Day: June 23, 2007

It’s our last full day in Taiwan and Irene and the kids are visiting with friends. I took the opportunity to go walking and catching up on writing blog posts, which are now dangerously backed up.

First order of business was a trip to MOS Burger for lunch.

Ordering went smoothly and I was quite pleased with myself. The place was a bit crowded, and as I was by myself, at sat at the counter staring out into the street. My burger arrived minus my french fries. (I believe I’ve mentioned before, MOS always cooks you fries after you order them, so they always take a while.)

It took an unusually long time for my fries to arrive, although I’m not sure what the disconnect was. I had finished my burger before there was any activity on the fries front. First, a girl came in and (as it was crowded) sat down next to me. They give you little numbers to sit on the table. I was 85, the girl who came and sat next to me was (coincidentally) #58. She hadn’t been sitting there long when the MOS employee arrived with a large order of fries and asked her (this much I understand) “You have a large order of fries?”

She indicated in the negative. The employee looked perplexed. The phrase “I’m supposed to have a large order of fries and it’s been a long time, perhaps you’ve confused her ’58’ with my ’85’ and those are mine? Especially since only waiguoren or large families ever order large fries.” was far beyond my abilities to say in Chinese, and even a simple “I should have fries” stumped me because I’ve never studied the concept of “should” in the language.

I tried to indicate that I might be the owner of the fries, but he looked at his sheet, looked at my number and left. he went from table to table, asking if anyone had a large order of fries. He went upstairs for the tables up there. He came back a few minutes later, still carrying the fries. He took them back behind the counter and threw them away.

I don’t know why I bother with the large order of fries. They may be fresh, but the have no salt on them, which doesn’t make for very good-tasting fries.

Nonetheless, I’d paid for them and positive that those had been my fries, I was formulating how I was going to express that. I got out my receipt and checked it and was preparing to go to the manager, (who had taken my order in the first place) when I heard the employees ask him about the fries. he immediately responded, “They’re for the waiguoren.”

So, they cooked me another batch of fries.

That’s not what this story is about.

It was hot, I had nothing better to do, and all I had left were my fries, so I was eating them slowly, daydreaming, when I noticed a faint glimmer – a shine like a flash in a mirror on a sunny day. It came from my finger. I looked closely, and there, like a tiny crystal dream was a single grain of salt.

I couldn’t believe it. It must have gotten there from the fries. I set about inspecting each and every one. Each fry had exactly 1 to 3 grains of salt. I could only imagine them being placed there, one-by-one, by some amazingly intricate Japanese machine designed just for that purpose.

As I counted each grain of salt, I removed it from the fry. (1 to 3 grains of salt doesn’t alter the flavor of the fry enough to bother with.) I placed each grain in a little spot on the corner of my tray.

When I reached the last fry, I had enough collected to rub the fry in the salt and it tasted delicious!

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

So, as part of my Sisyphean task to photograph every Costco in the world, I needed to get to the third Costco in Taipei and the fourth and last remaining Costco for me to photograph in Taiwan.

The problem, as explained in my original post, Costco – The Plan, was that none of the Costcos in Taipei are conveniently located near subway stations.

On my last trip, I was able to locate Costco #3 on my map of Taipei, extrapolate GPS coordinates, and make the 1+ mile trek.

The fourth Costco presented a greater challenge, as it was far enough outside of Taipei that I could not find a map of the area. Freak chance presented with an opening when, returning from Keelung by freeway at night, I saw the Costco lights in the distance and managed to snap a GPS waypoint along the freeway. Using that coordinate and Google Earth, I made my best guess for the location, built a series of waypoints between the nearest subway station and the Costco and waited my chance to make the 4.3km hike through unfamiliar territory.

My plan was to make the trek tomorrow, but, as I had time this morning, I decided I’d time how long it took to get to the subway station, and when I arrived, I decided I’d hike to the first waypoint to determine how accurate my Google Earth-derived coordinates were.

I also had a secondary motive: to see what bus routes were in the area. It seems that something as logical as a bus map is not part of the Taipei bus system, instead they have abstract route charts that only make sense if you know the names of the streets and are already familiar with the area. As it’s been alternating between brutally hot and humid and torrential rain, I hoped to have a backup plan for either getting to or from the Costco. By studying the bus signs and taking notes I hoped my wife or father-in-law could make sense of the bus routes in the area.

The first waypoint was about 1.7km from the station and I’m happy to report that Google Earth and the GPS brought me dead on target.

I plotted the waypoints without paying much attention to the distances, so when I checked to make sure the next waypoint was where where I expected it before returning home, I was surprised to find was only 220m away – too close for me to just turn around and not check before returning. Again, the coordinate was spot on.

The next was only 300m away, and I had found a potential bus route to take me back to the station, so I decided to press on a bit more.

You can probably guess where this is going. The next waypoint was only 200m further on, so I kept going. By now I was positive that busses Blue 15 and Blue 23 would return me to the station, so I decided to commit to the last 2 legs of the journey.

The next leg was only 800m away as the crow flies. (It turned out to be farther because the road curved around a river.) The final leg being only 400m away, and I was on the Costco in no time.

Too bad it was too early in the morning and they were closed.

Still, I got my photo, and then the bus pulled up to the stop, so I hopped on board, hoping my readings of the bus signs wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t.

Mission Accomplished!

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

Still catching up half-written posts from Taiwan
With time running out, we had to make a trip to Sogo department store. Grandma had purchased some Disney clothes for Michelle and James, but Michelle’s size skirt wasn’t in stock and had to be sent it. This was the day we had to pick it up.

At the same time, I needed to search through the housewares department for something truly “different” and Asian for a friend’s housewarming present.

Little did I know that, for the first time in my life, I was going to spent 4 and a half hours in a department store.

We arrived at noon, straight up and I was hungry. We headed straight for the food court, but there were no tables to be found. Since it was an easy trip, I opted to wait and eat later.

Picking up the skirt proved to be time-consuming. Although I have no idea why, grandma had to argue or question every little detail in the skirt, meanwhile Irene found some cute clothes for James, and while they did the clothes thing, I took the kids over to the play area and waited (and waited and waited and waited.) After finally finishing arguing with the Disney clothes woman, grandma went over to where Irene was looking at clothes and started “helping” by arguing with that saleswoman about something.

The play area has these little bouncy toys called Rodys that both James and Michelle loved playing on, but I could only take it for so long. It’s like watching kids on bumper cars and Michelle would periodically get aggressive with the other kids. (Usually, they’d provoke it, but Michelle seems to escalate the retaliation. I“m OK with the idea of never starting a fight, but always finishing one, but it’s a little harsh on the playground.)

I took it for as long as I could and it still went on. Finally, finally we got moving, this time up to housewares.

Housewares in Taiwan are fascinating, particularly at the big Japanese department stores. They have exactly the same things we do, minus a few items, and a few items we don’t have. Then the items fall into two categories: Those are are exactly the same thing as here and those that are subtly different because they’re for the Japanese market. Toasters and vacuum cleaners, for example. They’re just different.

If you’re going to go to the trouble of shipping something overseas, you must make sure you can’t buy it back home (for less, no doubt) and so, we an interminable length of time going up and down the aisles. ”Do we have these back home?“ ”Are they exactly the same?“ ”Could someone find filters for it?“ ”Is is even meaningful in the context of back home?“ (Believe you me, we do not need de-humidifiers in Arizona!)

Ultimately, we found something straight from Japan, it cost more than our $100 budget, it’s not as big as we’d have liked, it may or may not be practical, but it is quite nice and I’m reasonably sure there aren’t any places in Arizona to buy one.

However, even this small-sized one, despite having it’s own carrying case, is troublesome to carry, so Sogo shipped arranged to ship it to my in-laws house the next day.

Finally, it was time to eat! We headed to the 11th floor where the fancier restaurants are, and started perusing our options. It had now been hours since we’d arrive and I was starved.

That’s when I saw the rat. Not just any rat. This was the Giant Rat of Sumatra, transplanted to Sogo. He was running, in a panic, rather like a trapped rat, across the tiled 11th floor. It was rather like when you see those pictures of dogs running on slick floors and they try to turn but cannot. This rat had enough mass behind him he couldn’t corner as he tried to run for cover.

There was a bit of a stunned silence among the potential diners who saw him.

Never mind, I chose a restaurant farther away from where he ended up. Taipei has rats, I knew that. I’d seen what could only be called a ”herd“ of rats in Daan Park shortly after our arrival. Still, those were outdoors on the ground, and this was inside on the eleventh floor.

We ate at ”Herbs“ a restaurant that I’m not going to review, suffice to say that it wasn’t very good. I had a steak, covered with cheese and pesto, which actually wasn’t bad. The problem was the service. We ordered three entrees and four drinks. We ultimately got three entrees and four drinks, but they served them one at a time, with a 10 minute gap between them.

First one glass of orange juice came out, later one glass of tea. We asked about the second juice, in a while they brought. (You try ordering two glasses of orange juice for two children and when only one arrived, see what happens. It isn’t pretty.) I drank my tea. Then my steak arrived. After I’d finished eating, grandma’s spaghetti arrived. 10 minutes or so later, Irene’s food arrived. Later my tea arrived. (Turns out my tea was different from Irene’s tea – same, tea but mine was served from a carafe.) By this point, though I’d already drank Irene’s in the mistaken assumption is mine since I ordered tea first, and it was before we found out they apparently only prepare one item at a time, despite a team of about 8 cooks working in the back.

While we were there a massive electrical storm moved in and settled right over the building. As the lightening was quite aggressive, and we had the kids, we were stuck inside until it abated. We went down to the food court for ice cream and finally, after 4:30… 4 and half plus hours after we arrived, we got out of Sogo.

Shortly after we left, Sogo called to say they could deliver this evening. We told them anytime after 8 and left it at that.

We ran some more errands and headed home. We didn’t even really get to go home because of the time, we headed straight to a ”northern style“ Chinese restaurant for whole-family dinner. I’ve eaten there before and it’s usually alright, but this time my food wasn’t very good.

Not that I got a chance to eat much of it. The Sogo people call at 7:15, they’re about to deliver. Since it’s a family dinner and they’re all eating and having so much fun, I get elected to not finish my dinner, rush home on foot to meet the delivery person.

When it was all done, everything worked out except for my dinner. I only hope this thing survives the trip back to Arizona. It’s not going to fit in even our largest piece of luggage like we’d hoped.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

Since my last visit to Taiwan a sad, sad thing happened… the tore down the under-bridge computer market on Xinsheng Rd.

It was such a cool place. Dozens of rabbit-warren like shops selling computer components, MP3 players, cameras, cable bits, videos, books and Japanese pornography. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where you can see a hot girl walking down the street carrying the parts to go home and assemble her own computer!!! (No pictures of that, sadly.)

What a tragedy that the city decided it was unsafe, or in the path of a new subway line or some lame excuse like that, and tore it down. No trace remains of the bridge. (Incidentally, the bridge appeared to serve little logical purpose whatsoever in terms of traffic. My father-in-law tells me that, in the old days, the bridge was to take traffic over the train tracks. Now the trains are underground, but the bridge remained.)

This isn’t a completely sad story, though. They’re building a new, multi-story high-tech computer market nearby to replace it. Just one little problem: They tore the old one down before the new one was built. That seems to sum up project management in Taiwan in two sentences.

Instead of reversing the order, instead they’ve built a third computer market – this one a temporary one made out of prefabricated sheds. And this one is every bit as ramshackle and warren-like as the original.

The new one is supposed to open in 2007, but I can’t see how this multi-story new building is ever going to capture the spirit of the original.

Why is this not the sort of stuff that makes it on DiggNation? Why aren’t Kevin and Alex trying to record an episode where hot asian chicks buy computer parts? (And, there’s porn… it seems a natural.)

Technorati Tags: Blog, Computer, Taiwan, Travel

I mentioned we went to Ilan, which is much more country-like than Taipei. Apparently, they grow food there.

The green onion used in the Cong You Bing I tend to go on about only comes from Ilan, because it’s special. They also sell other vegetable matter and, whenever we’ve passed through Ilan in the past, my father-in-law stops to buy some black lumps in a bag. I really don’t know what they are, but I do know that they are special Ilan black lumps in a bag.

As we rounded the streets looking for that one shop that they always go to, a parking spot along the street became available, which my father-in-law immediately occupied. He waited with the car (and James, who was sleeping) while we went to the store to get the lumps.

We weren’t gone 5 minutes, and when we returned, a woman on a scooter with a PDA was writing up what looked to be a parking ticket for my father-in-law. He appeared to be arguing with her, although the conversation was far beyond my comprehension. There’s was lots of pointing at the white lines painted on the ground, and specifically at the front of my father-in-law’s car which was 2 inches over the white line.

She gave him the ticket and left.

Irene explained to me that it wasn’t a parking violation, but this was how they operate the pay-parking on the street. Why my father-in-law was arguing with her is beyond me.

Meanwhile, the parking woman just ignored this car, since he’s just double-parked, not actually occupying a pay parking-spot.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel