Rachel and I went to Mystic for our wedding anniversary.
Enjoy some shots.
I bottled my IPA today. Why 23? One bottle broke during filling.
I made the label before a few days before he bit me.
This morning the dog was sleeping too close to me and I attempted to move him. He growled and nipped me in the arm. I thought it was just a little nip until I noticed this huge bruise form on my arm.
Old grave stones are so cool. This one is from Marblehead, MA.
I keep hearing a ringing music noise drive by my hotel a couple times a day. It can only be described as ice cream truck music. I checked myself to see if I am getting Chinese fever and perhaps losing it in the head a bit. It took me a couple days but finally I was walking to dinner when the music started coming closer. Dah dah Daah Dee dah dee daaaah. Closer. Dah dah Daaah Dee dah dee daaaah. Almost there. Dah dah Daaah Dee dah dee daaaah.
I should mention that the sidewalks in Taiwan are (if they are even present) not even. It looks like the store behind the sidewalk is responsible for building the pedestrian walk. So depending on the property owner’s mood the side walk is concrete, asphalt, or tile. Also they don’t have to make them match in height so every new store (roughly 10-20 feet) the height of the sidewalk can be interrupted by a step that goes up or down six inches. Make sure you watch your feet as you walk. Also there are no parking spaces on the street so the sidewalks are full of little motor scooters. The sidewalk *would* be 8 feet wide but instead there is a 2 foot path between the motor scooters.
As I said, I was walking and trying to keep from running into hot scooter exhaust pipes or trip over the random gradient changes and the music was coming closer. I could sense that people were making for the street. Perhaps it is a famous movie star or a politician with loaves for the masses (which interestingly enough happened last year during the election the pols
bought the random masses of people banquet dinners). Dah dah Daah Dee dah dee daaaah. It is here. Dah dah Daaah Dee dah dee daaaah.
And. . .
I. . . see that it is a. . .
…bright yellow singing garbage truck.
The garbage trucks play ice cream music to call the people to them. People then have to throw their own garbage in the truck. Also since it is such a tropical climate and things rot and smell quickly the garbage trucks come everyday.
© Kaj Iversön
Food here is not what you get in your American chop suey joint. For one, chop sticks are a requirement and not an option. The Chinese cheat though. They don’t pick up every grain of rice with chop sticks they bring the bowl close to their mouth and push the rice in. This also necessitates the need for all food to be cut into chop stick size pieces. I think that this could lead to an authoritarian society. Freedom begins at the plate. Give me a knife and fork and let me decide.
Also, the Chinese don’t typically drink anything during a meal. They have soup at the end to wash down the meal. Some of the meals are really sticky and heavy with sauce so I cheat and bring some water.
Taiwan produces two things in abundance. Computer memory and fruit. I typically eat lunch at the customer’s cafeteria and they have something new everyday. I think the coolest fruit of all is the Phoenix fruit. It is about the size of an apple. The skin is bright red and feels leathery with flaps like an artichoke. The inside is blood red an gooey like gelatin with many many black seeds. I think it is related to a Kiwi but I don’t know for sure. It is very sweet.
For Dinner I usually have a Hot Pot. Which is just a big pot of boiling water with a small fire below to keep the heat. The restaurant gives you slices of raw meat, veggies and mushrooms. You throw them into the pot and let them cook and then use your chop sticks to fish out the bits of food as they cook. Any meal that involves a big fire on your table is ok in my book.
© su-lin
I think I know what it feels like to be illiterate. Every sign is in Chinese and I feel like an idiot. I know two characters. The one for Car (it sort of looks like a car) and the one for cell phone. It is three characters. I think you have to grow up speaking Chinese to learn to read and understand. The symbol for Baby is two characters in a row that together mean Baby. When one is alone it mean Treasure. Which I guess makes a little sense that a baby is Treasure^2. I asked what Car^2 meant but my host said it didn’t mean any thing.
In Taiwan travelers don’t rent cars to you take cabs. The chance that the cabbie speaks English is about 3%. I have two cards. One with the hotel address and one with the UMC factory address. I noticed that when I traveled with my Chinese coworkers the cabbies charge me more when I am alone. Plus, I was taken on the huge scenic tour of Tainan.
The fast way “BEEG short cut” take 30 minutes. It consists of driving on paved river embankments for about 15 miles. The small roads are exactly as wide as one cab. There is one road on each side of the river but traffic goes both ways on each road. They typical way that this works out is that one car pulls over into an area slightly wider and the other cars pass. When there is a mistake one of the cars goes into the water. This happened the second day I was here (not in my car). I found out later that this was the reason we were traveling on a totally different river.
Every small bit of land is used for farming. So what would be a small 160 acre farm in the US here in Taiwan is farmed by about 30 different farmers. Some plots are about the size of my backyard. A typical big plot is about 10 acres
© Storm Crypt
