砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Monday, April 30, 2007

Watched the news today and an interesting topic was the No Plastic Bag Day, designated on the 1st Wednesday every month. It's interesting because in Taiwan, convenience stores and supermarkets (and some shops) do not give plastic bags at all. Our first experience on this was buying Ayumi singles and the 5-cd Ah-Mei compilation (not sold in Singapore) and the cashier asked "Do you need plastic bags?" Apparently, you had to pay for the plastic bags too. I certainly think that this implementation is very feasible. To think that there were people who insisted on using plastic bags on the No Plastic Bag Day... these people may need to shift their mindset soon because we certainly need to reduce usage of these plastic bags in order to help conserve the environment.

Also read the news today about the drought in Australia, notably in Queensland. Jinki, what is your take on the current drought? I guess water rationing isn't too challenging for you guys who had been through the dirty and tough NS. I wonder if I can bear through it too? Haha. This also serves as a psychological warning to Princess Cow and company who will be visiting Australia end of next month. Hopefully they get to enjoy the trip without too much hassle. To think that in Taipei, we happily took tub baths and soaked in hot springs comfortably... aww. I guess the rains will come soon as the winter season approaches the southern hemisphere. That should alleviate the situation slightly. And I do applaud the conservation policies implemented by the Australian government, perhaps Singapore should try water rationing once a month in different constituencies? It would be really interesting to experience such inconveniences.

Alright, let's get back to Day 4 & 5 of the trip. =)

Day 4 of the trip was 21 Apr, a Saturday. Saturday is a good day to be in XMD because all the teenagers gather at the area for their weekend getaways. Moreover, many stars and artistes would come on the weekends to do their promotions and gigs. One memory I still have was a Japanese girl playing her guitar and singing on the street. Oh man, she does have a great voice though I doubt someone will enlist her as a developing artise =p Hee, I think the standards to become a star would be much tougher. We went to Nova to check out the laptops again. One of the sales assistant, a handsome chap told us many interesting news on the laptop market. Amazingly, Taiwanese computer sales people aren't pushy at all, unlike Singaporean sales assistants. They are very friendly and polite. Before you step in, they already greet you "欢迎光临" and then when you step in, they try to find out about your needs and try to make recommendations. We felt that the price was still a tad too high so we decided to go to the computer street again. We then took the MRT to ZXXS and spent 3hours there! Woohoo! Again I would like to commend the sales people, especially the guy we bought the laptop from. He actually recommended us to delay our purchase because new developments and the instable Windows Vista (the same reason cited by the yandao in Nova) were coming up. He also tried to find out what we needed and made the appropriate comparisons and recommendations. No single attempt to try to push the sale through at all. Actually before that we discussed for some time whether to buy the laptop or not. I felt compelled to recommend the purchase because of the huge savings, coupled with the fact that the best laptop wrapping specialist was in Taipei while we heard many problems from the Singaporean wrapping shops. By "wrapping" I meant not like packaging a present, but to put a transparent membrane on the surface of the laptop to prevent its surface from discolouring or dirtied. At the point of discussion, we shared 10 xiaolongbaos 小笼包 sold by a roadside stall at 40NT. Of course it isn't as nice as Dintaifeng 鼎太丰 but it was not too bad either for that price. We ate and discussed while sitting on a bench in front of a interesting monument made up of hundreds of empty glass bottles, which faced the Holiday Jade Market 假日玉器市场 as well as the Farm Produce Market 农品市场. And, so we spent 2.5hrs comparing, and deciding on the original target, the ASUS W7J. Heh. Beware that you may need to have your ID/passport ready for them because when using your credit/debit card, they may need your documents for verification and records for such huge purchases. Hee.

After checking the laptop thoroughly, we had the laptop packed back into the box with the freebies and moved on to the next destination. Haha, not back to the hotel but across ZX East Road (remember Power Station's song 忠孝东路走九遍? That's the long long road cutting horizontally across Taipei). We moved through a area that highly resembles Kowloon of HongKong. Too bad no Taiwanese salon is as affordable as any Kowloon salon. We wanted to find the famous 阿婆甜不辣 but unfortunately turned at the wrong road. It was actually northwards but we turned southwards and spent some time walking around the supposed street. The stupid street signs of Taiwan is one troublesome hassle for non-Taiwanese people like us. We gave up and went on to Dintaifeng (the first original outlet, not the ZX Dunhua branch at the basement of Sogo) to check the area out. It was already near dinner time at 6+ but the sky was already darkening. At Hsinyi Road 信义路, just opposite the famous original eatery, we were splattered with cement! One woman screamed at the operator for not looking out for the poor pedestrians like us. Luckily the damage was only minimal. Dintaifeng was awfully crowded, and taxis were waiting by the roadside, people coming by the bus loads. Wah! We decided not to queue and went on to explore the food street just beside it called 永康路. If you tried this shaved ice in Bugis, you might have some idea of this road, where this shaved ice shop called 冰馆 first began. It's designed like a al fresco dessert dining area with the shop looking more like a takeaway counter, but it still looks cool. This road is peppered with so many eateries! Japanese, Chinese, Thai, steamboat, etc. We decided to eat at a Chinese noodle shop (can't remember the name, but you should lookout for its red banner depicting its history). For the first time we sat down to have a meal! Haha. I ordered 鱼焿面 while Pika ordered some noodles (see photo below) whose name I can't remember =p. We also shared some special 饺子 (substitute our disappointment of no Dintaifeng) I think. Overall the meal only cost us 100+NT. Woohoo.

We continued to explore the area and decided to go back by WALKING (while taking turns carrying the laptop box). Think of it as a walk from Bishan back to Khatib (which actually we had already walked before). We were absolutely lucky to have walked past some tourist destinations like the CKS Memorial Hall 中正纪念堂(see photos, it actually has its own MRT station) and probably a local destination known as Bridal Street 婚纱街. (check out the photos). Bridal Street is a romantic street with many bridal shops and photography specialists. Check out their works right on the pavement itself. Heh. Using XK Mitsukoshi as a compass bearing, we walked along the CKS Memorial - Xiaonanmen - XMD Station route in fact. Along the way we even picked up a wallet belonging to a Taiwanese student, right on the road itself! I have sharp eyes, don't I? Unfortunately we didn't see any police station on the way so we brought it back all the way to the hotel. Haha.

After the hotel, we decided to go Carrefour because it was 24hr operated and we walked past it earlier on one of the days. Man, it was already 11+ by then. We walked past the famous Red Theater 红楼剧院 (built by the Japanese) which seems to cover a plethora of nighttime hangouts. Many al fresco pubs and eateries are just right behind it (rumour says this place is also a gay hangout, which I did see some guys behaving quite intimately, hand caressing shoulders and weird whiny voices =p) Oh and don't forget Jay Chou once held a promotion concert there before. Heh. We took some time to reach Carrefour, slightly past 12 midnight. Pika saw on the signs that only level 2 & 3 were opened but I didn't until I reached level 4 =p. There wasn't any travellator going downwards but he had to go to the washroom so I waited there awhile contemplating how to go down. One silly idea I had was to walk down the upmoving travellator, which of course was met with opposition. We decided to go up to level 5 instead where the car park was. Oh man, it was a bad but really fun decision, as there were those soft-toy catching machines there! Hahaha. One try is 10NT only (around 46cents) so we decided to try out luck to catch a furry cute teddy bear. After spending nearly 200NT, we still did not manage to catch any toy! LOL. (I tell you more about the toy catching machine next time). Feeling cheated, we proceeded to Carrefour level 2 (non groceries level) and tried to explore the hypermarket. One absolutely great buy we had there was this San Disk Cruzer 4GB thumbdrive, going on special offer at 999NT. Man, that's about $45! Referring to our minds for the last price list we could muster, Pika's San Disk 1GB thumbdrive was bought at $30+ at the last IT show if I'm not wrong, so 4GB would cost at least $60? By that logic, I wanted to get the thumbdrive no matter what (since I don't have one and needed one anyway). It was a great decision as it cost at least $70 here! Hehe. We continued to check out the cameras, the toys (no bear similar to the toy catching machine) and other stuff like laptops etc. We then proceeded to the groceries section and bought many stuff. One of which, the best buy, was the Meiji matcha ice cream. One tub (1l at least, I think) only cost 69NT! But we forgot we did not have any spoons until we got back to the hotel. We bought loads of buns (6 for 145NT) and they all seem to have pork floss in them, but none are comparable to Breaktalk (obviously). (Do bear in mind that bakeries in Taipei are usually very up-class shops, higher class than Four Leaves~) I paid 2717NT in all for all the stuff using Visa (including buying 2 big plastic bags, which they had to scan as the same as any inventory). There was a voucher promotion there where every 1000NT spent earns you a 100NT voucher but we were mistaken because the promotion was only for Carrefour members. Pika joked that I should show my lucky charm since I'm (actually it's in his name) a Singaporean Carrefour member. =p

We carried the loads back to the hotel while feasting on the buns. Man, I tell you, even if we were hungry, 6 buns were too much for both of us. We walked past the dingy, Chinatown-like Wanhua district (万华区) which was previously the main area of action in the heydays of old Taipei. Getting back to the hotel around 1+am, we had to put the ice cream sadly into the fridge because we had no spoons and couldn't "kope" any spoon from the convenience stores. (I actually found spoons on sale 2 nights later, no thanks to Pika's oversight while he looked at the disposables section). We also bought a magazine which we suspect to be a product of Baleno / Ebase, as the clothes featured were mainly of that family of brands. But it was a good buy at 95NT since there were some skincare freebies that came with it, not to mention many reports and insights (like vital statistics) on hot stars like Farenheit, and hunks like Aaron Kwok, etc. We read the magazine together for a while and watched tv while taking turns to bath. By the time we went to bed I think it was 4+am... but of course I knocked out first. =p

So much for Day 4. The next day, we woke up late and hence missed the timing to go Dintaifeng for brunch =p (my fault again for being unable to resist the bed despite having set an alarm). This time while I harboured hopes to visit Danshui as Stefanie Sun was having a promotion there, but we decided to go to Wufenpu 五分埔 instead for our clothes shopping because Monday was designated for wholesalers only. We took a long bus over to the area, and walked a short distance and voila, we found the clothes market without too much hassle. We explored a few alleys and came to a shop selling drinks and Pika wanted to drink Papaya Milk. Their papaya milk is rich and flavourful, and unlike here where they add sugar water, the shop had no need to do so at all because the papaya itself is sweet enough. Heh. We continued to walk Wufenpu for another 4hrs, stopping at a bag distributor (and bought 3 nice, stylish handbags for 1050NT), and many clothes retailer. You should see the bags of stuff I carried man. I also tried stuff like the fried hotdog with a sweet dough (tastes like hotdog in a fried bun actually), and sotong balls etc. Niceeeee~ We really walked rounds and rounds around the area, trying to comb for the best deals in the myriad of alleys which resembles the famous weekend Thai wholesale market Chatuchak. After feeling satisfied and hungry, we moved on to Raohe St NM. We passed by the train station as we crossed the overhead bridge, and also a police station. So I returned the wallet there and had a nice chat with the police officer. Haha. We then thronged Raohe St. I say this is a MUST-VISIT night market. The place is very exciting with the crowded walkways, shops and all the foodstores right in the middle of the road. The fragrance of the food (ignore oily stenches like chow tauhu) filled the air. One thing we missed eating was the ice dessert called 三色冰, because of the lack of seats at the dessert stall. It is actually similar to ice kachang except that it is made up of ice, milk, and fruits (kiwi (guava or some green fruit), strawberry and mango). SOBS. On the bright side we ate the best XXXXL chicken chop ever tasted and a myriad of other stuff. Hehe. (Reminds me that previously at LinJiang NM, the takoyaki was the best I ever tasted, it was crunchy on the outside, soft and satisfying on the inside!!!) *Droooooooolz* Again the 133NT shop was "closing down" there so we had a great battle for the shoes and stuff. We also went to A. Antonio shop which sells cheap leather belts (50NT for one, and they can even customise the belt to your size, woohoo!) and wallets and other accessories. We bought many nice wallets after taking about 30mins to search through the entire trolley. I bought the overpriced (on hindsight) Barclays EPL wallet upon seeing the cool look it takes on when it becomes used, when showed by the very nice, and helpful male sales assistant as well. He used a similar wallet (but I can't remember his wallet logo) and I felt I should have one as well as my current wallet ought to be retired soon before it breaks down entirely =x (now I'm feeling a tingling sense of ferocity from a certain eletric Pokemon). This EPL wallet which I'm using now isn't friendly to my numerous cards, so maybe my birthday I have to get a card holder or something. *hint hint*. Lalala. Satisfied with the great buys we had (4 huge loads for 2 of us), we waited nearly 30mins for the elusive bus back to XMD. Nearly got killed by the air pollution at the bus stop there, smoking, vehicles dust, KFC oil-stained air, etc.

We went back to the hotel full of everything and after playing a little bit with the W7J (let's call it Whitebox, shall we?), I decided to pack the luggage bags a little and the little bulge was kinda like warning me to stop our shopping forays.. haha. But of course we were undaunted!

Ok, photos time. Then the next and the final entry for the story on the trip should be up around Thursday..... arghzzzzzzzzz, still haven't did a single bit of work which I'm supposed to finish by Labour Day. (I should call it Labourious/Slavery Day, I guess, but heck, I'm going to play football and perhaps visit JB with my brother a short while later). 2.20am already~~~~~~~!!!!!!!! Pengz.

Siansified
Jeffire

Acknowledged my existence at
11:26 PM