taiwanese people are CRAZY about lines

seriously. they see a line and just herd behavior into it. waaay more than in america. I guess it’s nice, like being part of the group? but it gets ridiculous. there’ll be no one in line for a street stall, but if it ever gets above 4 people in line, oh man, it’s gonna be 10 people long in less than a minute.

here’s an example. they just opened this store called uniqlo across from my gym.  aparently it’s like the gap of japan. they opened yesterday. this is one of the two lines out in front of the store. one of two. there’s another one.

 

people are craaazy

taiwanese healthcare

so now that the three day weekend/holiday is over, i was finally able to get to a hospital.  (they close all but the emergency room on sundays and holidays.)

i show up, find internal medicine, hunt down gastro, and tryto figure out what to do next. this super great old nurse grabs me and literally holds my hand to the registration desk. then she makes some joke and everyone laughs except me? "please do something for this poor hopeless foreigner." and everyone does! seriously, how nice is everyone here. so helpful to the dumb american.

so i meet the doctor and he’s fairly helpful, there are a couple mistranslations but his english is probably better than my spanish.  anyway, he gives me some meds for my stomach. slightly different but he recommends it. time to go pay.

edit for parents: the drug is called salazopyrine, it's got a slightly different active ingredient. they use the same mechanism but one has a sulfate group on it, it doesn't get recommended as much because some people are allergic to it. it's the same thing as in aspirin that people are allergic too, so i should be fine. also, some people apparently react suuuper well to it compared to mesalamine. so i figure this might be nice thing to try for a while what with me being in a flare right now. one rare side effect is extreme depression in young men, so if the blog gets really weepy over the next month for no reason, we'll know why lol

i get up to the payment counter and i bust out my taiwanese health insurance card that everyone working in this country gets. she rings me up: 350 nt aka less than 12 dollars. for seeing a doctor and a month of pills. in the usa, the pills alone cost 35 a month, a meeting with a doctor is like at least 30, and all of that’s with insurance that has to get paid for back home! I love this country!

here’s hoping obamacare is this good when it gets all the kinks ironed out. no complaints here.

breaking news: friend?

I made a friend today. her name is madelaine and she is from switzerland and she is here for school and we met because asian kids in a grocery store wanted to take pictures of us.

then we talked about buying cereal and yogurt. maybe we will continue to be friends? time will tell…

anyway this is my life now. I should hire people to take pictures of me with other people so they’ll be my friends. this is the lesson I learned today.

taiwanese animals

all the dogs here are waaaay better behaved than the ones in america.  the vast majority walk slightly behind their owner, whether they’re on a leash or not, and I’ve never seen two dogs out for a walk get in a fight. I don’t know if it’s because we spoil dogs back home or what, but the dogs here are great.

which makes it less terrible when they’re sitting in the kitchens at restaurants or on top of unused tables. there’s no taboo on dogs here, they can hang pretty much wherever they want. lots of stores have like, a spokesdog. maybe the owner doesn’t want to leave it at home, I dunno. but they just hang out by the register and don’t bother anyone. 

wild dogs are a pretty common thing, and cats are allll over the place.  I see like 8 cats a day when I spend a decent amount of time outside. they’re very shy, but the dogs totally just want to be your friend. I always want to pet them, but I also don’t want fleas.

so moral of the story, nobody eats dog here? taiwanese people all say that’s the koreans giving asia a bad name, but the people who visited korea say nobody did it there either. lots of finger pointing and no one eats dog?

trains

okay so people probably know that I live right next to the mrt, taipei’s subway system.  I want to have an article about trains, because I’m just still so excited about them. every day, whenever I get on a train, I just think, “wow, I’m gonna get on a train!”

I guess I was train-deprived as a child, I’m just way too into it now. standing with other people, or even better, all by yourself in an empty station, little red lights on the ground near the tracks start flashing in time with each other. there’s a rumbling noise that gets louder and higher as the train comes down the tunnel, and a huge wind just rips through the tunnel. it smells fresh, I don’t know why, I can’t imagine them putting air-fresheners in the tunnels, but it’s usually really hot, and it’s just this big refreshing relief, and then you get to ride on a train! sometimes they’re even pink and covered with cats! advertisers pay to cover the trains in cute things, how great it this country.

seriously, it’s like one of the highlights of my day every single day. 

okay that’s it for trains. I’m gonna miss trains when I leave here.

saaad day

so now everyone’s gone.  90% of the princeton review teachers, nicole, the friends I met through nicole, everyone, all in one sad weekend. admittedly, it was kind of an awesome weekend, but now that’s over and I’m left with crumbs. well not crumbs, I have jenny, thekla, jack, and angelica, but I never really hang out with jack or angelica and jenny and thekla have their own people.  we’ll probably still hang out outside of work, but probably less because there won’t be a really fun big crowd.

solution: gonna go find this group that plays ultimate frisbee, make them be my friends, and then have lots of fun with them. added bonus: I get to play ultimate again. so rolling with the punches over here. 

still don’t know about the tpr full time job, might find out by friday, but I don’t know how soon it would start.

solution: go traveling around taiwan with my savings for the couple weeks until that job starts, and if I don’t get it, call around to find something else.  odds seem somewhat in my favor right now though.

other than that, been reading a book or two and sleeping late.  nothing huge going on.