Typhoon Day!

I'm so excited, tomorrow has been declared a Typhoon Day!

Today started out beautifully, temperatures in the low 90's with a good breeze, and it was not too humid. By early evening, the breeze turned into a strong gust and it started to rain. It is around midnight right now, and it is raining cats and dogs. I head over to the supermarket at 9pm, and it was buzzing with people stocking up on instant noodles and talk of typhoons.

The City of Taipei has declared tomorrow (Monday) a Typhoon Day (Typhoon Fung-Wong), which means government offices are closed, as well as schools and businesses (it's like a Snow Day, but with rain and strong wind instead of snow up to your elbows). It also means no class and no work for Jean...whoopeee!!! A Taiwanese friend prepped me on how to brace for a typhoon - stock up on water, instant noodles, bread/non-noodle foodstuffs, and candles/flashlights. She also informed me that playing mah-jong, watching DVDs, and drinking are mainstays of typhoon day culture (I like that she listed drinking as an activity).

I remember when I was just a wee lass growing up in one of the desert suburbs of Los Angeles, having heard that other kids get to stay home on Snow Days, and wishing so hard and long for a Snow Day that never came. As I recall, there was a brief hailstorm once in the mid-80s in sunny Southern California, but the hail pellets just dusted the ground, never accumulating enough volume or posing a sufficient threat to close down the school. I felt cheated.

Technically, this is not my first Typhoon Day, I remember having experienced one in my youth on one of my vacations visiting Taipei with my family - staying indoors all day playing (and fighting) with my siblings, and when finally allowed to go out to the streets, only to see a ghost town with not another person in sight, bits of broken signs and wreckage strewn all over. Because I was on vacation that time and didn't have to take a day off from school, I can't really consider that to be a proper Typhoon Day, after all, taking a day off from my vacation would mean that I'd have to go to school, right? Tomorrow will be my first REAL Typhoon Day because class will be cancelled. Never mind that I came here on my own volition to learn Chinese and am hungry to soak up every bit of Mandarin that comes my way, I still get a thrill from being a student, and as far as students go, a day without class is a good day.

If ever you need a pick-me-up

For a cheap thrills, just wander over to your nearest store selling Japanese beauty products. Without fail, I find myself in a fit of giggles soon after I browsing the Japanese beauty products aisle. Why, you ask?

They've got stuff to correct things you didn't know needed correcting, like a little plastic clip to place on the bridge of your nose to lift the height of your nose bridge, a little plastic clip to correct the size of your nostrils, plastic rods that stretch out your lips to correct your smile, and even sheets of little slivers of shaped sticky tape for your eyelids! They've kicked the usual beauty gadgets up a notch. There are electronic eyelash curlers, tiny eyebrow razors, and a plastic "Y" shaped tool to help you make sure your new newly plucked/shaved/waxed eyebrows are even (actually, this might be one tool that is marginally practical).

It is the most disgusting fad, but so many people are walking around with ridiculously fake eyelashes. I've had to put these on once, for Halloween, and the pain of pulling them off at the end of the evening makes me never ever want to put on another pair of fake eyelashes. These fake eyelashes puts the U.S.'s eyelash fad in the 60's and 70's to shame. The eyelashes come in all different styles, some have straight lashes, others are cross-hatched at the base, some are sparkly, and all are curled to touch the sky.

It really makes me wonder why Japanese women think there is so much wrong with them? I mean, sure women in practically every country pit themselves against impossible standards, but to say that your smile needs to be corrected takes this insecurity to a whole new level. The fact that these items are being sold in Taiwan makes me wonder too.

Urban Art

When I'm on the streets and I see an exceptional piece of graffiti or public art, I take a picture of it and take it home with me. Lately, I've been noticing that some of the ones in my stomping grounds bear the same mark "BBrother," so I googled it and found out that he is a local stencil artist. Cool beans!

A Bbrother piece spotted on my walk home from school.

Found this one in Keelung, just north of Taipei. Cute and very clever.

Urban graffiti in Fulong, a beach town in northeastern Taiwan

This one is from my 'hood, near a metro station.

Culinary Escapades, Part 1

Super mango shaved ice (a mountain of shaved ice topped with fresh mangoes, sweet condensed milk, and topped off with a scoop of mango ice cream) at Ice Monster on the culinary experience that is Yongkan Jie. Mmmm...doesn't it just make your mouth water?


Celebrating Dwan Wu Jie (Dragon Boat Festival) with rice tamales "zhong zi" (glutonous rice, shittake mushrooms, nuts and spices wrapped up in a bamboo leaf, tied with twine; non-veggie version has meat things). Tamales is actually a pretty good translation - like tamales, they are steamed and then served with the leaf intact. There are sweet ones as well, but I don't like them as much. Legend has it, during the period of the warring states before China was united by the first Qin emperor, a great patriot of another state drowned himself in a river rather than submit to living under Qin rule. His countrymen stuffed bamboo leaves with rice and tossed them into the river in hopes that the fish would not devour the dead patriot's remains. Today, the tradition continues with eating rice tamales and racing dragon boats to commemorate the day he died.

A "Healthy Sandwich" as it was advertised (no joke): deep fried baguette stuffed with cucumber slices, a GENEROUS spooning of mayonnaise, two slices of black "1000 year old egg," a slice or two of tomatoes, and a few other veggies. This can only be found at the famous Keelung Night Market, about an hour's train ride northeast of Taipei, look for the "Healthy Sandwich" sign! A friend told me that Keelung is a harbor city that has long been exposed to foreigners (hence the baguette and concept of stuffing things into it to make a sandwich), and locals have been eating this sandwich for about a century. Back in the day, when diets were quite poor, this was considered a healthy meal! It truly was a tasty treat, but like a donut or deep fried twinkie, moderation is key. If you ate this everyday, all that health will probably kill you.

When it rains, it pours!

This has certainly true for the weather in Taipei lately! It rains on a dime, not just in little misty, drizzly drops, but big fat globules with as much water as you can pack into a drop of water and still call it a drop. There's talk of typhoons, and a few students in my class got a bit excited at the prospect of a "typhoon day" (similar to a "snow day," when the weather conditions are so dangerous that schools and businesses close down for the day).

At any rate, I realize that I've been neglecting my blog, so I too shall be showering updates on the recent past, present, and that which is yet to come...mwahaha