Friday - January 24, 2003
Chu-Wan, Michelle and I all went to CKS memorial
this morning for my daily pictures.
Today were to meet Chu-Wan's parents
at the Basil Mint restaurant - one of my favorite places to eat in Taiwan
because it has all you can eat fried chicken and spaghetti, plus salad, beef,
lamb and chicken - for lunch.
It was still too early to meet them, so we
headed to Hsimenting, since I didn't get a chance to look around much the other
day.
CKS Memorial also has a Metro station and, right now, the walls are
lined with reproductions of abstract art. As we walked through a little girl
looked at the art, turned to her mother and said, "how ugly!"
She was,
of course, dead on in her assessment, and I didn't know how to tell her that
some art has to be ugly because talentless people feel the need to be artists
too.
Hsimenting was mostly closed down, too. Being an area that stays
open late, the stores don't open early.
The Lai Lai department store was
open, so we looked around there for a while. We found some interesting
electronic toys for children - rather like a speak and spell, but for Chinese.
This stuck me as a great toy for Michelle (and, perhaps me too), but they were
too expensive.
Outside the store, we stopped for Chu-Wan to change the
baby. While I was waiting, a completely insane person snuck up behind me and
tapped me on the shoulder. He was speaking in gibberish, making bizarre sounds
and trying to convince me to come over and look at his collection of garbage.
Chu-Wan wanted to get away quick, she felt he might be trying to show me a
severed human head.
With that delay out of the way, we continued on to
Basil Mint for lunch. They had replaced fried chicken and spaghetti with
seafood - a most disappointing experience for me. What should have been the
highlight of the day was crushed in front of my eyes. At that moment I vowed to
have pizza for dinner.
On our way back home, we passed Bunny Listens
to the Music again. I guess it must be on one of the may walking paths back
to the house.
Despite being what appears to be an arty coffee house,
it's really quite a nice looking place. Clean wood paneled walls, large picture
windows, comfortable looking furniture, and not a single clue outside as to
what they really are. Perhaps the name is unique enough I can find it on the
Internet.
After a rest, we headed to the Sogo department store to look
for a gift and then we walked down the street to the sit-down pizza hut for my
long-awaited first pizza in Taiwan this trip.
They were packed out the
door with a huge line waiting for tables. No luck there.
I remembered an
oddly named pizza buffet place down the street, so we tried walking there. It
too was packed solid.
By now I was starving, Chu-Wan could carry the
baby no further and needed to stop for a while. The only option seemed to be
the large, only three-quarters full restaurant next to us: McDonald's. Once
again this was not an acceptable substitute for pizza!
One bright note,
Chu-Wan was so exhausted she refused to stand up to order food. I managed to
order entirely in Chinese, even answering their questions. It's the first time
I recall the McDonald's employees not trying to speak to me in English.
That didn't make the food taste any better, though.
To add
insult to injury, when I got home that evening, I learned that Jackie Chan had
been in Taipei for three days and had left earlier today. On my last trips,
Jackie Chan usually arrives that day or so after I leave... this time he
slipped in and out while I was here.
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