Demolition

On Thursday, I paused as I was leaving the apartment, noticing that I could see in through the window across the street - I could see a family sitting on a couch in a very nice living room. Their curtains are usually closed.

Friday I woke to the sound of a building being demolished. It went on all morning, nearly deafening at times (It's really not great background noise for a phone interview). When I returned home after school, the whole thing was gone. The destruction and removal process was amazingly quick and thorough. My grandma said they were going to build a new apartment building like the one behind it (though I can't be sure I translated that right).

Today, I joined John, Becca and Dan to the east coast. The intent was to go surfing. They brought their own boogie board and we rented a couple full sized boards for us to share. However, I didn't get to that point, b/c I soon realized the water was too powerful for me. After a while, everyone came out of the water - the waves were coming in one after the other too quickly. Because of the typhoon on Tuesday, what was once a nice sand beach was now a very stony beach. As the waves came in near the shore, rocks would pummel into your legs. Further out, this didn't happen, but your ability to reach sand bottom was unreliable as the bottom floor had been dug up by the storm.

We came back to Taipei and enjoyed a late lunch/early dinner at a Din Tai Fung-like place, just a little further down YongKang from the more famous dim sum place. I had mixed feelings about the meal - the cha siu bao were terrible, but the luo buo gao was good. The xiao long bao were OK, and the zong zi and bamboo were excellent. Afterwards, we enjoyed a Jumbo Mango Ice from the other famous place in the area - Ice Monster. It was enjoyable, but I still think a good ripe mango beats it. Though, on a hotter day, the ice mound might have hit the spot more. There are a lot of antique stores down the road (combined with some caged chickens) - which reminded me of being in France with Brianne and exploring the antique shops there. It was interesting to see the Taiwanese version of the same thing - including old photographs, posters and porcelain.


We demolished this Mango Ice


Dude, how does this guy sell ANYTHING!?