The Taipei Kid

I am not too sure about its other restaurants, but the coffee shop at the Regent really seems to be sliding. Noisy, crowded, uncomfortable atmosphere; terrible food, including salad that’s obviously been sitting out for hours. This is a Four Season’s property?

Do you hate the long immigration lines at Peach Orchard International Airport? Well, don’t complain about it or you could be kicked out of Taiwan for five years–even if you are married to a Taiwanese.

I just have to shake my head in disbelief at this article about an American woman living in Hualien being fined NTD 6,000 (about US$181) for telling someone to frig off. See Rank’s breakdown about this–and “Don’t think that Taiwanese judges don’t understand English”!

I love this bit:

The accompanying story explains that the defendant had had the misfortune of running into Judge Zheng Pei-ting who “studies English assiduously with a private foreign tutor and plans to do graduate work in the US.” Zheng, whose English was “excellent” in school, had her doubts about the usage and asked her undoubtedly illegal private tutor whether the usage ‘Forget you’ was correct. Her tutor confirmed that ‘forget you’ is not a valid English construction.

Our secret spies have been at it again, and this time they’ve caught an interesting way to sell U.S. beef. (And corn-fed beef–see the corn!) Not really sure if that cow is sporting a uni-udder or needs a ballbra. And that’s about all we are going to say about this–we don’t want to have to be dragged down to some courthouse in Texas like they did to Oprah.

The Players:

A: Late-40s, tired, bald, white, North American, ex-military-type-or-high-school-coach-looking dad

B and C: Dad’s two teenage Eurasian kids; perhaps the family is here visiting relatives?

The Setting: Walking around behind the Shin Kong Tower area, the teens start to argue with dad.

B (the son): “Dad, you’re not making any sense.”

A: (Stops to turn around and violently grab son by the arm and push him against a column) “Don’t tell me what my sense is!”

…tried to keep my hands on the table.

Quick! Get out your Grease 8-track tapes, your Xanadu videocassettes (hopefully in betamax) and put on your leg warmers—Olivia Newton-John is coming to Taipei! Now this we would actually go see, as long as the show is more Physical and Magic and not the 90s new age earth-mother crap.

Wallpaper magazine recently gave Eva Air an award (”Best Livery”) for its mile-high shrine to Hello Kitty! Top that, Alaska Airlines!

I had blogged about what I hope is the now-famous “Flirt…the art of pleasure” microwave and now they’ve got a “Flirt…the art of pleasure” rice cooker. I really wanted to get it, but my Winnie the Pooh rice cooker still seems to work fine, despite the fact that the lid is slightly broken and the Pooh sticker fell off and you can’t even tell it is a Winnie the Pooh rice cooker anymore. My current rice cooker is a really ugly beige and brown, and nowhere near as hot as the rice cooker that flirted with me the other day at 3C. It was the last one in the store–that flirty rice cooker must have gone home with a lot of appliance shoppers. Hopefully someone will say they need a rice cooker and I will have an excuse to buy and photograph it.
As for the Flirt microwave, someone gave it a good review as a good-looking bargain.

Taipei’s sparkling clean subway system failed to make the list of the Top 11 underground transit systems. Maybe it wasn’t “eye-catching”, “diverse” and “popular” enough, but it is clean, and nice, and it works.

Our secret spies saw this military recruitment ad the other day and were like, “What the heck”? This, um, pyramid is gaining quite a discussion over a Forumosa. (Thanks to Brappy for the shot.)