today ash and i got up and walked for awhile, eventually ending up at the ximending market. (at least i think that’s the one we went to.) this is i guess a trendy market for the younger people. there were lots of people there, and lots of shops. there were also a lot of street vendors, selling food, trinkets, purses, clothes, etc. and some street artists. i had a small corndog, as well as part of an onion pancake ash got. they were both good. we walked around this area for awhile. then we hopped on the mrt (subway) and took it to taipei 101.
once we got to taipei 101, we decided to eat lunch in the foot court area that is in the mall that is attached to the taipei 101 building. my legs and feet were already hurting quite a bit from all the walking i’d done the last few days, but i ended up walking around the foot court trying to find what i wanted to eat. i went to a dumpling place, but they had mostly seafood stuff. so i ended up going somewhere else and getting fried wontons. i also went to another shop and got a preztel dog and a lemonade to drink. the fried wontons were good. the preztel dog was fair. while we were eating i started talking about the trip thus far, and my original desires to consider this a trial toward a possible long-term move to some other country like russia. i had already been feeling down about things but was trying to do some stuff for my last day, but the conversation really bummed me out. at the end of it, i didn’t really care about doing anything. i mean anything. at all. period. so i told ash i didn’t want to go to the observation deck any more, and we could go have a beer or go home or whatever, as i didn’t care.
ash was a bit confused by my change in plans i guess, and didn’t really understand why. he also wanted to go to the observation deck. i told him he could go if he wanted, i didn’t care. so we ended up going to gordon biersch (where tim and i had gone) and had a beer. i had another winter bock.
the previous week ash and i had gone by a dr. marten’s store that was in the taipei 101 area when we ate at kiki’s, and i had decided it’d be kind of cool to buy some docs in taipei. the reason being, they last a number of years, so when i was wearing them i could say “i got these in taiwan.” so we walked over to the doc marten’s store. we went through a park, where they were preparing for the lantern festival. people were putting up lighted floats and such. i also learned at this point the new chinese year is the year of the tiger.
(aside: i later learned while the years cycle every 12 years (zodiac-ish), the aspect also changes, and this year just happens to be the year of…the white tiger! (you recall what i told you that was slang for, right?) well, that certainly makes me more excited about this coming year.)
well, we went to the store and i looked around and i couldn’t really find anything i was interested in. i guess i could have bought a generic pair of docs, but my heart wasn’t in it and i only wanted to buy a pair if they really stood out to me. and nothing did. so i left the store empty-handed.
we took the mrt (subway) back to ash’s place, then we went to meet esther for supper. she’d wanted to take us out for supper, so we went to a place that was sort of japanese-ish. the menu didn’t have much i was too excited about, but esther got a bunch of different stuff (trying to meet some of my taste interests). some of it ended up being pretty good. she was very friendly and nice, and also paid for the meal. at the end, she gave me a gift box that her family’s japanese-style bakery makes. i think they’re mostly used for wedding gifts or something. we thanked her and headed back to ash’s.
once there, i talked with ash a few hours about various things, including how i was feeling and why as far as being depressed. we kind of had to cut the conversation short because we were both tired, plus we had to get up early to get me to the bus for the airport the next morning.
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failure is not an option. it's a requirement.
yeah, I was enjoying our conversation too, but the thought of having to translate chinese on less than 4 hours of sleep wasn’t very appealing. But, how your trip here somehow negates you ever living or going to Russia is beyond me. It’s so far beyond me, that I’m creating a new acronym to describe it:
DTL – Depressed Terry Logic. It’s a type of ‘logic’ whereby Terry turns positives into negatives for reasons that anyone who knows him can’t figure out. (I’m totally serious about this. I’ve had several conversations over the years with people who know you and we invariably walk away from the conversation scratching our heads as to why you think that way.)
I thought you handled yourself here extremely well. In fact, I was quite impressed by your ability to stay calm when faced with a language you can’t understand. You did better than I did when I went to Holland for the first time. You have all the makings of a good traveler: 1. not freaking out 2. ability to adapt to the local situation 3. not trying force everyone to do things ‘the way we do it back home’ 4. ability to navigate a foreign city (that BTW doesn’t mean ‘not getting lost’ — everyone gets lost. It means ‘getting lost and then being able to fix the situation without panicking’ 5. being sensitive to the local culture, etc.
You aren’t ready for Russia yet, but you could be in a year or two if you started working towards it. Don’t take yourself out of the game for phantom ‘reasons’.
I really enjoyed your visit (except when you decided not to go to the top of 101 — although I’m sure I’ll get over that some day) and hope you don’t give up on travel.