Strange marketing tactics....

Brian (my older brother, for those of you not related to me) told Wil about a beverage that he simply HAD to try...marketed in a yellow bottle, 'P' is sold as a sporting drink, but tastes more like cream soda. It really isn't bad. Shame about the name.

This photo was taken on Sunday, October 9th at the Taipei Train Station (which, for those who care, is located directly above the main MRT station.) After clowning around with 'P', we took the train to Fulong beach, where Brian's old roommate, Jesse, has a place and was holding a Thanksgiving dinner. It took about an hour and twenty minutes, but it seemed a little longer, being that we had boarded the car with a woman we dubbed 'the fishwife'. She had no fishhusband, but boy did she have an arsenal of fish. Actually, we are not sure WHAT was in those buckets...There were about 12 people at Jesse's. We had chicken instead of turkey, and there was no stuffing (nothing competes with my Mom's anyway) but everything was delicious. There was even pumpkin pie. A good time was had by all.

The next day was Double-Ten Day (10/10). This is Taiwan's national holiday, and there was therefore no school or work. Brian doubted that the National Palace Museum would be open, but I checked a 'lonely planet' and it said that the museum is open every day of the year. Not only was it open--it was free! I seem to remember that when I was here before, I went on New Year's day and it was also free. The National Palace Museum is really quite amazing; if I have my story straight, Chiang Kai-Shek (despite the fact that nearly everything else he did was evil) and the Kuomintang saved all the relics, artworks and artefacts that he could from being destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. It was all sent to Taiwan, so that Mao Tse-Tung couldn't erase several millenia worth of culture and history. Only about a 6th of the entire collection is on display at any one time--the rest is hidden away in some secret location in the mountain at the base of which the museum sits. So it actually takes a couple of years to see the whole collection. They were doing renovations while we were there (and will be until June 2006, apparently) so the amount they were showing was even smaller. They were showing a selection of Buddhist manuscripts, an emperor's (unnecessarily extensive) collection of stamps (as in the name chops) and inkstones, jade works, and bronzeware (mostly ceremonial eating vessels).

After that, we went to the Shrlin (no, that's not a typo...) Night Market, which is RATHER large. It was still early, so it wasn't too crowded. We wandered into one part of it which was mostly arcade games and those annoying claw things....one of them had DORAEMON (I always thought it was a cat, but it might be a dog...anyway, kids go nuts for these things), so Wil had to give it a go. We spotted (Wil spotted) a store that sold DSs (it stands for dual screen--it's some video game thing...Wil's been on about them for some time now....) and of course had to go in there....Wil drooled for a while...

So, that's about it for now--we will post again when we are feeling interesting enough to read about....