Brothers, Ducks and Taiwan

I saw my brother Ted off to the airport early this morning to return to his wife, Angela. It is Angel's birthday, and he will be arriving late in the afternoon (he should be home by now) where he will comfort his three daughters before leaving them with the grandparents and celebrating his wife's birthday.

Ted stayed with us over the weekend, and the cats loved him. Ted has a history with cats: they pretend to like him, then they lash out at him. The Joneses' cats, however, took to Ted like he was a family member. Even Oliver took to him and did not need his muzzle around Ted. Amazing.

Last night, Ted, Wifey-Pooh and I went out to an authentic Chinese restaurant. True to form, we wrestled briefly over the tab, but Ted won the privilege of treating everybody to the meal after Wifey-Pooh defected and cast her vote in his favor. :)

What a feast! We had Wontons and Spring Rolls, Fried Green, Rock Cod, Mixed Fried Rice and best of all, Peking Duck, which usually consists of a Pekin Duck, large white domestic ducks upon which Disney's Donald (Fauntleroy) Duck was modeled after.

In case you are interested, Peking is better known as Beijing, the capital city of the communist state of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC is not to be confused with the Republic of China (ROC) which has its capital in Taipei on Taiwan.

We reminisced about growing up in Taiwan. Ted got a scar on a trip to Yu Shan (“Jade Mountain” a.k.a. Mount Morrison) when he was seven years old. Jade Mountain is one of East Asia's highest peaks at 3,997 meters (13,114 feet) above sea level and the highest point on Taiwan.

Over thirteen years, more than 8000 miles and no less than two countries later, we shared a meal together again. It is a good memory. I've lost my camera's USB cable, and I've yet to purchase a memory card reader or replacement cable, otherwise I'd upload a photo. Oh well.

Ted has a Compaq Presario x1000 laptop. The secondary IDE bus appears to be malfunctioning (I get a boot-up error "1792 - Secondary Controller Failure"). We disassembled the entire laptop since the warranty expired in December of 2004. If someone had told me during my high school graduation that Ted and I would be in my apartment last night, disassembling a laptop before he left for a mini-vacation prior to flying to Haiti, I would not have bet good money on it.

Isn't life grand?