There's a sports center with a gym not far from my apartment where I usually go for exercise. Afterward, I typically go to 7-Eleven for soy milk, a tea egg, and an onigiri.
As an aside, 7-Elevens in Taiwan are the opposite of 7-Elevens in the States. The version in the States, of course, is best known for its 48oz. Slurpees and food items made primarily from leftover industrial waste and discarded cattle feed, which can hospitalize an otherwise healthy person if eaten in any significant quantity. That's about all it has to offer.
The version in Taiwan is different. For one thing, it sells items that resemble real food: sandwiches, pasta, onigiri, almond slivers with tiny dried fish, the aforementioned tea eggs. It's still all laced with preservatives, and it's still a minefield of industrial sludge shaped like potato chips, but the point is that things with nutritional value can be had.
Then there's everything else: the clean bathrooms (again, no need to buy anything to use one), the ATMs (no transaction fee), the clean, bright seating areas inside and outside, the free WiFi, and the all-purpose vending machines, where you can buy things like plane tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, and concert tickets, print out contracts, get a passport photo taken, make photocopies, deliver or receive packages, or do pretty much anything else that would otherwise require you to go to some specialized place that does only one of those things. I'm pretty sure they also print wedding certificates, though I haven't tried.
So usually I go there for my post-exercise snack. For the sake of variety, however, today I went to the lunch cafeteria next door. It was in a small shack that looked like it was caving in. A couple people who had just ordered were waiting outside the open entrance, and a woman with an apron was standing over a cart with two cauldrons of hot liquid. I ordered a shrimp fried rice and the woman told me to sit, nodding in the direction of the door of the adjacent building.
Inside was a long room of tables with people eating. Every seat was taken except for one table at the back, where an old man was sitting by himself, facing the wall. I sat down across from him.
He looked up and smiled at me, revealing long, crooked, discolored teeth with several large gaps, and asked where I was from.
Mr. He (pronounced like "huh") is 70 and worked in real estate from high school straight until his retirement. He's one of nine children, eight of which are boys, and has five sons. He's been married and divorced twice, and now lives with his girlfriend of 18 years. His dream is to travel around the world, but he's afraid of flying and so has only been as far as Korea and Japan.
Why don't you take a boat? I offered. You still look plenty young to travel the world.
Thank you, he said. You've comforted me.
He asked me how old I was, and when I told him he nodded approvingly and laughed. Good! He reached into a bag and produced a seaweed snack, which he offered to me. Then he pointed at his teeth and laughed again.
You don't brush your teeth? I ventured.
Five times a day! he replied. He reached into the bag again and produced a toothbrush and rinsing cup to prove it.
Maybe that's a few too many times, I caught myself thinking.
Mr. He took his phone out of his pocket and showed me a video of cats in a cage.
These are my cats, he said. I have twelve cats, and two dogs.
I wanted to ask why they were all in cages, but thought better of it. We exchanged phone numbers, and wished each other the best of luck.
These are dishes I had last night at a 熱炒 ("Hot fry") restaurant. Clockwise, from top-right: Birds-nest fern with small dried fish; Deep-fried oysters and basil; Sweet and sour Asian swamp eel; Whole squid with ginger; Basil omelet. Not pictured but consumed: Deep fried, breaded pineapple shrimp balls with frosting and rainbow sprinkles on top.
A chandelier store, I assume.
This gloopy dessert, which I had two nights ago at the 寧夏 night market, is made from grass jelly (仙草). Inside, hidden in the jelly, are fun things like boiled balls of glutinous rice flour (湯圓) and pinto beans. Another dessert I had here, which was even more of a gastronomical revelation, is a pungent, sweet and sour, pinkish soup made from fermented rice (I'm pretty sure it's made with koji). The version I had contained large glutinous rice flour balls stuffed with sweet black sesame paste. I was so excited about this that I forgot to take a picture.
The entrance of a temple.
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