Gasp inducing anecdotes from the bad old days on Taipei's streets have been related to us on the odd occasion. When we're tempted to think that we're veterans of the Taiwanese expat community, we're brought back to earth by someone more "senior", sometimes by decades! This always tends to amplify the benefits of living in this wonderful safe, modern city these days and also makes us realise how much even we've seen change.
Not long before we arrived in Taiwan, the local government authorities had a fairly "basic" approach to garbage collection and it wasn't uncommon for most street corners to have steaming mountains of putrefying filth attracting vermin and disease for indeterminate periods, before a languid city truck deigned to clean it all up. Fast forward a couple of decades and not only is the city clean and fresh, but Taipei is leading the world in garbage collection and more importantly, recycling. We have days dedicated to flat plastic, other plastic, styrofoam, steel and aluminium, and daily collections of food scraps, some for pig swill and some for compost!
It was into this almost pristine environment we strode, our mission to collect garbage and clean up various public spaces within the general vicinity of the school. The Grade 8 Community Day is a long-running tradition and used to garner some great loads of trash and really make a difference for a day or two. Trouble is, that as the years roll on, everyone is sooo terribly responsible and citizenly, that there is almost nothing to collect: some larks even suggested that the school needed to go out overnight and, in a clandestine fashion, seed the parks with some trash for the kids to collect the next day!
Despite expectations, there is always the odd dog poo or disintegrating piece of plastic hidden under clumps of bushes where the regular city cleaners don't venture. We completed our missions, and spent the rest of the day watching uplifting videos and discussing the merits of giving back to individuals and communities and setting the kids up to embark on their own individual community service projects.
We took advantage of the glistening edifice that dominates our little village area when we dined at Din Tai Fung for the first time in a while. Being quite hungry by the time we wandered down fairly late in proceedings and enduring a 20 minute wait in line, the offerings were judged to be even more exquisite than usual! I downloaded an app which keeps us up to date on the wait times, so we can wander around the store in the future as we wait for our spot. Cass did a quick reccy in Uniqlo but didn't see anything tempting to buy and we shopped for a few gourmet food items while we were in the SOGO building.
It's anathema for me to enter school grounds on the weekend, but I had to join my colleagues to grade some external test papers on Saturday afternoon, despite my misgivings about breaking a long-standing "rule"! I've got a ton of grading to do in the next couple of weeks and this blog writing is just the first step of my procrastination! The tests keep on coming, but once I do the arduous part (the writing samples), the rest is relatively straight forward, if time consuming.
The weather has partly turned here at last and we're enjoying some warm to cool days and nights. Despite that, we're both reading "The Dry" at the moment and Jane Harper's descriptions of a long hot Aussie drought almost bring a sheen of sweat to the brow, they're so evocative and succinctly wrought. Photos are rather sparse today....some of the clean-up crew ready to embark (you can spy Cassy in the far left of the first photo: she has a white shirt), Youbikes and Din Tai Fung.
