12 Jan 2026
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 Family time: Christmas break
 
 Fully (hopefully) back to usual life after the break.
 
 This last Christmas, we went to Taiwan instead of staying at home. It was
 because when I noticed, it was already close to the year end and we haven't
 yet been going on vacation with our kid for the whole year.

 A sudden revealation came from my wife - she did the travel plan and shared
 to me, asking for my opinion. I did my usual "LGTM", then she said "You are't
 interested in Asia, except may be Singapore?". I was like, "oh, it seems to be
 the case?".

 But to defend myself (secretly in my head), I think what I didn't like was to
 follow travel plans. Instead I would like to see what I see. That definitely
 will annoy my wife if I answer her that I have no idea where to go and I just
 plan to walk around. I guess she knows a lot about me to not ask.
 
 The trip was relaxing, and I got another reminder of no plan can ever catch up
 with a toddler. Some of the things he loved to do are still his favourites,
 but some no longer. He asked to go somewhere else at the entrance of the zoo,
 but agreed to stay for a while after we told him that there was a train inside
 the zoo which we could ride on. He loved the cable car, but not a fan of
 Legoland anymore. Something like that, so we had to change plans all the time
 to keep him happy.

 The only thing that was a bit tricky was food. It seemed our kid was not very
 keen on Taiwanese food, and generally restaurants wouldn't pay too much 
 attention to food allergy. Somehow it worked out, we managed to find pasta
 places and noodles that he liked.

 We even went to soft play one day. Not sure why but recently I noticed that I
 am the one who make friends in soft plays...I think it is like a checkmate
 sequence - most of the time I was only playing with my son, then I felt some
 children looking at us, and became even harder to ignore when we met eyes.
 They would get closer and might start talking to us, and eventually we would
 be playing together, chasing, jumping around, absolutely no mercy on little
 old me...

 Now I think about it, it is quite stressful. Sometimes children can easily go
 overboard when they get excited, but then you won't want to ruin their fun. It
 is a super demanding multi-tasking work for me. I have to jump out quick
 enough to nearly catch the kid, but not so quick so that they turn around too
 fast and bang their head on something or someone; I learned to use fingers to
 squeeze-shoot balls at kids in a ballfight, so that the balls go fast enough
 but hit lightly, while being thrown at at full force...I also think that I got
 a strange insight at soft play - for me to catch a kid running away at full
 speed is just impossible, so I was learning from the wild hunters on how to
 catch swift animals. Ambush tactics somehow delivered well, kept the fun going
 while saving me from getting too exhausted. My son has a smaller build but now
 I know how to inspire him in chasing games, in case he needs help in future.
 Sometimes children bumped into each other, got a ball hit in the face, kicked
 others on their head sliding down too fast, and I think it is natural for me
 to see if they were okay if not to cheer them up, when I am bad at cheering
 people up. But always the most important one was to be attentive to my son. I
 feel very lucky that usually my kid would just join me to chase other kids, or
 gave me balls so that I could fight back, and told me that it was very fun
 playing in indoor playgrounds.

 Overall speaking it was a good trip. Uber is used in there so it is not too
 much a trouble going somewhere. Quite some places use credit card but cash is
 still needed. We didn't do a lot of shoppings but there are lots of malls for
 people who like it. But the most important part was that we got time to spend
 together.