McDonald’s | Taiwaneers

New Bicycle

Dec 012008

The other day I took the train down to Yilan City. First of all let me say that the train ride was beautiful. As you can see from that map the train goes right along the coast for a ways. I love the ocean and seeing it again made me remember it all over.

I met up with the girl who was selling me the bike outside the train station. I gave the bike a test ride, we talked a little bit, and then I gave her my money and she took off.

She had suggested I take a bus back to Taipei since they can cut through the mountain using a tunnel slicing my traveling time in half. I went over to the bus station to make an inquiry. The dude behind the counter wasn’t too good at English and my Chinese still isn’t that great. He seemed to indicate I needed to take the front wheel off my bike and put it in a garbage bag to be able to load it onto the bus. When I tried to explain that I didn’t have the necessary tool to do so he told me that the bus was “all full.” When I asked him when the next bus would go to Taipei he told me 11:30pm. “Really?” I asked him since Taipei is a pretty hot destination and it was only 4:00pm at the time. He said yes that was indeed the case. I don’t know but I suspect he figured I was too much hassle so it would be best to just get rid of me. I guess I’ll never know the truth.

I went back over to the train station and went to the window to buy a ticket for me and my bike. “eega ren hu eega bi she cal zai Taipei” I told the man which means ’1 person and 1 bicycle to Taipei.” He kind of hesitated at first not knowing what to do about the bicycle but then asked me if 6:55pm would be okay. Even though that was 2 hours later which would mean I’d have to bum around Yilan for a while I just decided that I was lucky to be going back to Taipei at all and said okay. He sold me two tickets (1 for me and 1 for the bike) on the slow train back to Taipei for 6:55pm which was about $8 USD or so. After taking the tickets I called Emily to tell her how long I’d be.

To kill time I decided to try out my new bicycle and see a little bit of Yilan. There were rice fields everywhere. You could look out at a whole bunch of rice fields and see a house in the midde of it and a few roads going through them. It was weird because rice fields are basically like ponds with little walls protruding about a foot up around the edges. Buildings in the middle of a bunch of them look so lonely and solitary since Taiwanese construction normally means every house and building mashed up against the sides of those beside it.

I loved my new bike. Smooth, easy, pretty, and the ten-speed style I had wanted. God is so good to me! Then all of a sudden the back tire went flat.

I walked the bike back towards the train station and decided to study in the McDonald’s close by it. After finishing dinner I got out my Classical Myth by Barry Powell textbook and started on the Trojan War.

Next to me was a high school girl and guy studying. After about 30 minutes they finally got up the nerve to all of a sudden pass me a slip of paper with “Where are you from?” written on it saying a hasty “excuse me.” I read the paper and told them I was from America. For the next hour or so I would study a little bit and every once in a while answer a few of their questions. The boy always did the talking and the girl always would turn her head away and give one of those embarrassed laughs while he did so.

After discussing what my favorite basketball team was and getting the foundation of Helen & Paris’ elopment covered I got ready to leave and asked the two high schoolers if they knew of a bike shop nearby so that I could fix my tire. I was surprised when they immediately packed up there stuff and took me around the corner to a scooter store where they asked the guy if he would patch the inner tube in my bike tire. He was so slow. A middle aged Taiwanese guy who before we came along was peacefully watching tv now tried to patch my inner tube. While I stood there worried I would miss my train he moved as deliberately as possible. Taking out the tube, rubbing some goop on the hole, blowing on it to dry to goop, putting a patch on top of that, putting some air in it, and then sticking it in a bucket of water to see if the hole made bubbles indicating a leak. The two high schoolers stayed right there with me nodding reassuringly at me and trying to speed him up.

Before it was fixed I decided I better be off. I gave him 50NT (about $2 USD) for his trouble, grabbed the bike and set off for the train station. Looking behind me I saw the high schoolers still right there. They walked with me down to the train station. Then when the ticket taker became unsure about the bike they went with me down to the package guy. He explained that bikes aren’t people and I was going on a people train back to Taipei and that I needed to go to the ticket window. As a rush of worry and tension seized me I told him ‘I know but that the dude at the window had sold me these tickets and told me to ride the 6:55pm back to Taipei in the last car.’ He looked at some paperwork or something and then all of a sudden said “oh yes, okay. I’ll talk to the train conductor for you.”

As I, my bike, the two high schoolers, and now this package guy walked out to the platform down to where the last car of the 6:55pm train was pulling up I was relieved. The package guy talked to the conductor, I hopped on the train and leaned my bike up against some empty seats and sat down next to it. The high schoolers tapped on my window. I turned around and waved goodbye to them as the train pulled away and then after noticing strange looks from those sitting around at me and my bike I popped in my headphones and sat back to listen to Viva La Vida.

This is only one of the myriad of stories like it. Whats the moral? You can live in another country and get by just fine, even if you don’t speak the language very well. You can even find good deals and bikes! You just have to be prepared for mistunderstandings, long waits, and expect everything to be more of a hassle than back home.

Stir Crazy Verbosity

Michael's Posts, Our Taipei Life, University 4 Responses »

Sep 292008

After playing video games to the point of boredom, watching more then two crappy movies on TV one of which was a Segal (need I say more) and getting to the point where I started to contemplate the existence of everything I decided that typhoon or not I needed to get out of our apartment. So where did I go? McDonald’s!

McDonald’s in Taiwan is quite the social Mecca. At the table behind me the guy who had been sleeping for a while has awoken and is reading his book again. However this won’t last long as he’s trying to read an English dictionary and has gone through this read a little sleep a lottle cycle for over an hour now. The table right next to me has four late-teen to early-twenty something guys playing some sort of card game but they are special cards, not like poker cards. Other tables have dates going on, groups talking, etc. Are there children? Yes, but they are the minority and there is definitely no play-places. Don’t worry; they do still have happy meals.

This semester is shaping up to be interesting. It’s hard to tell at this point, unlike last year with the presence of Calculus, which class will be the most demanding. My Statistics class appears to be easy to understand but because of that the teacher seems to move fast and I worry that she will be focused on forward motion and not enough on giving us practice. We are able to use calculators though, unlike Calculus, and I have gotten giddy in class punching in numbers and then pushing a button to get the answer! My Management class is being taught by a Taiwanese professor woman who is in her thirties probably and has the hugest curly hair I’ve ever seen on an Asian. She also whips out one of those hand-held fans in class while she teaching when she feels hot. You know the kind I mean: those little fans that people use while waiting in line at Cedar Point. My computer teacher is such a vast improvement over last year all I can think is I’m ecstatic that the four hours of that class every week won’t be a slow decline into depression over being alive and considering the Amish lifestyle. The Dean of MCU’s International College is my Public Speaking professor. So far I still haven’t made judgment on the class but I have noticed she is one of those ‘there is something positive about everyone’ people but at the same time emits a ‘if you screw around with me I’ll fail you’ tone……..confusing. My Intro to Law class has been the most fascinating so far. The professor is teaching us about Taiwanese law but it’s the basics of the basics which I would guess are pretty much the same anywhere. You know, the definitions of things like: a natural person, a juridical person, a juridical act, rights and obligations. Its fun and that’s not sarcasm!

One story I do have to share. Through a series of unfortunate events that are sorted and complicated the IC (International College) was pretty much going to force us sophomores here in Taipei to take a French class. I decided I didn’t want to do that and was willing to travel to the Taoyuan campus once a week for a different class instead. Well the class I am taking instead is called Classical Myth & the Arts. I went the first day and I was pretty much the only international student (at least going on looks which can be deceiving) in the room. The teacher wanted to know my nationality and when I told her she said the class would be too easy for me. Asking if I could take it anyways she agreed. However instead of actually attending class and using the hand-out that she prepared for the students to use as study material for the semester she and I have worked out an independent study plan for me using a real textbook. What I thought was going to be a blow-off class to give me enough credits to keep my full-time student status and therefore my scholarship has become something totally different. I’m really excited about it and so far have really enjoyed reading my textbook. I have to admit I am completely ignorant of Greek mythology which is basically what the class is on. I’ve only gotten through Creation so far but already I feel like I have so much more context with which to approach literary references and artwork including these themes.

The PE class this semester is at the top of the mountain (our campus is on the side of a mountain), the equivalent from the road as about 14 stories, on the track field at eight in the morning and so far we’ve been learning how to bat baseballs and softballs….you know you’re jealous. Lastly, my Psychology class which got scheduled last minute and started two weeks late. I think I’m really going to like it. Hopefully I’ll enjoy it for the content but most definitely because the professor is a flaming Taiwanese guy who is hysterical. I just laughed thinking about him.

In other news I am just about to finish C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity which has been wonderful. I feel like I’ve found a book I can recommend to Christians and non-Christians alike and I can do so with an authentic belief that it will benefit them. I have also been trying to capture video footage of our summer in the USA from our new (new to us) camcorder onto my laptop so I can put together something for taiwaneers.com. However I can’t seem to get the audio to go with the video and I’ve become frustrated. Hopefully it will work out!