party of polaroid friends

I was staying with a friend in Taiwan, a lovely girl named Shiva who I met through a mutual friend in Sydney and who's working with kindergarteners teaching them English. There are so many jobs like that in Taiwan (and pretty much everywhere in Asia), and Shiva's is just one of many programs that trains people who have never been teachers to teach an immersion class for little kids. This is the sort of thing I think I'll end up doing in China after university, just teaching kids and running around after them, because it sounds like so much fun and I think you'd get a lot out of it, even if you weren't completely enamoured of children.

Anyhow, first things first: Taiwan was HOT! So damn hot, and sticky and gross! It was definitely very weird being transplanted to a completely different climate - from the cool of Sydney's waning winter to the end of a tropical summer - and of course it didn't help that most of the things I've packed have been in preparation for cold cold winters in Xi'an! Thankfully, my tshirts were all on top, so I didn't have to root around for anything and displace too much.

Shiva and I didn't do much that first night; I got very well-acquainted with the public transportation system and went out to a temple that's somewhere in the city. It was a nice and relaxing place, but it seemed to take forever to get there! We set out just after getting to Shiva's apartment at about seven in the evening and didn't make it back until ten! We had some deep-fried food vendor stuff for a very late dinner, which was absolutely delicious, but it's hard to eat too much in hot weather.

The next day, Friday, I traversed Taipei by myself, as Shiva was working with the kids from 8-4. I went to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial, which was MASSIVE, and all I really wanted to see was the big statue of him and the guards standing extra still. Which I found eventually but not before being whisked upstairs by excited English-speaking guides saying "how great would it be to look at some calligraphy?!"

So I went upstairs to look at the calligraphy of some Venerable Master Hsing Yun which was kinda cool, all these scrolls of Buddhist sayings. There was also a poster or two that you could take, so now I have one hanging on my wardrobe door where there's a dent as though someone's punched the door. Anyway, back to Taiwan... they also had a place where you could trace one of the more famous of the Venerable Master's sayings, which of course is right up my alley (haven't done calligraphy in AGES!), so I sat down to do some and one of the exhibit people came over and started talking to me in English and I spoke to her in Chinese. Once I'd finished, we talked in Chinese some, about why I was there and where I was going. It was definitely good to see I could speak Chinese somewhat conversationally before getting there!

Then I was lost, trying to find the famous statue, and this place is HUGE, like I mean MASSIVE. The hall is... a New York City block, easy. I did find the statue and the guards doing their thing in the end, but only after walking around the hall once (and it took me ages!). I took some photos there, it was fun to watch the guards do their little rituals every so often. The funny thing was, though, there was this DUDE, employed by the hall, and I think all that was in his job description was straightening the guards' clothes after they'd moved around in them! It was hilarious!! Imagine having that job.

So I wandered around, then took a bus to the MRT (subway) station because it was just... ridiculously hot to be walking around in, and then made my way out to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

I really missed my sister at the MOCA, because she is so much more the expert at these things than I am. The exhibit was called "Slow Tech" and (I think) it was all about the concept that technology is great and progressive and helpful in society, but we need to slow down and use it to reassess the things we already have in life. I kinda just made that up, actually, but it sounds pretty good. There were some video installations, and this one that had like panoramic pictures put into globes and hung from the ceiling, that was pretty cool. Not very technological though

Then I met up with Shiva in the city (back near the memorial), and we went to Taipei 101 and went up to the observatory in this super-fast elevator that cleared my blocked ears! The view from Taipei 101 was spectacular, as it should be from the ONLY tall building in Taiwan. During the entire drive from the airport, it's the only tall building. I don't remember how many floors it has, but it's the tallest building in the world at the moment, until something in China and then, later, the World Trade Center memorial site (or whatever it's called) in New York. Then, once back inside Taipei 101, which is essentially a big mall, we also bought some English books at a place called Page One. I bought some short stories by Roald Dahl (which I am now reading) and 'Crash' by J.G. Ballard, which Shiva suggested. I don't usually read books at home, but I have been reading them voraciously here - I've only got three left!

Anyhow, then we went to an Italian restaurant - of all places - for dinner, and it was actually quite good. Plus, the price! Antipasto, pasta for two, and two glasses of wine cost us $44AUD total! Insane! Then, for some reason, we had been talking about the movie Cruel Intentions, and Shiva knew this place where you could just rent a movie and sit in a little room and watch it, it's called MTV (like KTV is for Karaoke, MTV is for Movies?). I thought it was a bizarre sort of concept at first, but it works really well! They should have them everywhere. We also got a free drink with it and could buy a bag of popcorn, it was awesome! They played the movie for you so you couldn't pause or anything, but it was definitely a great concept. They had all types of formats - even laser discs!

Then on Saturday we went into Xi Men Ding which is basically street after street of shopping malls. Also there are street food vendors, but apparently they're illegal, so whenever the police come around they just start running - and they did! I didn't see any police, but at once point they all randomly started high-tailing it out of the streets, pushing their carts of fried dumplings and tofu as fast as they could!

From Xi Men Ding we went to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial. it was also MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE. It was this HUGE plaza with two traditional-looking temple buildings, with the red roofs and everything, which are used for concerts and plays and things, and then a gate at one end (white with blue trellices) and a huge white and blue building that housed a big statue of Chiang Kai-Shek looking rather smug and benevolent (though I'm not entirely sure how they go together). We saw the guards coming down from the changing thereof, and I snapped a picture of them furtively (I felt like you shouldn't, somehow). I think the guy I mentioned before who was straightening the guards' clothes at the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial, I think they're just the security for the guards. Because the guards are like the ones in London that don't talk or move or anything. But they are somehow scarier in the blue military outfit with big guns. I think it's the silly hats that make the English guys less scary.

Then yesterday we were going to go to an antiques market somewhere or other, but it started TORRENTIALLY POURING as we went. I had just made an awesome purchase of a 1GB memory stick for my camera for $90 AUD when it started pissing down with rain! We hung out in the local Mos Burger (Japanese burger chain, with very tiny burtgers!) to get dry and have a snack, but other plans for wandering around were sort of shot, so we went back to the MTV place and we watched Clueless - perfect, minus that we were drenched and it made drying off a rather cold experience in the air conditioning. After that it was about time to head back to Shiva's place to see her parents off. So it was a bit of a lazy day, which was all right, because then...

We went to a teppanyaki place for dinner, where they cooked up all of the food for you right there, it was awesome! But after that, I had terrible traumas trying to get some more money out for the trip to the airport the next day. Nowhere seemed to accept my bank card and in the end one did, but it tried to tell me the available balance on my account was $100NT!!! I did not have four dollars in my account so we went to check at the internet cafe and it was kind of all right except it showed I'd made two withdrawals of the amount. I messaged the bank over the internet banking message center and they got back to me saying I had to fiill in an official complaint or something, which is almost worth losing the $80 to ignore the hassle. Still, at that point, anything was a relief after thinking I only had four dollars in my bank account!!

And then I woke up late this morning because my phone had somehow switched the AM/PM function, which was more than frustrating to say the least! It worked out in the end though, the taxi driver was late so I still got some time to hang around and cool off. And don't worry, I remembered to take my vaccine!