Parking tickets

The first time I saw one of these women, sitting with one foot on the ground and the other on her bycyle pedal, wearing some kind of uniform, the conical hat down to her ears, the mask around her mouth, and taking out of some pocket the ticket-printing machine, print out a ticket, which she would immediately put on the windshield of a car, I thouhgt she was having a field day putting fines.

Later, I saw her/them many days until somebody's explanation made me realize that I had been wrong. They do not put parking tickets as fines, they mark the time intervals during which cars are stopped in the parking zones. As in the picture I took the other day.

The car owner must then go pay what is owed—I guess before a few days— to any 7-11 or similar store. I found it quite odd, but it's not such a bad idea, because they save the cost of installing the automatic coin machines. You cannot get rid of the watchmen/women anyway.

Hot

Month of July in Taipei. As you can imagine, it is very warm. We have been over 36ºC today, according to the temperatures on some websites, very humid and with a burning Sun, even if there were some diffuse clouds overhead. The funny image, that I have not been able to save because I did not have my camera with me, was five or six scooters waiting for the traffic light to turn not just at the line, as they usually do, but 10 or 15 meters behind it, under the shadow of a footbridge, all very close to each other to better avoid the Sun. Special people!.

As for me, maybe recklessly, I went out jogging along the river this evening for while. I felt rather well again, better than last Saturday, but it looked as if I sweated my soul out. I was literally dripping, so much that I left a trail on the tiles at home .

Maybe tonight, when I get home, I will take a third shower. Summer.

Innocent smiles

I think I have already talked about the little children here, which can be very funny, particularly when they look at me shyly, with a half-made smile in their mouths, because, in fact, I am different. Many are very pretty, although there is a number of them that, maybe because of the way they are dressed up or just because they are like that, are rather ugly.

Today, when I was going back home with the bus after a successful raid of one of the Ikea stores in Taipei, there was a couple sitting in the row ahead of me with a probably around one-year old baby —two teeth above, three below— very pretty, with very big eyes, that was standing all the time. Suddenly, she discovered me and, as expected, looked at me fixedly and, as soon as I smiled at her, shone a big beautiful toothless smile, almost laughing. And she repeated that several times.

As somebody who knows what he is talking about once said, you only need a smile to wash away your worries. Certainly!, and I also remembered some things I should never forget.

Little pleasures

Memory always ends up fooling me, but I do not remember that we had so many sunny days last year at the beginning of May. I am not complaining, today and yesterday have been fantastic days, with blue skies, maybe occasionally crossed by a white cloud, and a Sun resembling the early summer sun from back home. It is warm, but still comfortable.

Yesterday at midday, I had lunch by myself —by stupid chance— and after eating I sat in a bench of the garden in front of my building at campus. Sitting under the shade of the palm trees, which were gently rocked by a cool breeze that maintained a perfect temperature and listening to the birds singing, while my eyes wandered over the green grass and the trees, I spent 20 minutes savouring pieces of watermelon and soaking in the quiet around me. And dozing off little by little too.

Little, and ephemeral, but very pleasant moments of an otherwise ordinary day, that I do not usually enjoy as much as I should.

Relax

I finished the three nights of observations that I had scheduled for this weekend on the early morning today. Luckily, I could finally do more than I imagined in a moment of almost despair during the first night. When I check the data more thoroughly, I will see if there is anything particularly interesting there.

Right now, I must go back to a normal schedule. I only slept a few hours again today, because I wanted to attend a talk at noon. So, I will be sleepy for a little bit longer. In any case, I realized, when I was going back home this morning, that the word of the day is relax, even if I have to do some work, of course.

Why?, well, as I was walking back home this morning, as on Friday morning, it was almost five and the sky was getting light. It was that very quiet moment, in the twilight, just before it is too bright. There were people already exercising around campus. The funniest ones, three old men that were doing something that resembled gymnastics, accompanied by choral music (buddhist?, religious?), very calm, which at that time seemed to engulf everything in it. In fact, it was that way on Friday, because yesterday they were chatting before starting, I guess. Very relaxed already.

Tremors

In life, you can find yourself in some situations where your legs shake. In others, emotions can be so intense that you might think that the earth is rocking. I experienced one last Friday in which it was really shaking. A few minutes after 8:30pm, suddenly, a couple of strong shakes; another earthquake. It was shorter than others I have felt here, but with apparently more intense oscillations. And, for the first time, with some reaction from the locals. Not that much, mind you. Later I found out that it had been of a 5.5 magnitude. I guess that we can notice it better in our tall and narrow building, but I think it was the first one I registered since last year.

I Remember You

When I walk from Shida to the campus of Taida, I must cross Roosevelt Rd, a wide avenue. I usually take one of the two underpasses that are between Keelung Rd and the main gate of Taida. There is also an elevated pass and some pedestrian crossings, but it is not really worth it to wait.

The first underpass is usually deserted —even if there were some girls sitting on the steps today—, barely decorated and recently painted again.

The other one, near the Gongguan night market is different. In fact, it has six exits from three arms that meet in the middle of the street, with fake decorative columns, posters about Taida or some map of the nearby streets. It is usually fairly crowded and with people selling different things: old books, flowers, necklaces or combs, etc. Many times, there is also an old man selling, well, I do not know what he is selling, but he has apparently been there for many years.

This afternoon when I walked down this pass, I heard a familiar music, though. I immediately recognized the accords of the Skid Row song, I Remember You. A young guy with looks half-way of punk and sleaze style and with his arms full of tattoos, was singing it. He had the guitar case open at his feet with some old records and similar things in it. His was, obviously, a personal cover of the song—it is not easy to sing it— but I did not mind. In a day full of nice songs, I walked back to my office humming the tune of that song I had not heard in such a long time, but I had always liked. And it got me thinking...

Clash

Different cultures, such as Taiwanese or Japanese, deal with things in different ways. Then, it must also be taken into account that each person inside a culture is probably like a very different island from the next one. The result?. Sometimes there are very strange encounters, almost collisions.

I witnessed a colossal one yesterday. In the end, we did not know what to do, whether to laugh or to get annoyed at the surrealism surrouding it, when we realized that we had wasted two hours in a meeting that had turned irrelevant at the last possible moment. I will not go into details, but the more I think about, the funnier it is. Some people are truly special.

By the way, anybody interested in doing a postdoc in Astrophysics in Taiwan?

Cartoons

I have never been to Japan, yet, but when I think about it, a mix of high-tech and manga images come to my head. Taiwan is not the same, but many people say they look alike. Sometimes, I feel I am living in a cartoon land. As an example, this figure that sits at the entrance of the Shida campus in Gongguan

Nobody has managed to give me an explanation of its meaning, but it is taken care of: changes in decoration, it is clean. I cannot imagine anything like this in Europe.

Noodles

Almost at the end of our visit to the Taiwan Folk Village, when we were going back to our hotel, I could see this

recently made noodles left to dry to the air and the Sun of that morning. From what I have been told, this is, more or less, the traditional way to do it and, depending on the different ambient conditions and how strong the wind is, the noodles may have different characteristics. For instance, Hsinchu noodles are famous, very thin noodles on account of the wind of the place.

When I took a closer look at these, it was impressive

and the smell of pasta filled the air. I was almost suddenly hungry.

Cloudy ceiling

So, this is how the Taipei 101 looked for most of the day.

I wonder if it was sunny at the top.

Exceptional audience

Last week's Monday was the full moon and it also was the last day of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations. All in all, two weeks. We had dinner in a restaurant in front of our campus and when we left, around 7:30pm, we walked by the small temple close to it. This time, there was a small truck with a big square hole or window on its right-hand side to be used as the stage for a puppet show.

The show was already on, with the usual amount of shouts and special effects, but the audience consisted of only a woman on one side and a man standing behind one of the doors of the temple. Fortunately, it seems that it did not matter if there were a few, or no, human onlookers, because the performance was intended to entertain the gods that live inside the temple. I wonder how the puppeteers will know if they liked the show.

Neighbours

My kitchen window faces the same alley where the entrance to my building is. In the balcony there, I have the washing machine and some space where I can hang clothes to dry. The alley is fairly narrow and you can often hear how the neighbours of different buildings go along with their lives, because it resembles more an inner court. So, some days I can hear how somebody sings in a karaoke or, once in a while, a baby crying inconsolably . A while ago, though, I could hear the same baby, probably, laughing, in that amazing way that babies do using their whole body. Happiness.

Triangle

If you read this today, maybe you will still have the chance to see it. These days, Jupiter (mù xīng) and Venus (jīn xīng) are getting close to conjunction, and the Moon has joined them very close today. All together creates a very nice triangle up in the sky. And in a day so beautiful as today —we are very lucky lately— the scene was complete with the last colors of sunset. Can you tell which is which?

Dialogues

I would have never imagined it. It was after 9pm, at the same time that my (for pedestrians) traffic light turns green, a scooter and a SUV stop almost in front of me. Before I can step down onto the road, the SUV driver gets out of his car, walks towards the scooter driver with a scowling face, says something to him and gives him a big shove. While I begin crossing the street, they start talking. I thought there could be a brawl right there, but no, nothing in the end. Who knows what could have happened before.

I had read that these things happened from time to time, but after seeing so many weird things in the street traffic, I was beginning to believe that they did not care at all. Well, looks like bad temper is universal.

Questions

One of the advantages of being a foreigner, and looking the part, is that I save myself the bother of being stopped by people making some poll or getting signatures for any campaing in the streets, or to be offered too many shop flyers, or similar things. I would not escape in Europe or the US —as I did not, I was asked once if I wanted to register to vote in their elections—, but here they see me coming and I can tell in their faces how they are quickly making a probability estimate of my understanding any Chinese and, with good reason, they decide it is not worth it.

One day last week, as I was walking along the Gongguan zone, I went past an army of middle-aged women, dressed with white trousers and dark blue polos, that tried to stop anybody that was around. They were probably from some kind of cultural, or even political, association. They looked at me, with a slightly disappointed face, as if thinking: one that gets away. Well, I do not think I would stop for long even if I understood the language. Of course, you never know; I think I am more peaceful here.

Student activities

I have been seeing them in the little esplanade in front of my building at work since a few weeks ago. Groups of boys and girls, stretching and practicing different coreographies. O I could hear their cries and laughs from my office, but I was not sure what they were doing there. Maybe they were in some kind of body expression classes, or taking dancing lessons, because there was also music sometimes. Or maybe they were just rehearsing some play. The weather is generally good and they have enough space there to put a lot of people.

I finally realized what it was today, when I saw the large number of people at the bottom of the research building again and also, some hundred meters down the road, in front of the auditorium or gymnasium that is located half-way along the central street of campus. The shouts, choreographies, girls climbing on top of boys and jumping or making somersaults and expecting somebody else to catch them before they crash into the ground, pom-poms on the grass: they are practicing for some cheerleading show. Probably one of those competitions that are everywhere these days.

I am not at all surprised, because of the american influence on many things and because I already saw an example a few months ago in a student show in the Shida central campus. Even if some people won't like it, these are also multicultural activities, aren't they?.

Road crash

When I was going back home last night, I saw, at just one block from my apartment, the first example of a road accident that had happened a few minutes before. There was an ambulance on the other side of the street, its doors open, three or four policemen measuring the distances of the trajectories of the vehicles and, as I walked by, I could see a scooter driver sitting on the sidewalk and another one on a stretcher with the ambulance guys taking care of him, but he seemed to be moving. Everything looked like a crash between two scooters, but I could be wrong.

Before coming to Taiwan, I read in some guide that there were many road accidents here —I am not at all surprised—, but apart from all kind of bumps and dents on the frames of cars and scooters, and many almost-absurd evasive maneuvers in the general driving, I had not yet seen a scene like that. In the long run, you end up seeing everything.

Newlyweds

During the lunch break in the meeting I told you about yesterday, I went out of the building after having lunch to enjoy the wonderful weather outside. There was a very nice temperature, with a bright Sun and a predominantly blue sky. Suddenly, I see a girl with a wedding dress, with the bridegroom at her side (but brides are much easier to spot, with all the volume of the dress), posing for pictures on the grass in front of me. I remembered that I had seen a couple when I arrived to the meeting at 9am, but I had not paid any attention.

Then I looked around and I saw two or three couples more near the sculptures to my right. No, four, five if I count the ones taking a picture in front of the sports center. More behind the door or near the walkway!. A true plague of newlyweds posing for pictures or looking for a place to do it. Alone with the photographer or with their families. It was almost scary.


It was still full of newlyweds and photographers when I left, after 4pm. I do not know what could be going on in the sports center: a competition of wedding dresses?, a picture competition?, marriages in bulk?. At least, it was an ideal day for taking pictures.