dim sum soon

I've been kind of busy lately... reminiscent of my first week of work when my mom and sisters were still around. This week my dad's been in Taipei, on business/meetings meetings meetings. So after work almost every day I've been running around town to meet up with him/ grab dinner/ meet other family. I finally saw my uncle and cousin yesterday. It's crazy... it's been 5 years, and it's either because we're on his turf now, or my Chinese is better, or we're both older, but I guess we've both changed... anyways, I feel like we connect better now.

But besides that, I love having my dad here. And it means better food =) Here is a glimpse at one of our manyyy mango shua bing's

it's freshly cut ripe mangos, really finely shaved ice (a la sno balls of NOLA), some condensed milk, a little syrup, and a scoop of mango ice cream. Delicious.

On another note, I spent a day this week at the Psychiatric Dept. in the hospital. It was interesting and somber on some notes, uplifting on others. 70% of the psych pt's there all have schizophrenia. wow... I never realized how prevalent it is.

The good points were the encouraging and friendly staff (they must have such stamina to work there everyday), and the way the system is set up -I think it really benefits the pt's there. For example, the "day care" ward has a full on kitchen and teacher, and they teach pt's how to cook various foods that they go down and sell in the hospital lobby during lunch to make a little income. The department also has a mini-career center; once they think a pt has attained certain skills and is capable of working outside of the "day-care" walls, they set them up and try to find them some work.

It was an interesting day... esp. with the language barrier. I keep wondering what the experience (and being able to talk to the pt's) would have been like in English.