Sunday, March 12, 2006

One Down

Well, today was the first cockroach battle of the season. I had a feeling the first house invasion would be coming, we had been seeing more cockroaches in the alley. I walked out of my bedroom and saw him running down the hall. Carly's bedroom is right next to mine and she heard my scream. As I panicked and ran back in to find a weapon, she really panicked, yelled something like "Forget this!" and ran into the spare room. So, left to deal with it myself, I put on the only shoes I had in my room- flip flops and peeked into the hallway. Cockroaches do scare me, and the only way I can deal with them is to get really, really angry. So I stomped on him and shouted "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you" Whew! Thankfully Carly emerged to deal with clean up. He was huge, too. Yucky. Needless to say, I went around and replaced all the cockroach bait traps.

On a better note, I've had a few laughs today at the absurdity of life here. I was having scrambled eggs at my favorite resturant for lunch and enjoying the company of a good book (My Antonia by Willa Cather). I looked up and saw a girl going upstairs. She had those sweatpants on with the writing on the butt. Usually they say things like Cute or Perfect or Juicy, but her said... "Responsible" Yes, because that's something you need to advertise on your behind!

I had a doner kebab for dinner at the Taipei 101 area (yummy!) There was a woman in line behind me (a foreigner) who wanted to order a doner and one plain roll: not a sandwich, just the bread. Well, such a thing just wasn't possible. Even the manager came over to explain that it wasn't on the menu, so it wasn't allowed. She got really frustrated, and I had to smile. That's one of the hardest things, I think, for foreginers to get used to here. It's not about customer service, it's about the rules: in offices, stores, resturants and even schools. Even if the rule is totally absurd, or makes no sense in the situation, it has to be followed. If I try to point out the fact that it makes absolutely no sense, the emloyee looks at me like I'm a nut and says "... but it's the rule!"

And speaking of 101, I love going to movies at the theaters there. The concessions are really resonably priced at the "Candy Bar". Yep, the sign is up there in bright neon, but do you think there is any candy for sale. Nope. You can buy a hot dog, a coke or a churro, but no candy, not even a chocolate bar.
Talk about disappointment.

Posted by Kathleen @ 8:00 PM