Greetings sports fans!

It's 2:30 a.m. here but this's the only way I get to sorta participate in Seattle getting whomped by the Giants, through nfl.com's play-by-play. And thanks to Dov for showing me that. It's a little bit of home that's much better than reading all the commentary on Monday. I might rethink this habit if the Seachickens don't figure out a way to win, but it does give me time to say hi to you all.

Oh, and I've been meaning to say thanks to Karl. He recommended the camera I'm using, and it's been a really good tool for what we're doing. On that note, on with the photos: food first.















I know what you're thinking: that looks like a bag of squid, but that's just ridiculous. And you'd be right, it is ridiculous, but it's also a bag of squid. The ridiculous part is it's sold next to ice cream. Seriously, the two things this little shop sold: ice cream and bags of squid. I am beside myself with both mirth and disgust. Whether that means there are four of me, I'll leave to you, dear reader. But this little experience reminds me that culture shock seems to be starting to set in.

I was walking to a bus stop in an unfamiliar neighborhood the other day, and I suddenly had a very strong sense of anxiety and frustration over not being able to walk on the sidewalk. Very early I took pictures of parked scooters filling the sidewalks. In the less planned neighborhoods, scooter parking takes precidence over space for people to walk, so everyone ends up in the street. The drivers are surprisingly good about this and there really isn't much honking about the herds of people filling the streets to go around the scooters. But I just had a twinge of "why?" accompanied by a sort of homesickness for Redmond, Seattle, Phoenix, and even Norfolk where the sidewalks were not filling in as parking lots. They all also differ in not being filled with people like here, but that's a different set of emotions.

In that vein, I'm really glad we went south of Taipei this weekend.















This's near the end line of the Muzha (said kinda like Mu-ch-zha) metro, where the Taipei zoo is. I took this photo for several reasons: the green hills are the most vegetation I've seen I think since we got here; very refreshing. Also the parking lot is the largest one I've seen here. It surprised me to see this much concrete dedicated to cars, but it makes sense, with whole families coming to the zoo, scooters don't make as much sense, and lots of people just take the metro. Next, it's raining and it was cool. It felt really good to be outside on a finally coolish day, even if we did get a bit wet. And it's hard to see from here, but they have huge sidewalks. Lots and lots of space for the really big zoo crowds, which weren't out today. So it was also a great time of not having to dodge people every few steps.

We were actually too late to get into the zoo, but we knew it was too late; we just wanted to find it and see if it was worth another trip, probably next Friday when we have a national holiday. Around here we've learned if we really want a trouble free excursion, we need to be willing to make a dry run at finding a place. But it definitely is worth coming back for. It has several environments with several dozen animals. It's not the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, which can charge $15 or $20 per person, but it only charges 60 NT. That's about $2, so, good deal.

And the trip gave us another installment in our giant inflatable animal series.



















It's not really giant, except relatively, and it's not the whole animal, but man these things were popular. I never did figure out what they were good for, except whacking your little sister with.















And here we are having a surprisingly expensive, but surprisingly appetizing dinner. It was about 900 NT each, and then a half bottle of wine, totaling about 2500 NT, or around $80. So, pretty expensive, even for Seattle, but it had an appetizer, soup, salad, entree, dessert, and tea. And I was really surprised by the flavors. I had what they called a chef salad as the salad. It was like a mini chef salad, with a zippy orange-kinda dressing, unexpected but very good. And it's the first time we've had steak since we've been here, so that made everyone happy. And they were both good cuts of meat and done about the way we wanted, which's kind of a miracle with language barrier, and it felt like the server was surprised by us ordering medium rare. I wonder if that's an unpopular choice or if I was just reading her wrong. Whatever it was, we had a very good meal and evening.

This was also kind of a celebration for finally making enough money to live independent of our savings, tho' the celebration might've pushed us back into the red.















This's why there aren't more pictures of me. This's our night out, but I really don't know why Marie kept turning the camera every which way but level.















And I'm just learning that my wife has a juvenile sense of humor. She demanded that I take this picture. Maybe this's where I'm wrong. I thought it was kinda funny, but I didn't think we needed proof. This sorta thing is on every other sign, t-shirt, you name it. This's probably the record holder for size, prestige, and unfortunate meaning, but I just didn't think it was that funny. I thought the squid and ice cream was a lot funnier. I mean, if they sold bras or swimsuits that would've been funny!

But some of us are on the lookout for culture.















This's obviously a street performance, and that is a basket over what I'm assuming is her head (assuming the her, not the head). I couldn't read any of the descriptions, so I don't know if this's traditional music and attire, but I have the impression it is. And I'm sorry to say I didn't listen to much of the music, but it was pleasant to hear after the kids covering pop songs on the other end of the block.















Finally, I've been reading a little of the ongoing complaints from Seattlites about the new light rail and how much it costs and won't be cost efficient even if people ride it and blah blah blah. I'd really like those people to come here and see things like this. This's about ten o'clock on a Saturday night, when people in the U.S. are taking their cars because anything else's too much of a pain. They have a really good system in place here, so people use it. And you have to start building somewhere. And if anyone saw the amount of people this thing carries on a regular basis and calculated what would happen if all these people were even riding two to a scooter, they'd see how this system is the only thing standing between Taipei and mass gridlock.

Personally, it seems like a good idea to build the emergency release valve before you need it. But, the fact that Seattle couldn't get it's act together on this until just recently and is still whining about it, and Portland saw the need ten or fifteen years ago, is part of the reason we're seriously thinking about moving there when we've seen enough of the world.

So, sorry, still no beach trip, but confidence is high! We have next Friday off, so I'm hoping we can go to the beach either Friday or Sunday and the zoo the other. So I hope I'll have lots of stuff to show how much more fun we're having than you!