Good times grocery shopping

This one takes a little bit of explaining...

1. The Mandarin word for the number three is pronounced "San".

2. In Taiwan, there is an adjective used to describe a food that is pleasantly chewy (i.e. a gummy candy). This word is pronounced and written as "Q".

3. Many Mandarin speakers, particularly in Taiwan, have trouble pronouncing the "TH" sound. Instead, it usually comes out as "S".

Put it all together, and "3Q" magically becomes "Thank You". Given the relative ease in typing these two characters vs. the complete words in either language and you have the shorthand that nearly all Taiwanese use when sending instant/short messages to each other.

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Here, you can see our lovely model is holding a flattened dried squid. This is in our local grocery store - similar to Albertson's in some ways and VERY different in others...

Interesting piece of web art

I just received this link to a very cool piece of animated art. It is basically a woman being drawn from the inside out, starting with her spine and finishing with a completed clothed woman in repose. Check it out:

http://fcmx.net/vec/get.swf?i=003702

We have also finally met Alton!!

We had been planning to get together with the Walkers at some point this week for a gift exchange and, more importantly, to also get to meet young Alton for the first time. What we had not counted on was a call from Jared asking if we were available and (upon confirmation) finding out that they were only 10 minutes away...

After 15 minutes of frenzied gift-wrapping, we were finally ready.

For those of you that have known Jared a while, you will recall that he has always been a big boy. Alton Gregory Walker certainly takes after his father in this regard. He is precocious and quite even tempered, but the most obvious thing about him is his size. In particular, after living in Taiwan for the past 14 months and seeing the relatively smaller babies out there, Alton looked more like a 4-year old than a 17-month old.

Alton is a sweet kid, likes to go give high-fives, and absolutely adores Clovis (our little parrotlet). I felt as though I had met him before after seeing all the pictures, but it was definitely much better to finally get to meet him in person.

We finally met Milo!

We met Milo today for the first time, and he really is a fantastically cute little boy. It is fascinating because he looks more like mommy from most angles, but more like daddy at some others.

We got to see a few baby pictures of Christy from when she was about the same age - had we not known that it was Christy, we would have both sworn it was Milo.

Milo is a boy of a thousand faces (most of them are happy, all of them are cute) so the only real answer is to actually meet him in person.

Buses in Taipei

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I have the sneaking suspicion that either the bus drivers in Taipei are out to maim their passengers, or they just spend a little too much time playing video games.

With the recent move to the new office in Neihu, I have had the opportunity to ride the bus to the office with increasing frequency. While there are occasionally a few friendly bus drivers that conscientiously operate their piece of heavy machinery in such a way as to minimize the amount of jostling that their passengers undergo, the other 99% seem to really hate the people that keep getting on and off their bus.

I have seen cases where the bus drivers accelerate/decelerate suddenly for no obvious reason, take turns at breakneck speeds, and even start driving off before their passengers have fully boarded/alighted. This is exacerbated by the fact that the drivers have large comfortable seats that have independent shocks to smooth their rides.

The funny thing is that while this would probably never be considered even remotely acceptable in the US (at least on those few occasions when I've had the opportunity to ride the bus), for the most part, this seems to be the norm here in Taipei. Old people literally being thrown into other people's laps doesn't even so much as solicit a dirty look or a sigh.

I'm still trying to figure out if the problem is really with the drivers, or if I've just become too soft after living in the West for most of my life.

One cool thing that I have seen time and time again is a profound respect for the elderly. Every time somebody that looks even somewhat frail gets on the bus, at least one young person - usually the one sitting closest to the entrance - will immediately stand up and offer their seat to them. In the year that we have been living in Taiwan, there has not been a single exception to this phenomenon, which just gives me a warm fuzzy. I have always tried to be courteous and polite, but seeing this sort of behavior makes it seem like it's less of a choice and more of a moral imperative.

Keep it up, Taiwan!
(The courtesy part - not necessarily the crazy bus driver thing)