While I was walking to Zhishan the other day I was looking at the shops along the streets.
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it, but a large portion of the business you walk by are small, single-family businesses. Many of them are quite literally their homes, converted into storefronts. It’s a little unnerving to look into the open front of a business and see the family sitting in the back, the parents watching TV or eating dinner, the kids doing homework. They turn their expectant eye to everyone who lingers to see if they are customers. I always feel like I’ve suddenly been dropped into someone’s living room; an uninvited intruder gawking at them in their personal space.
In any case, the area around Zhishan has a lot of small businesses, and, I studied them all as I walk by. This time I noticed a window manufacturing business. The small business, no bigger than a living room, was building windows by hand. Another business was making doors.
I got to thinking about that and it really drove home something I’ve probably known subconsciously for some time: Taiwan doesn’t seem to have standard building sizes. I’ve mentioned that bathtub faucets are never consistently placed. I’ve passed dozens of hand-made mattress shops, because the beds aren’t made in fixed sized, and I’ve passed through every shape and size of door I can image.
For all Taiwan’s former industrial output (seeping away to the cheap slave labor in China), they must never have established firm building standards. It fits completely, but it must add a significant cost to building things and repairing them.
Then I thought, “This can’t be.” Surely this only applies to old houses and the new homes are all standardized. So I decided to do a bit of research and travelled to B&Q a UK-based DIY chain in Taiwan. A quick scan of their website showed one within walking distance of Shihlin station and so, with a free afternoon to explore, I headed out.
B&Q turns out, not unsurprisingly, to be very reminiscent of Home Depot back in the States. A bit smaller, but really quite large by Taiwanese standards. Even the layout was very similar.
While I didn’t make a complete aisle by aisle inventory, I did find that all the bathroom faucets are designed to fit unevenly and non-uniform spaced pipes. In fact, they don’t even even space them for the store display, presumably to give that “authentic” look.
They had a small selection of doors, and, as far as I could see, no windows.
They did have a massive flooring section, with every kind of wood flooring and foam mats conceivable. I could really go nuts with the flooring choices they had.
Time ran out before I could really work the place over, I had to get back to the house in time to collect Michelle and take her to class. Circumstances prevented Irene from taking her, so it was up to me to get her there, then deliver her to her grandparents after class, and head over to the photography place to pick up our children’s album.
Irene and James arrived their early and he was having pictures taken with wings and a halo on.
Three years ago, when Michelle was James’ age, we were in Taipei, and attended a trade show at the Taipei World Trade Center for parenting things. The photography studios were there in droves, trying to sell parents on albums. Michelle was causing a riot, literally, we had difficulty moving through the trade show because the people, both the vendors and the other attendees were thronging around her. At times we’d be surrounded to 20-30 people asking to hold her and trying to look at her.
More so than anything, the photography places were bouncing off the walls trying to get us to bring her in. One place, Hollywood, made us a great offer and we took it. They produced a great album which we really love.
This time we went to them first to see what deal they’d give us. We got a good deal, and, after the pictures were developed, they offered us more stuff to let them use our kids pictures, especially James’ for promotional items. We agreed, but when they called us up to tell us the album was done, they wanted more pictures of James. It turns out that another trade show is coming up and they want him as one of their posters at the booth. They already printed up hand-out name cards with him on it.
They got their pictures, which they’ll be forwarding to us also, and picked up our album and posters. It looks great, they did another great job.
The only problem is age… Michelle is at that age where kids can’t smile naturally, so some of her expressions are… a bit odd, or grimace-like. Can’t blame the tools or the workmen for that one.
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