Travel-related posts before they get moved to travel.lonelocust.com
Finally got out for our first pizza in Taipei on this trip. I’ve placed the review over at pizzalocust, and there’s not much call for me to double-post it here.
Instead, I’ll just post this picture of myself, enjoying a glass of water at Sabatini in Taipei.
In the basement of the Taipei 101, like most other shopping complexes in Taiwan is a food court. While they all tend to have similar restaurants, just as food courts in malls back in the States are much he same, there is some slight variation from mall to mall depending on the clientele.
The Taipei 101 appears to attract foreign businessmen and that’s reflected in the food court.
We arrived right at the opening time for lunch and chose the Karen Teppanyaki. My exposure to teppanyaki is fairly limited as the total teppanyaki places in Arizona can probably be counted on 1 hand.
Teppanyaki, for the uninitiated, is a Japanese style of food grilled at specially-designed tables. The chef prepares the food in front of you while you watch. Back in the US, Benihana’s is probably the most widely known name in teppanyaki, but whereas the cooking at Benihana’s is more of a floor show with lots of flourish, knives being flipped and food being tossed around, Karen Teppanyaki was more matter-of-fact.
We placed our orders (I had the filet steak, Irene had the prawn, fish and rib steak) and the cook set about preparing our meat to order. he worked in a no-nonsense, but very efficient and well-practiced manner, and in a matter of minutes we had our food. In addition to the main dish, the meals also include rice, fried vegetables (lettuce, I think), bean sprouts and miso soup.
Without a broad base of comparison, I can say the steak was tasty and cooked as I’d asked it to be. The sauce it was served with was mild, but added something to the steak. Typically, I’m used to a teppanyaki sauce with a stronger ginger flavor, but that wasn’t the case here.
The steak was served topped with slices of crispy-fried garlic which, after a bit of getting used to, is pretty good.
As I’m on vacation, I didn’t actually bother to pay attention to how much it cost, but I’d provisionally recommend it as tasty food and as good as any teppanyaki I’ve had previously.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Restaurant, Review, Taiwan, Travel
Saturday was the last day for Computex, and the only day they allow general admission. As I didn’t arrange my registration from overseas before we came and I wasn’t sure if the title of CIO would get me into the door (they’re mostly looking for bulk buyers) we waited for general admission day.
It was still raining, but the show is inside buildings surrounding Taipei 101. I’ve commented on the show elsewhere.
It’s a good area to get food – a lot better than what used to be immediately around Comdex Las Vegas – so we ate lunch in the basement of the 101.
In the afternoon, the rain actually stopped for several hours. While my wife and brother-in-law haggled over a discount on getting glasses, I finally got the chance to head off on foot with nothing in mind than to see the sights. While life in Taipei carries on fairly normally in the rain, I couldn’t help noticing that the streets were more active and lively, as people just wanted to get outside. Street food vendors were setting up everywhere they could. Continuous rain downpours couldn’t have been good for outdoor businesses.
Once again dinnertime meant “family time†and we all went out to eat at Ali Baba’s kitchen. Ali Baba’s is a long-standing Taipei restaurant run by Pakistanis with decent food, that they know I like. My mother-in-law, who is the one insisting on the family dinners, hated it. “It’s all too spicy,†she said, without trying a single bite. I think she had a salad and some fruit.
It’s horrible of me but not only did I enjoy the food, I enjoyed my mother-in-law’s dislike of it. It made up a bit for Friday’s dinner, which is what triggered my penguins post in the first place, which I haven’t finished writing yet.
Today it stopped raining for most of the afternoon. Two days in a row where I went outside and didn’t get wet. Could this be a promising trend? Tuesday we’re supposed to take the high speed rail to Chiayi and then the rickety old narrow-gauge, Japanese colonial-era railway into the central mountains. Assuming they haven’t been washed away in a mudslide.
Once upon a time I’d have killed for the opportunity to go to Comdex in Las Vegas to see the new technology and ogle the showgirls.
Through no planning of our own, Computex, the world’s second largest technology show was in Taipei this week, so I made the effort to visit.
Booth after booth after booth of USB keys and hard drive enclosures and water cooled PC and girls in skimpy outfits and thousands of geeks with cameras taking pictures of the girls and the hardware.
I made a few half-hearted attempts to catch the spirit, but it’s just more of the same, year after year. Ho hum.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Computer, Taiwan, Technology, Travel
The rain has let up some today and, even when raining, is fairly light. We took the kids to the Miramar shopping center, which is quite a long bus ride.
On the way back, some teenagers got on the bus. They were all friends and having a good time. Michelle and I were in the back of the bus because that has the highest seats for Michelle to see out the windows (and the roughest ride.)
One girl, just one row up and across the aisle leaned forward, tapped one of her friends on that arm and said in Chinese, “Look at the foreigner and his cute little daughter.†(That’s a loose translation, since I don’t understand much Chinese, but it was a pretty simple sentence and all words I understood.)
Naturally, I turned towards the girl who was talking about us and I smiled, because what father doesn’t smile when people say his kids are cute?
The thing is, it embarrassed the girl completely. She assumed I wouldn’t know she was talking about us. Her friends immediately started laughing at her. One of them said, “[Something I couldn’t understand], he understands Chinese.†and then the next one said in English to her, “You are so stupid.â€
I felt bad for her, but couldn’t think of anything to say to her.
I really like Taiwan, and I really like my in-laws, but… there are days when the insanity it too much.
Taiwan exists in such a weird state, as a de facto country, that I think they are desperately trying to assert themselves as a progressive country just to show they can be like the “gown-up†“real†countries. (Never mind that the world’s “real†countries include such lovely places as North Korea, Haiti, Sudan, etc. ad infinitum.)
Case and point, over the last few years, they’ve been progressively banning or trying to ban just about everything that makes life easy and good: plastic bags, wooden chopsticks, nuclear power plants, etc. They’ll jump on any environmentally conscious bandwagon waived in front of them, presumably just to demonstrate they’re in the forefront and not at all like those dirty, grubby, environmentally destructive swine who live over in China.
Still, somehow, they’ve missed the point – all you have to do is look at the grossly polluted air from the factories and cars to know that the emperor has no clothes, or, to mix a metaphor, they can’t see the forest for the trees.
We got a 20 minute lecture this morning on how to sort the garbage. There are four flippin’ different garbage cans in this house.
One for garbage, proper. You know, the icky stuff, like paper you’ve blown your nose with, or greasy paper, non-recyclable plastics or (I kid you not) the paper you’ve wiped your ass with.
The second for all manner of recyclable materials, plastic bottles (washed, if you please), aluminum cans and plastic bags. (Wouldn’t it be better to keep those, since you have pay extra for them at the store?).
A third is for clean paper products. Newspaper, scrap print outs and paper milk cartons (cleaned, dried and pressed, no less.)
Finally, there’s the pig slop bucket. Yes, that’s right, food waste is sent to the farms so the pigs can eat it. Isn’t letting pigs eat food waste how those nasty diseases like BSE pass from one species to another? Presumably because of this very problem, the slop bucket is actually divided into two types. Vegetables, raw meat, potato skins and cooked meat scraps. The cooked stuff goes to the pigs, the other goes for fertilizer.
Considering how unlikely it is for anyone in Taiwan to pay attention to the rules of anything, is there any reason to believe that people really diligently sort their garbage? They don’t pay attention to any other signs, rules or laws, why should this be any different?
Not only am I not inclined to believe they’ll properly sort their meats, I’m not even convinced they’d properly sort the other garbage. From my point of view it’s just as likely the pork I’m eating was fed on the papers that wipe the collective asses of Taiwan. Not only would they be disinclined to pay attention to the rules, there’s a negative incentive for them to do so – for garbage proper, they pay by the bag to dispose of it, but the recyclables are free. Sure, the garbage man spot checks the garbage when it’s handed over, but a good and clever monkey could find a way around getting caught.
Knowing that, I’m not really inclined to eat pork here again.
Apart from Taiwan’s country-envy status, I think this sort of knee-jerk psuedo-environmentalism appeals to the Taiwanese psyche. This is, after all, a country that believes in feng shui, fortune tellers and ghosts.
Taiwan has lots of mosquitoes. It also has malaria and dengue fever, both serious mosquito-borne illnesses that mankind has spent staggering amounts of time and money in order to eradicate, and yet, while watching TV tonight they were advertising new “all-natural†OFF insect repellant. “90% of mothers prefer all-natural OFF.†Yes, frightening isn’t it? 90% of mothers would choose to protect their children from potentially fatal illnesses with insect repellants clinically proven not to work one damn bit.
They might as well strap magnets and copper bands on their wrists for all the good it will do.
It’s true! We have to surreptitiously coat our children in real insect repellant otherwise my mother-in-law freaks out. Never mind that while we were letting her use the all-natural stuff they were being eaten alive. We just let her spritz on the worthless stuff for her peace of mind and go on.
[I’m not done with this thread, but I’ll save some for later.]
The new Sogo department store at Zhongxiao Fuxing has put a twist on the idea of a rooftop garden. Their rooftop garden is inside on the 9th floor. The restaurants on the 10th and 11th floors have view overlooking this gorgeous (and enormous) Japanese garden.
I’m not much for gardening, but this is what I want my backyard to look like.
Speaking of Sogo, we arrived there today just at opening time. At precisely 11:00AM, two “elevator girls†came out and gave a speach to the waiting customers, one in Chinese, the other using sign language. Inside the store, the teams dashed to their places at the counters.
About 1 minute later, the doors were opened letting the public in. Every employee we passed was obligated to bow and “good morning†and “welcome†to us. There were 4 to 6 people waiting at each escalator landing, one a floor supervisor, and as we passed each level they also greeted us with a bow. Since we were heading to the 10th floor, we were bowed to and greeted by no less than 60 people.
It was almost embarrassing.
I can remember when there were only a few MOS Burgers in Taipei and now they’re almost ubiquitous. They’ve even begun to muscle out McDonald’s and there’s nothing bad to be said about that.
We stopped at the MOS in the basement of the new Zhongxiao Fuxing Sogo department store and, rather than have my standby MOS Cheese Hamburger, I decided to try their new specialty sandwich, a southern Asian chicken sandwich. The sandwich was a boneless fried chicken thigh served with two kinds of sauce and shredded lettuce. The first sauce was something like a cross between teriyaki and orange chicken sauces and the second was akin to a bland tartar sauce (it may have just been mayonnaise and pickle relish.)
It was fresh and pretty good, although I wouldn’t choose it over a MOS burger in the future. It was certainly unique.
I made a combo out of mine and had a drink and (instead of fries) a piece of fried chicken. The fried chicken is, I think, a leg, that the bone has been cut off above the ankle, and the upper leg portion, now boneless, is pounded into a patty before being battered and fried.
I skipped the fries because, despite the fact that MOS always cooks their fries fresh when you order them, they also never salt them. Since they don’t offer salt as a condiment, you really have to like your fried potatoes completely unadulterated.
They do offer “black pepper†as a condiment and when Irene looked at the ingredients, it became clear it wasn’t black pepper. It was a blend of black pepper, salt and MSG. That sounded like a winner to me, so I ordered fries after the meal just to try their “black pepper†on them. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but the MSG did give them a uniquely Asian flavor.
Part of the reason MOS is doing so well in Taiwan is their rice burgers, which Irene had.
I know local taste prevails but I just can’t understand the popularity of these so-called burgers. They have to go to great lengths to compress the rice and wrap it in a special way just so you can hold it and “pretend†it’s just as convenient as bread to carry around. They might as well try to sandwich meat between two layers of thick soup.
Combine that with the fact that (and my western bias is really showing here) well, while rice has been historically part of the asian diet, it’s only that way because it’s a great filler. It hasn’t got a lot of flavor on its own. At least good bread can taste good by itself.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Restaurant, Review, Taiwan, Travel
On Day Two, the rain was cramping our style a bit, but being still jetlagged (awoke at 2:00AM and finally went for a walk in the pouring rain just so the kids wouldn’t wake everyone up) we didn’t have a lot to do, anyway.
We took a trip to Costco for supplies and while we were there stopped in at the local B&Q, a UK-based DIY store that looks like they stole genetic material right from Home Depot.
Most homes in Taiwan have bathrooms that do not have enclosed showers. The floors are tile and have a drain in the middle. It’s easy for cleaning, but the floors are always wet. Recently, the trend in custom and semi-custom homes is to get enclosed “western†style showers and (gasp!) even bathtubs. B&Q has a fascinating array of cool showers “imported from Europe.â€
I wish we could get these in the US. The unit pictured here would have fit in the small space we had when we redid our 3/4 bath, plus it includes a steamroom, and a seat. The only major problem I saw was that the unit has a ceiling and that ceiling is only 6′ high, leaving me 3“ too tall to stand in the shower.
Presumably the real one from Europe are taller.