Bamboozled

Yet another boring day in the house of this…place. Same song and dance as yesterday. Got up, played games, layed around, showered, donuts, mall, home. Except this time when we went into the mall it was totally sunny and crazy and when we came out of the mall it was raining like a mother. Luckily all three of us had our umbrellas. But Taiwan rain is insane. You’ve got your sideways winds mixed with the rain and there were puddles EVERYWHERE! Soooo wet…

So, I was gonna blabla on and on about different things that I have forgotten to mention here and there throughout my blog, but so lets get on with it. I bought this little notebook with a deranged penguin and elephant on it so I could make notes of what I wanted to talk about. Lets do them in order!

Ice cream lady:
Every time we go to the mall, theres this lady on a mega phone talking about her ice cream…I don’t really know what she is saying, but she is sure exited about her ice cream. I looked over at her stuff, and she didn’t even stutter. Weird. Actually a lot of people are on microphone singing and dancing about their store or product. Im pretty sure you would get smacked if you were to do that in the US.

Garbage truck song
So, on garbage days the small truck rolls around and it plays happy little music. It would easily be mistaken as an ice cream truck in the states, but there aren’t any ice cream trucks here…instead, there are garbage trucks. After a while it gets really, really annoying.

Saltless
They don’t believe in salt here! HA! That was a lie…everything has salt in it, it seems. We opened up one of our burgers at two different restaurants at two different times and found that they had salted and peppered our burgers. How weird is that? I think its weird. Anyway, when we went to ask for some salt, they didn’t understand what we were asking for. We wanted packets of salt, right? They gave us a cup lid of salt. Odd…

Receipt Lottery
If you go to a regular store, their receipts are all the same. Its weird, but they are. That’s because each receipt has a number at the top for a lottery that this city does every few months for 2 million dollars (NTS Im sure). So if they draw your number, YOU WIN! :D They also have these receipt drop offs all over town so if you don’t want your receipt you just pop it in and if they draw one of those numbers they donate the money to charity. Pretty cool, I think.

McDonalds Coupons
My sisters got a book of coupons to McDonalds. Frankly, they don’t make sense. They tried to walk up and use the coupon like you would normally, but apparently that’s not how you use it. What you do is you have to buy a meal deal du-dad and then present one of these coupons and you get whatever is on that coupon for free. Soooooooooo weird. But whatever floats their boat.

School Boys
We were on the train going home one night and a group of Taiwanese school boys maybe around the 10th grade came on board and I gave them a smile. After that they were whispering among themselves and kept looking over to me. Anyway, when they left they all said “bye-bye” and waved. I watched as they went down the escalator and kept waving at me. SO CUTE! I want one.

Plastic Wrap
Fricken…everything is plastic wrapped. Dad brought it to my attention that everything that comes in a package, stays in a package. So all of the new shoes we see or the new computers, monitors, whatever…they are all still in their air tight plastic wrap. Its so weird. And if people buy it that way, they will keep it that way! Even if it looks like crap. Its so weird.


Soooo. That night we went to a magical place, filled with lights and sparkles. And what I mean by that is, the electronics market! It was huge! Several large, several stories high buildings full of nothing but electronic shops. We went to an underground section and it was pretty weird and cramped, but then we walked across the street to this building that was about 6 stories high of stores. It was much, much nicer there and cleaner (YAY! FOR ONCE!). I had so much fun! There were lots of shops with computer towers that I was just urrrging to buy but didn’t. Good for me. But I was on a mission…to find a tablet! I knew I could find one…somewhere…and for cheap. I found a place with one tablet that was uber-duber sexy. It was called a Tooya Pro, and I am unfamiliar with that brand. Although, it was ultra thin, black, and widescreen. The size for it was 10x6 so it was pretty cool. One thing that bothered me about it was that it didn’t say it was pressure sensitive AND the pen came with…batteries? Ive never used a tablet that had battery powered pens. So…eh. That one was about $150. We went off and eventually found a place that sold actual Wacom tablets. YAY! Something I know! I took a look at several of the tablets they had…but decided to go with their Wacom Bamboo Fun medium sized tablet. Its 8.5x5.3 drawing space (goooood compared to the 3x4 space Im use to at school). SUPER EXITED! Now I can make all sorts of doodles and oodles and UGH! Its so sexy. Good catch. Good day!