Around The World In 72 Days - Post Earthquake Stroll

 Let me stop you before you get your hopes up. This not going to be a post showing all the scenes of devastation around us from yesterday's earthquake. In Taipei in general, and in our area specifically, very little damage occurred. We were shaken up and taken out of our complacency but that's it. 

Because of the quake, we weren't really in the mood for taking a long metro ride out of town which was our original plan. We decided instead to just go for a walk and explore our neighborhood. Wife and decided this was a good excuse for us to go into photo shoot mode. It turned out the neighborhood had a lot to offer.

Off we go!

A common theme through out are the Grandchildren saying...

"Where's (fill in with Grandma or Grandpa as appropriate)" as we go wandering off after some shot or other. Or...

"Grandpa (or Grandma), get out of the street! You can't stand there and take pictures!"

(And yes, this is all a bit of role reversal with Wife and I know playing the wandering toddlers and 2.2. and 2.3 the parents)

Major Theme - Food

It is mind boggling just how many food options there are in just this rather small section of the city.

Then we have motorcycles and motor scooters

 

Taipei has vast coffee options

There is also Exotic Taipei Coffee, Cheap Taipei Coffee, Fancy Taipei Coffee just to name a few.

Taiwan is an Extremely capitalist culture. 

While the New Taiwanese Dollar is the official currency, there are many other subsidiary currencies as well.

Some even have their own banking systems

General Street Scenes

The Mandatory Temple Shot

Education

Education is valued very highly in East Asian cultures

Even baked goods are encouraged to seek out schooling

Personally, though, I found this outfit's recruiting a bit creepy.

Laundry

It is not a de-I neighborhood shoot without a Laundry Shot

Uncategorized

And of course...

SIGNS OF THE WORLD

Special, "We're Not Sure" Edition

Is this a school for Dancing? Contortionists? Chiropractic Work? Sadomasochism Studies?

Where Pigs Loving Brews Congregate?

And lastly...

The Place for Romance? Heart Transplants? Cannibalism?

Around The World In 72 Days - Taipei 101 & Dim Sum

We are returning you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Yesterday, our goal was to see the popular attraction, the Taipei 101 World Trade Center (one of the tallest buildings in the world with on of the fastest elevators in the world. In addition, 2.2 had researched that close by was a great Dim Sum restaurant that offered some of the best dumplings in the city. 

 Here is what the Taipei 101 tower looks like in model form.

 

 And here are shots from just before we entered.

Views from the upper, observation floor

Shockingly, as when we visited in 2017, the sky was very hazy. (If any of these pictures look similar to the ones I posted in 2017, that is because they are.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 However, I did not have 2.2 to model for me then.

 Nor did they have this neat light display.

This picture of the Mass Damper (to keep the building stable from high winds and earthquakes) is identical to that I took in 2017. As the Taipei 101 is still standing after today's quake, I guess it works.

 

DIM SUM

We had to wait 40 minutes to get seated but it was well worth it.

Stir-fried Pea Greens

That mass of white sticks on the top of the plate is ginger. Nobody else likes ginger so they made me take it.

Steamed Pork and Spinach Dumplings and Soup Dumplings

Pot Stickers, Pan Fried Dumplings

 We also had Vegetable Fried Rice and Pork, Won Ton Soup and Shrimp Siu Mai but the food was coming too fast to get pictures of everything. The dumpling skins were quite light, and the vegetables were very fresh in all the dishes. The Siu Mai and the Won Ton were my favorites.

SIGNS OF THE WORLD

Taiwan is a very civic minded culture. Everyone is expected to take care of even little things like platform gaps.

 Who was to know that Soy Bean Jelly is not Food?

Okay, I am happy to know that I should not pull on the lights to avoid danger. BUT WHAT THE HECK DO I PULL TO AVOID DANGER!

Around The World In 72 Days - SPECIAL EARTHQUAKE EDITION!

Just a few minutes before 8am local time here in Taipei, I was in the bathroom, on the toilet, before I was to take my shower. I feel a sensation of shaking. I look around. The sensation is getting more and more pronounced. I have a realization that I am experiencing what I have only read about before...an EARTHQUAKE. 

I vaguely remember that one should go to a door frame and hold oneself for support. The movement is side-to-side and I can clearly see the walls moving. I am not hearing anything crashing in the apartment. As the shaking is continuing, my mind is going to a strange space. I am not feeling fear. It is more an analytical space. I am looking at the walls moving (the shaking is just side-to-side thankfully) and I am wondering, "How much longer is this going to go?", and "Is the intensity of the shaking going to get worse?", and "If the walls start to go, what the hell do I do then?".

However, the shaking starts to subside and then stops. I go out and meet up with the rest of the family. No one has been hurt and miraculously there is actually very little damage considering all the things that could have been knocked off (you will see this in the pictures below). 

We still have power and internet. One can hear the city life moving around us. In under an hour the news comes through. This had an epicenter off the Eastern Coast near the city of Hualien which we visited in 2017. It is known as the earthquake capital of Taiwan. There it was 7.5. We've hear numbers here in Taipei of between 6.4 and 7.0. There are tsunami warnings so we decided to pass on going out to a town on the coast today. We're not excited about going on the metro in general today. We will probably just walk around our home neck of the woods. 

Where would you rather be when the earthquake hits?

Here (where Wife was)

Or here (where I was)

Examples of some of the apartment damage

Yet you will notice that all those glass bottles, in fact virtually every loose item, stayed put.

Experience of the Aftershock

 

Around The World In 72 Days - Grandchildren In Charge, A Food Shopping Experience

I intend to write in the near future about the interesting and very enjoyable experience of inter-generational changeover. Last night, after the night market experience, we agreed that 2.2 and 2.3 would take responsibility to go out locally and secure our dinner for us. As designated ATM, I was required to join. This gave me the opportunity to record the process as it unfolded.

 

 

Around The World In 72 Days - The No Facial / Night Market Flood Day

 Traveling with teenagers has required the massively planning obsessed Wife and de-I to let go and 'be one with the force'. In the words of the immortal 2.3, when asked what he wanted to do during this trip, "we will figure it out when we get there." And so as it was said, so it has become. 

We threw out a bunch of ideas. We wrote them down on slips of paper. We then proceeded to pick them out (each person taking a turn taking one out). We listed them. Our first choices. Get a facial (yes both 2.3 and I were up for this) and go to a night market for dinner. 

It is an interesting experience having grandchildren who have lived in China for years, have various apps that work better in Asia than most of the apps we use, and who are used to using these apps to both locate options and navigate to same. Off we went.

The weather here is pretty warm and humid during the day, getting cooler at night, and there is a lot of rain on and off. We found the first few options pretty quickly. However, we were put off by the prices that equaled anything we would have found in the US. This led to a more difficult search. We decided we were in a too posh part of town and started to walk back where our apartment was. While the teenage navigation team worked, I killed some time by taking some relatively innocuous pictures of some buildings.

Getting back to our neighborhood, we were tired and wanted something to eat. The grandkids have clearly shown they understand how the food scene works and have been pointing out how this or that (to Wife and I) non-descript place was, in fact, a local joint specializing in X, Y, or Z. We'd been going by this one place that specialized in Soup Noodles because it is right on the way to the Metro. 2.3 had marked it as a place to try.

Getting good pictures of teenagers is a challenge but I managed to get both 2.2 and 2.3 in a shot

We made one more attempt circling our general area to find the vaguely remembered spa without success. Wife and I were both beat so we headed back to the apartment to relax until time to go to the night market. 

Around 5pm we're ready to go but it is raining out. No rain has been called for in the forecast. When it stops we head out. It is a fairly short metro ride to this market. To our surprise it is clearly marked and very easy to find upon exiting.

There is a fairly famous temple right at the entrance to the market (of course you will have to go to Wife's blog to get the name because I can't remember it).

This night market trip was a bit of an experiment. Going to night markets (especially in Thailand) has been a mainstay of the #2 family traveling over the decade they've mostly lived in East Asia. They have a whole process related to it. Night markets are mostly something Wife and I have avoided because of a number of reasons (we don't eat a lot any more, we have very different tastes, we find it hard to figure out what things are, and we don't like staying up late at night). But we very much want to take advantage of our grandchildren's superior knowledge of Chinese culture and learn from them. 

As it turned out it was a mixed experience. Things were complicated by the rain continuing while we were there, the fact that the food scene was very different to the grandkids than the SE Asian markets they were familiar with, and the four of us learning how to communicate and interact. We learned a lot and I think it will hold us in good stead for the rest of our trip. Here is a set of videos that generally capture our experience.