Wedding and Internet Issues

Went to a Chinese wedding last nite, my second one here... It was pretty good, excellent food, must have been at least 5 courses... Unfortunately no one but my friend spoke english at my table and everyone kept looking at me and saying stuff in Chinese. The weddings here are kinda like a banquet affair, with the groom and bride usually already having been married earlier in the day, and at night one merely attends like a farewell banquet.

The decorations of the hotel were really quite beautiful. The table was gorgeous as well as the chairs. After about 2.5 hours (I had arrived 1.5 hours late) everyone left. It was really fun, because the food so tasty.

After the meal, when I got home, my internet was not working. I called the cable company, but they gave me the same run around that Rogers Cable does. Told me to run ipconfig and check my cable plug, reboot the machine, renewe the ip, said they could see the cable modem, bla bla bla. It doesn;t matter if its Eastern Broadband Telecom or Rogers Cable, it seems they have a set of BS they feed every customer. Quite clearly my cable line is defective, but they fail to believe me. They kept saying crap like my network card was not functional and/or my network cable. Anyways, about 15 mins later my internet started working again. Hopefully they will send out a network engineer from some 2-bit college to check it out in a few days (at least thats what the tech support dude told me).

Mosquitoes are getting to be a problem, they keep biting me, and I can't seem to find where they are hiding. Its getting quite frustrating, they fly in these bizarre patterns, and seem to be quite good at evading me, no matter how fast I am at trying to swat them... grr. I have no idea how they got up to my apartment so high, but hopefully they will die out once it gets a bit colder, although living in Taiwan I doubt thats saying much.

Another Reason for me to learn Chinese...

Dude, learn to use the microwave!!

True story.

Yesterday I was hungry, coming home late at night, and the

only thing open was the local convenience store. I went

inside, and noticed a new vegetarian soup noodle dish. I had

previously bought these before, and they are quite delicious.

This time they had a new flavour out, and it was 40NT (prev

ones were 35NT), about $1.40 Cdn, so I am like ok sure might

as well try it out.

I take it to the cashier who is suppose to microwave it for me

and I am like ok, I pay for it and he begins microwaving it.

I than notice that he had put it into the microwave without

opening the lid. The package consists of two portions, a cup

of noodle, and a plastic bag of soup and vegetables, normally

before putting the cup into the microwave, you are suppose to

open the package pouch, dump the soup and veges into the cup

of noodles and than throw out the plastic pouch and than

subsequently put the cup of noodles and veges and soup into

the microwave. Instead, what we had here was a cup of noodles

with a bag of soup and veges lying on top of the sealed cup of

noodle container.

Anyways, I realize that that doesn't make sense, so I tell him

(well I point to the microwave). I try saying in english he

needs to OPEN the bag and mix the noodles with the soup, but

naturally he does not know english and my chinese vocabulary

is limited :( My pointing does get him to look at the

microwave, but he fails to notice that the bag is getting

bigger. About 1 minute later the bag has reached critical

mass and is ballooning hugely, I than point to the microwave

again, somewhat ethusiastically but he just smiles at me :(

The bag than looks like a giant water balloon and subsequently

explodes on top of the cup... Aghast, I stare at the

microwave and point at it, he looks inside , but does not seem

to notice anthing amiss, which is odd considering the bag that

was on top of the cup of noodles is gone (well not gone, I am

sure shrapnels of it are littered on the microwave floor,

although the door was obsecuring my view somewhat) and the cup

of noodles is now upside down and rolled over to the side. I

than point to the ooze of liquid (perhaps my chinese soup?)

that is dripping out of the microwave.... That set of a light

in his head and he finally begun to understand what I was

saying...

He turns off the microwave and opens the door. The contents

(I don't know what to call it, a maelstrom of plastic, hot

soup and a cup that had rolled over like a GM SUV turning at

50km/h) were too hot for him to touch, so he tried to get me

another one, unfortunately, that was the last one :( . I

guess its just cheese and crackers for me tonight :( Damn I

gotta learn Chinese~! At least he refunded my money, that was

nice of him :)

Pineapple Galore

Been awhile since my last posting. I got a sweet apartment only 10 mins from work, its so nice sometimes I think I am living in a hotel or something. Haven't got internet at home yet... :( I did get some really cheap furniture, unlike N. America, furniture is really cheap here, half price or less of what is found at The Brick, or Leons or even Ikea.

This post actually will be centered around the glorious watermelon, mango and pineapples. These fruits are grown in Taiwan and taste differently from the ones found in Canada. The ones in Canada are brought and bought from Mexico and Latin America. As such, they tend to have more fibre in them, where as the fruit here is really smooth. Its a lot less likely to get stuck in the teeth and extremely sweet.

The mangoes in TW are a little bit cheaper than in Canada, but not by much, but they are very smooth and rarely will get stuck in your teeth due to lacking the strong threads/fibre their Mexican relatives have. The mangoes here defenitely not as hairy as their Latino cousinsbut just as sweet. Unfortunately mango season is over, as well as strawberry season but it should return in a few months when it gets colder.

Today I bought a bag of pineapple from a truck on the street for only $3. The dude had a pickup truck filled with pineapples. He took one out and skinned it and cut it up into squares for me, and gave me some toothpicks to eat it with. Such a great deal, as a comparable amount of pineapple would cost double in Canada, especially because of the quality. The pieces are extremely sweet and not hard although firm. You can eat them all day without getting sick of them, very different from the ones in Canada which are slightly bitter or tangy and quite hard, where you spend a lot of time chewing them and removing them from your teeth.

Watermelons, they are cheap, large and plentiful. Watermelons here, as mentioned in a previous post come in 2 colours, yellow and red, although the red ones taste better. They are extremely juicy, and a glass of watermelon juice can be bought for only 40 cents, 80 if you don't know where to shop. Unfortunately, watermelon doesn't keep well, and best to stick to the juice, as its hard to eat them without making a mess on the street, as I encountered first hand. Unfortunately I do not have a kitchen readily available...

Buying fruits in Taiwan is hit and miss, due to the variations between supermarkets, especially the pricing. The price gouging in supermarkets is crazy, where regularly the fruits have a 200-300% markup. On the bright side, occasionally they will have a 4 cent sale, where certain products are only 4 cents~! Obviously those products sell out super fast. There is no such thing as raincheques or pricematching, after all, this is Asia, but one large Walmart clone called Carrefour is quite good in terms of pricing and convenience. They are located in many places throughout Taipei, but mostly cater to those with cars. They are also really big, bigger than most Walmarts, some even encompass 2 whole floors.

There are some other stores here, such as Costco and RT-Mart, but those are much more rare, only 2 Costcos in all of the Taipei Area, one in Neihu the other in Xji-shi. I went to the Costco, and it was ok, although most stuff there is too expensive due to the taxes imposed on imported products.

The weather here is getting really good, cool enough at night so that the air conditioner is no longer needed, and windy during the day. It has been raining quite often lately, but that should stop soon. I should hopefully get my internet hooked up and new pics uploaded as well.