Lions, Tigers and a Bear of a Commute

A little over anxious to find a job I decided to go on an interview a little further out on the MRT (subway). There is a red,blue,green,orange, and brown line all going to different parts of the city. We live on the green. So I took the green line to the red, and switched to the blue, and then switched to the brown; already 30+ minutes into my trip. I was going to the Taipei Zoo stop on the brown line which is also the last stop. The train has to slow down as it twists and curves around mountains; only one tunnel through (I guess that was a labor nightmare). Over and hour later I arrive about 5 minutes late and call the school I am interviewing with; they are kind and offer to come pick me up from the station. 30 minutes later they show up... I am thinking to myself, "I don't care about the school, where the h-e-double hockey sticks am I?" So the car ride is only about 5 minutes, and that was a small victory. The school was nice the kids were nice, but I'm not sure I'm into the two hours and 8 sub-way switches. So it was a nasty rainy day or I might have walked around the zoo for a bit. The shining bright spot on this mini adventure was meeting the teacher's own child when they short bus came to pick me up from the MRT station. First the child was very cute, as most the children are here, and then he offered me something to eat...does this kid have instincts or what...he read me like a book. What he offered appeared to be beef jerky, and I'm always game for some jerky at 10am; who isn't? This jerky was not beef, and it was sweet and tasted more like a fruit roll-up, although it was clearly meat of some sort; oh well tasty treat non the less. To up the anti, this school that was practically in another city. To my surprise they had a single cup coffee machine that ground the coffee and drip brewed a fresh cup. Well I know most of you aren't excited, but to let you know if its not Starbucks here you are getting watered down espresso. So the school was nice, the people were nice, the coffee was great, but the commute was just a bear!

Did you know that DVD players on computers have region codes...me neither. So we found a great DVD rental store. It only took 3 trips there to figure out that it had a downstairs with most of the movies. We thought, okay its just a small rental store so they only have like 3 bookcases of new release and TV series....the down stairs hold most of the movies. The movie stores here focus on animated cartoons; about 60 (YES 60) bookshelves top to bottom are filled with animated cartoons. They don't stack them front ways like we do, these are on the shelves like books and are crammed into every bit of available space. I'm sure I could get into the cartoons, but Bayly probably wouldn't care as much. So DVDs have this regional code; America's is region 1 (of course); Southeast Asia is region 3 (FYI). I've located the regional code area on my computer, and changed it to 3...NOTHING happened. So most of the DVDs we were renting where not playing. Our neighbor was really cool and spent like an hour downloading this VLC movie player for us and told us that it should play most if not all the movies...nope. We've also been introduced to bit torrent so now I think we can cancel our ghetto blockbuster membership. I'm still not perfectly sure I have the region code or VLC player figured out...knock knock neighbor...you should have never given this mouse a cookie. =]

Stay tuned as I am starting to look at scooters....don't tell Bay!

ALinTaiwan