Saturday - January 25, 2003
Fresh from my success at ordering in Chinese last
night, I was ready to try again. Ordered my own Cong You Bing for
breakfast in Chinese - successfully. I might point out that the Cong You Bing shop is a tiny corner stall, just big enough for three people and a
big frying pan. The proprietor is an older gentleman who, I would guess, does
not speak any English at all, not like the college level McDonald's
employees.
Something which I presume are the legs of the lantern have
been built up at the memorial. It's still hard to project a sheep or ram onto
this object.
When I returned to the house, my father-in-law asked me to
help him trim the vines in front of the house. This turned out to be a lot more
involved project than it sounded. The vines had been growing for 26 years and
the project wasn't so much "trimming" as "removing." To make things more fun,
these vines had huge, sharp thorns everywhere.
The process involved
snipping parts, then wrapping cables around the cut off part and pulling until
it broke free. After we piled up a volkswagon-sized pile of vines, we dragged
them 3 blocks through the streets until we took them into the basement of a
construction site, where they'd be hauled away.
The back streets of
Taipei aren't exactly wide and they are invariably lined with cars parallel
parked along the curb. We quite literally scraped 5 enormous bundles of thorny
vines along at least 40 cars along the route, but since there isn't a car with
battle-damage on it anywhere in Taipei, it's doubtful they'd notice. Pity about
the Porsche, though... it wasn't too scratched up to begin with.
We had
plans that evening for dinner with the other Huang family (the Huang 2's) at a
Mongolian BBQ restaurant, so Chu-Wan wanted to rest. I didn't really want to
rest, so I walked to the computer marketplace on my own. Because I was on my
own and had more time to look, I found many more stores than I was previously
aware of. There are more up and down areas that you can shake a stick at and I
began looking at digital cameras. Having lugged the camcorder everywhere when I
wanted to take a snapshot was getting tiring and knowing that the quality of
the images isn't that great, I was interested if I might be able to get a deal
on something better - and smaller.
At each camera vendor, if I asked
them to see a camera in Chinese, they'd show it to me, then talk to me at a
level far in excess of my ability to understand. If I didn't try to ask in
Chinese, they didn't let me look at the cameras.
I picked up a few
product sheets with pictures, model numbers and a variety of readable specs on
the cameras and went back to the house to study the cameras on the Internet. I
saw a really nice looking Konica camera that uses the same memory sticks as my
camcorder (saving me money) and wanted to know if it was any
good.
Before I could do that, it was time to head back for dinner. I had
intentionally walked as the weather was very nice and needed to give myself
enough time to walk back, too. It was only about 2km each way.
When I
got to the house, I learned that, although I'd been told we'd be taking the
Metro, they decided to drive because everyone was running late (except Chu-Wan
and I). To fit everyone into the car, we'd have to remove the car seat and
carry the baby. Taipei traffic being what it is, I headed out on foot to make
room in the car. My intent was to meet everyone at the restaurant - not that
anyone knew exactly where the restaurant was, nor could I read the name in
Chinese if I found it.
It was about 1km to the Metro station, then a
brief ride and another kilometer to the restaurant. I still got there first,
even though I had to call Chu-Wan and ask her to describe the Chinese
characters verbally over the phone, and the fact that they told me it was on
the wrong side of the road.
Apparently Mrs. Huang 2 and her daughter
also didn't know where the restaurant was and arrived at the Metro station at
the same time I did. The recognized me, and decided to follow me to the
restaurant. Since they didn't tell me they were there, I left them far behind
as I was walking at top speed thinking I would be the last one there.
It
just goes to show that it doesn't pay to drive a car in Taipei,
ever.
Dinner was good and lasted several hours. Mr. Huang 2 (who knew
where the restaurant was and drove) gave me a ride home so I wouldn't have to
walk.
I was a bit tired, but then Chu-Wan's friend Nora came over so we
could go to the night market. They wanted me to drive Chu-Wan's father's car,
but I wasn't up for that, so we agreed to take a taxi, leaving Michelle at
home.
On the way over, the taxi driver was a speed demon, and when we
finally got into the busy night market streets, he managed to hit (albeit
gently) two scooters.
The market was packed with the usual stuff, mostly
uninteresting to me. One of the vendors wasn't Chinese, but of some
middle-eastern or Mediterranean descent. He was selling roasted lamb sandwiches
and, despite being rather full, I had one. It was so good!
On the way
back, the taxi drivers ran no less than three red lights - but at least he
honked his horn before he ran them. The girls, in the back seat chatting away,
never noticed.
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