Taiwan - Chinese New Year 2003

Mountain, Ocean, Sun

Thursday - Jan 23, 2003 I got out early and headed over to CKS memorial to get my daily picture. Although nothing looked like it had changed, there were railroad cars full of materials being unloaded. The objects looked rather like something that could be part of a lantern - fabric covering a hollow frame. The final product will almost certainly be a ram, but it was hard to see how the orange painted, hippie-60's designed objects will take on the semblance of an animal. Chu-Wan and the baby weren' ready yet for the day's excursion to the computer market place, so I made a detour to Hsimentig to look around. My first stop was the Tower Records to look for the puppet DVDs which were supposedly available. They weren't there, and I wouldn't have bought them even if they had been. Tower Records has some things unavailable elsewhere, but they aren't the cheapest place to look for discs. The computer market also features books and movies and usually at much better prices. I barely got to look around Tower when Chu-Wan called and I went to meet her at another Metro station near the computer market. If anything, the marketplace is bigger than ever, and it was packed solid with people. Altough we had nothing in particular to look for, it's fun to browse all the shops selling computers, whole and in pieces. This year, the big item seems to be light-up cases. Many of the stores had full window displays of nothing but various forms of cases with blue, green and other colors glowing from them. Pretty, but of no value to me at the moment, I recently switched my main computer from a PC to a Mac and case changes aren't much of an option there. Down in the book and video section I stumbled across of treasure trove of Japanese DVDs of... perhaps questionable origin. Nonetheless, at those prices, I needed to get them. Now, I just need to find some way to watch them before I return to the states. It's still several weeks to go and no DVD player in site! On the way back we stopped in a MOS Burger fast food place. MOS is a Japanese chain featuring an alternative burger menu taylored to the Asian taste. They claim to be Taiwan's number 1 burger, but they fail to say number 1 in what way. We ate in a MOS burger in Singapore several years ago and I recall being unimpressed, but a friend who recently visited Japan strongly recommended them, so I thought I'd give it another try. Their menu wasn't very English-friendly, but Chu-Wan had no problem ordering for me. They sell (among many other things) a burgers, cheeseburgers, fries and soft drinks. They also have value meals, for example, you can get a burger, fries and a drink from a convenient picture menu that even I could work - but you can't get a cheeseburger, fries and a drink as a meal. In fact, even with Chu-Wan trying to negotiate the deal, they could not add cheese to the burger value meal, so we had to buy them seperately. They also have some interesting items called "rice burgers" - which are not made of rice. Instead of buns they use sticky rice cakes for the top and bottom. Chu-Wan tried one of these while I went with my cheeseburger non-value meal. They can make them in a spicy and non-spicy fashion. I, of course, asked for it spicy. It was a tasty burger. Instead of toppings, they use an onion-laden sauce which tastes like a mild salsa. It's not something I'd think of putting on a hamburger, but it was quite good. Small but good. Chu-Wan's rice burger was even smaller. Incidentally, MOS isn't "Mo's" it's "M.O.S." (Mountain, Ocean, Sun). On the way back to the house, we stopped by an Apple computer store near the house. Although they didn't have any readily in stock, we ordered a Taiwanese Chinese keyboard for my Mac at home. It should arrive in a few days. Feeling unfilled by the MOS burger, but pleased with it, we stopped at the MOS burger right by the Apple store for another burger. Michelle slept through our second trip to MOS. Returned to the house and spent some time catching up on my writing and e-mail. Associated Links MOS Burger Menu - Chinese Hsimenting - English Tower Records Taiwan - English