The Best Dessert From The Night Market

    Night Markets in Taiwan are Huge! They occur Every Night and so are one of the most common ways to spend time with friends. They are usually blocks and blocks of food and clothing vendors crowded with thousands of people. Taipei city must have about 10 markets that I have heard of, and I know there must be more. Then each city throughout Taiwan has they're own night market. When I played Bike Polo in Taizhong two weeks ago, we ended the night off at they're largest night market where we got food and beers and just hung out people watching.
          A few weeks ago my cycling friends took me to the Shida Night Market that is about a 10 minute walk from my house. It was the first Night Market I had been to in Taiwan. There they introduced me to my now favorite food in the world, I could eat this every night. Its called 冰火菠蘿油 Bīng huǒ bōluó yóu, it means "cold, hot pineapple butter" Its the greatest!!! Warm bread topped with crystallized pineapple sugar and sandwiched inside is sweet cold butter! It might not sound that good, but it is the best thing I have ever eaten. I go back to Shida night market each week just to go to that stand and get one. 
     In other news, tomorrow is mid-terms... I feel confident that I will do just fine. I have seen my language abilities improve leaps and bounds since being here these last 6 weeks. I excited to see how much I can improve within the next 6 weeks till I  move to Nanjing, and then to see in one year once I make it back to the States, I should be speaking like a native. 
     School is over in 4 weeks, and I am starting to plan my intended cycling trip to the Southern tip of the island. So now I have been asking people who have some experience cycling round Taiwan about what I can expect, but more of that later.

冰火菠蘿油

Shida Night Market.

 

The Little Things...

     Yes, I feel it is the little things about a place that make it stick in my memory. I lived in Oakland for just under 6 years and I will never forgot the wonder house I called home, for more reasons than I have space to write about here. Then I moved to San Francisco for about 4 months and for the most part hated it, because I lived on a Hill... a big hill. And I biked up and down that big hill everyday for 4 months. My time in SF was dull, nothing note worthy happened during that time, living in SF had little impact on my life. But I will never forget living there only because of biking up and down that hill.

     I just walked in the door 20 minutes ago after walking 4 blocks down the street in flip-flops and my soccer shorts carrying back two jugs, 3 gal. of fresh water that cost me $0.69 US. I cannot drink water from my tap so I have been looking for  a water re-fill station since moving into my new apartment, and I'm glad I finally found one because the empty 1.5 gal. water jugs were starting to pile up on my balcony and it seemed a waste to toss them out to buy a new jug instead of just re-filling them. A new 1.5 gal. jug costs $1.30 US, so I just two dollars, hooray!

     I know that paying a deposit on bottles is fairly common, but I have never experienced it my self until a few days ago when I was charged $52 NT for my $50 NT bottle of beer. "Now hang on a minute!" I said... Well I would have said “等一下吧！” But then they explained that I had to pay $2 NT extra as a deposit. So now when I go to get a fresh beer I just bring back the old bottle and only pay $50 NT, and that other 2 kuai (kuai mean $1) just stays in the system, I suppose until my last day in Taipei when I return to the shop with an empty bottle and and a smile on face and they'll ask "Another bottle Mr. Allen?" “冷先生再一瓶呢？” to which I'll reply  "Not today thanks, I'll just be taking my 2 kuai back." 2 kuai is about $0.07 US.  It'll be a small, but important victory to get it back.

     Lastly, in a continued attempt to seriously grab the Chinese Bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground (by that I mean get really good at speaking chinese) I found a local Taipei resident who is in a similar boat with learning English. I'm moving to China in August to study at a university and I feel linguistically under prepared. He is moving to New York in January to study at a university and also feels under prepared. So we've teamed up for language exchange. Today was our first meeting, first hour speaking all English, second hour speaking all Chinese. I have plenty of opportunities to speak Chinese with teachers and class mates during the 15-25 hours I spend on campus each week, but this language exchange is great opportunity to study and practice my chinese during my free time.......  my free time away from studying and practicing on campus........... But he's a cool guy and our first meeting went really well and I think I'll get a lot more out of this summer because these extra hours I'm putting in.

Recycling

I remember at San Francisco State University the only refuse stations that had three bins; Compost, Recycling and Trash, were located by the student center. Everywhere else on the large campus was just a single Trash can, and sometimes there was a Recycling bin. But looking into the cans it was easy to see people didn't pay much attention to what they threw away into what can, as long as they threw it away... But few people realize that the "away" in "throw away" is a myth. There is no such place as "away" People are usually more concerned to throw their trash out of sight, thus, they don't take much notice to what trash belongs in which bin.

I think this is because in America there are many places to hide all our garbage. I am often reminded by the locals that Taiwan is a very small island. There is certainly no such place as "away" here. The recycling program that Taiwan government put into effect in the 1990's is very comprehensive. First off, and what I feel is most important, it is ILLEGAL To Not Recycle. Residents that do not properly separate their Recyclables from not Recyclables (as well as Compostables) are fined by the Taiwan Environmental Protection Agency for not complying. I could only imagine some crazy folks back home getting hit with that fine and arguing something like "It's my right as an American NOT to recycle!" anyway....

Not only is there lots of recycling going on, it is very thorough recycling. As you can see in the pictures below (this is in a hallway of the Foreign Language Department at National Taiwan University) there are four cans sitting together. PAPER, ALUMINUM PACKAGING, PLASTIC BOTTLES, then TIN & ALUMINUM CANS.  Six feet away, on the other side of the hall you have PAPER CONTAINERS (i.e. coffee cups) and PLASTIC CONTAINERS (i.e. lids, plastic cups). In the States, these six recycling bins are all condensed into the single Blue Can.

Recycling in Taiwan is a source of Civic Pride. The people realize what a small place they live in, and if they were to handle there trash situation they way most of the world does, it wouldn't take long before their tiny island is engulfed in garbage and turned into a pretty shitty place to live. They recycling rates have improved so much with the new recycling regulations put into place over the last few decades, that government officials from countries throughout Asia and Europe are coming to Taiwan and taking notes on how to drastically reduce the amount actual "Garbage" while increasing the amount of recyclables that can go back into the system as Raw Material (a small island like Taiwan doesn't have limitless raw material) So, Recycling, as handled in Taiwan makes good environmental and economical sense.

SIDE NOTES; Tomorrow I'm heading to Taizhong 台中 to participate in my first ever Bike Polo Tournament in Taiwan, HOORAY!!! On campus today I found a place to practice piano after class, HOORAY!!! 

New Chinese Words Of The Day (other than lesson vocab) －發抖 fādǒu To Shake (i.e. too much coffee)。  －驚訝 jīngyà Surprised，Amazed。－要緊 yàojǐn Essential。

Walking around town after class 6/23/11

Today after class I went a walk to a music shop a few blocks behind campus looking to buy an old guitar. I didn't buy a guitar, but I did find this awesome park that I had often seen from campus, but was never sure how to get there. As luck would have on the way back from the shop I walked right past the entrance, so I went in for a stroll.







I  saw a lot of tile and concrete and bricks through out the park, like they used a bunch of old building materials as back fill while they were creating the park. Anyway, behind the bathroom down a small hill I found this half of a tomb stone with a faded inscription and a dragon sculpture on it, pretty cool.











Here is a three shot series of the city from the top of a hill in the park.

1.) North Westish

2.)Northish

3.) North Eastish

I really liked the mud flap on this scooter of a Beautiful young woman standing in front of a lake.

I also walked past a police station which happened to home to a fleet of police scooters. Scooters are unbelievably common here, believe me. Most of the police patrol on scooters.

Broken glass placed into wet cement on the top of your wall is a simple yet effective means to keep folks outta your yard.

My Kitchen

 I just bought this gas cooker today for $565NT, which is about $20, and I put it out on my patio, which is now a patio/kitchen.

Dumplings and beer. No better dinner.