The Giant Rat of Sogo

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.

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