Ten-cent Tour Around Town

These are just a few sites I've explored around town these past two weeks.


Taipei Fine Arts Museum
They had a great exhibit called "Open City: Architecture in Art" when I visited last week. One of the coolest exhibits was a room with a projection screen and a square with an "X" marked on the floor with tape. Visitors were instructed to walk around the room and stand in the X. When you stand still, the graphic of collage pieces gets assembled into the image of a building, and as you move, the building deconstructs and reconstructs to follow you. You can imagine me prancing around the room with glee. Really cool.


Stencil graffiti
I've seen urban stencil graffiti in some European cities, but did not expect to see it here. I spotted this little gem on a wall facing a small parking lot on my walk home from school.


Preserved Traditional Courtyard House on the Campus of a Middle School
You won't see too many of these around town anymore, especially ones that are quite so well preserved with the courtyard intact. The rounded roof ridges is a feature of traditional Fujian architecture, and is used for typical households. Households with a high-ranking official would typically have roof ridges with pointed ends.


National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, formerly the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall
This was completed in 1980, and I remember scurrying over here as a child, since my childhood home is only a stone's throw away. The statue of Chiang Kai-Shek seated in an armchair in the pavilion of that pointy building in the background is reminiscent of the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial or on the "tail" side of a penny. You can spot groups of people doing Tai Chi here in the morning.


Presidential Office Building
Why there is Western colonial architecture in Taiwan? Most colonial-style buildings are a relic of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.


One of four original city gates, now just a pretty ornament in a traffic circle. The four gates were once connected by city walls, now long gone. The size of the original city is pretty small, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to walk from one gate to the next.

A Correction and an Amendment to Jean's Powdered Milk Selection Methodology

Powdered milk as far as the eye can see.


Freebies are attached to cans as big as your head.

It is not often that I say this, but I stand corrected. The powdered milk can with the young Asian woman doing yoga is not purple, but PINK. Please make a note of this for your powdered milk excursions in the near future.

I also realized that I had omitted a very significant (and possibly overriding) criteria when I went back to the powdered milk aisle tonight because my supply of baby blue gringos is starting to run a bit low.

JEAN'S POWDERED MILK SELECTION METHODOLOGY is therefore to be amended as follows:

add Criteria 5: Check out the freebies they give away with the purchase, which is usually shrink-wrapped together with the can.

The larger cans tend to have the freebies, which can range from pink little plastic microwaveable containers with a matching pink nylon strap and a clasp that looks like a cute little cow, to a travel mug with a cute little cow on a green pasture. And then I spotted a little glass teapot that looks like a tiny coffee pot, no cows or anything fancy, it is small but still big enough to hold about two cups of tea. I could get more use out of the teapot for sure, the only problem is that it was attached to the geriatric milk, and it even says on the can that it is formulated for those 50 years and over - I don't care if they were giving away their mascot cute cow and a 50-acre pasture for it to graze, I'm not ready for this milk.

In the end, I chose a small glass jar with a lid, it has a picture of a little cow on a green pasture (the pasture also comes in baby blue and pink, collect them all!). Oh yeah, it came with a pink can that is as big as my head.

"Teacher, three air conditioning units are really expensive!"

My class is two hours long with a 10 minute break in between. Our teacher usually takes this opportunity to correct our homework and chit chat. So here's an abbreviated version of how break time went today:

Thai boy asks Teacher: Why are Chinese characters so hard, a little dot here or a stroke there changes the meaning of the word.
Teacher: English is hard too, a slight misspelling and you get a different word.
Me: But in English, if you just get the first few letters and last few letters of the word right, people can usually figure out what you're trying to say.
Thai boy: Yeah, I always get "is," "are," "am," and "were," mixed up, but it's still ok.
Brazilian guy in the back: Teacher, three air conditioning units are really expensive!
Me: (chuckle, chuckle, amused and wondering where the hell that comment came from)

(Bell rings, signalling the end of the break)

Teacher and Brazilian continue to discuss where he gets his quotes, that each store tells him something different about what needs to be installed, how to figure out who is telling him the truth.

Brazilian guy: I also need to set up Channel 4 (cable TV) and broadband at home.
Me: I'd recommend getting roommates and getting them to set it up. (a knowing grin and a nod, and even more amused with where this conversation is going)

Teacher, Brazilian guy, and South African guy discuss how to get cable, and Teacher talks about how back in the day, a lot of people would steal cable so you could see a bunch of lines connected to one cable line, and how that doesn't happen anymore because they lock the lines.

Brazilian guy: How do I set up automatic payment for my bills?
Teacher: You need to go to the bank and ask them to set it up for you.
Brazilian guy: But what if the name on the bill and the bank account holder are different people?
Me: (I don't know why I thought it was so funny, but I just lost it and couldn't stop myself from going into a giggling fit, almost slipped off my chair too. Almost.)
Teacher: I don't know. I live with my parents, so my Dad pays the bills.
South African guy: How do you open a bank account?
Me: You need two proofs of identification and a chop.
SA guy: Where can I get a chop?
Me: You need to have it made at a chop shop.
SA guy: What does it look like? What sign should I look for?
Me: (Pause, thinking about how to describe a chop shop) If you want, I can show you one after class.
Teacher: There's a place down the street. (She draws a map of the block and points him to the place across from McDonald's on the next block.) You can get them very quickly, a machine makes them now and it just takes minutes. It would take forever to carve them by hand.
Me: I got mine in an hour and they told me it was hand carved.
Teacher: How much did you pay for your chop?
Me: NT$1000
Teacher: (flabbergasted) Is it made of a precious stone?
Me: Bull's horns
Teacher: Some go for like NT$25. What do you need with such a fine chop?
Me: Because it's pretty.

I felt really bad thinking that the Brazilian guy might think I was making fun of him, but I wasn't really laughing at him, I just found the randomness of the conversation so incredibly entertaining. After class, I explained and apologized to him. Thankfully, he wasn't miffed, or at least he didn't look it. Still, I hope he won't stop asking these random off-the-wall questions every once in a while.

Note: No bulls were harmed in this blog. The lady at the chop shop assured me that their bull's horns are harvested humanely, without killing the bulls.

TGIF in Taipei, and All the Little Voices

My Aunt treated us to dinner at TGI Friday's in Banciao last night. To my surprise, the restaurant is exactly like its American counterparts, down to the servers singing to anyone celebrating a birthday, and all the hoopla and embarrassment that is normally bestowed upon the birthday guest (she was at the next table). We had a TGIF feast (thanks Aunt Michelle!), and even my grand-Aunt Jimbo had two cocktails. Afterwards two of my cousins and I took a stroll around the mall, playing air hockey and shooting some hoops at the arcade, totally fun. I took home two bruises on the base of my thumbs as souvenirs, for grabbing the handles too tight while playing air hockey. You know how competitive I get with air hockey. You know.

I had to change buses at the Taipei Main Station on the way home from dinner. There was another girl waiting at the bus stop, I'm guessing she is probably in her late teens or possibly early 20's since Taiwanese women can look deceptively young (take myself, for instance ;)). She's on her cell phone and talks in a high-pitched, soft, kitten-like voice, very similar to the voice of a young child. Then she is on another call, and I know because she is using her normal speaking voice, which is a few octaves down from kitten, and much more assertive and adult sounding. A 3rd call is greeted with yet another voice, this time a mix of the kitten and the adult, sort of medium high-pitched. Why a grown person would talk in the voice of a child, I don't know. Even more bewildering to me is how she can manage to remember which voice to use on whom.