March of 2020, my family moved all the way from Fremont, California to Taichung, Taiwan due to COVID-19. This itself was a crazy story on its own.

During the morning, San Francisco announced that they will start having a lockdown. The first thing my wife and I did in the morning was to stash up on food, diapers, and toilet papers. We even bought a brand new freezer to bunker down for the next few months.

Then in the afternoon, Angel suddenly asked, "Maybe we can just go back to Taiwan?" I asked, "Is that even possible? We have lived in the US for 20 years, and we don't even know where we would live.

Plus, the city is on lock down, can we even fly out?" It turns out that there was 5 tickets flying out that night, so Angel bought it and we had 2 hours to pack everything we could for an indefinite flight to Taiwan.

It was like what my grandmother told me when she was running from the communists - we just grabbed enough to survive the trip. We left some precious heirlooms back in Fremont (later a friend helped us retrieve it) and due to early COVID concerns everyone dressed like an astronaut. We didn't allow for uses of the bathroom, nor could we eat.

So the 5 of us - me, Angel, her mother who was in her 70s, and twin daughters who were 2, hopped on a plane and we ended up staying at Angel's brother's home.

We stayed at Angel's brother's home in Taichung for a month, but soon moved into an Airbnb that was within walking distance. It was during our stay at the Airbnb that we discovered a nearby ecological reserve park that was simply breathtaking. 

The park was filled with lush greenery, beautiful flowers, and stunning water features. We spent hours walking along the paths and taking in the beauty around us.

As we explored the park, I couldn't help but notice some homes on the side. One in particular caught my eye and I thought to myself, "Wow, it must be a true blessing for those living here." 

A few months after, my wife was looking at some real estate and came across a listing for a home that she thought would be interesting for us. As fate would have it, it was the exact same house that had caught my eye in the park.

We were thrilled, but there was a lot of turmoils for getting the house. The current owner of house had not been taking care of it, and their daily stuff filled all five floors of the house, to the point where they had even left bags in the daily elevator.

The real estate agent was no help either. He complained about the place and the owner throughout our visits, and even lied to us about the owner's family no longer living there.

This made us like the place less and less upon each visit.

Luckily, the home nearby with the same floor plan was on sale so we checked that place out and liked how the house looked when it was empty. We thought if we could buy the first house and then renovate it to make it better, it would combine with the stunning outside park environment and become a divine place to live.

Luckily, one of my best friends is also the famous London Architectural Designer PH Chen. So I could ask him to help design a newly renovated look for the otherwise bland and very narrow house.

So on August of 2020 we purchased the house. As you can see the view from the garage or above is stunning, and the park has a lot of great features that come alongside it.

The little river that flowed through the park was home to fish, frogs, and turtles, and it led to a much larger park with an array of activities for our twins. There were special events like mini-train rides, concerts, and festivals that made our new home even more exciting.

However, this is just the first part of our story with this house. After purchasing this house, we would still live in that same AirBnb for two years and eventually move to Taipei without ever staying there due to renovation headaches. We decided to completely gut the house and start from scratch, which was no small feat. But with the help of PH Chen, we were able to create a stunning living space that was truly one of a kind.

I will document that difficult process and the final magnificent outcome here in Metablox.