Taiwan - Chinese New Year 2003

Michelle, Super-Model

Tuesday - January 28, 2003 I made my usual morning run for breakfast and pictures. An odd thing happened on the way back. I decided to take a completely different route home and at one point I came to a red light and stopped to wait. I was on the northeast corner of the intersection. The southbound traffic just happened to be a complete wall of scooters waiting for the light to turn green. Normally the scooters cluster towards the curb, but not this time. I looked up at the southeast sidewalk and a new Mercedes Benz was driving down the sidewalk to get around the scooters and turn right. Normally, Taipei sidewalks all have cement barriers to prevent cars driving on the sidewalk, but they must have missed this intersection and the car driver was taking advantage of it. I was in no danger because I was on the other side of the intersection and the driver turned right, but it's not something you expect to see driving down the sidewalk at you. The image of the driver and the car was burned into my mind, but while that was burning it, I simply forgot to grab the camera and take a picture. By the time it occured to me, he was just an ordinary Mercedes on the side street and not a hurtling pedestrian-seeking missle of death. I walked further on then turned onto the backstreets. Two blocks later the same Mercedes was coming at me down the road. He musted have looped around on the one-way streets and coincidentally happened to travel down the same street and me. I passed Bunny Listens to the Music a few blocks later. Bunny isn't open this early, and I was suprised that a car was sitting in front of the restaurant, motor running, driver in front seat. It was the same Mercedes! He wasn't looking at me, and I never saw him again, but the coincidence was too much to be believed. Perhaps he reads my daily journals and was taking the sight-seeing tour? Today we had an appointment for Michelle's photo album to be taken at noon. The plan was to take the Metro, but, since family pictures were being taken too, everyone had to go and that meant we were late. I hate being late. We took a taxi, but it was impossible to make it by the noon appointment. I hadn't had lunch and my plan was after the family pictures having been taken, I'd slip away to the nearest restaurant I felt confident ordering food in and have lunch while they photographer worked with Chu-Wan and Michelle. When we arrived 20-23 minutes late, the photographer was running late with his previous appointment. I hate it when other people are late. I wasn't in the best of moods when the photography place suggested we go eat and come back 30-40 minutes later. I was prepared to go sit and stew for a while by myself, but now it had suddenly become a family luncheon. As we walked along the streets, weighing the relative merits of each place we passed, but not getting food as our 30-40 minutes slowly ticked away, I jumped at the chance when it was suggested that I could go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and everyone else would find a restaurant. In addition to a little alone time, I felt confident that I could handle the menu at KFC. As I walked in the door, though, I began to think of the possibilities. There's not much in the way of options at McDonald's - a Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac, but KFC has original and extra crispy. How you say that in Chinese? Worse still, how do you even know if that's what they're asking you? There's dark meat and white meat, and then there's side orders. Again, McDonald's has fries. KFC has fries, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, cole slaw and other things. I began to think this wasn't such a good idea, but it was too late. I studied the value menu for some time. I immediately decided again the things I couldn't identify by sight. That left me with two options. A chicken sandwich meal and a pieces of chicken meal. Worrying about the whole original extra crispy thing, I decided against the chicken, besides, that value meal had no less than 3 prices on the picture, and one configuration of chicken, with dotted lines drawn around it. It seemed too complicated to hope to just ask for a #4 and get out cleanly. English is a mandatory subject in junior high and up in Taiwan, so I approached the counter of a hopeful looking employee of an age that let me hope he'd taken English recently, just in case. I ordered my meal and he turned around, repeated what I ordered and then asked me a long, complicated and totally unintelligible question. I tried to explain I didn't understand, but couldn't remember how to ask him to repeat, or to say it slowly. Hoping that perhaps he was asking me what type of drink I wanted with me my, I tried a helpful "yi bei kele" (Cola). He just looked at me like I was an idiot - obviously that wasn't what he asked me. As if it wasn't obvious, I tried (in English) to explain to him that I didn't understand, and we both stood there, looking stupid at one another. It was a tense moment. After what seemed like hours, he said just one word in English: "Here?" Yes, that was it! He was asking if I was eating here or taking it out. Once passed that, he asked no more questions, just took my money, handed over the food and the deal was done. My meal was quite filling, since it had been served with a large helping of humble pie, but I wolfed it down quickly so that I could meet everyone back at the studio. When I got back, I was still the first person there, so I spent some time looking through the sample wedding albums of the studio. There was a particularly nice one, with lots of pictures from yangmingshan park. I later learned that was the best-of-year winning album that the studio had done. This gives me great hope the album will be very good. By the time we all got back to the studio we were late again. I hate being late. The photographer was still running late too. I hate it when others are late. There was another reason that late was bad. We'd scheduled the appointment to coincide with Michelle's naps. After a certain time in the afternoon if she doesn't get her nap, she gets nasty. One thing I had noticed about all the baby albums was that there was at least one picture in each of them of the baby crying and screaming. That said, Michelle was excellent, and only began to fuss towards the end. When the photo shoot was over, she really started wailing, but it looked to me like she was smiling in most of the 50 or so pictures they took. We go back tomorrow to choose the 32 pictures that will make up the albums and the poster. The album will be ready sometime near the end of our trip - hopefully they won't be late. It was late in the day and we returned home for the rest of the day after a brief detour to pick up my Mac Chinese keyboard and have a meatball sub at Subway. I did further research on Sony camera I had seen the other day and discovered generally excellent reviews for a simple, one-touch type camera. Baring any negative information I find, I'm seriously considering buying this camera before Chinese New Year so I can get better pictures of the festivities.