Soup's On

You may ask, what do we do here in Taipei?  How do we fill our days in a foreign city on the other side of the world?

Mornings are pretty much spent taking care of basic needs, like laundry, mopping the floors, shopping for lunch and dinner, and going out for breakfast.  Taylor and I also take little exploratory trips around the city.  We like to be home by noon though, because that's usually when David brings Soup to our apartment.  That is when the most important part of our day begins.

Soup's first project is to take off his socks.

Tah dah!

We have several story times.

Soup likes to check out his own special cupboard.

There's always a meal or two.

Soup gets tired with all the activity, so he takes naps.

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Grandpa also needs to take a little rest while Soup is snoozing.

Disaster Averted

Last night I broke one end of my size 5 Knit Picks circular knitting needle.

Fortunately, there is a yarn shop in Daxue Village.  I went over there this morning and managed to make my needs known to the shop keeper who knows slightly more English than I know Mandarin.
After measuring my needle she showed me two options for a size 5 circular.  I made my choice and then browsed around in the small, cramped, humid shop.

In spite of the heat, the resident dog wore a sporty sweater.

I thought I was going to get out of the shop with just the needle, and then I spied sale bin.

Who knows if I got a deal, but the yarn is 70% cotton, 30% mystery and quite pretty. I spent 800 twd which is about $25.

What I find amazing about this entire experience is that when I first came to Taiwan in 2011, I was too timid to go out on the street by myself.  Now, I'm out on the street and I'm shopping all by myself.

Where's My Bike?

National Taiwan University

If only I had parked my bike out on the street.

At least there are instructions on how to get my bike on the upper level.

Religion in Daxue Village

One of the aspects of Taiwan I enjoy most is the prevalence of temples.  There are 30,000 temples in Taiwan.  Apparently that is more than any other country in Asia. The temples have been built by Buddhists, Taoists or practitioners of Chinese folk religion.  Pretty much every where you go you run into temples, large and extravagant, small and informal, or modest but distinctive.

A pint size temple in the Hakka Cultural Park which is within walking distance of our neighborhood.

This temple is on a table in a corner of the Gongguan Traditional Market which is across one of the main roads from Daxue Village.

One of the disappointments I've experienced living in our current neighborhood is the lack of temples.  2.6% of the population in Taiwan is Protestant, and they all seem to live in our community.  We've got a large Baptist Church, a larger Presbyterian Church and the Lutherans are here too. I'm not going to include photos, because you know what they look like.

We had a big surprise yesterday morning while taking our morning walk.  We strolled past Daxue Park which we had visited before.  This time, we approached the park from a different angle, and lo and behold - here is our local temple!!!

Now I feel that all is right with my world.  I've got at least one temple in my immediate neighborhood.  There are probably more, I just haven't figured out where to look yet.

No Matter Where I Ramble, Knitters are Nuts

National Taiwan University campus, which is across XinSheng Road from us, is lovely.

The groves of academe.

From looking at the directories, we can see that this is a very serious university dedicated to science and technology.  However, a few knitters somehow got into the school as is evidenced by this giant Tee pee.

My conclusion is that knitters are nuts.  https://www.jamarp50.blogspot.com/2015/07/bits-and-bobs-about-western-scotland.html

Let's Talk Trash

When I'm not thinking about Solomon/Soup, I'm thinking about trash.

There are two major differences between our current apartment and the one we rented last September. First, we paid $600 more for this apartment. Second, we have to take our own trash to the garbage truck.  There was no mention of trash disposal in the Airbnb description of this "Central Lush 2BR Apt @ Guting/Da-an".  And it never occurred to me to inquire about trash services because I'm an American and trash just magically disappears in my part of the world.

When we got here and read the information booklet about apartment rules and regulations, we discovered that we were responsible for sorting our trash and for taking it to the trash collection site.

 For advance  practise, we followed the map to the collection site expecting a giant dumpster.  There was nothing to indicate that we could leave our trash right there on the main street, so we called our landlady.  She explained that trash pickup occurs every night, except for Wednesday and Sunday, at 9:00 pm.  She told us if we couldn't cope she could come over and get our trash for us, but it seemed ridiculous to me to let her into the apartment every night for a month because we were too damn lazy.  However, learning to live with trash management has been challenging.  We have gone through at least 7 stages of emotion to reach acceptance.

7 Stages of Acceptance for Self Managed Waste

• disbelief
• pissed off (we're paying $600 to take out our own trash?)
• anxiety (how do we do this, where is the collection site, will we be late and have to take our trash home?)
• hilarity (we can't believe we're running through the streets with our night soil)
• desire for education (how do we sort the trash so the collection men don't yell at us?)
• resignation (we can do this)
• research (you can't believe how hard it was to find information on how to get rid of our trash.  I found lots of amateur blogs, but very little official information.)
• acceptance

Schedule

• Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, Sat   Blue bag trash and food waste
• Mon, Fri  Paper, flattened recyclables
• Tues, Thurs, Sat   3D recyclables like clean styro foam, cans, bottles, containers

How to Sort

• Buy official blue bags from 7-Eleven for the used toilet paper (remember - no flushing), and used Kleenex, diapers, napkins, all disgusting stuff and things you can't figure out
• Save paper bags to put your flattened paper items in, in an orderly manner
• Save plastic bags to put your flattened plastic items, in an orderly manner
• Place glass and plastic bottles in another bag. These items will be dumped into a bin and you will take that bag home with you
• Save plastic bags to put food waste in.  You don't have to take these bags home - they let you throw them into a bag on the truck.You can also use a bucket, but we aren't going to buy one.   

How to Do It

• When you hear the music (it sounds like an ice cream truck), walk in an orderly manner past people dining in charming restaurants four blocks to the parade of trucks that will take your trash
• Truck number 1: Blue bags
• Truck number 2: Food waste -dump it into the bins in the back.  This will be boiled up to feed the pigs.
• Truck number 3: Whatever recycle is being picked up that night (refer to the schedule above)

Wrong

The trash collection man yelled at me because he couldn't see what was in the American white plastic bag. The pink bag has mixed recyclables which is a no-no.  One blue bag has food waste in them is not allowed.  We also had tied up the white and pink bags which is discouraged because the collectors like to see what you're throwing out.

Right

We have 3 blue bags, one of which has food waste in it (we're still learning).  The bucket also has food waste but it's in an appropriate plastic bag inside.  The pink and white bags have bottles  - plastic and glass. Everyone was nice to us on this evening

We should get a big smile for this contribution. These small bags contain our flattened paper and plastic.  This is a week's worth of recycling.  I can't believe I have one enormous blue bin in Portland for each week's worth of recycling.

Unexplained Mysteries That Happen Along the Way

Taylor broke a planter.  Where does that go?

Now that I have trash out of my system, I can continue to share the more interesting parts of living in Taipei in future posts.  I will also be more mindful of my trash when I get home, and where ever I travel.

Street Fruit

We were walking with David and Chia the other day, making our way to the MRT station to take the train back to our apartment.  Before we made it to our destination we saw a man on the sidewalk with  boxes of pineapple and Mandarin oranges.  Chia wanted to buy a few pineapples.  However, the price of an entire box of pineapple was too good to be true: $200 TWD ($6.17 US).  But an entire box?  The salesman was charming and before we knew it he was packing the pineapple into bags and tucking them into David's duffel, and giving us each bags to carry.

Then  Chia noticed the Mandarins.  Of course it was a deal to buy a box of oranges. We turned that deal down and got half a box for $50 TWD ($3.08 US).  Now we had more fruit.  Chia was carrying Soup as well so all our hands were full.  But, what a deal and all the fruit is so delicious.