Sunday - February 9, 2003
In the end, there was not much to recommend this
day, but it started out gloriously.
Whoever sent over February weather
from Arizona, thank you! It was great.
When I got up, the Knocky Cats
were turned towards the sun like little sunflowers, knocking away.
I
knew it was sunny outside, but it wasn't until I started on my daily walk that
I realized how nice it was outside, warm, not too humid, the sun bright without
a cloud in the sky. The sky was even blue for a change, the pollution having
been blown out by yesterday's storm.
What a glorious day for a Cong You Bing breakfast! Too bad it was Sunday, which I realized just as I got
to the corner and saw the closed Cong You Bing shop. The setback
couldn't dampen the wonderful weather, so I continued on my way, marvelling at
the 70 degree weather and the people in heavy coats and mufflers.
When
I got to the memorial, something was happening. A crowd of photographers was
clustered around something, which I had to work hard to get a look at. It
turned out to be a very cute woman posing for photographs. Clearly she was an
actress or a model. I was only able to get one picture and the results were
terrible. It looks nothing like her and no one was able to identify her from
it. A professional photographer I am not.
This was happening around the
back on the memorial, out of sight of the lantern. As I walked around the
corner I realized that it was finished! In one missed day they'd managed to
complete the form of the lantern... and did I feel cheated, it's just a stupid
pair of horns! This is nothing compared to the elaborate lanterns of the
past.
One of the reasons I'd wanted to see the lantern in Kaohsiung was
that for the last couple years, their lantern was better than Taipei's - at
least from the pictures I had seen - although Taipei's had still been cool.
Chu-Wan explained to me last night that, in the past, the central government
always gave the money to Taipei for the celebrations, but since President Chen
came to office, he's been giving the celebration money to other cities in an
effort to be fair to other parts of the country, letting Taipei fend for
itself. For the year 2000, the year of the dragon, Taipei had a fantastic
Dragon, in the next two years Kaohsiung had a terrific snake and horse, this
year, Taichung will have the great ram/sheep/goat lantern.
Taipei can
apparently only afford two ugly horns.
Signs have begun to pop up around the
city for the festival, showing just the two ugly horns. I'm so
disappointed.
On our trip down south, we kept passing (and being passed
by) enormous tour buses. According to Johnny, who has taken one of them, the
have full reclining, lazy-boy massage-chair seats for each passenger, with
their own video screen. We could, indeed, see that to be true as they passed.
After the 15th, we're going to take a one day bus ride to Taichung to see the
good lantern on the comfy bus.
On the way back, I stopped at MOS and the
same girl who ran in terror was there. This time I was able to give her my
order successfully. Things were still looking up for the day.
Today was
the day I'd been waiting for to take Michelle to the zoo. Unfortunately, late
last night Phoebe called and told Chu-Wan that lunch with her friends from the
summer camp had been arranged for today at 2:00PM at the Paris buffet
restaurant inside the new Shin Kong Mitsukoshi. (Can a day go by without going
to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi?)
Despite plans to leave 2 hours early, just to
be on the safe side, we didn't. At least we did leave with just enough time to
get there, provided nothing went wrong on the way.
Let me digress for a
moment to talk about the new Easy Card (or Yo Yo Ka) system on the the
subway. The Easy card is a stored-value card that can be used on the subway and
the buses. It's was in the planning stages when we last left, now it is fully
implemented. The cards even offer fare discounts and free bus transfers. To use
the card, you just wave it near the reader as you enter and exit the stations.
In fact, you can even leave it inside you wallet, which I discovered on the
first day by watching others.
Chu-Wan followed suit and put her in her
address book which she uses as a pocket book.
That's how we know she had
her address book when we entered the station, but didn't have it when she got
on the train. There was only one place it could have been, at the seat waiting
for the train, and we immediately hopped off the train and headed back, hoping
that it was either still there or had been turned in. It wasn't. It hadn't. The
loss was all credit cards, cash and addresses. Chu-Wan is naturally very upset
about the whole thing. We have to wait until Tuesday to check the lost and
found at the main train station to see if it got collected at any other
station, but in the meantime, she needed to go about cancelling all her credit
cards and such.
We, of course, were also late for lunch. That turned out
to be no problem, since the Paris was packed and no one had made reservations.
After wandering around for a while, we ate at Chili's.
While the friends caught up, I went walking in the
area. There's not much point in me sitting in the chair and listening
(uncomprehendingly) to them talk for hours. I checked out every floor of the
New York Department store, both Shin Kong Mitsukoshi buildings, the major movie
complex, the surrounding blocks, a small market place, a little park and a
couple construction sites.
A couple hours after finishing eating at
Chili's they all gave up and went their separate ways. On our way home, we
swung by the camera street and picked up a case for the camera. It's been very
inconvenient and potentially damaging to the camera on our trip to
Tainan/Kaohsiung so I wanted to get something to cover it immediately.
Especially since we're apparently going to Yangmingshan tomorrow. I
found out about that late last night.
Father Bob is a Catholic priest
who came to Taiwan many years ago and contracted Polio from the vaccination he
was given at the time. He established Operation De-Handicap, which Chu-Wan's
father runs. Father Bob is wheelchair bound and I've spoken with him in the
past, and on this trip, about the appalling conditions in Taipei for
wheelchairs.
One thing that he noted (as we had with the stroller) that
all the subways are wheelchair accessible, but in certain cases, you have to go
through a few gyrations before you can get to the train.
Worst of them
all is the Taipei Main Station. Despite the fact that we successfully navigated
it once with the stroller without resorting to picking it up and carrying it up
the stairs, we've been unable to accomplish the feat again. To get to the
camera street, you have to get off at the main station, so we tried again
(without luck) on the way out and again on the way back in.
Successfully!
You have to take the elevator up one level, cross all the way to
the next side, go up one level, cross all the way back to the other side, go up
one level and then you can go to one of several up elevators out from the mall
level. At the trains as we were leaving, I found a map that actually
illustrates this, so I got a picture, since no one is likely to believe
it.
On the way back, I noted they're making visible progress on building
a new subway line, apparently down XinSheng road. if it continues on it's path,
Chu-Wan's parents will probably be about 100 meters from a subway station. That
would be so convenient!
Overall it's been a pretty rotten day. Neither
of us were in the best of spirits when we got home.
We did go out and I
tried a new faddish food being served in Taipei. I don't know what it is
called, but it is essentially a huge ice cream cone (slightly less sweet)
filled with a little cheese, a little meat, a lot of lettuce, corn, cucumbers
and thousand island dressing (actually, mayo and ketchup, but by the time it
mixes it tastes just like thousand island.) It's really more of a salad than a
meal, but lots of people are eating them. I might try another from a different
vendor, just to see if I can find one with more meat in it.
Saw an
article on the BBC web page about Taipei today. The article talks about the
Taipei 101 tower, again calling it the largest in the world, but the picture
accompanying the article is actually the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi tower, cur&dZly
the tallest building in Taipei and no where near Taipei
101.
Associated Links:
BBC article on
Taipei |
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