5/31 1:58pm
Somewhere back on the west coast in the U.S. it’s probably still Memorial Day but I have no idea anymore. I’ve been getting up around 6am running the 6 blocks down to get my family breakfast, then going back to sleep until a more godly hour. I also take lots of naps. I rationalize this by watching my 7-month pregnant aunt take 3-4 naps a day, and say that since I limit myself to two per day, it’s not quite as shameful. I think I’m one of those people who take vacations that allow for laziness and lounging, rather than those who take vacations with manic itineraries.
I watched the final minute of the Suns/Spurs game. I’m sure there will be much said about the blown call at the end when Amare’s block of Tim Duncan’s dunk should have been a goaltending call. I don’ t care though. It was pretty.
As for a half-assed trip recap, we left Friday evening and arrived late Saturday morning here. There are 8 of us sharing my grandmother’s 3-bedroom condo–my cousin Bohr and his mom, my aunt Jodie and her husband, my mom, brother and I, and of course, my grandmother. At least there are 2 bathrooms and plenty of mirrors for all the women to get ready in the morning. We hit up a street market for a late dinner. The thing about Taiwan is that there are what feels like hundreds of street vendors in any given alley, all selling some form of fried food most likely containing processed fish product. But it’s all fairly cheap, ranging from 50 cents U.S. to $2, so you can pretty much try 4-5 different things all for under the cost of an entree at a cheap diner. And you never have to tip.
The meat is so fresh that they pretty much slaughter the animal sometimes right in their little space, something that luckily, I have yet to witness. I did see a whole pig floating in the water when we went to visit this seaside market area (kind of like 3rd Street Promenade in Los Angeles); it must have fallen off one of the boat ferries. I couldn’t stop staring because it was kind of sad to see this slaughtered pig floating in the water surrounded by random trash. Like it died for nothing. My mom requested that I not take a picture of it (as she had earlier in the day with the La Muff sign), because she doesn’t like me portraying Asians in a bad way.
The second night we were here, my mom’s oldest brother (aka my rich uncle) had this family reunion banquet. It wasn’t so much a family reunion, as all the family members who happened to be here this week, and 25 of his friends. He had rented out the events room of a nice restaurant and had a man with a Casio running a karaoke machine. Whoever invented the dinner format of having karaoke going on as people try to eat should be shot. Whoever thinks that a respectable job description is “Man who runs a karaoke machine while backing up the music with one-fingered notes on a Casio keyboard” is someone who still lives in his parents’ garage. It was mildly awful. The head of D-Link was there. I wanted to ask him for a job. The night ended with Bohr’s mom up alone on the stage with the microphone saying, “Bohr! Do you want to come up here and sing You Are My Sunshine?….Bohr?…..Julia? You Are My Sunshine?…” I don’t think the human language has an emphatic enough way of saying no in answer to questions like those.
Yesterday was the first day of the Computex show, which was why most of my family is out here. So they all left in the day and it was just me, my pregnant aunt, my brother and my grandmother left to nap away the day. I took Michael to the 12-story department store that’s designed after the department stores in Japan. I lost my brother at one point and had to enact a floor to floor search. After searching each floor from top to bottom, I decided to take the elevator up to the top floor, which was where I had last seen him. The funny thing about the elevator was that there’s a very graceful young woman in white gloves who ushers people into the elevator, and another inside who pushes the buttons. The funny thing was that whenever someone’s floor came up, she would say in Chinese, “Forgive me, but this is the [3rd] floor.” I’ve noticed that about the different service jobs. Rather than just announcing something, they always pre-empt it with, “Forgive me” or “I am deeply sorry,” etc. Like, “I am deeply sorry, but here is your order of fried meat product.” Maybe it’s the way they say excuse me, just twisted by a severe translation. Regardless, it makes us sound like pushovers.
I have just bought a bunch of grapes that I thought cost the equivalent of $1.50US, but actually cost $7US. Damn my limited Chinese vocabulary. For 7 bucks, these things had better get me drunk or something.