June 28th, 2005
11:50 pm
Yesterday was a pretty fun day, although it pretty much rained the whole after, it cleared up in the evening and consequently the temperature was cooler than usual. Originally Neil and I planned to meet up at 3 in the afternoon, but I couldn't see him when I arrived at the Taipei railway station, I waited 15 minutes and decided to give him a call, it then turned out that he was still in bed, but we managed to meet up at around 5pm
We then had supper in a vegetarian place run by some buddhist people who listen to remixed chanting music that was surprisingly good, I asked them what it was and they shown me the CD which I'm tempted to buy.
Afterwards we headed off to Ximending 西門丁 mainly for me to get some clothes, Ximending is the place where all the young people hang out; since there're many fashionable shops there as well as manga, games, CDs and places to eat and drink. The only problem is that most of the clothes there are more expensive than I was prepared to pay for, although I thought I really need to get something, so I ended up going to a shop called Baleno (is it famous?) and bought a T-shirt that was modeled by Andy Lau, and since they had a special deal if I buy two, so I asked the girl in the shop to recommend a colour for me, and she suggested pink! I thought she probably knew best so I went along with it, later on Neil and I noticed that there're a lot of boys wearing pink here, and some of them do have girls surrounding them, so I guess it's OK.
Later we've arranged to meet up with Rory and James near the university area, but stupidly non of us checked before we got on the underground so three stations later we realised that we're going to wrong direction!
After we all met up, we decided to head to a bar, that's where I got my first taste of bear since I got here, the bear I ordered was Taiwan bear (it used to be the only bear that was available in Taiwan, until the government allowed foreign competition in), and it was great. Overall we had a lot of fun together.
Here are some photos I took yesterday to give you guys some idea of what Taipei looks like.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mai/Blog_photos/Taipei_28_June_2005/
June 26th, 2005
7:46 am
Last night I took a walk around the university area where all the food places are, only to find that all the vegetarian shops were closed (it was already around 9pm), and the normal places in Taiwan tend to be really meaty.
Tapei is a very mixed up city, at night it doesn't look unlike Tokyo with all the lit up sign boards and modern looking shops and restaurants, but during the day you'll see lots of buildings that's old and dirty on the outside from the first floor onwards. What's strange is that in between these dirty old buildings you'll see ultra new modern glass panel towers, although doesn't matter whether the building is new or old, the interiors tend to be quite nice all the time.
Because I'm near the university area, there're lots of foreigners about the place, last night I saw a group buskin (someone tell me how you spell this word) in the park, they were shit, but that didn't seemed to stop them from having a big crowd; since it's still amusing to see exotic westerners on their guitars.
Times have changed and Taiwan has changed too. There're too many things here that I'm not familiar with; such as the recycling rules, Taipei is way ahead of anywhere in Britain when it comes to recycling, there're three rubbish collections a day, and if you don't sort out your rubbish to different categories they wouldn't take it. Also when you buy things from a shop, they'll ask you if you need a bag, if so you'll have to pay for it.
Taiwan has surprising large amount of luxury cars, there're huge number of Mercedes and BMWs, my guess is that in Taiwan people like to be seen to have a high status, coincidentally you'll often see a hot chick in one of those cars, but the guys tend to look like a pig. Maybe I'm just jealous?
Speaking of which, Taipei has so many pretty girls, I found myself turning my head here and there like a little boy in Disney Land. This is how the world should be, I'm always jealous of boys living in places where nice girls are the norm. I was speaking to a Dutch gentlemen (who was a business class passenger working for a big Dutch bank “AB Amro”) when our plane stopped off at Bangkok, he said that he thinks there're a lot of men who go to Thailand for the girls there, and I said I'm not surprised judging by the scenery in the airport. So Ruairidh, we know why you're there!
June 26th, 2005
6:51 am
After waking up only to find that it was already 11 o'clock, I quickly packed my bags, checked out of the hotel and got in a Taxi, the Taxi driver asked me whether I was Japanese since my Chinese doesn't sound quite natural, and so I explained my background to him, and then we got on talking about politics, of course for me to talk about politics in Chinese is like asking me to explain Quantum Physics without using any jargon, so basically I couldn't understand most of the questions he asked, and I tried to guess a good answer and talking long winded.
My host family's house is a tower block which people in Britain might think it's a council flat (Taiwan is a crowded country); of course once you're in you'll realize that it's not a council flat at all. Like any typical Taiwanese house, security is very high; I was given six keys and shown how to use them all (you really do need to use them all!), and if that's not enough, there's also high-tech infrared and magnetic door sensors installed around the house like in Mission Impossible, which means that if you're the last person out, you'll need to put your security chip in a little scanner near the door and it'll say to you in Chinese “All system set”, and coming back you'll need to do it again and it'll say “Security deactivated, welcome home”, but if you forget to deactivate it, the alarm would go off, and the phone would start ringing right away with a person asking for your name and date of birth, if you don't get it right the police would be sent. This level of security doesn't come cheap, the host father told me that it costs NT$2500 a month, that's around £40.
The house is just like any other families' in Taiwan, walls painted white and balconies on both sides of the house, the bed room I was given is very nice, it's twice the size of my room in Edinburgh with a double bed and my own Toilet, broadband and oh a huge TV with most of the cable channels - all except the porno ones.
In the afternoon the host father said that he'll show me around the neighborhood after he finished the movie that was on TV, so I decided to have nap, but ended up falling asleep for hours, what's worse is that I ended up having weird dreams that one of my eyes had popped out, and I was running around the house asking people to put it back in for me.