've been back to America, I haven't really liked any of the bubble tea that I've tried here. Either it's too sweet or it's watered down or it just simply tastes bad. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to report, the bubble tea at the Formosa Art Tea House sucked. Just plain sucked. It was given to us in a plastic cup like you would get from a take-out tea store. The taste wasn't very good either. I've had better bubble tea at a shopping mall.

To be fair, the Formosa Art Tea House does offer many different kinds of teas, not just bubble tea. They have green tea, "kung fu" tea, and at least a dozen more kinds of teas. Maybe their other tea is good, who knows. So I may give them one more chance with a different tea. My wife seemed to enjoy talking in Chinese to the manager there. I don't really have any idea what they were talking about, except that they both seemed to be complaining about things in America compared to Taiwan. That doesn't surprise me. Whenever I would get together with David in Taiwan, we would always complain about Taiwan.

The manager told us that he worked at Dell Computer during the week, and that was his "real" job. The tea house was just secondary income. Let's hope that Dell doesn't fire him.

(Pictures: 1 & 2. Outside the tea house. 3. Inside the tea house. 4 & 5. Kyle drinking the "jen ju nai cha.)

Texas and Guns

Texans sure love their guns.

A law passed recently here in Texas that will allow students to carry concealed weapons on school campuses across the state. If you find this hard to believe (as I do), here's an article about it:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/DN-collegeguns_20tex.ART.State.Edition1.4999a31.html

Where does this end? Guns in church? Guns in movie theaters? Guns in hospitals? Guns in elementary schools? I mean, why not just allow guns EVERYWHERE?

The advocates of this law like to point out the massacre at Virgina Tech, and they say that if some of the students had carried guns, the shooter wouldn't have killed so many people. Okay...maybe that's true...BUT....these types of massacres are extremely rare. What's more likely to happen is that you'll see more random shootings. Some student will get pissed off at their teacher, BANG! A guy gets pissed off that his girlfriend dumped him...BANG! That kid who sits next to me just said I was stupid....KILL HIM!

Statistics have shown that people who have guns are more likely to shoot a loved one or family member, than shoot someone that actually means them harm.

I can't imagine the people who crafted the Constitution ever thought it would come to this. As it was originally intended, the Second Amendment was created so Americans could defend themselves from a possible British invasion, which was certainly possible back in the late 1700's. Now we've got kids carrying guns into their college classrooms. Thomas Jefferson can be proud.