Friday - February 14, 2003
I got out early again this morning with the intent
of getting my pictures (tomorrow is the last day, hurray!) and then hunting up
some flowers for Valentine's day. I wasn't looking forward to that transaction.
It promised to be difficult and expensive. I seem to pass flower shops all the
time so I anticipated finding an English-friendly one and trying my
luck.
When I got to the memorial, once again, something was happening.
Several teams of military-types were standing behind a makeshift curtain and
there were chairs positioned around the parade grounds and what looked to be
top military brass overseeing things.
The chairs were filled with mostly
children and it was clear that many schools had brought their students here on
a field trip.
As I pondered what was happening, the announcer on the
loudspeaker said, in English, "...and now, let's get started with the
show!"
What timing! Again!
I watched the show for about 90
minutes. It consisted of the (Army or Marines or both, not sure) Lion Dancing
team and Dragon Dancing team. They were followed by the Marine precision drill
team and marching band, the Navy frogmen team (who performed a series of
impressively limber pre-swimming exercises to demonstrate how they stay in
shape) and the Marine Hand-To-Hand Combat Team (Read: Kung Fu Team) who were
the most impressive.
I was lucky and got a few good pictures of the
performances, but I was cursing myself for not bringing the camcorder this
morning. Later, Chu-Wan's father told me this was practice for tomorrow night's
show and a special show for the schoolchildren.
Stopped at McDonald's on
the way home for Chicken. My practice must really be helping, because after I
ordered, this cashier launched into a long conversation with me too. When I
adopted my "Hi, I'm too stupid to understand your language" look, she
immediately switched into fairly fluent English.
Strangely, I didn't pass any flower
shops on the way home. I never really tried to pinpoint them, but they seem to
be everywhere when I'm not looking.
When I got back to the house,
Chu-Wan's mom sent us to the restaurant she tried taking us to for steak the
other day. I just shut up about my lunch at McDonald's and ate another
meal.
The restaurant is called "K.P. Chefs Factory". I've passed this
restaurant several times in the last few weeks and considering it's on a street
with no less than two restaurants calling themselves "eclectic restaurants" I
really didn't give much though to the name. In fact, I've been misreading it
all this time. For some reason, I read the sign as to mean "K.P. Chef's
Factory" - or, the factory of Mr. K.P. Chef and I further somehow never
pronounced the word "chef" correctly in my head, but came up with something
Chinese-like, making it sound more like "Jeff".
It is, in fact, a
restaurant run by the cooking school across the street. They are open lunch and
dinner and the students run the entire place, which has two sides, a Chinese
side and a Western side. The meals are therefore cheaper than at a fancy
restaurant, but they still put on the whole dog-and-pony show.
My
mother-in-law wanted me to go to get a steak, but steak wasn't on the lesson
plan for today's lunch. The Beef Rib Steak in a Green Peppercorn sauce sounded
good, but apparently to everyone else, too, because they were out.
They
had two types of pizza on the menu and the waitress tried to convince me I
wanted one of them, but the choice between "Tuna Fish Pizza" and "Mixed
Mushroom Pizza" wasn't palatable.
I had their lasagne, which wasn't bad,
but a touch dry. It was probably a little dry because they managed to pack
about 10 layers of noodles into the dish, there was little room for sauce in
between.
After we ate, we went to the nearest Eslite bookstore but I
still didn't find book 2. I'll have to keep looking.
To get to the celebrations in Pingshi
tonight, a special series of busses have been set to run from the Taipei Zoo.
We needed to be out of the house about 4:30 to get out there early. That left
us an hour or so, so I headed back to the PC market. They also sell DVDs there
and I found something yesterday that I needed to research price and
availability in the US before buying here. It turned out to be a great deal
here, so I decided to pick it up.
Meanwhile, Chu-Wan called the picture
place and found out Michelle's baby-picture album was ready. She met me at the
Metro station near the PC Market and we went to pick it up. It really came out
great and it is something we'll always treasure. Part of the package was a
poster and that really was the icing on the cake. It's really a great
picture.
We just had time to turn around and head back out to get to
Pingshi. We were about 15 minutes behind our time schedule, but we beat
the afternoon rush hour and were able to get to the busses quickly. The bus
ride was another 30 minutes into the Northeast Coast Scenic Area, although I
never saw any coast.
In
Pingshi we bought a lantern, along with all the other people there, and
launched it, with our wished written on it, into the night sky. All evening,
when you looked up, the sky was dotted with orange lights floating ever higher.
It's quite beautiful.
People were launching lanterns all the time, but
there was a concert going on at the local school and, from time to time, they'd
have a mass simultaneous launch. One time they launched 99 lanterns all at
once.
The bus returned us to the Zoo, so we went over to the Zoomall,
where I remembered a pizza place. The pizza place didn't serve any ordinary
pizzas. More tuna, seafood, "Japanese Style", black pepper beef and a host of
other pizzas tailored for local tastes.
I had a grilled chicken sandwich
at Ranch 1. It's still no substitute for pizza.
Tomorrow or Sunday,
we're calling Domino's.
Associated Links:
Taipei
Times article on tomorrow's activities
Toilet Cleaning
Count:
| CKS memorial |
Cleaning Crew |
| Kuting |
Cleaning Crew |
| Chungshiao Hsinsheng |
Cleaning Crew working elsewhere but using men's room to
fill mop bucket |
| Minchuan West Road |
Did not check |
| Minchuan West Road |
Did not check |
| Chungshiao Hsinsheng |
Did no check |
| Technology Building |
Did not check |
| Taipei Zoo |
Did not check |
| Taipei Zoo |
Did not check |
| Technology Building |
Did not check |
I did not do my research well today as we were
constantly running through the stations in a hurry. |
|
