Back in Hsinchu

Well, we're back. In Hsinchu, Taiwan, that is. Even though we are in a hotel, it does feel like being back. It does also feel a bit strange, to live in a hotel in your own town.

We're quite lucky, as the weather is very nice. During the day, it's over 20 degrees C, in the morning and evening a bit cooler. Nice transition towards the still wintery weather in Holland.

Today, we spent almost all day getting all docs and and info together to file our 2007 taxes. Monday, we'll file our 2008 taxes and then we are good to go. Pieter went to the foreign police, to get some kind of statement/evidence of us living in Taiwan for the past 7 years. What he ended up getting is a LONG list of entries and exits in and out of Taiwan. Dating all the way back to 1987, when he first visited Taiwan, and including our most recent entry, yesterday.

Tomorrow, we'll do some vacation laundry and send the last 2 or 3 boxes to Holland. This time, we'll send them to our own (temporary) house in Veldhoven, instead of to oma Rommers in Hoogerheide. We already sent 10 boxes to her house, so her spare bedroom now probably looks like a storage facility.

A little something about sending these boxes to Holland here. The boxes we use are regular moving boxes (medium size) and they weigh about 10 kg each. For the amount of about 35 EUR, they are shipped to the Netherlands in only 7 days! This amazes us so much, because packages from Holland usually take 2 weeks or more to get to Taiwan and it's much more expensive. But, we're not complaining. So far, all our boxes arrived safely in Hoogerheide, so we'll have our winter clothes and toys when we get there.

The next few days, we plan to eat at as many as possible of our favorite restaurants one last time. Tomorrow, we go to Squares for lunch and to Outback Stakehouse for dinner, with Sarah and Oliver. Sunday, we go to Taipei one last time, to Danshui, with ASML colleague John and his family. Monday, we'll have lunch at Brunch Bagels and dinner in ZhongHe, with Pieter's boss. Tuesday, we'll have a goodbye breakfast in Chungli, with some TPV people there (Pieter's old Philips group) and maybe we can squeeze in a dinner at Friendy's Pizza. Or even better, at the Shrimp House ...