Home is where you stay

Over the past few days have been trying to find a place to play badminton and was not so successful on my own. Found a place called Zhong shan Sports Center (NO 2, Zhong Shan N. road, sec 2 lane 44.), this place is quite good has a swimming pool too. If you have a playing partner this would be a good place to sweat out. I later found out that most of the people who play actually form teams and then lease a court collectively for a specified duration. So having a localite to point you to a team would be the easiest way to play badminton here.

This is where my taiwan colleague malcolm helped me by introducing me to a friend of his Matthew. He stayed at a place near to neihu so I got the additional advantage of a pick up and drop. So this sat and sun morning was spent playing badminton with their team. Most of the members of the team were in their middle age, wonder where the younger generation went !!! But one thing is for sure that the chinese people defy their age when it comes to fitness. They do have an initial inertia when interacting with strangers but as they get to know this curtain drops and their warmth and friendliness comes out.

During a trip to the local supermarket we picked up some “Chinese salted egg”. It is supposed to be kept/cooked in a saline solution to hence the name. Tasted pretty salty ha ha. My taiwan colleagues told that it goes very well with porridges. They talked about the 1000 year or century egg, which is supposed to be made by storing underground for long periods of time. I remember seeing this but could never get myself to try it out. Anyway for that I guess i should rely on dutta who is an eat all (Eats anything and everything).

Around sunday evening the sky became darker, slowly a drizzle followed. A call to a friend jason confirmed that we will shortly have a typhoon passing over taiwan. A day off on monday was the news which made us happy. The night saw some heavy downpour and rough winds rattling anything not sturdy. Typhoon Haitang brought taipei to a standstill for a day. We were in the meantime having a test of our culinery skills, prepared some pretty yummy dishes. Well offcourse we did give some competion to kumbakarna also. Kumbakarna is a character in the hindu epic ramayana who is supposed to sleep for months to get up only for his food.

Taiwan has a lot of parks for a good walk, one such park near the place where we stay is beihu park. It is infact a beautiful lake and in the sunny days you will find a good deal of people angling there. A walk around it gave us a cool breeze with that distinct aura of freshness, a rare treat in a city.

Tags: food, Taipei, Taipei Jul-Aug 2005, Taiwan

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