Confusion. All over my face.

The representation of Major League Baseball teams in Taipei is outstanding.  Everywhere I look there is a Yankees purse, a Braves hat, a Tigers t-shirt, even an Oakland Athletics sweatshirt.  Yes, that's right.  My very own team was represented by a store in one of the many malls (we'll get to that); the poster was of a cheerful gentlemen rooting for the home team--my home team.  I was so excited to see such a display that I got out my camera to take a photo, but then decided to not to when all three sales associates stared me down.  Next time I plan on being more stealth.  While doing my research on Taiwan before arriving it was brought to my attention via Wikipedia that this island has baseball!  I totally forgot about the Asian obsession with baseball...how could I have overlooked this?!  Not only do they have baseball, but they rejoice in the MLB.  It is comforting every time I see it.  While in Prague I found myself feeling a kinship whenever I heard an American accent; in Taipei I want to blow past the white tourist and head for the Taiwanese man wearing the Mets hat and introduce myself.  It's a whole new kind of camaraderie.  And I don't even care about the Mets!

Let's talk about the amount of shopping malls in this city.  Outrageous.  There are rival malls that stand across the street; staring each other down; challenging each other to a duel over customers.  The stores within the shopping malls are even more competitive!  Really, do you need Gucci and Prada facing off across the way, with Chanel around the corner?  Isn't there a mall with a store that normal people can shop at?  Every mall is full of the top names in fashion, and my curiosity about the amount of actual sales to be had gets the better of me when walking by.  But alas, just as I do when I'm at home, I continue walking by--longingly looking in the window, marveling at how cute the jackets are.  Many of these shopping malls crowd around the base of 'Taipei 101', which appears to me to be the ritzy downtown area of the city.  The allure of 'Taipei 101' is confusing, because I have doubts that it was until recently the tallest building in the world; down-graded when Dubai opened their terrifying tall hotel.  The past two days I wandered down to the area surrounding 'Taipei 101' and both days I looked up with a furrowed brow.  It really just doesn't look that tall.  And my confusion is heightened when I think about the fact that all the buildings surrounding it are very short...shouldn't this make the skyscraper look taller?  Confusion.

 

While we're on the topic of confusion, allow me to switch to the arcades.  At the night market three things are plentiful: dumplings,  strange smells and arcades.  The dumplings (and all their glory) need no explanation, I'm close to determining the exact source of the nostril stinging smell (as previously mentioned), but the arcades make no sense.  Taipei has chosen to devote whole arcades to the most frustrating game out there--the claw game.  There are not one, but two arcades in the night market filled entirely with different versions of the same infuriating game!  Doesn't anyone else see how truly vexing this game is?!  Why would you want to enter an arena where that is all you play?!  I just don't understand.

On a different note entirely, I had my first visit to the grocery store this evening.  The store is called "Wellcome", which is friendly but, well, wrong.  I breezed past the obvious error, heading for the produce section--surprising, I know.  After five weeks of consuming meat and every form of potato imaginable in Prague, I realize that maybe that wasn't the wisest of choices and should probably add a little balance to my diet.  There were things in that section that I've never seen in my life!  They looked like hybrids of fruits, but one can never be too sure...it also didn't help that the names of these "fruits" were in Chinese characters.  I stuck to the apples.  Safe bet.  For those wondering, outside the produce section I sucessfully located the peanut butter (phew!), and some delicious bread to put it on.  These groceries will be used on the evenings when I don't frequent the place that my travel mates have named "Dumplings", because it serves dumplings.  For the low price of NT$45 (US$1.47) I had five dumplings and a bowl of some sort of salad/coleslaw, something or other.  The food here is outrageously cheap.  And!  Get this--I ate all five dumplings and the lettuce-whatever with chopsticks.  The whole thing.  Chopsticks.  Success.

As has probably been surmised by this point Taipei has been confusing, to say the least.  I walk around feeling overstimulated all the time.  There are signs everywhere, but they all look the same only with different background colors.  The scooters are loud and feel like a constant stampede; it is also not uncommon to see families of four all riding on the same scooter...adding more to the confusion factor.  But through all of this I'm having such a good time making observations and watching how the other half lives, so to speak.  Taipei may be very confusing, but is also full of countless amusements.  Right down to their overzealous, white-gloved parking attendants.  Yes sir, I see you and I'm stopping.  There's no need to blow that whistle right in my face.