I wouldn’t be surprised if things here get a little quiet; since just about everything happening to me qualifies as a new experience, a lot of it will probably end up on the travel-and-expat blog. I could announce its updates here, but I think most readers here follow that one as well, though the converse isn’t true. That one’s for friends, family and coworkers, some still at our same company, so I try to keep it a bit sanitized and keep any kvetching here.
Today was meant to be our day to take off from work and do lots of shopping and chores, but Rudder ‘s caught a cold and elected to stay in bed in the hotel all day. He’s generally pretty stoic, so that probably means he’s feeling entirely rotten. I’m feeling great today, with lots of energy – paradoxically, sometimes that means I’m just about to catch his disease, so I figured I’d better take advantage of all the energy to get everything done myself, just in case. We move in to the apartment Friday night, anyway, so getting some things done was essential.
The first thing was to be in the apartment to let the guy in to install cable. We’d been told he’d be there at ten, but he didn’t show up until 11 – apparently some things are universal. Rudder had considered staying at the apartment to take care of that, but decided he’d be more comfortable in the hotel – I figured my shopping tolerance was probably only a couple of hours anyway, so being freed to go earlier wouldn’t have helped. After the experience of driving home last night, I decided I was too chicken to drive in Taipei without an able navigator/observer, even with a GPS, so I cabbed it. (Really need to figure out the bus system here.) Arfter an hour or so, the cable guy left, leaving the TV working (though not a great picture) but the internet not. I set off for a housewares place someone at work had recommended, and scored a sheet, pillow shams (can’t seem to find actual normal cases here), duvet cover, duvet (ours will be arriving but not for weeks, so the spare will go on the spare bed), and 2 pillows (ditto); enough flatware for the two of us until our full set gets here, chopsticks, chopstick rests and those Asian ceramic soup spoons, a traveling chopstick/spoon set because I notice my coworkers use them int he cafeteria (yes, there are disposable ones there. Shut up, it was cheap); mugs for us to take to work; and probably other stuff I’ve forgotten. (Incidentally, all that together cost less than a third of the so-expensive-we-returned-them sheets and duvet cover.) I would have bought plates, pots, and even a fake Xmas tree but couldn’t carry any more home in a cab.
(Yes, I really would have bought a tree. We like real trees but don’t know if they have them here, and anyway we’re getting sick of not being able to have a tree at all on years we travel for the holiday because of fire hazards. We buy ornaments to commemorate places we’ve traveled to so as you can imagine we have a shitload of new ornaments we can’t wait to use. So this is something we’ve wanted.)
The shopping was probably far more productive alone, actually. It’s coniderably easier when I don’t have argue and get agreement between two different tastes on every stupid sheet pattern. He doesn’t seem to dislike the one I got, anyway – I brought back pictures.
I had so much stuff I decided to make an extra trip leg and take it back to the apartment instead of just going to the hotel and ferrying it later as I’d planned; good thing because the (wonderful helpful and friendly) doorman told me the cable company had called and “might be here at 3 to fix the cable”. I have no idea how they knew to call him; I don’t understand how things work here at all yet. It was 2, so I went off to the hypermarket to buy a phone and to try to get my toll-pass card loaded up so we can get to work tomorrow. I finally found the place to do that – conveniently, the main one in the city is in the foyer of the market two blocks from us. (If you imagine a Walmart on top of a giant supermarket on top of a small mall, you will have a good idea of this place. It’s a Geant, called I-My in Mandarin, and is right across the street from a Carrefour which is exactly the same thing. Opposite both is a mall. This place is the polar opposite of the Netherlands, shopping-wise.)
When I got back to the apartment, the doorman said the realtor guy (who functions as a realty-management person too) had called to tell him our phone should be working (it isn’t). A cable guy came not at 3 but at 4:30, but after an hour was unable to fix the problem; if you haul the (large) TV into the dining room the picture is perfect, but I don’t plan to do that. No joy on the internet, which I’d much rather have than TV any day. Apparently the cable was somehow screwed up when the apartment was renovated. The cable guy is going to be “thinking about how to fix the problem”, I was told. The phone guy should be out Saturday morning.
Assuming Rudder is functional tomorrow, plans include work, getting out early if possible, and going to the Mac store near our hotel. He wants a new one and I need a different plug for mine; Taiwan plugs match US ones but the apartment has absolutely no 3-prong outlets. If he’s not up to it, I might still go if people in the hotel say it’s safe to walk there by myself. Friday after work we’ll do a shopping trip with the car so we can really stock up, wash all the sheets and towels and spend our first night in the apartment. Saturday maybe we can go back to the HOLA (housewares place) for plates, pots and all the little stuff, and maybe Sunday I’ll make it to a bookstore. Or not. If it doesn’t sound like fun by then I won’t go.
I suppose I should post most of the above at Avontuur, so anyone who’s gotten to this point might want to skip that entry. (But I just posted another one – a descriptive essay about the taxis here.)