tuesday morning i headed to taiwan's bureau of administration for military service to ask about the specifics of my ability to stay in taiwan and still avoid conscription. so, to bore you with the details, due to the year in which i was born, i can stay in taiwan w/o being conscripted as long as the following hold true.
until i am of age 36 (according to taiwan counting, i am now 33)
* i do not stay for an uninterrupted full year in taiwan
* i do not stay for an uninterrupted four month period more than three times
so what does that mean? it means i can pretty much move back to taiwan for the rest of my life. if i were to start now, i would need to take a trip outside the country twice. good to be old.
afterwards, went to the museum of natural history. my uncle works there and had free tickets to the van gogh exhibit there. i enjoyed the art, especially seeing van gogh's early works, and the constrast of the darkness and bleakness, vs. the impressionism influences once he moved to paris. what i hated was the curation. the lighting was horrible. the drawings were housed in disgusting frames. they put physical barriers so that the closest you could get is approx 1 meter. if you raised your arm to point at something, you got yelled (yes, yelled!) at by the docents because they were afraid you'd ruin the artwork. the drawings were hung side by side, so tightly together that each picture was about 3 people deep. it also didnt help that everyone was listening to the audio guide, so no one was moving. and when you finally exited the exhibit, you entered the gift shop that was almost as large as the exhibit, where the docents (at least they were dressed the same) are more numerous than in the exhibit, and hawking the items at you.
afterwards, stopped by camera street to get a replacement lens cap. this time i got one with a string attached, so that i wouldn't lose the cap again.
then for lunch, went to this tempura house. this is taiwanese tempura, which is mainly fish cakes. this place has been open 40 years. my aunt used to go there when she was in high school. they've obviously done well for themselves. the handbasin to wash your hands is no longer the industrial metallic box with a rubber hose attached to the faucet. it's one of those fancy sinks that you'd expect to find in the bathroom of the most upscale restrooms.
at night, i went to the raohe(sp?) night market next to the songshan train station. that used to be the train station i would take to visit my maternal grandfather in taichung. it used to be just a parking lot and two tracks. now it's all nicely renovated, and all underground. the night market is a different matter. which shilin was tremendously crowded, raohe was virtually empty. all the vats of oil looked disgusting (instead of bubbling beautifully), as they didnt turn on the fire until you ordered. and the food, just not quite there. the stinky tofu was bland, though had a good garlic sauce. i also ordered an oyster pancake. that wasn't bad, and i'm glad i got quite a bit of oysters. there was a period about 10 years ago where instead of raising the prices, the vendors put less and less oysters in the pancake, to keep prices the same. it got to the point you had only 1 or 2 oysters, and not with it for NT$25. the prices are now NT$40 (~ US$1.25), and i like that it's now loaded with oysters.
observation: you can't get napkins in taiwan. instead, when you reach for a napkin at a food vendor, you get toilet paper. i suppose that the cost per piece is lower for toilet paper than it is for actual napkins. the problem is, toilet paper is meant to be used once, and designed to break apart at the slightest hint of water so as to not clog up your pipes. so you can imagine how that works out when you try to wipe your hands of grease or some liquid. but, i guess what's good enough for your ass is good enough for your mouth.
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