my first leap

Back in the internet cafe on Shida Road, near Taipower Building Station. The only difference is tonight, there will be no Sophia to greet me when I arrive at Yating’s place. While I’m on the internet, she makes phone calls. Tonight, I know I can stay here all morning if I wanted to whereas before I know she would worry if I didn’t get back within the hour or so. She told me the first night, when I said an hour and stayed an extra hour, she saw a store nearby close for the night (Shida Night Market – people are still up in the grey ambiguous hour of night/morning) and then open again while I was away. I don’t know, within two hours?! Yating is cool with me staying here another night. And Ling is ready for me to go to her place (original plan) tomorrow night. Yating and Ling have been so very good to me and Sophia, so helpful, so organised, so full of information; they’re pretty amazing friends.

This afternoon after spending my last few hours with Sophia; I found a chemist (we’ve been trying to find calamine lotion in Watsons and convenience stores with no luck) I said to them in my best Mandarin that I wanted to write the name down and bingo, I came out with calamine lotion for my rash. I phoned Singapore Airlines to change my flight. Seb can come out early so I’m meeting him in Singapore in a weeks time. Unlike Singapore Airlines in Sydney where just a phone call is enough to change to an earlier flight; Singapore Airlines in Taipei requires a copy of your ticket. They wanted me to fax them my ticket details. I had 10 mins to do it before they closed for the day at 5.45pm. My first port of call was the internet cafe; they tell me that 7-11 does faxing. Ling later confirmed that 7-11s are major convenient – you can do almost everything there (ATM, fax, photocopy, pay your household bills etc). Faxing at the 7-11 is so simple, so quick. Then I’m on the phone again and bingo, flight changed. Then back to the internet cafe to book a hotel. Bingo, hotel booked. See, when I’m on my own I do okay.

I bumped into Shihmen and 2 of her friends moving her stuff in when I got back to the apartment. The place is a newly built one bedroom (twin beds) apartment and virtually empty except for a washing machine and fridge – most vital stuff I’d say. Tonight I’ll be on my own – would it feel strange not to have Sophia there?

After talking to Ling on the phone, we arranged to meet at University Station, exit no.4 – problem was when I got to the MRT station and found that University Station didn’t exist. I asked the woman behind the counter the nearest MRT station to the University – after 10 mins she still didn’t know. I tried to call Ling but the pay phones in the station (and most stations) are card only. So I asked 2 guys who looked like they could have gone to University and next minute I’m zooming off to Gongguan MRT station. After finding each other, Ling showed me a dark building (I’m blind and it’s dark) where she lived when she attended the National Taiwan University. She hasn’t been in the area for up to 4 years and wanted to show me the sights and foods she enjoyed back then. She tells me that the area is made to accommodate the mass student population and looking at it now, it’s much more trendier and not so simple back in her student days. Ling weaves in and out of lanes to a restaurant called Shun-Yuan where she orders some of her favourite dishes; one of which is pig’s ear. I tried it and if she didn’t tell me I would have happily munched away a little more but she told me and all I could think about are the white lines between the brown bits and think of creases in the ear. After a couple of tries, I left the rest to Ling. Another dish was tofu and black (with a green centre) duck’s egg which I liked and can eat again. It was the first I had congee with not white rice but little yellow rice – the dish is literally translated little rice congee.

We then went to have some fruit tea, tea with floating bits of fruit inside the pot. Nice. Ling tells me about Mr Ma, the present Mayor, a good-looking guy, Harvard graduate, lawyer, who is the opposition that nearly overthrew the President the day I came. It’s a complicated story behind it all. It had something to do with the President’s son-in-law breaking the law, using insiders information to make lots of money but was caught, then they find that the President’s wife did some frowned-upon stuff as well, til the network of corruption weaved and flowed all around the President. In the end, according to Ling, Mr Ma is a gentle man and after losing the parliament vote to have the President kicked off his throne; he decided to calm the whole thing down. According to Ling, to kick out the President, the whole country would have to vote and that could take a lot of time and manpower and also, the fact that his term finishes in 2 years, the opposition decided to not push it in the end. You can see why Ling and Yating think politics is very entertaining here.

After yesterday’s posting and a chat with Ling, I’ve decided to make some changes health-wise, some serious changes and it starts tomorrow.

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To Family: Please check your emails and respond.

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Art Print $25.99 (115 x 82 in)

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again. – Groucho Marx. American Comedian, Actor and Singer, 1890–1977

Tags: Calamine Lotion, Taipei, Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.