Random stuff

7-11:

7-11s are ubiquitous in Taipei. It’s where you go to get another bottle of water (your last one having lasted you an hour), and seaweed flavored potato chips (yummy! You can also get seaweed-sushi, chicken, and pork, among other flavors.)
Anyway, when you buy enough stuff there, they give you a prize. Kind of like cracker-jacks. These prizes are little refrigerator magnets that feature cartoon characters. Anyway, they work quite effectively, since Evelyn is now ga-ga for these things (everyone who’s surprised at this news, raise your hand. No? Nobody? Thought so.) Of course, they made them into a series, so you have to collect them all. The series she’s working on has a cat from the future, and also from outer space. His name is Doraemon, he’s blue, and very happy, and is afraid of mice, since they nibbled off his ears at some point. Sometimes he wears a propeller beanie. He has a little cat friend and also a little boy he’s friends with. Anyway, he likes to visit other countries, so you get a magnet with him in the Netherlands, or Thailand, or whatever, with some local flavor on it. And the competing convenience store chains do the same thing, with different cartoon characters. So far, this and the scooters (see below) are my favorite things.

Money:

Everything is in NT$, or New Taiwan Dollars. There are about 30 of these in an American dollar, and there is no smaller denomination. I don’t know much more, since Ev has all the local money (she gets paid in local currency), and I’m not bothering with trying to get some myself. Which means she has to buy me things! Getting a few bottles of drink and some chips at the store costs 89 dollars, which is about 3 bucks. Getting a plate full of pot-stickers from the pot-sticker restaurant in the train station was something like $50. This also leads to initially shocking notes on the kitchen walls like: “I need 700 dollars back for pasta night!”

Scooters:

There are a lot of scooters here. I mean, this place has scooters like Seattle has Subarus. Intersections will have three or four car lengths’ worth of scooters lined up at red lights. There’s a special painted box on the ground right at the crossing where the scooters can wait. I’ve seen plenty of scooters with two people on them, and one with three – an entire family on one scooter. They are ridden expertly – things I wouldn’t attempt on bike or on foot they seem to handle without noticing. Onto and off of the sidewalk, darting through small gaps between cars, through construction zones, etc. People here must just pay a lot more attention to their driving, since I haven’t seen anything bad happen yet. Just lots of what look like really close calls. One person had a helmet painted like a ladybug. Here’s a picture Ev took of helmets earlier, where we see several of these.

Cars:

A large portion of the cars here (and nearly all the taxis) are Toyota Corollas. There are also several brands I haven’t heard of, including the Delica, which I think is a sub-brand of Mitsubishi (it’s got those little diamonds), some sort of mini/utility van. Almost everything is the familiar Japanese brands, sometimes with a local name. There are a few Fords, mainly these miniature vans that look more like smartcars than Fords. They’re really narrow.

Air quality:

So far, this isn’t so bad. Better than I expected in a city of 8 million people. Not great, but not Beijing, either. Occasionally you walk through a pocket of something that smells horrible, but then it’s gone again. In general, it kind of smells like the Twin Cities: humid. I’m probably fooling myself, and I probably inhale the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes every time I run, but that’s okay, I can quit whenever I want, and all the cool kids are doing it.

People:

Either friendly or ignoring you, which is the best kind of host, in my opinion. I’ve seen a few ass moves on the part of car drivers, but people on the street completely ignore us or smile a little if you catch their eye. Shopkeepers are really friendly, and all speak enough English to get us by. I’ve seen only one acknowledgment by people that we’re different so far, when Evelyn overheard a group of teenagers say something about the white lady, she turned to look at them, and they all got embarrassed, and whipped out their English skills: “Hello! Hello! Hello!” and smiled and waved. I got looked at a few times when I was out running in the mid-day heat, but that happens at home, too. At places where we are supposed to negotiate the price, we may be getting the white price, but it’s hard to tell. One woman who couldn’t speak English numbers just tapped out a price on her calculator and showed it to us.

Peace, two fingers:

Whenever Taiwanese people pose for a picture, they do a thing with their hand which looks a lot like our peace symbol – extending the first two fingers on the hand, while keeping the others in a fist. You’ll see this in lots of pictures. This isn’t the rabbit ears you do behind someone’s back while they’re having the picture taken, or the way we usually do the peace symbol, which is with the bottom of the hand showing forward. The back of the hand is the thing that’s presented. (Update: since writing that, I’ve seen a cartoon frog on a stamp doing this the other way. So, no idea if there’s a right way.)