Some people in my office are really excited about the live action Transformers movie coming out this summer. For a while I was excited too, but Steven has never seen the Transformers before so to prepare him we have been watching the first season of the cartoon.
I remember watching the cartoon a bit when I was young, but I don’t remember too many details other than the names of the major characters as well as the names of some of the toys I had. It turns out that there was a reason that my memory isn’t that detailed, there aren’t too many plot details to remember in the cartoon anyway.
I will give you the rundown of the average cartoon. Spike, the human companion of the Autobots (the good guys) begins writing in his journal about how nice and thoughtful the Autobots are. After that point the screen switches over to Megatron, a Decepticon, who is hell-bent on stealing the natural energy resources of the Earth. At this point he comes up with a brilliant idea to take over a dam, or an ocean turbine, or a solar plant, or even tap into the geothermal energy from the Earth’s core. You can see that the creators of the cartoon are very keen on promoting alternative energy sources.
After a much needed commercial break, we return to the Decepticons who fly in to plunder the energy resources. Immediately the Autobots hear about this and race to save the humans and their energy. There is a battle that results in a stale-mate and Megatron saying “I’ll be back to get my revenge!”
No one ever dies. The reason for this is due to the fact that no child wants to buy toy of a dead character. Also, every few weeks we are introduced to a new Autobot or Decepticon available in the local Toys R Us the day later. This means that each cartoon is really just a 1/2 hour toy advertisement. I guess I didn’t see this when I was 10, but now I only see empty plots and weekly releases of new toys. I will watch more of the cartoons for nostalgic reasons, but I won’t see this as anything more than background noise when nothing else is on TV.
After having a dinner that contained too much milk and watching a movie in one of the local theaters I had to use the bathroom. The problem was that the toilet there did not have any toilet paper.
Steven told me before that it used to be quite common in Taiwan, but this is becomming more and more rare. When people hand out flyers in Taiwan, they are normally inside tissues. This means if you go to a public toilet and they don’t have any paper for you, you are covered. Unfortunately, this was not the case so I had to buy some here.
Steven skated for his first time yestarday with Yuyi. There are a bunch of cute photos of the two of them.
The Taipei Arena has an ice rink. For $260 NTD you can rent the shoes and skate for 2 hours. If you want to go, make sure you get there early, last week we tried to go and there was a 2+ hour wait to go inside.
For a new arena (it opened less than 6 months ago) it is already shoing age. The food court looks deserted and the ice rink reminds me of the Valco shopping mall in the early 90’s. They did not use the best materials to build the arena. Sure the ice and zamboni machine are fine but they could never host a large ice hokey game, there are seats for ~500 people only. Also, the paint on the hand rails is chipping off and the wood seats and floors looks quite aged already because everyone walks arround on their ice skates there. Not the best facilities.
We went out to KTV the other night. In the front of the guide that shows a list of all the songs, they teach you how to put a plastic bag over your head when there is a fire. The only problem is that I read the plastic bag will sometimes ignight if the fire is hot enough.
Oh well, use a wet rag if you really want to live.
I began this day by checking out of my hotel and rolling my luggage 30 feet to the next building to the hotel I would be staying at for the next five days.
When I first arrived I was a bit upset that the lobby was on the second floor. It was a hot-humid day and I had a large suitcase I had to pull up a floor. By the time I made it to the top my shirt was soaked. I then entered the building and was pleasantly surprised to see six people waiting to welcome me behind the front counter.
I walked up to the counter and was welcomed and I asked to leave my suitcase in the lobby office until I came back after work. They said wait one moment and began to search for my reservation on their computer.
The receptionist behind the desk then asked for help from two other people working at the counter. It seems they could not find my name. They then asked me to write my name, and I did so.
They spent another 5 minutes looking and they still could not find my name. I mentioned that my co-worker Henry is staying here, and they said "Oh, Henry-san!" and then looked on the computer and could not find him. I mentioned my company name (which is well known) and they could not find anything under my company name.
Another three minutes later someone came from the back room and they had a small piece of paper with a few numbers and names scribbled on it. It seems that someone took the information from my office, but no one entered the reservation yet. Everything was finally ok, and I could leave my bag and head off to the office.
When I finally got to the office I told Henry about what happened to me and he told me that the same thing happened to him. I thought it was very clueless of them, since he was there only 20 minutes before I got there and they did not remember the entire ordeal. I guess if you are not in the computer, then you aren’t a customer!
My day was normal, and once again my meetings with customers were put off until the next week. Steven got into Tokyo right around the time I was checking in. Henry, Steven and I all went out to dinner and I now have the weekend to look forward to.
Today it was Chinese Valentine’s day, and my company gave me a card (the ink rubbed off when you touched the card) and a choclate in a gold wrapper on a stick with a ribbon arround the base.
A co-worker ate her choclate and she gave the stick to me when she was done. Thinking about a romantic gift, I decided that I would give the stick to Steven, with wonderful Burger King Ketchup on it.
I didn’t want to wast the card, so I whited out the company’s name on the card and signed my own name. Steven was very impressed with this gift and he is looking forward to his birthday present.
Taiwanese trains are notoriously bad. They routinely oversell their seats, and instead of turning away customers they allow them to stand in the aisle. Most everyone is given a ticket with a seat number on it, but they are given blank tickets and it becomes a free-for all to try to grab a seat.
Last weekend Steven and I went to visit the Chinese Cultural Center here in Taipei. Neither of us have ever been here, and we thought it would be a nice place to visit.
When we got here I was a little surprised to see an old beat up "Hot Dog on a Stick" sign outside. This just yells Chinese culture. Well, it went downhill from there.
Imagine this, you are walking through a busy Taiwanese shopping district and you begin to hear a clang, clang, clang sound. You walk a little further and the sound gets louder. Trust me, this isn’t a normal sound you hear on the streets of Taiwan and it isn’t a sound you are likely to hear, unless the Clang-Clang Girl is on the streets.
Yes you heard it right, the Clang-Clang Girl. She is a girl under thirty, with a short-cropped haircut. Her hypnotic dance draws you in as she clashes her cymbals together. Her makeup is as striking as Mimi from the Drew Carrey Show, rouge circles over her cheeks plastered on in a chaotic yet beautiful manner. You look down and see three dancing hamsters scurrying frantically around their cage, joyfully jumping towards the top of the cage in unison with the music. This is the essence of true art.
