Time is winding down now in Taiwan, at least for this visit. We’ve now reached the point where we have to pick and choose the activities that we wish to do before leaving.
This trip was really all about the kids spending time with their grandparents, and in that respect it’s been a great success for Michelle and quite successful for James.
James, just shortly before the trip started, entered into the separation anxiety phase of babyhood, and doesn’t want to be long away from mommy. We’ve been unable to leave him alone with the grandparents for any length of time and take him pretty much everywhere, which limits their time with him some. Meanwhile, Michelle wants to spend all her time with them.
Despite that being the primary goal, I can’t help but consider this a vacation and as such, there are a million things I could do that, with the primary objective in mind, I couldn’t accomplish.
Now, there is very little time to accomplish anything else, and Michelle still has classes through Saturday, which limits our available schedule time.
In the morning, we went shopping for DVDs for Michelle (and myself) in Chinese so that she’d be able to continue being exposed when we return. Watching the Taiwan Disney Channel has really helped her. We hunted all over and cleaned out our available cash as most places still don’t take credit cards.
We stopped at MOS for “brunch” and the girl at the counter, as she saw me enter, switched to English to say, “Hello, Welcome to MOS Burger.” That’s a first for MOS. Immediately, the other girls in the back started giggling and mocking the girl at the counter. Too bad, she did a good job, but she was relieved when I told Irene what I wanted in Chinese and she, in turn, spoke to her in Chinese. She actually had pulled out an English menu, the first I’ve ever seen at MOS.
Later, Irene and the kids were to meet her friend Ivy. Ivy, her ex-husband and their son, Danny were living in California several years ago, and it was a trip to visit them that really convinced Irene that it was time to have children. (Really it was Danny who convinced her.)
Ivy is now divorced and alone. I’m not really privy to (nor care much about) the details of the divorce, but there were mistresses and abusive mother-in-laws involved, but in Taiwan, Dad always gets the children in a divorce. Irene didn’t even get to see Danny to see how he’d grown.
The meeting effectively cut the day into a wasted half (my perspective) and so I set out to do some walking and try to cover a few places in Taipei that were optional to visit. On my walks I like to go to places they tell me a “too far to walk” from a train station, when in reality they’re less than a mile.
The first was the Living Mall. Once Asia’s largest shopping mall, now it is simply the world’s largest “ball-shaped” mall. It was brand new on our last trip. This trip it is beginning to show some age. Admittedly, it was Thursday during the day, but it was nearly deserted. Inside, the mall now has a Taiwan lived-in look. The vendors have extended their stores outside the stores and into the mall space, like street vendors, and the proprietors try to entice people in as they walk by. I wonder if it will even be open the next time we return.
Somewhere on the 9th or 10th floor, there is a Coca-Cola store – that in itself is not so interested, except that Coca-Cola stores usually have a little food stand, and on that food stand they have corn dogs: American, Foster Farm corn dogs, not the god-awful, vienna sausage in hyper-sweet corn bread they call corn dogs here.
We really did spend all our cash, and so I had very little to spend on food, but I wanted that corn dog. No one working the store ever showed up, even though it was open. I visited 3 times before giving up and going to the basement food court.
There, the food was either too expensive or just downright unappealing. In ended up “playing it safe” at McDonald’s, knowing exactly how to order and exactly how much it would cost.
It was a fiasco. They kept having to try to talk to me, despite the fact I clearly didn’t understand what they were saying.
That’s not exactly true, I knew exactly what they were saying to me – they were telling me that they didn’t have any fried chicken ready and that I’d have to wait several minutes. I didn’t understand the words they were saying – and they were optimistically trying long and complex sentences. I couldn’t key in on a simple verb to respond appropriately, and I couldn’t phrase a new sentence to make them understand that I was in no hurry.
They called over the manager, who also spoke not a word of English, and we tried again. Finally I (poorly) phrased the question “How many minutes?”
They seemed to understand somewhat because their behavior changed: they started making gang signs with their fingers. With their right hands, they they pointed their index finger towards the ground, elbow straight up in the air, thumb fully extended. All that was needed was a, “yo yo yo, word up”, to complete the illusion.
In the end, they were trying to make the number “7” with their hands.
Once that was out of the way, more bad news arrived. They fries weren’t ready either and we began again.
Finally I got my food, which was delivered to my table in waves as the food came out of the fryers.
I wasn’t happy about how that panned out, and hate the fact that I get flustered so easily when things “go wrong”. Equally, they were flustered, too, and with more good reason.
I left the Living Mall with only $US2 and enough for train fare back home on my Easy Card, so rather than taking a train to get closer, I decided to walk the mile or so to The Breeze Center – the newest mall in Taipei, and the name I hear bandied about as a potential location for Taipei’s long-awaited Apple store.
When I got there, it wasn’t very busy either, but the day was getting on and more people were on the streets. It’s certainly aimed at the high-end market and therefore not of much interest to me.
It had a Mister Donut (Japan’s #1 Donut store) which, like all the others I’ve seen on this trip, had a long line out the door. Oh how the Taiwanese like their fad food places! Whenever you see a restaurant that gets a bit of press, the line is out the door.
One other place that wasn’t too busy, but showed signs that the line to get in sometimes stretches around the whole darned mall is Build-A-Bear Workshop.
When I first saw Build-A-Bear years ago, my immediate response was, “Put one of these in Taipei and the line will stretch a mile.” Irene and I discussed the concept with several potential investors back then, but, sadly for us, they all didn’t see any potential. It seemed to me to be exactly the faddish, cutsey, name-brand experience that they love here.
Perhaps it will fail and I won’t feel so bad.
I then hiked another mile or so to Michelle’s school, just in time to meet Irene and the kids and sit through her class. It was English Playtime class, where they played games and had some English instruction.
The teacher told Irene that Michelle, obstinately, responds to her in the opposite language that she speaks to her in, and expects the teacher to do the same.
One thing that I noticed while watching the class, either Michelle is highly-competetive, or she understands the instructions faster than the other kids. She’s always immediately off the mark when the teacher tells them to run or jump, which the others have a delay. I assume that’s language more than a fierce competitive drive.
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