Thursday - January 30, 2003
My daily trip to the CKS Memorial now seems
endless, so just to break things up a bit, I snapped the pictures in the
reverse order. Wild and exciting, huh? (To avoid confusion, I present them here
in the same order as the others, though.)
At least this morning,
something has happened, two of the "leg-things" are up on platforms. There's
still no way I can see how this can anatomically represent a ram, unless it's
been exposed to high levels of radiation on some test atoll in the
Pacific.
Tomorrow's pictures will be with my new, higher-resolution
camera and I hope are considerably better.
I try to vary my route to and
fro every morning, but almost invariably now I pass Bunny Listens to the
Music so I decided to take a picture just for this web site. (Inclusion
here does not constitute an endorsement of this establishment.)
Chu-Wan
is in charge of tomorrow's dinner and I went with her to a local wet-market to
purchase the needed vegetables. I'm told we need to purchase the ingredients at
six different markets, but no satisfactory explanation has been forthcoming as
to why.
Michelle has finally begun to accept grandma and grandpa, so we
left her with them while we went shopping.
On the way to the wet
market, we passed a camera shop. They too had the Sony camera I was planning to
buy, so we stopped and and asked the price. My research had found I could get
the camera stateside for about $US 340. The shop we had seen the camera in the
other day had it for about $US 350. We knew there were many stores carrying the
Sony cameras and that we could probably haggle the price down lower than the US
price. The price at this solitary camera store was about $US 320. Not bad, but
if that was their regular price, we could surely do better where we could pit
the vendors against each other. We also didn't have the money with us, either.
Apparently everyone in Taipei needed to stock up for New Years, too, as
the place was crawling with people.
We had a slight problem with the
cart we were using to haul groceries. Everyone else (and I do mean
everyone) had a tall 2-wheeled cart with sides and a top clearly
designed to carry groceries. We, on the other hand, had a luggage cart with a
cardboard box on it. Periodically, as we'd fight our way through the crowd with
Chu-Wan in the lead, I'd step on something and jump. I didn't jump because I
always jump when I step on something but because everytime I'd stepped on
something it had the squishy yet firm feeling of an animal. Each time I'd look
under my foot there'd be some odd-vegetable that we'd purchased earlier and had
now lost. Once after I'd stepped on one it disappeared moments later. I rather
wonder if someone will be eating that vegetable on New Year's day.
My impression of the 3 day holiday is
that it is tantamount to being in a fallout shelter after a natural disaster.
No food, no water, no electricity, nothing but what you bring with you. I know
it isn't this bad, but I'm treating it as such, just in case there's nothing
for me to do or eat.
Which is why... after the wet-market we went to
Costco to buy top sirloin steaks, all-beef hot dogs, pasta salad and Hershey's
kisses. I should be able to survive a few days on that, just in case.
On
the way to Costco, Chu-Wan's father showed me something that was so ridiculous
it bordered on the absurd. A sticker on the back of a van that (translated)
said: "New driver, please show patience and consideration." What a concept!
Now, why can't the drivers just try that for everyone?
It looks like
everyone was stocking up at Costco too, because it was packed wall to wall with
people. It was almost as difficult to walk through as the wet market had been,
and Costco has much wider aisles.
I ate a good, solid meal for Costco
hot dogs at the snack bar and was pleased it wasn't just my desperate need to
food the other day. The dogs were just as good as before.
After leaving
Costco, which is in Neihu we drove around in an area of Taipei we could
scarcely believe. Tall, brand-new, gleaning new high-rise buildings lined the
streets everywhere. It was if we were in a different city altogether.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me. I barely believed it myself.
Somehow I need to get back there and take some photos.
Our last stop for
the day was to pick up the new camera. We went to a shop referred to us by a
friend of Chu-Wan's. The friend's brother had worked there and put in a good
word for us with the staff.
They didn't have the camera, but they were
able to explain that the camera is highly constrained and that only a few shops
in Taiwan had gotten any in, and those were probably sold out. This store was
expecting their shipment in March.
Knowing that I'd seen the darn things the other day, we went up
and down the street only to find that, sure enough, it was different Sony
cameras that looked the same. The place we'd priced it the other day was the
only one with it. That and the place we'd seen it earlier today.
We
rushed back there as quickly as possible, hoping that they didn't close early
because of the holiday and afraid that they'd be closed tomorrow, too. They
were open and we got the camera.
We went out again to nearby Ta'An Park
to try a few test photos with the new camera. Of the whole bunch I took, only
one of two came out, the picture of the 7-11 on the corner being the best. |
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