Amusing Signage in Taiwan.

Shoe washing station.

The Chinese portion of the sign basically says "Child specific sink - do not step/place excessive weight." Somehow it got translated into "Hand basin for child only do not beat." Who doesn't love Engrish?

"No hunting or electrocute or poisoning fish. No contaminating to water or air." But my favorite? A toddler playing with two balls and Thor's hammer in a bathtub with wheels = vender?

"Inshallah" is an English transcription of the Arabic phrase for "God Willing." Guess what is this business? It is a store that provides bride services (e.g. dress/nails/hair).

I will try to build a top notch leisure environment that can be enjoyed by all!

Political correctness has not eradicated signs that bring joy to my life.

I'll be sure not to "bring outer zone's food."

This is an evacuation radius map for the Nuclear Power Station 3. It is written in both Chinese and Engrish. 

Leaving America.

It is sort of scary how long I've lived in America. I would say that just six years ago - I still found America to be very alien, foreign, and sometimes downright confusing. But overtime, slowly and surely, through the course of regular life and also the generosity of very kind people who have shared their experiences and opened their lives and homes to me, I think I've sufficiently mastered the rather marketable skill of pretending to be a natural born American citizen.

Similarly, life in Taiwan, like the time and tide, waits for no man. I'd imagine much has changed in the last six years, and I suspect it is entirely possible that I could experience culture shock at "home," and I wonder how long it would take for me to feel comfortable again.

But anyway - enough with my random musings!

I took the Port Authority bus to Pittsburgh International Airport, a perfectly nice airport that is unfortunately too large for western Pennsylvania. The 28X bus was about 6 minutes early - which can really ruin the day for someone who is not familiar with the Port Authority's customary business practices and misses their bus and possibly their fight.

Did I mention waiting for the bus made me really cold?

The bus was pretty fun. A young fella who was probably drunk got on the bus and tried to avoid the bus fare. The bus driver called him out on it and the young fella pays - but then began to curse up a storm. Then he sat down and whipped out a new smartphone (I think it was even HTC! Yay Taiwan represent!)

Anyway - so he made the bus really awkward because there was toddlers going to the airport and this smuck was saying things that would make a sailor blush. But karma is a bitch - and the young fella forgot his charger on the bus. I guess I could have said something to him - but I swear everything happened so quickly ;)

Lonely and sad micro-USB charger.

Once we got to the airport - I got up and grabbed the lost charger and handed it to the bus driver.

"I believe that young fella who was giving you a hard time left his."

*bus driver and I share a laugh*

So anyhoo - I proceeded to the bag drop area, went through security and found my gate nearly two hours ahead of schedule.

There were not a lot of people, so it was particularly odd when this (pictured below) showed up at the gate, sort of eyed everyone up, then sat down next to this Asian girl. He then kept looking at her, put his arm on the back of the seat over to try and start a conversation, and was generally quite creepy.

Creeper. He was sort of large. Thankfully he bought two seats so no one would have to sit under his arm.

But his creepiness was to my benefit because it provided amusement while we waited for our flight to Detroit   to arrive in Pittsburgh. It was a good distraction because I was a tad bit anxious at this point as I only had a little over an hour between my flight from Pittsburgh to Detroit and the connecting flight from Detroit to Tokyo.

The little plane finally arrived, and by the time we started boarding after a torturous wait for the passengers to deplane, we were thirty minutes past our scheduled departure time. Once we finally we on board - we then taxied around on the tarmac until we got to the deicing station (as it had started to snow rather heavily).

The plane landed after we had been scheduled to board.

HURRY! 

By the time we had departed, we were over an hour late and I resigned to the possibility that I would miss the flight from Detroit to Tokyo.

But I think the pilot maintained a higher cruising speed and managed to get us there with only a half hour delay. We deplaned just as my next connecting flight began boarding, so I made a mad dash from one terminal building to the other, weaving through the crowd and running up the stairs to pass people on escalators. Thankfully I made it for the flight!

Good bye America! I'll miss you!

But I'm not sad I'm leaving behind your weather.

Going home!

In a few more days I'll be getting on a jet plane and leaving Yinzburg for a little time at home.

It has been about six years since I have been back home and over a decade since I had the opportunity to spend the Chinese New Year with people who actually partake in Chinese New Year festivities (Chinese New Year is the American cultural equivalent of Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas combined). So I guess at one level I am somewhat excited.

However, until mankind perfects teleportation technology, in order to get there, one has to spend nineteen and a half hours in a dry pressurized metal cylinder. That is a long time to spend watching family movies and enjoying the wonderful food and service offered by Delta Airlines followed by a two and a half hour bus ride from the airport (basically more than 24 hours door to door). Unfortunately I'm not 19 anymore and I get stiff, tired and cranky.

Also, one of the primary reasons why I'm making this trip back is to sort of um... see some older members of the family while I still can. So it is a rather somber trip.


Going back to the old country is a lot easier than leaving. In the United States, people go through customs and border controls for entering the country. But as long as you're not a criminal/terror suspect on some watch list, someone who has knowledge of information subject to export controls, or someone out on bail, you're free to leave pretty much whenever you want.

In Taiwan, the customs and border controls exist for people entering and leaving the country. In fact, in my experience, I have spent more time waiting for the customs official to permit me to leave the country than I have awaiting permission to enter the country.

The reasons for this peculiar setup is twofold. First, Taiwan was in a continuous state of martial law from 1949 until 1987. Law enforcement found it beneficial to be able to able to control departure since it made it hard for criminals (both genuine and political) from leaving the country.

Second, Taiwan still has a military draft. All males between the ages of 19 through 36 are subject to conscription for service in the armed forces. Those subject to the draft are not permitted to leave the country unless they fall within a few rather specific categories. The draft is being phased out in the coming years - but I'd imagine the departure inspection to continue for the foreseeable future (because frankly it is such a nice law enforcement tool).

So we'll see how this trip goes - hopefully it will be smooth sailing with plenty of joyous festivities, yummy food and wonderful Engrish of the Day blog posts.

Old Country Currency.

We recently had to make some unexpected travel arrangements for the old country. Because of the rapid development of events that necessitated the unexpected travel arrangements, the Mrs. and I were relatively unprepared. We thought we didn't have any old country currency, and because the scheduled flight would arrive rather late at Chiang-Kai Shek International Airport, we were concerned about having to sit around in the airport overnight until the currency exchange was open for business.

Thankfully I remembered I had a wallet I exclusively used in Taiwan...

This is the only old country money I brought left.

All the currency is logically sized - and a visually-impaired person can tell the difference between the different notes.All the "paper" currency is actually plastic. The 500 NT note has a youth baseball team on the front, and a Taiwanese deer on the reverse. The 100 NT pictures the founding father Sun Yat-sen on the front, and the reverse is covered by a picture of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial. The largest coin is 10 NT, the intermediate size 5 NT, and the smallest is the 1 NT.

Having 626NT, the equivalent of $21.19 USD, will get you to any major city from the airport, with change to spare for some simple nutrition. But the increasingly weak USD plus annual inflation might be catching up to me, and I may need update my emergency travel kit... maybe I'll get another 1000 NT note.

Old Country Memories: Sausage Gambling

When I was growing up in the middle to late 1980s, Taiwan had barely just emerged from under martial law, and people were relatively poor. One of the more amusing memories I have about Taiwan is the sausage gambling phenomenon at night markets or in the rear gates behind schools (where all the "illicit" and "shameful" stuff like candies and pop stands were). Gambling was and still is illegal in Taiwan, but because martial law meant swift and harsh disproportionate punishment, people never gambled in cash, but instead offered "games" for goods like soda, candy, and sausages.

A modern sausage stand.

Taiwanese sausages are sort of thin tubes of pork that is over-salted and over-sweetened. They tend to be a little dry, because they literally are hung on a rack above the grilling station. Unrefrigerated in Taiwanese weather! But whatever! They were tasty and I never got sick.

So anyway - one of the stranger things is people gamble for these sausages. Back then, prices were relatively low, so you could buy a sausage for like NT$ 5 (something like 17¢ USD). So once you bought your sausage, the dude behind the stand would grill it up for you. But if you opted to, you could gamble with your sausage.

Usually hidden under the grill, the guy had a mini roulette wheel or  a dice board, and you could gamble a sausage for more sausages! Hypothetically, you could win the entire cart and just go home with a few hundred sausages, but I don't think that ever happens because the games were probably all rigged like in any real casino, where the house always wins.

I never gambled with my sausage - probably because the only money I ever had was the random NT$ 5 that I found while I was looking at the ground. But I recall some classmates had the gambling bug.

I guess no matter where you go, there is a portion of the population that enjoys gambling. Gambling is like extreme alcoholism, if you have the genetic predisposition, all it takes is the rush of the first roll of the dice and you're hooked for life.

I guess my former classmates could say "it all began when I started gambling with my sausage."

Black Pepper Sauce goes well with anything.

Very few things make me nostalgic about anything concerning my childhood. But I have to say that black pepper sauce is of those things that elicit childhood memories.

One of the only childhood memories I have with my dad involves black pepper sauce. We didn't eat well growing up, neither parent had the inclination to bother, and we didn't have the $ to eat out with any regularity.

But, sometime between the age of 4-6, for whatever reason, my mother had one of her extended absences abroad. I don't precisely remember why my brother wasn't around, but somehow my dad and I ended up at a "steakhouse."

Keep in mind, this was in the mid-late 1980s, and Taiwan had barely just emerged from under martial law, we didn't really have THAT much culinary contact with the outside world, so "steaks" were really more like sad little cuts of beef from an old water buffalo or maybe an old cow. It definitely wasn't one of them fancy American or Australian imported steaks.

But it was cheap. For something like $2.50 USD, the "steak" came to your table sizzling on a hotplate, with black pepper sauce, with an egg (sunny side up), vegetables, and pasta. And not just any regular pasta (which we had plenty of in Taiwan), but WESTERN extruded pasta (i.e. macaroni). WOW!

I was a child, and didn't really know how to use this strange WESTERN knife and fork business (where's my chopstick?), so I spent about 90 minutes gnawing on this rather dry little "steak" that sat in a puddle of black pepper sauce. I distinctly remember how proud my dad was that I had finished this thing, even if it took 90 minutes (or maybe it was relief? I was a kid, who knows!).

Objectively speaking the steak was dry and old beef, but for me that was one of the more memorable meals.

With that old country tale being told, let me get to the actual cooking.

You can make your own black pepper sauce, but I didn't bother. I endorse Lee Kum Kee's black pepper sauce. It works, and you can find it at any respectable East Asian food mart.

I sliced an onion. Sauteed it in an oiled skillet at medium-high heat until they're brown, then added a pound of bite-sized chicken.

You can use lamb, beef, or whatever protein that builds your muscles. Saute until the surface of the protein is cooked, and add your vegetables. We opted for peas.

Add some chicken stock, some pepper sauce, and bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes.

You can eat it over rice, or chose to do the "Western" thing and eat it over some rotini.

Yum!