A certain dichotomy of service exists in Taiwan, a strangeness that's initially difficult to identify, but when it happens again and again, it becomes more discernible. The country is world famous for its tech capabilities and innovation in high tech gadgetry and leadership in all manner of futuristic goods and services. Its high speed rail, while not the world's first or fastest , was built in record time and is blindingly efficient, like all the metro systems running in the major cities. All public areas and public facilities innovate and experiment, often leading to copycat catch ups in other areas of the world, including the Youbike system and chipped Easycards to pay for virtually everything in the city.
Sometimes, however, age-old antiquated practices rear their ugly heads and provide a headache, an example being the perennial problem of changing my phone payment account each year! The phone store for Taiwan Daa Gu Da is slick and ultra modern, and the handsets and plans sold concomitantly are cutting edge. The problem lies in the penchant for paper records, necessitating an upgrade of my credit card details each and every year in an incredibly laborious shuffle of papers and documents. I have to bring the text they send me this time each year, my Alien Resident Card, my passport, my driver's license and the new credit card. They then photocopy everything in triplicate, showering me with copies I neither want nor need. Despite having a phone plan for 14 years, every time they spell my name incorrectly, necessitating a further lengthy and frustrating search for this fellow who has the exactly the same name and birth date as me, but whose first and middle names are reversed. Over an hour later, I stagger away....Arrrgghh!
It's very rare that we get frustrated here, despite our continuing, occasional language barriers, because everyone is just so delightful and accommodating. Despite our frustrations, it's impossible to stay grumpy for very long. The other classic example is the bank. The foreign exchange and transaction floor is like going in a time machine back to 1950. Conservatively dressed armies of bank workers whisper and shuffle in a library-like solitude, each sitting at a desk cluttered with stamps and ink-pads and surrounded by mini-mountains of forms and papers piled high in every available nook and cranny between desks. It's like an absent minded professor's chaotic clutter! Somehow however, everything gets done with great efficiency and if they have to resort to the computer for anything, the tellers seem very disappointed that they can't utilize their abacuses and paper mountains!
The phone company was my dreaded stop on Saturday, but we sauntered over to SOGO beforehand to have a delicious Thai feast and then shopped for various accessories for our trip back home early next month. I managed to buy a tie straight from Saville Row at ridiculous expense along with a Japanese designer's pocket square. A new pair of socks from Uniqlo and I'm ready for action. Cass didn't spot anything in our travels so I was the one hauling purchases out of the store, despite a 50% off shoe sale on the bottom floor that was well examined, but ultimately dismissed by said shopper.
Cass had her Book Club meeting on Friday at Kristin's place. They ate Vietnamese food to match their latest book, with the Pho flowing along with the wine. Some of the crew were back after forcing a postponement a week before because of various important events. This means they'll be meeting again in just 2 weeks time to catch up on their monthly get-togethers. No pictures, because someone took the camera but forgot about it!
We've got an unenviable week coming up. I'm slated for duty at a parent reception, a fairly tedious and forced social affair for school, where we're tasked with mingling with parents over a few drinks and supper of hors d'oeuvre, ostensibly to spruik the various wonderful programs that we're all teaching. For born and bred Australians, this is a difficult task: Our more gregarious and, dare I say, less humble American colleagues seem to find the role as easy as sliding on a silk glove! Cassy has an onerous duty as well. Her annual "Back to School" night is on Thursday night, and she, as a team leader, has quite a significant role in presenting various parts of the evening's program. We'll both be pleased when this Friday rolls around!
The pocket park behind the tennis courts opposite our apartment is full of typical Taipei exercise equipment of dubious fitness and strength value. While there is a quite useful horizontal bar set-up, even the higher bar necessitates some strange contortions so that parts of the body don't drag along the ground. Others seem to use body weight to push another part of the apparatus up in the air, then release it down again and the net exercise trade-off is approximately zero. Still, the oldies seem to like it and think they are doing something worthwhile!
Photos:just some of the exercise machines in our park, a frieze from the temple across the river, and flourishing bushes that are defying the fact that the first day of autumn has already come and gone. I'm reading Lionel Shriver's dystopian "The Mandibles" which is quite riveting, while Cass wraps up her reading of Viet Than Nyuyen's, "The Sympathizer", which has been quite a bit longer than she originally thought (the curse of the Kindle)!
Oh, and....Looks like the secret's out regarding Taiwan. It's just been judged the number one country for ex-pats in the world!