Author: Eugene Glover

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.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Hiking, Taiwan, Travel

We took Michelle out to the Taipei Municipal Children’s Recreation Center, which is Govspeak for a city-run amusement park which is apparently on the grounds of the old Taipei Zoo. It’s just a short walk from the Yuanshan station, which is one of the first on the Danshui line to be outdoors. (The subway runs underground in the inner city and then rises above ground for the outer parts on some of the lines.)

Michelle, James and Irene were sitting down. Usually someone will yield their seat for Irene and the kids, but I frequently end up standing. I was standing near the connection between two cars. On the Danshui line, you can walk freely between the cars, but there’s a space where the connection makes it unsafe to stand as the floor moves back and forth to accommodate the join between cars. When you’re standing near the junction with your back to the next car you’re at the farther possible point from another person behind you as it is possible to be on the train.

We were still in the tunnels, but we were about one station away from coming out into the light. As I was standing there, just as plain as day, I heard voices whispering over my shoulder. They were indistinct, yet loud whispers, like you’d expect as the soundtrack to a horror film. It was so vivid that I involuntarily jerked around to see who was there. There was no one, and the people on the seats nearest looked unlikely to have been talking.

I turned around, thinking I’d tell Irene and scare her when the train thumped and rocked in a highly unusual way, there was a loud bang, and then another. On the second bang I clearly saw the train door shake as if it had been hit by something forcibly from the outside. There was a third and final thump, further down the train and suddenly we moved into daylight.

It was all rather eerie and unexplained.

Michelle had a lot of fun at the park. Consistent with my previous experiences, there was a school class there on an outing. These kids were probably 8-10 years old. If it weren’t for them, the place would have been virtually deserted.

None of the food stalls in the park were open, so afterwards we needed to get something to eat. We headed to Shihlin Station (with no plan in mind) hoping to find something to eat – and more importantly, something open. Many restaurants in Taiwan close at 2:00PM for a break before dinner.

We found a spaghetti and tea shop, which had a predominant British theme. Britain is well-known as the world’s leading culinary leader in spaghetti in ketchup and so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be quite good. Sadly, I have no idea what their name was to give them a plug, and there were at least three other pasta shops just off the Shihlin station.

Interesting to note that in addition to this British-themed pasta restaurant, last night, late, we went to an “Indian Curry and Tea House”, which was also good, but I can understand the British theme a little more clearly in the case of Indian food. Last I’d heard, Italy was never part of the British Empire.

Irene and the kids went back home and I went out to Zhishan station. Last time I was here it was called Chishan station. Nearby there’s a mountain (Zhishan) with an ornate temple and trails on it. It was a very pleasant surprise when I found it last time and it was still undergoing some new construction of trails and such.

This time the planked trails looked 15 years old, but they’re still building new main steps and other enhancements to the temple. I guess I’ll have to come back again someday to see what they make of it.

The photo album of the kids will be ready tomorrow. They called today and asked us to bring James back for more pictures, at their expense. They want to use his photos for promotional purposes and they’ll provide us copies of the new pictures they take.

Since he’s only 7 months old and lives thousands of miles away the celebrity status will go to his head, but in case anyone ever sees the promotional items they make, please take pictures and let us know.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Food, Kids, Restaurant, Taiwan, Travel

I was awoken this morning just after 5:00AM by a text message and since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I went for an early morning walk.

Since it was Halloween, I decided to go to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial and see the early-morning activity.

On the last trip to Taiwan, I visited the memorial almost every day, photographing the construction of the Chinese New Year Lantern. I’m pretty much CKS Memorialed out and have only been to it briefly once. Nonetheless, it’s a very nice park and usually filled with people in the mornings. This morning was no exception.

There were the usual crowds of Tai-Chi practitioners, who, like flocks of birds, follow the motions of an indistinctly defined leader in steps.

The Tai-Chi people have been joined by similar groups of jazzercise and tango people.

Then there are the individuals who walk around the part beating themselves about the arms and legs, presumably to improve their circulation, but it looks more like a Monty Python routine to me.

Finally, the newest morning activities is apparently KTV (or Karaoke). In the peaceful quiet of the park at 6:00AM, someone had brought in a portable Karaoke machine and was ruining the morning for everyone.

On the way back from the memorial, I got the opportunity to confirm something that I’ve seen before on every trip to Taiwan, but this time I can confirm it is what it appears to be.

There are dogs in Taipei, smart enough to only cross the major streets with the green walk signal and only in the intersections. I’ve seen it before, but the dogs were walking with crowds and could have been influenced by the movement of the humans. This morning, I watched a dog, by himself, on the near-deserted streets, walk along a sidewalk until he came to a crosswalk, stop, and wait till the walk signal went green and then cross the street.

There were no people about, so he had to being doing this entirely on his own.

On the flip-side, there are an awful lot of three-legged and crippled dogs roaming the streets of Taipei, so clearly evolutionary selection is being helped along.

Come to think of it, Taipei must be a rough place to live. Everyday I see at least 5 people missing an eye, disfigured by fire, lame or otherwise mangled. I suppose the dogs are just fairing par for the course.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Taiwan, Travel

Michelle had her first Halloween that she participated in this year. The Disney Channel Taiwan held an event down at the new Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department store and Irene signed Michelle up for it.

The rain has continued on and off today, but it wasn’t so bad as to stop us from going. There was a small crowd, hardly surprising for a new, imported holiday. All the kids were in costume (Disney did tend to encourage Disney-type costumes) of all types and Michelle was the cutest of them all, if only she’d smile.

Strangers were asking to take her picture and lots of people commented on how cute she was, but Michelle was in a daze to begin with, and by the time they were halfway done with the parade of kids around the block, she was ready to go home.

The Disney Channel had video cameras all over the place, taking shots of the parade and the kids, but they managed to completely bypass Michelle every time. At first I thought I was just being conspiratorial minded, but the parade was just one static shot of the kids and their parents going by, being projected up on the jumbo plaza TV so everyone could see the kids in costume.

Just before Michelle would have been on camera, they panned away to show the hosts being irrelevant on the stage, and when they panned back, the got a nice picture of Irene’s back. Michelle was completely excluded. I honestly wonder if they were intentionally excluding waiguoren kids.

We did take pictures of Michelle with the scariest Minnie Mouse ever. Taiwanese girls can play it young and cutesy a lot longer than most western women, but the woman dressed up as Minnie looked more like an over-age prostitute dressed up for a specialty trick. Peter Pan just looked like a goof-ball.

The Chinese Wiggles showed and did a few numbers, but Michelle isn’t interested in the Wiggles anymore. They grow up so fast.

On our way over we discovered the “easy” route to get to the Taipei 101, 1 bus, no trains, no running. It also passes next to the “The Frying Scotsman”, an authentic fish & chips shop from Scotland. I’ve been meaning to eat there, as that’s the way fish was meant to be served, since I arrived. Today we stopped to give it a try.

Closed until 5 on Sunday. If you ever go, check their hours online beforehand.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Family, Kids, Taiwan, Travel

My Flickr account allows me to upload a maximum of 2 GB per calendar month.

Sometime back on this trip, I began to think I might accidentally exceed that limit before the trip was over and be stuck towards the end of this month without being able to upload pictures as things happen. So, at that point I started only uploading selected pictures instead of every picture that I didn’t immediately delete.

Here I sit on the 30th of a 31 day month and have only uploaded 1.1 GB, so I’m now uploading a couple hundred older pictures ranging from our mini-trips to Alishan through Chingjing Farm.

We’ve got Halloween stuff today, so I’m sure there will be some pictures of Michelle still to be posted this month, so I’ve left myself some room for more current photos. In November, I’ll continue uploading the older photos.

Incidentally, if you’ve been looking at the photos I’ve been posting on flickr in addition to the ones I post here at lonelocust.com you may not have noticed that flickr offers a few alternate ways to view photos.

The main organizational tools used by flickr are “tags.” Tags are arbitrary keywords assigned by me to my photos for organizational purposes. Ultimately I have to go back a do a lot of additional tagging, because the only tags I regularly use on this trip are TAIWAN (every photo taken here gets that one), TAIPEI (only those taken in Taipei or suburbs) and FAMILY (every picture that has a member of my family or myself in it). At the moment that’s not very useful to people unless they only want to look at pictures of my family or only look at pictures from Taipei.

The tag browser is on the right hand side on my main flickr page, or, you can jump right to a page of tagged photos by going to the address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gridman/tags/taipei/ to look at photos only tagged as taipei, as an example.

You can also browse photos by date. The default for flickr is by upload date, which I think is somewhat stupid, but you can select an option to view them by date taken (My digital cameras all embed the actual photo date in the file, making this automatic.) For a calendar view you can also get to that from the left of my main photo page or go directly there with this address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gridman/date-taken-calendar/.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

I mentioned previously that there are three Costco’s in Taipei, and that the third one is so far out that it was off our maps and no one had any idea where it was.

My frivolous goal is to photograph every Costco in the world, which may seem impossible, but it gives me a goal.

As we began entering the outskirts of Taipei, Mr Huang spotted and pointed out the third Costco. I briefly glimpsed it as it passed behind a hill, and was not visible when we got past the hill. I was playing with the GPS so I managed to get a fix, but the camera was on the floor and I couldn’t react fast enough to take a picture.

Now I know where it is. My expedition to Carrefour had been about a 1 mile walk from the last station and I took readings there and at the station. The third Costco appears to be about 2-2.5 miles further in a direct line from the Carrefour. As the subway station was sitting right along the railroad tracks, there should be a straight, level path in that direction. I might consider trying to locate it on foot, despite not having a street map of the area. The non-linear nature of the city streets makes it potentially difficult, but I’m reasonably sure I could navigate back to the station if I had to.

It will just depend on available time on a trip that is now certainly looking more towards the end than the beginning.

When we got back we finally went out to dinner as a family. I was hungry enough even Chinese food sounded good.

We went to a place that specialized in Northern Style Chinese food. That consists of lots of dishes made with flour, noodles, dumplings, bread-like things along with other things such as hot pots and Peking Duck. Chinese restaurants in the US have an overwhelming majority of Southern style restaurants, as the predominant immigrants during the railroad era were Cantonese from the south. Generally when Americans think of Chinese food, Cantonese style is what dishes come to mind.

To my knowledge, in Phoenix, there is not a single Northern style restaurant, which is a shame, as I like it better.

I mention dinner not because of the food, but because of the entertainment.

My mother-in-law has been complaining that Michelle is a poor orphan because we’re so harsh on her. (Gosh, we make her put her own shoes on and hold hands when crossing the streets, what brutes we are!) She’s been spoiling her rotten, and her increasingly bad behavior lately can be tracked right back to one thing: She’s runs to grandma every time she doesn’t like something we tell her to do. Grandma promptly does it for her and bribes her in the process.

Tonight at dinner, the restaurant staff (wisely) gave Michelle a set of plastic dinnerware instead of the china everyone else got.

Grandma promptly noticed that Michelle’s dishes looked “old” – not “dirty” or “broken”, just “old” and so she took them away from Michelle and gave her a set of china.

She promptly took the china bowl and slammed it down in the china saucer and then took the china soup spoon and started banging it inside the bowl. The owners realized they must have accidentally given the wrong dishes to her and tried to swap them, but now Michelle (and her nut grandmother) wouldn’t let them. Michelle just wanted to be troublesome and grandma still felt the dishes looked old.

Later, Michelle kept climbing all over grandma with dirty, messy hands, which, as grandma is a bit of a clean-freak, amused the heck out of me. I was hoping she’d pull her wig off in public.

If the day hadn’t been long enough, Irene and I were going to go to the night market, but the rain finally came and we (somewhat relieved) didn’t go.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Costco, Family, Food, Kids, Taiwan, Travel

For at least the last three trips, I’ve wanted to go to Keelung. It’s the last “major” metropolitan area in Taiwan that I haven’t been to and that, predominantly, is why I wanted to go there. Combine that with the fact that it really isn’t very far from Taipei and it is just been a bit frustrating that I’ve never been there.

Keelung is a small container and fishing port on the northern coast. I have no idea how busy it is as a container port, but it certainly is nothing in comparison to the massive, world-class port in Kaoshiung where the bulk of Taiwan’s shipping occurs.

On previous trips here, Irene has gone to Keelung without me, usually without my knowledge. She goes for seafood with her friends. When I’ve asked about going, she’s always replied, “There’s no reason to go to Keelung if you’re not going to eat seafood.” I disagree. One goes to a fish & chips shop for seafood where the fish has been properly processed and the fish flavor appropriately disguised.

When we arrived in Keelung, we spent an inordinate amount of time circling round and round the busy, narrow streets. I know we were just going round in circles because the GPS told me so. I couldn’t tell one street from the next and so only had the vague notion that it seemed like we were traveling in circles.

We passed Keelung’s famous night market, several times, and I thought perhaps we were going to stop if only we could find parking. By this time, after 5:00PM, I was hungry, and despite the obsession with seafood in the area, I felt sure I could grab something to eat in the night market. Grilled corn on the cob, a Chinese sausage or something like that would have been very good, and Irene and her dad could get some fresh seafood. That’s the kind of native eating I like, where they eat their thing and I eat mine. I hadn’t had breakfast when I went out in the morning, but I grabbed a couple pieces of chicken when I was waiting at the subway station to be picked up. Otherwise, I was running on empty.

However, we were not going to the night market, and finally Mr. Huang found what he was looking for, a road that lead up to a small park with (are you ready for this surprise?) stairs leading up from it. They parked and sent me on my way.

My guess was that it lead to a vantage point where I could see the city and perhaps the port, but sunset is just after 5:00 these days and the sun was already gone.

After several false “tops” of the hill, I finally reached the real top, which had giant statues and a commanding view of the area. I snapped a few pictures in the fading light and headed back to the car. After I got back, we drove to the other side where a parking lot was only 10 steps from the statues, rather than 100.

Now only a couple pictures away from a full memory card, we returned to Taipei along the freeway.

And you’d think that would have been the end of my day, with one exception…

(to be continued)

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Taiwan, Travel