Tag: Taiwan

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

Get out your map of Taiwan and you’ll see one of the principal hard realities of the island: It’s really rough terrain.

We once went to Taipingshan, which is near the city of Ilan. I took a GPS reading and was shocked to discover were were only about 50 miles from “home” in Taipei, and yet the drive was hours. Looking at Google Earth, Ilan and Taipei are only 23 miles apart, but they are (or were) 23 impassable miles, you had to go around the coast, which took a long time.

Finally though, after 15 years of construction and 25 lives lost, the Hsuehshan Tunnel has been completed. 12.9km underground and the fifth longest roadway tunnel in the world, it cuts the travel time to Ilan to under an hour.

It’s only been open one year, and my father-in-law apparently needed an excuse to go through it, so we packed up the car and headed to Ilan.

There’s really nothing to say about Ilan, except that it made Taipei seem cool and dry in comparison.

To give some idea of how much a barrier the mountains are, in Ilan it was blue skies and hot, and when we popped out of the tunnel on the Taipei side, it was grey and in a downpour. The clouds just couldn’t get over the mountains.

The tunnel is nifty, though.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

Of course, we have no fireworks back home. One firecracker could set the entire state into one huge fireball.

This general prohibition cuts both ways. Because of lack of exposure, I neither have much fascination for fireworks but at the same time they are enough of a rarity that it’s somewhat of a treat when I do see them.

We decided to go for an evening to Danshui and when we arrived, there were having what Irene called a Bai bai. I have no clue how that’s phonetically spelled, or what Chinese characters it represents. It was some sort of annual celebration for the local temple.

Thousands of people crammed the streets and millions of firecrackers were being set off. I’ll post some more later, but I’ve never been this close to something quite like this. This video was taken at (apparently) considerable risk to ourselves. People were running, when it went off, the sound was unbearable, it was impossible not to cover the ears and were we assaulted by burning hot shrapnel as it exploded – about 10-15 feet away from us.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

One of the things thats a bit of a problem when I’m in Taiwan, and I see it in a lot of other people’s flickr photos is the air.

So often there’s a white haze in the air that makes all the pictures lifeless. We went to Taipei 101 today, during the day, because when we got going it looked like it would be clear, but by the time we got to the top, it wasn’t and I really didn’t get very many good pictures because of the haze. (Which, because it was through tinted windows was not just white, but blue.)

One of the tricks I’ve found that frequently helps – sometimes amazingly well, other times not so much – is to make a quick levels adjustment in Photoshop. In Martin Evening’s book, Adobe Photoshop CS for Photographers, he shows how to increase the dynamic range of digital photos to tightening the ends of the levels. I’ve found that in many cases, it also clears up the haze in my Taiwan photos.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work so well for today’s pictures, many of which were basically all blue/white.

The picture here is a before and after playing with the levels and curves. If anybody’s got any tips on how to try to punch up photos like this, please let me know. I’m really awful at Photoshopping things.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

There’s apparently a saying in Taiwan – my guess it was said by advertising types and not Confucius – that goes like this, “There are no ugly women, just lazy ones.”

To that end, last night the news was reporting that Taiwan’s women spend NT$ 320 yi (I may have the phonetic of that number wrong.) on face creams alone to whiten their faces or remove wrinkles. That doesn’t include any other kind of cosmetics or make-up.

To put that in perspective, that’s NT$ 320,000,000,000 or roughly US$ 9.6 billion annually.

Is it any wonder you can’t swing a dead cat around this place without hitting a beauty store?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

Even better than a pastrami sandwich… at the supermarket in the basement of the Breeze Center I found a Dr. Pepper!

Plus a box of Scottish shortbread.

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This is why I don’t normally wear a hat, but it’s quite practical at this time in Taipei.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Taiwan, Travel

We headed to MOS for breakfast. Last time we were here, MOS didn’t serve breakfast and, as with most burger places, I don’t really care for the breakfast menu. My stomach can’t tell time, I’d rather have a burger than an egg & bacon sandwich or something similar.

Nonetheless, the serve breakfast now and Michelle wanted a ham and egg sandwich, so we decided to go try them.

I ordered a tonkatsu sandwich, Irene ordered a shrimp sandwich and James had the ham & egg sandwich. Little Miss I-Want-Ham-And-Egg opted to have a hot dog instead.

I was displeased with the breakfast for two reasons – they were all cold sandwiches. Luckily for me, my sandwich didn’t have egg on it. I wouldn’t give $0.02 for all the cold egg in the world. The second reason was that each sandwich was really only half a sandwich, that is each one was on one slice of toasted (yet refrigerated) bread, cut in half. it tasted alright, but it wasn’t enough breakfast by a long shot.

James wasn’t too happy with his sandwich, either. For some reason, he wouldn’t eat the ham or egg, and after a couple bites of the toast, declared it “icky” and wouldn’t eat anymore. Good thing, too. Irene ate the piece of bread she was trying to feed him and said, “I know this seems impossible, but there’s peanut butter on this ham & egg sandwich.”

James is allergic (mildly, thankfully) to peanuts. He was already breaking out in a rash on his face.

In what circle of Dante’s Inferno did some condemned chef come up with the idea of putting peanut butter on a ham & egg sandwich? Or was that why he was there in the first place?

The rash faded about 30 minutes to an hour later. Lesson learned, though. Never trust any restaurant not to sneak peanuts in somewhere inappropriate.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Restaurant, Review, Taiwan, Travel