OK...I couldn't take it any longer!!!

Well...my lack of animal companionship finally went beyond my ability to stand it, so let me introduce you all to Maggie. We adopted her from someone on Craigslist. She is so beautiful, and I love her yellow eyes!! She is 10 months old and belonged to an older couple who just didn't feel that they could care for her so their friend's daughter took her in until she could find her a new home...with me of course!! We had to drive to Bellingham to get her (about 1 hour north of here), but I think she was worth it.

Taipie...Day 2...Part 2...Now With Pictures

Back to Tuesday. Chunnan and I arrived at the designated place and met Cher and Shu-Jen. The restaurant was a small place with some tables out on the sidewalk and I staked a claim to the only four seat table while the three of them went inside to get the food.


While they were busy inside I watch a young man inside as he kneaded dough and sliced it into the sizes and shapes necessary to make the various buns and rolls sold by the restaurant.


Soon Chunnan, Cher, and Shu-Jen returned with the food. Here's what they brought: A pork stuffed bun, a taco shaped bun stuffed with chives and rice noodles, pork pot stickers, a rice roll stuffed with powered pork, a crepe with scrambled eggs rolled inside, and a bowl of hot soy milk. To drink we had rice milk. Theirs was white and, I assume, unflavored, while mine, not pictured, looked like chocolate milk and tasted like liquid peanut butter. I had some of everything except the soy milk. I've had soy milk in the US before and didn't like it at all.


As we finished eating I heard someone speaking over a PA system and noticed a large building across the street surrounded by an iron fence. Rank upon rank of people sat in a large plaza inside the fence but the details of the goings on were obscured by the fence and trees growing just inside it. Chunnan told me it was a school and that the students all gathered in the sports area each morning for announcements. He said I could go look so I did.


This was a junior high school, judging by the age of the students. All of the schools here have different uniforms and many times on this trip we've seen large groups of uniformed youth in subways or on sidewalks, especially in the late afternoon or early evening since schools let out at 5pm. Judging by this school, they start in around 8am, so that's a full work day of school for them. Most high schools also seem to be gender specific, though Chunnan says some newer schools are integrating the sexes. This group of assembled students seemed to be coed and the gathering seemed to be some sort of awards presentation but since I went to look without a translator I can't be sure.


Another thing about the school system here is that the high school you can attend is determined by your test scores, kind of like the college SAT system here. If you want to go to the BEST high school you have to place well on the tests. The system is very competitive and Chunnan said he surprised his family by testing his way into the best school in Taipei. Heck, seeing the way he studies for his career tests here in the USA it doesn't surprise me at all that he should be in the best school there.


We walked back to Cher's place, strolling through the tree shaded sidewalks along a busy road and I snapped a few more pictures of the scooters which still fascinate me.



Along the way were saw more and more signed of Western culture encroaching on the East. TGI Fridays, McDonalds, KFC (the four story KFC pictured here just amazed me...this photo was taken a few days after the events described here), Starbucks, Apple, Xbox, it won't be long before it will be hard to tell any place apart if we keep exporting our lifestyle. The cultural mixing does work both ways, I suppose, but it just seems so obvious here where foreign products seem to be a part of everyone's lives while in the States those cultural incursions from other countries seem to be more ghettoized. America, having reached a certain critical mass, just doesn't seem to be the welcoming melting pot that it once was, culturally or economically.


Our next trip was the the National Palace Museum. This huge and beautiful building is undergoing extensive renovation and I'm sorry to say that only about 20% to 30% of the typical display are is currently accessible.


What was on display though was beautiful, as one would expect from a culture as ancient and rich as that of Taiwan and Greater China. Bronzes, porcelains, jade, ivory, calligraphy, painting, religious statuary, Buddhist sutras were all present. The Bronzes and Jades were the most popular galleries and we could hardly move through some of them for the throngs of visitors. I had an audio tour device which helped give me a little more context for some of the items but there were too many items that had no audio entry and if there had been audio for every item then I'd probably still be there five days later. It's just a balancing act between attention span, available time, and information delivery.


Regrettably, photography was not allowed in the museum and I was actually surprised they didn't ask me to surrender my camera before entering. You'll have to satisfy yourselves with photos of the outside of the main building.


We hopped in a cab and left the museum, heading for a traditional street market where we'd planned to find something to eat. It was like a warren of small stands and carts weaving in and out of alleys and buildings, and they sold everything there from raw meats, cooked foods, and groceries to housewares, clothing, and knick knacks. There was indeed tons of stuff to eat there but I don't think I'd be brave enough to try most of it. In typical Western fashion, I was worried about sanitation, hygiene, and just what the heck it was, so I was almost relieved when Cher called and told us to come back to the restaurant for lunch.


Coincidentally, Chunnan's birthplace and the home where he spent his early years was also nearby. We did not walk by it but he pointed down a street as we taxied around the area. Ok, time to break off...we're heading down to Breakfast on Sunday (real time again) and then a HUGE family dim sum lunch around 2pm. More later.

Notts' New Vehicle

As some of you may know (Peggy at least) Merle and I had decided to trade vehicles in the fall and go for a Honda Civic for better gas mileage. Well, Merle told me a couple of weeks ago that he'd changed his mind and was ready to trade now instead of waiting. So, I listed it in the Chiefland Citizen and in the Gainesville Sun, at Craigs List which Peggy told me about and at kbb.com on their cars.com site.I had fully intended to wait until the end of next week to see if anyone might respond to our ads, but....

We took it to Ford of Ocala yesterday for a needed oil change and, afterward, on our way to Home Depot passed by the Honda of Ocala dealership. Well, since we had never seen one up close, we decided to just stop in and take a peek. Well, after seeing it and hearing the enthusiastic salesman, Merle got buying fever and wanted to make a deal right then and there (after agreeing earlier that we were just looking only). I tried to tell him when we were alone that the Gainesville dealer I had been emailing could give us a better deal. I really had to put my foot down and endure a lot of tough sales talk to get us both out the door without buying it that day.

I think, after that experience, we both just wanted to go ahead and get it over with and not have to worry with or about it anymore. So, I contacted the Gainesville dealer today and we went to see what he had. Merle was very surprised today that this "driveaway price" for his vehicle was approx. $3,000 lower than the Ocala dealership and Ocala offered us $11,600 for the Freestar where Gainesville only offered $10,000. The only differences I could see in the Ocala vehicle and the Gainesville vehicle was they had the trunk tray and splash guards on theirs.

At any rate, we drove home in our new Honda Civic EX sedan and so far I love it. We'll have to see if I say the same thing after taking a long trip in it! But, in order to gain in one area (gas mileage), you have to make concessions in others (size and comfort perhaps). The new vehicle is what they call Galaxy Gray. It looks different colors in different light as you can see a little from the photos. Sometimes it's gray an sometimes it looks gold (to me). The steering wheel is tilt and telescoping and the driver's seat in adjustable both forward and back as well as up and down. Both the cruise control and the stereo controls are on the steering wheel. The rear seat folds down 60/40 if necessary.

So, that's what we've been up to lately. Love and Hugs to all.... Ruth and Merle

Taipie...Day 2...Part 1...Now With Pictures

(All the pictures here are of Chunnan's younger niece and nephews)


Tuesday morning saw me awake at about 6:30am local time. I slept great considering the mattress was as hard as rock. I'm serious, here. These beds have the hardest mattress I've ever experienced...and somehow they sleep great. I'm typing this on Saturday morning and I have had no waking back pains at all this whole vacation. If my back pains resume when I get home then I'm gonna have to consider switching mattresses.


I logged on to my office computer and handled my emails there and before I knew it Chunnan's cell phone was ringing. Let me digress here for a moment. Somehow in all the taxies and travels on Monday, Chunnan managed to loose his Verizon cell phone. No great loss, I guess. It won't work over here anyway and I really don't understand why he was even carrying it with him, but that's just the way it was. There are a million cabs here from dozens of different companies and all the cabs look alike, so there was no telling in which one it might have slipped out. Later, after dinner, Cher loaned Chunnan Gina's cell phone (That's Gina and Chunnan in the top photo) so that we'd have a local phone to call back and forth when we were out and about and one of the family members needed to contact us. It was this phone that was ringing.


Cher and Shu-Jen wanted us to meet them for breakfast at a corner shop so we dashed about our morning activities, fled the hotel, and hopped in a cab that we'd asked the hotel to call for us. The cabbie seemed fascinated by my nearly shaved head and wanted to know if I'd done it myself or what. I offered, through Chunnan's translations, to cut his for him. He got a good laugh out of that. If he'd seen my head a couple of days latter when I really shaved it smooth and nicked myself pretty good in three place, he might have kept his mouth shut. He was one of the happiest cabbies we've had this trip and thanked me, in English, for riding his in his taxi.


A word about the language barrier...it's not so bad. I understand nothing, of course, execpt Thank You, You're Welcome, and Hello, but many of the Taiwanese understand that much and more. There's also the international gestures language with smiles, nods, and waving hands. All in all it's working out pretty well.


A little break here for a new development. We're over a Cher's place now (Saturday) and I have two new friends, Danny and Jeffrey. They are Shu-Fen's twin eight year old sons. They seem fascinated watching me type on my laptop and are hovering around me watching intently. The pictures are...Jeffrey, Stanley, and Danny (#2 above)...Danny (#3 above)...Stanley (#4 above...Stanley is Shu-Fen's youngest child)...and Jeffrey (#5 above). I found Danny and Jeffrey hard to tell apart...the only way I could do it when was they were standing because Danny was a little bit shorter. In these photos, though, I see that Jeffrey has a slightly darker skin tone. There will be more posts about the kids later.


Shu-Fen is taking Chunnan and I to a Buddhist temple today and will leave the boys here with Cher. Shu-Fen and Chunnan are pictured here. In fact, we're leaving now...more later.

Taipei...Day 1...Part 3...Now With Pictures

It's Friday night at about 6:00pm. I'm sitting in Cher's living room while Chunnan and Cher are chatting in the den and Mom is cooking in the Kitchen. Various other family members are here and there throughout the apartment. Let's see, the next topic of discussion is Sun & Palm, the restaurant owned by Cher and her husband Tom. I took a lot of photos of the restaurant when we arrive around 11am on Monday and I'll attach several when I return home, but briefly, the restaurant is quite nicely appointed and the food is wonderful. I should know, every time we're there they're feeding us.


Unlike many of the street side eateries, Sun & Palm is a real restaurant and a nice one at that. The walls are decorated with the painting of Cher's daughter, Gina. I'm guessing she's about 8 or 9 years old and her artistic talent is really quite developed. There's a painting of a face that is reminiscent of Picaso and her Bird of Paradise flower blossom is very pretty.


As it struck noon the customers started to trickle in and by 12:30 or so the place filled up and I was evicted from table in the back corner where I had been quietly observing the action while sipping a kumquat lemonade drink (really delicious) to a chair near the bathroom so that the paying customer could have a spot. I was tickled to see the place so busy.


Sun & Palm is a family restaurant, meaning that everyone who works there, with a couple of exceptions in the kitchen, is a family member. Tom is the chef, Cher is in charge of drinks and coordination, Shu-Jen and Mom wait and bus tables. At various times this week they've also had guest workers...Mom's aunt, Mom's other aunt, Mom's sister, the husband of a sister I haven't met yet, and Chunnan himself.


Yup, that first day Chunnan jumped in and helped out. He started off tallying the order tickets to make sure all of the food got taken out to the tables, then he started delivering food and bussing tables, then he was hostess for a little bit and finally he took the order for one table. However, when he got the order wrong and the customer didn't want what Chunnan delivered, he was retired from order-taking duty and put back on ticket tallying.


Around 2pm when the customers had all left Tom started cooking for Chunnan and me. First we had some Japanese style fried chicken. It was mostly like American fired chicken but cut smaller and with a sweet and sour dipping sauce. Then we were served a dish of hot sliced beef over a bed of cold pickled onions. Wow, that was great! Then there was the big plate of chicken fried rice covered with tiny little shrimp. Yummy. I didn't get a picture of all that, sorry, but trust me it looked as good as it tasted. More Kumquat Lemonade finished it off and I was stuffed. In fact I've left there stuffed every day but one...and that day we were out running around town so we didn't have time to come back to Sun & Palm for lunch. Above is a photo of Shu-Jen, Chunnan, and Cher.


After we finished lunch Cher and Chunnan and I hopped in a taxi and headed for Taipei 101, the world's tallest building. This was only the first visit to 101. The second was on Wednesday when we went up to the observation decks, and the third visit will be when we go back at night on Sunday to get some photos of it all lit up. For this visit though we stayed in the shopping mall section. There are five floors of mall stores covering everything from Haagen Das to Cartier.


Not surprisingly for a building with 101 floors, there's almost anything you'd need there, including a grocery store. There we found a fruit I'd never even heard of before—Dragon Fruit. On the outside it's bright pinkish red with green fleshy flaps, like little tongues, sticking out all over it. It reminds me of a sunburned Kohlrabi or a mutant Artichoke.


When you slice it open the meat is bright white with little black specks like poppy seeds—kind of like real vanilla bean ice cream. The meat comes away from the peel very easily so to eat it you just take a wedge of fruit, pull back the rind from one end and munch the meat as it comes free. It's slightly crispy and melts in your mouth like watermelon but it's not as juicy and the flavor is lightly sweet. I really wish this fruit was available in the states because I'd buy it by the bucketful. Pictures will be attached.


I just took a break from writing for dinner (real time on Friday). We had the kind of barbecue pork that I love when Chunnan make's it and his mom made it just the same...now I know where Chunnan learned to cook it. We also had drunken chicken (a cold sliced chicken that's been marinated in various sauces and some alcohol, I think) and stir fried shark. I had no idea what to expect with that, but really loved it. The meat was tender and flakey and had absolutely no fishy taste at all. Sorry, I know that this piece of Friday is way out of order, but I just realized that I could not remember all of the other dinners I've eaten here and I didn't want to forget this one. Back to Monday....


We spent an hour wandering the mall with Cher then she had to go pick up Gina from school so Chunnan and I spent another hour or more wandering the rest of the mall ourselves. The higher you go in the mall the higher class the stores. I think the first floor was the only one I could actually afford to shop in. Speaking of affordable, transportation in general is very affordable. We've been using taxies at least a couple of times a day to go just about everywhere and the rates are great especially when you factor in the entertainment value watching the laws of physics bending all over the place as you travel around. Our taxi fares have rarely been over $120 NT. That's New Taiwanese Dollars. There are about 32 NT to each US dollar, so $120 NT (our high fare) was about $3.75 US. The subway runs about 90 cents US for an average trip.


After we were done at the 101 mall we taxied back to Cher's and plopped down on the sofas while Mom cooked dinner. I took an accidental (and way too brief) nap before dinner. What did we have? I remember sliced cold squid and some A veggie (that's the name of the plant...A veggie...really) but the rest is a fatigue induced blur. Remember, I'd awoken at 5am on Saturday in the USA, hopped a 3am Sunday flight and slept fitfully enroute. Then a full day of Taipei and I was about expired. So, soon after dinner we made our excuses and accepted the offer of Shu-Min (Chunnan's brother) to drive us to the hotel.


Shu-Min told me that before becoming a computer hardware tech he worked for a whole as a taxi driver and he still had his physics bending abilities. He got us to the hotel quickly and told me that he'd stayed there himself for a week at one point and was very happy with it. When we got there he acted as though he owned the place and escorted us through the lobby, pointed out the restaurant and gave us our free breakfast tickets. Then he escorted us up to our room, inspected it himself to make sure it was all in order and showed us the internet connection. When we said we'd neglected to bring an Ethernet cable he disappeared for a few minutes and returned with one in tow that he'd gotten from the front desk for us. His service as a private individual was better than that of any employee in any other hotel I've ever stayed at in the USA and I felt like I should have tipped him.


After Shu-Min left, Chunnan and I collapsed, but in true Internet addict fashion, we both had to log in and check our emails before sleeping no matter how tired we were! We hooked up, punched the on buttons and...nothing. No internet. We fiddled and tinkered as best we could but we could not get a connection from either the iBook or the Vaio. We called down to the front desk and in a flash a computer tech was at our door to troubleshoot the problem. First he checked our computers, then went to the floor's hub, then came back with his own laptop and finally decided that the problem was the rooms Ethernet jack. He popped the plate, installed a new jack, plugged us in and Viola! Internet! If you had an internet problem at the Holiday Inn do you think you'd get a real live computer tech in 30 seconds and the situation fixed in 15 minutes? Not a chance! I like this hotel!

Ok, we're ready to leave Cher's place now so let me just finish this quiclky...we checked our mail, we showered, we brushed our teeth, we slept like rocks. Tomorrow I'll start on Tuesday's events. BTW, the last several pictures on this page don't relate to the text in any way, I just used them as filler because I didn't have any real pictures from the events described.

Taipei...Day 1...Part 2...Now With Pictures

I guess I really need to get on the stick here and write more. It's already Friday here and I've barely scratched the surface of Monday's happenings. I suppose that is because everything was so new on that first day and kind of overwhelming and there is a lot to put down about my impressions. Of course, only having a couple of hours in the mornings to write also plays a part and my innate laziness is also a factor.


So, after the experience of Taipei traffic washed over me, and even now, four days later, I'm still finding aspects of the traffic to be amazed about...like how any turn off a major road will take you down a narrow alley road where modernities like cars and scooters and parking shoehorn themselves into antique neighborhoods built for pedestrians. These neighborhoods streets, that Americans would call hardly more than an alley and find tight for a parking lane and a one-way driving lane, manage to accommodate parking on both sides and pedestrian, scooter, and car traffic in the middle. Thankfully, this usually takes place at a much slower speed. Usually. The photo above is the view from our hotel room taken several days after the events of this entry.

So, the first thing we did was stop at the hotel to drop off our big bags. It was too early to check in but they put the luggage in a back office for us. Hotel Green Peak is located on one of those neighborhood streets. A canyon of sorts with twelve story apartment buildings towering over a narrow street chock full of parked cars and scooters. This street is actually wider than most, now that I look at it out my window as I type, and the cars on one side are parked diagonally nose-in. Most streets are parallel parking only. Inside, the hotel is all marble and gleam and later I would learn from Chunnan's brother that this hotel caters to Japanese tourists and businessmen.


With the bags gone we next went to Cher's apartment to pick up her and Chunnan's mother and the five of us went to get breakfast. We went to another big Japanese hang out (insert name here when I get Chunnan to translate it from the photos) that is famous for its very special “juicy buns”. Take a thin wonton style wrapper, insert a special pork ball and seal it all up in a particular way, then steam it. The pork cooks, releases all sorts of juicy flavorful drippings that fill up the wrapper like a half-inflated balloon and you have a juicy bun. These buns are so special and so sought after because they are only served at this one restaurant and only for one hour each week—9am to 10am on Saturday. If you're a minute late you get nothing and you cry while waiting a whole 'nother week to try again!


We got there at 9:55am on Monday so no juicy buns for us. We had to content ourselves with the juicy bun's poor cousin. I gather it looks similar and has the same style ingredients, but it's just not the same—or so I'm told—but it tasted great to me. I don't know if I could endure the real thing if it's better than what we had. The picture shows our ersatz juicy buns on the right and a mutant juicy bun/shumai concoction on the left. It was like the juicy bun on the bottom but had a diced shrimp kind of stuffing on the top and looked a little like a vase of flowers. The taste was great and I'd go there for more of that any day of the week. Also in the photo is Cher on the left and Chunnan's mom (name unknown by me) on the right. Chunnan sat on my left and his father on my right but they didn't make it into the photo.


We also had some chicken soup and an assortment of snacky things that didn't make it into the photo. One was julienned slices of pickled tofu, bean sprouts, and seaweed and the other was (I guess) pickled navy beans or something very close. Maybe they were soya beans.


After we left the restaurant we stood around the entrance a bit while we waited for Chunnan's dad to get the car and pick us up. I snapped a few pictures of the area and as narrow street clogged with parked scooters. Looking at the photo now I realize that that the reason pedestrians use the middle of the streets are that there are few sidewalks in the neighborhood areas and where there are sidewalks they're really extensions of the small shops that make up the ground floor of EVERY building EVERYWHERE in the city. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well here in Taipei and fully supported by the building codes. I also shot some pics of the Taipei 101 building looming in the distance. There will be a few more entries on that building in the days to come.


We must have stood there for ten or fifteen minutes, Chunnan and the ladies chatting away, me snapping pics and gawking at the city. We began to wonder where Chunnan's dad had gotten to and looked around to see him gesticulating wildly a block away. Seems he'd been waiting in the car for us to follow him and we'd been waiting for him to bring the car to us. Crossed signals there,I guess. We all had a good laugh about it, piled in the car, and drove back to Cher's neighborhood and to the restaurant that she and her husband own, Sun & Palm. That will be the topic of my next entry. Good décor, great food, and Chunnan waiting tables. Loads of fun!

Dougs medical (cont)

After 2 x-rays, 2 CAT-scans and a PET scan I have been officially declared CANCER FREE. As a matter of fact the Dr. said that it appears that the spot is getting smaller. She said "have a good day and I'll see you in 3 months" To which I said AMEN and left the office.
ps, Oh yes and 1 biopsy

Taipei Day 1...Now With Pictures

David couldn't get this posted so I'm doing it for him. Here you go...


I consider our passage through customs to signify the beginning of our visit in Taipei. The airport is moderately sized and virtually empty. Later in the trip Chunnan would tell me that this airport is only for international flights. There is another airport right in the city that handles domestic flights. To be fair, we arrived at 7:45am on a Monday...perhaps most international flights come in at different times.


Chunnan's brother, Shu-Min, was to meet us at the airport but we looked and looked and he was nowhere to be found. Chunnan went off to look at the other end of the vast lobby and I extracted my camera from the suitcase and got to work documenting the trip. I snapped a couple pictures of the inside of the airport and will attach them later when I can re-size the images. We knew that our cell phones wouldn't work outside of the USA but I was surprised to find I had four bars of signal strength when I turned mine on anyway. I tried to call the office and leave a message since I knew that no one was there sleeping at 4am but got a recorded message in Chinese and English that service was unavailable...I guess they get a lot of silly Americans trying to use their phones.


Chunnan had decided to call his brother from a pay phone to see if he was delayed or what but turned around to see his sister, Cher, walking into the lobby. Hugs were exchanged among us all.


Turns out Shu-Min had to send out a shipment from his new computer hardware company and had asked Cher to meet us instead. We tugged our luggage along behind us and met up with Chunnan's dad (gotta find out his name) at the curb. He had done the actual driving. We stuffed most of our luggage into trunk and the rest into the back seat with Chunnan and Cher. I had the front seat with Dad. I wasn't thinking a trip home could be eventful so the camera was in the trunk. Silly me.


The airport is about half an hour outside of town, but sine we were traveling in morning rush hour traffic it took us a little longer, but it was nothing different than any other morning freeway commute except for the new variety of cars and trucks that one doesn't find here in the states­different makes and models and shapes­and it made the trip go by quickly. Once, when I was criticizing Chunnan's driving back in Seattle he had told me that I should see his father drive.


Well, here I was in the front seat and I found no real problem with Dad's driving. Sure, he followed a little close but when you're creeping along at 20kph there's nothing wrong with that. And he seemed to nudge his way into other lanes a little more determinedly than I would, but I was still cool with that at slow speeds. Oh, if I'd only known what lay in store when we exited the freeway and entered Taipei proper.


I guess I need to explain a little about Taipei itself. It's a big city. You've all been to Seattle now, I think, so I will use that as a reference. Seattle has a nice downtown area with tall buildings and typical downtown density, but the downtown area is fairly compact and gives way to suburbia fairly quickly. Well, there is no suburbia in Taipei. I guess it's what New York City is like, but I've never been to New York City so I can't say. Take Seattle's downtown and extend it several miles in ALL directions. It's not all skyscrapers, by any means, but almost every building is seven to twelve stories and densely packed. There are no single family homes in the city, or, if there are, then they're hiding them really well.


So, you've got this big city, with big building and that naturally gives you a lot of population density so you're gonna have slow creepy-beepy traffic and gridlock, right? Wrong. Traffic MOVES in Taipei. Ok, time for another “imagine this” exercise. Take all the cars you'd normally find downtown in a big city, now make half of them shiny yellow taxies. There are no alternate taxi colors here...only yellow...and almost all of them look like they just drove out of the showroom. Now take the total number of cars and taxies and put an equal number of scooters on the road with them. Ya, scooters, Vespas, Hondas, everything. Now the scooters are not shiny and bright like the taxies, they're dusty and grimy and well used. Ok, next step...take all of these vehicles­cars, taxies, and scooters­and put Mario Andretti in the drivers seats, pretend that every traffic light is seen as a man waving a checkered flag and that the laws of physics do not apply and you'll have some small idea of what it's like to drive in Taipei.


Really, though, that description doesn't do it justice because you have no concept of what the “scooter-factor” is like. For you, a scooter is a cute little thing driving down the side of the road. Here is OWNS the road. I've spent three days trying to come up with a metaphor to describe the way scooters behave and I think I've finally got it. The road and the cars and the taxies are all just a moving obstacle course for the scooter drivers. It's like playing the video game “Frogger”, but instead of one frog crossing the road there are a million frogs and they're speeding along with the traffic, swerving in there, dodging in here, weaving around and through the cars like they were standing still...all at about 50kph.


You still don't have the whole picture yet­the cars are not behaving like you would think either. Every car and taxi exists in a reality of its own. In that reality there are no other cars on the road­they own the road and they are totally alone. They move into any lane they want whenever they want, they turn whenever they like, they stop whenever it's convenient to drop off a fare or make a delivery. Turn lanes are great but they shouldn't be considered to actually mean you have to turn when you're in one. You know that double yellow line that divides the different directions of traffic? It's negotiable. If you need to cross into the other stream to get around something then feel free. In fact the whole concept of lanes seems highly flexible here. A three lane road is actually at six or seven lanes wide. You've got the three usual lanes, you have the two white lines between the lanes and the two yellow lines on the outer edges that are great for scooters.


Scooters even have their own special zone at the head of every intersection. When the light is red the cars stop and the scooters all start to trickle up from the back of the line like water running downhill through a rocky riverbed until they're all at the front of the line in a pack in their holding zone. During rush hours there could be a hundred scooters bunched up at the front of the four points of the intersection revving and anticipating the change of the light and as soon as it changes they're racing ahead of the cars questing for the next leg of that mobile obstacle course.


Perhaps the most amazing thing about all of this is that it happens as casually as you please and I have yet to see anything resembling even a fender bender. After my first exposure to this system (can I use “system” to describe perfect chaos?) I expected the road to be littlered with crashed a burned out vehicles and for ambulances to be whizzing back and forth ferrying the maimed and wounded human debris to the nearest level one trauma center. But it's not that way. I have yet to see even a fender bender or ambulance or even a police car. Somehow this works for these people and instead of a dance with death it begins to take on aspects of a ballet. Granted the dancers are a mismatched sheet metal machines, but still, it can be beautiful once you stop cringing at every imagined impact.


Oh, and Dad's driving, perfectly in tune with his surroundings.


Well, I've just touched on day one but it's time to head out for breakfast. I'll continue this later.