Another Day

“So what country you from?” asked the taxicab driver in heavily accented English. I responded the US. “Very good, very good,” went the cab driver, “I visit America thirty years ago when I work on cargo ship.”

It always makes me a bit sad when I find an interesting person, but because of language it’s difficult to have a conversation. I did discover the nice silver haired taxicab driver had worked on a cargo ship for many years and visited the US, South America, and the coast of Africa. When the boat stopped in New Orleans, he and a friend had gone on a road trip of the US, passing through Ohio and going to NYC. Again, conversation was difficult so he just briefly touched on where he’d been and focused the majority of the conversation on the tall buildings in NYC – go figure. Anyway, it was an interesting talk on my way to some Taipei government building on my continued quest to get an ARC, Alien Residence Card. I had dropped my paperwork off last week. I rode the escalator to the busy second floor full of copy machines, people, and machines where you “take a number,” and though they told me to pickup my visa today it still wasn’t finished – ARG! I guess I’ll be making this same trip next Monday.

I stepped outside into the light rain and walked to the nearest MRT station to ride the blue line to my work. I got off at the exit for Sun Yet-Sen memorial hall. Every day when I’m walking to work I see people leaving SYS and crossing the street to the large McDonalds at the corner. I had some time to kill, so I decided to do the same. This is the first McDonalds I’ve visited in Taiwan and I was curious what one in Taipei would be like. The place looked upscale with upholstered seats and distinct angular looking tables. It struck me as strange, but they only had 2 types of hamburgers – a single and a Bigmac, most of the other sandwiches were fried chicken, fried fish, and something that looked like a sparerib burger. McFlurries were half the size as in the US and fries came in small and medium. The most distinctly Taiwan aspect was the rice bun sandwiches, with rice cooked in grease and then shaped to form 2 circular ½ inch thick buns. I’m usually pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but I must admit I’ve never been able to bring myself to try these rice buns or for that matter the rice sausages (rice cooked in meat grease and shaped into sausages) they sell in all the markets.