The plane ride was hellaciously long. I wasn't beside any sick people, and fell asleep nearly before the credits had finished running on Tropical Thunder. My first nap was roused by the serving of chicken dinner and tea. I nabbed a red wine as well. I fell into one of those truely amazing deep sleeps and was shaken awake by the little guy next to me (he must have been like 50 years old, but let's face it he was not having my troubles with leg room) who was shaking me and saying "bathroom, bathroom" over and over. So much for my comfy aisle sleep.
For the rest of the flight, my little friend got up had to go past me approximately 58,012 times before we had breakfast at 3am. Taipei time I think.
Jim had arranged for me to be picked up by a driver, so I was one of the cool people who got into the arrival area and had someone waiting for me with my name on a sign. I always love that. All the nice sedans in Taipei are Mercedes or BMW, with the Benz being far more popular.
Inside the airport I had been a bit bewildered. I missed being able to follow the crowd due to an urgent call of nature, so I was left in the near-empty early morning quiet. Eventually I lined up in a line called "non-citizen" where I was breezed through without anyone discovering the kilograms of drugs or 10 pounds of C4 I had in the bottom of my bags.
An hours drive takes me from the airport to Jim's place. Once we got off the freeway I had my first sign that I was no longer in Kansas. We rounded a corner and literally 50 scooters carrying over 100 riders swarmed around the sedan.
And so I arrived, 20,000 kms from Calgary.
Taipei was a bright and noisy city, lots going on. I stayed in Jim's apartment, accessible by tiny alleyway, but was only a 10 minute walk from a huge modern shopping district and the tallest building in the world. Apparently this part of Taipei has been mostly redeveloped in the last ten years as affluence has been increasing.
I literally spent all my time eating or between meals in Taipei. The traditional greeting is "Have you eaten until you are full?" and so they spend a huge amount of time correcting the situation if the answer is no, and forcing me to try new things if the answer is yes. Jim had a huge list of foods and restaurants that I needed to try, and try them I did. I think I left the country 10 pounds heavier than I arrived.
My first day there I was surprised to not have any jet lag, but I had slept well on the plane, small bladdered seat mates notwithstanding. We ate a traditional Chinese breakfast of take-out, the name of which I do not remember, and then went walking about the area. We decided to go up Taipei 101, the really tall building, even though it was kind of cloudy or foggy.
The view from the 101 was still pretty impressive, and of course they steered us past every gift shop and museum possible. We had to rush from side to side to find view through the fog, but I still managed to get the idea that we were indeed way up high. I got a kick out of these signs telling me that I should meet the "Danger Balls." They seemed to accompany mascots who indeed looked like balls. With legs. In various colours.
The significance of the danger babies and their balls became clear when we entered this one chamber with a huge.. ball in it. Hanging on 6 inch thick braided rope or cable (painted gold, so it was hard to tell) this ball was supported by huge hydraulics. I guess the idea was that this ball absorbed the motion caused by wind and/or earthquakes/ typhoons and other natural disasters. I am not a structural engineer, but come on! A big ball on the 89th floor of a 101 story building is going to save it from an earthquake? what if it shakes on the 79th floor?
Later on Jim and I swapped music from each others computers while investigating the ancient art of binge drinking. In a land where beer can be bought at 7-11 24 hours a day, only the fact that Heineken is considered the highest quality beer stops the entire country from becoming alcoholics. Whiskey and vodka are trying to change that. Daphne, Jim's wife, told me at one point that "one of the great things about Taipei is that there is a 7-11 everywhere." Daphne wasn't a big drinker, but I knew what she was getting at. I am pretty sure I discovered the real reason a 1 story ball is in charge of the safety of the tallest building in the world.
After the 101 Jim and I checked out the Sun Yat Sen Memorial palace. Sun Yat Sen was the founder of MODERN China. He was the first ruler after the abolishment of the feudal system & the monarch government. He is also more widely recoginzed for merging traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine. (Dodson, 2008 - Thanks Christine). We watched the changing of the guards, which is a very elaborate ceremony involving completely synchronized actions. Synchronized actions became popular in war as a show of prowess after the first exhibition of synchronized swimming in 1783 (Gilbertson, 2008)
Being around memorial halls and a recently developed area there was a large amount of green space. Jim showed me one little pond well known as a good place to dump unwanted goldfish and turtles. Some of the goldfish in this pond must have weighed 6 kilos and were between 2 and 3 feet long.
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