FIRST DAY IN TOUFEN

The First day here but the day hasn't started well- Maya sent me a message that she is sick. She was not feeling very good when we left New York but  she is sick now. She is going to stay in and rest today, that is the best to do at this point. I certainly hope she gets well soon.

The day is cloudy and seems like it's raining a bit- it will probably rain on and off all day.

You can appreciate that on the photo below- this is "A Room with(out much of) a View"...apologies to E.M. Forster.

Shortly I'll go down to breakfast- I am going to update this post at random times throughout the day.

After talking to the nice desk clerk girl, she found out that a pharmacy nearby had ibuprophen that Maya needed. Took a short taxi ride there and got it- hopefully that will make her feel better. Of course, Maya was able to recognize many of the Asian medicines in the pharmacy, from her time working in Chinatown in Chicago. She is going to do some meditation and rest, I am going out for a walk around to get a lay of the land. We'll meet around noon for lunch.

I walked to the Zhunan Sports Park just to get a feel for the city. It's was about a 30+ minute walk.

The photo above of an interesting building- it's a little hard to see the detail on the walls though.

On the way to the park there were quite a few small plots of vegetable gardens alongside the streets. They look like they are in some kind public land, but I could see a variety of vegetables planted.

Entrance sign to the park.

Several shots of the park.

A copse of trees, unknown type.

At the end of the park, across the street is an art museum called the Miao Bei art museum. Photo below is a shot of the entrance to the Miaoli Bei museum. Unfortunately, it was closed today.

It's an art museum that also has exhibits of ancient artifacts.

A flower shop on my return to the hotel. Who would have flowers outside in early February?

And there are a few locations throughout town where the only diversion is these fair-type entertainment boxes where for a few yuan you can take your chances of capturing one of the furry creatures. According to Steve, there are some locations where they offer iphones. Good luck in getting one of those on your first try.

Altogether I walked for about an hour and a half. When I started, around 10, there was nearly nobody in the streets, traffic was extremely light too. I ran into very few people. it was only when it was closer to noon that I started to see people. Either the New Year vacation coming up or the weather keeps people away.

For lunch we went to a curry restaurant. The food was OK.

Maya tells me that there was an earthquake on the East coast of Taiwan last night, when we were driving back from the airport. I guess the best place to be during an earthquake is inside a moving vehicle.

The earthquake measured 6.1 on the Ridhter scale.

Steve mentioned that the earthquake scale used here is different than the one we use in the US. Here it ranges from 1 to 7, while the US's goes up to 10. Lest you think "whoa, six is very close to seven" you should note that this scale is exponential.

Whatever.

For the afternoon we didn't do anything worth of mentioning. Maya needed to rest a little. So we got together with Steve for dinner later on. He came by the hotel around 5:30, after work.

Given that the weather is rather chilly, not Wisconsin chilly though, we decided to have dinner in a restaurant right next to the hotel. The building next door has a bunch of restaurants in the first two floors; in fact, we had lunch in that same area.

We decided to go to a Mongolian "hot-pot" restaurant. I realized that this approach is an efficient way of shifting some of the "labor" costs to the consumer. Instead of having a chef, that carries a salary expense for the restaurant proprietor, you simply have the consumers cook their own meals at the table. Voilà, the restaurant can keep prices down and consumers seem to enjoy the "experience." Win-win, like most things that good old capitalism brings. Sorry for the economic digression.

This is the entrance to the restaurant.

 But I am mot sure about the connection between Mongolians and cows. Somehow I don't see Genghis-Khan crossing the steppes with his hordes of soldiers and tending cows. A horse may have been a more befitting symbol for the entrance. But not here though; maybe in France having a horse may be appealing (they eat horse meat in France, don't they?).

And here is the food cauldron with the left side strictly vegetarian and spicy, for Maya, and the right one with all kinds of meats and vegetables for Steve and I. The food was good, and we got to it a lot.

By the way, they will bring as much food as you want but there is a one and a half hour limit.

We got thin slices of pork, lamb and beef (cow?), plus many different vegetables. Those things floating on top are mushrooms, plus cabagge, etc. Really good in fact.

One side side dish was this plate with two types of food. The light brown squares at the bottom are what they call stinky tofu. The darker thing in the back is, are you ready?, coagulated duck blood. 

It had the texture of soft liver. By the way, before you freak out and blame this food only on exotic Asians, you should know that you can get "blood pancakes" in Sweden. Yummy, sounds delicious for breskfast. I wonder, do you use honey or maple syrup on blood pancakes?

Maya accompanied her dinmer with some local beer which is clearly labeled so you know what's in the container.

After dinner we went to the hotel bar and had a glass of good cognac and converse for a whiel. Come to think of it, I haven't had cognac for a few years now. What's wrong with me?

I was a little tired by this time. After all I had walked a lot this morning while Maya rested. I left them in the bar around 9:30 or so. But I am sure that Steve went home right after that.