low rider
had the best day yesterday.
i went to the post office, and it was totally normal. the stamp guy was pretty nice, and didnt seem angry at me for making him figure out how many stamps it takes to send a bunch of random stuff to america. usually i hate the post office because it's busy and mostly in chinese. yeah, there are signs that say 'Stamps' and 'Registered Mail' and 'Other', but especially the first time i went, i no clue what the hell i was supposed to do. was i 'Other'? where is 'Regular' or 'Cheap'? Evidently, those are synonymous with 'Stamps'. in taiwan, they actually count out the stamps for you behind the counter (as opposed to printing out that paper sticker with the price on it) and then give them to you so you can glue them on yourself. yes, that's right, glue. they don't have self-sticking stamps, maybe because of the humidity. i dont know. i always liked sticker stamps the best, but then again, i dont much enjoy gluing. sometimes they have paste (like the kind you can eat but arent supposed to) and a brush, though, which is kind of fun in a elementary school sort of way.
but i digress.
then i went for sushi - vegetarian of course - at the sushi express. i love the sushi express because it has a conveyor belt upon which the chefs place trays of sushi and other related items. each plate is 30 NT (about 1 USD). you grab them as they go by you. the hot water for tea comes out of a little faucet in the wall under the belt, right in front of your counter. sometimes they dont have the glutinous rice cake i like, but they did yesterday, which of course was great.
post-sushi i went shopping, having in mind some things i needed for the upcoming children's christmas show. i found said items, but then also found a book and a few movies i had been looking for. of particular note were The Jazz Singer and Citizen Kane, the latter of which i had been searching for for ages. i watched the jazz singer tonight. pretty interesting in a history-of-film sort of way, or a how-was-life-portrayed-in-the-20s sort of way. apparently the first picture with sound and one of the first to shoot in immigrant neighborhoods of new york (the story is about a jewish guy who is supposed to be a cantor but who wants to be a jazz singer).
anywho, back to yesterday. after buying all this stuff, i decided that i would go join some of the other teachers in taipei. they had gone there earlier to see a harry potter movie at the IMAX. while neither harry potter nor imax interests me enough to rouse me out of sleeping in, after being up for a while i was ready for a night market. there was one i had heard of - a tourist market - called snake alley. apparently you can drink snake's blood, see them feed small animals to big snakes, or eat snake there. while these arent generally attractions, i figured i should see it before i go, so i went.
bus ride was as per usual. i got a cushy seat and listened to my music the entire way there. for those of you who havent been on a bus in taiwan (which probably isnt many of my readers), for about 5 USD you can spend the 1-1.5 hour ride to taipei in a reclining sofa chair, next to nobody, on an air-conditioned bus with video moniters and movies. it's almost worth it just to sit on the bus, let alone go anywhere. anyway, the bus ride was great, but the market, ech - pretty boring actually. you cant take any pictures of the snakes, and there really isnt much snake action going on. all this, not to mention the fact of slitting snakes open to amuse tourists seems a little ethically shaky, maybe why they dont want people taking pictures. that, or perhaps that the flash might scare the snakes into biting the trainers, which would actually make for a far better picture, wouldnt it?
finally, i met up with said teachers at another night market not far away. i love taipei because it has a subway which, being so logically and trilingually laid out, makes it super easy to get across town. nothing special at the other market either, but walked around nonetheless. the real treat of the entire day came in getting back home. we managed to get in line for the last bus back to hsinchu, but it seemed that the number of people in line were not going to fit on the bus (those enormous sofa chairs make it hard to transport large numbers of people at once). there were even taxi cab drivers trying to get people to pay for a ride back. small amounts of frustration and exasperation were expressed by some members of the group, mostly because they had things to do the next day, and because the trains and other buses seemed to have ceased running. ech.
we were saved in the strangest of manners. as the bus came and people began filing on, we noticed that they were really packing them on the bus. how are they fitting these people? oh my god, they're standing in the aisles! yes! it was the first time i was happy to see a bus loaded up with people like a filipino jeepney. when the bus lady got to us (the last people in line), she asked if the bottom of the bus was okay. the bottom?! the bottom of these buses is a space rarely used. it's like the 3-foot-high cellar beneath a luxury mansion from a long time ago. you could make scary stories about it, like "oh, the bottom is where they keep the dead bodies of the people the drivers kill when they go crazy from driving back and forth all day," or "the bottom is where they put the ugly people." really.
well, the bottom is where they put two couples of taiwanese lovebirds and five late americans when there's no more room up top. it was like a camping trip without fire or bugs or marshmallows. first we tried to play UNO on the floor, but we were taking up too much space so that had to end. then we watched charles, who is more than 6 feet tall, try to get into the bathroom, which is no more than 4 feet tall. that was better than UNO. eventually, charles resorted to a crossword puzzle, stephanie her ipod, david his ipod and his most recent Economist, susan sleeping on david, and me The House of Sand and Fog and my ipod. pretty antisocial, eh? but i think we annoyed the other people below pretty well in the first 20 minutes when we took pictures of each other and raved at the novelty of sitting below the bus, and what a great story it would be.
great story? i dont know. but i thought that since i generally bitch about taiwan, it would be nice to write about the kind of day that ends in the bottom of a bus.
i went to the post office, and it was totally normal. the stamp guy was pretty nice, and didnt seem angry at me for making him figure out how many stamps it takes to send a bunch of random stuff to america. usually i hate the post office because it's busy and mostly in chinese. yeah, there are signs that say 'Stamps' and 'Registered Mail' and 'Other', but especially the first time i went, i no clue what the hell i was supposed to do. was i 'Other'? where is 'Regular' or 'Cheap'? Evidently, those are synonymous with 'Stamps'. in taiwan, they actually count out the stamps for you behind the counter (as opposed to printing out that paper sticker with the price on it) and then give them to you so you can glue them on yourself. yes, that's right, glue. they don't have self-sticking stamps, maybe because of the humidity. i dont know. i always liked sticker stamps the best, but then again, i dont much enjoy gluing. sometimes they have paste (like the kind you can eat but arent supposed to) and a brush, though, which is kind of fun in a elementary school sort of way.
but i digress.
then i went for sushi - vegetarian of course - at the sushi express. i love the sushi express because it has a conveyor belt upon which the chefs place trays of sushi and other related items. each plate is 30 NT (about 1 USD). you grab them as they go by you. the hot water for tea comes out of a little faucet in the wall under the belt, right in front of your counter. sometimes they dont have the glutinous rice cake i like, but they did yesterday, which of course was great.
post-sushi i went shopping, having in mind some things i needed for the upcoming children's christmas show. i found said items, but then also found a book and a few movies i had been looking for. of particular note were The Jazz Singer and Citizen Kane, the latter of which i had been searching for for ages. i watched the jazz singer tonight. pretty interesting in a history-of-film sort of way, or a how-was-life-portrayed-in-the-20s sort of way. apparently the first picture with sound and one of the first to shoot in immigrant neighborhoods of new york (the story is about a jewish guy who is supposed to be a cantor but who wants to be a jazz singer).
anywho, back to yesterday. after buying all this stuff, i decided that i would go join some of the other teachers in taipei. they had gone there earlier to see a harry potter movie at the IMAX. while neither harry potter nor imax interests me enough to rouse me out of sleeping in, after being up for a while i was ready for a night market. there was one i had heard of - a tourist market - called snake alley. apparently you can drink snake's blood, see them feed small animals to big snakes, or eat snake there. while these arent generally attractions, i figured i should see it before i go, so i went.
bus ride was as per usual. i got a cushy seat and listened to my music the entire way there. for those of you who havent been on a bus in taiwan (which probably isnt many of my readers), for about 5 USD you can spend the 1-1.5 hour ride to taipei in a reclining sofa chair, next to nobody, on an air-conditioned bus with video moniters and movies. it's almost worth it just to sit on the bus, let alone go anywhere. anyway, the bus ride was great, but the market, ech - pretty boring actually. you cant take any pictures of the snakes, and there really isnt much snake action going on. all this, not to mention the fact of slitting snakes open to amuse tourists seems a little ethically shaky, maybe why they dont want people taking pictures. that, or perhaps that the flash might scare the snakes into biting the trainers, which would actually make for a far better picture, wouldnt it?
finally, i met up with said teachers at another night market not far away. i love taipei because it has a subway which, being so logically and trilingually laid out, makes it super easy to get across town. nothing special at the other market either, but walked around nonetheless. the real treat of the entire day came in getting back home. we managed to get in line for the last bus back to hsinchu, but it seemed that the number of people in line were not going to fit on the bus (those enormous sofa chairs make it hard to transport large numbers of people at once). there were even taxi cab drivers trying to get people to pay for a ride back. small amounts of frustration and exasperation were expressed by some members of the group, mostly because they had things to do the next day, and because the trains and other buses seemed to have ceased running. ech.
we were saved in the strangest of manners. as the bus came and people began filing on, we noticed that they were really packing them on the bus. how are they fitting these people? oh my god, they're standing in the aisles! yes! it was the first time i was happy to see a bus loaded up with people like a filipino jeepney. when the bus lady got to us (the last people in line), she asked if the bottom of the bus was okay. the bottom?! the bottom of these buses is a space rarely used. it's like the 3-foot-high cellar beneath a luxury mansion from a long time ago. you could make scary stories about it, like "oh, the bottom is where they keep the dead bodies of the people the drivers kill when they go crazy from driving back and forth all day," or "the bottom is where they put the ugly people." really.
well, the bottom is where they put two couples of taiwanese lovebirds and five late americans when there's no more room up top. it was like a camping trip without fire or bugs or marshmallows. first we tried to play UNO on the floor, but we were taking up too much space so that had to end. then we watched charles, who is more than 6 feet tall, try to get into the bathroom, which is no more than 4 feet tall. that was better than UNO. eventually, charles resorted to a crossword puzzle, stephanie her ipod, david his ipod and his most recent Economist, susan sleeping on david, and me The House of Sand and Fog and my ipod. pretty antisocial, eh? but i think we annoyed the other people below pretty well in the first 20 minutes when we took pictures of each other and raved at the novelty of sitting below the bus, and what a great story it would be.
great story? i dont know. but i thought that since i generally bitch about taiwan, it would be nice to write about the kind of day that ends in the bottom of a bus.
posted by bethany at 13:58
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