Yesterday we cleaned the house thoroughly (I even tidied my room a bit, haha) and this morning I went to Tianmu to buy some donuts while Joni went to fix some lunchboxes from town.
This was all because some rotarians were coming to the house to check if the house and family suitable for hosting a future exchange student. (This is standard procedure because her son, Alex, applied for a long term exchange.)
Yeah, it's a bit strange since she already has an exchange student living here, but anyway. Today I'll write about my journey to buy donuts.
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First thing I encountered on my journey was this: A very angry street cat.
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She's angry because she has kittens. So because she fears that I am going to eat them, she jumps up on the wall in the hope that her kittens will follow her. Unfortunately for the black kitty, he was not really good enough at jumping, so I finally decided to walk away and let him have a break from the mothers panicking after he attempted to jump up the wall a dozen times. (It looked quite funny though. Should've recorded it instead of being so polite to leave.
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Afterwards I took the 601 bus to Tianmu and got this picture of a really long road uphill.
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In Taipei it's always a big challenge to find a place to park because there's really too many cars. So people will park anywhere. The only rule is: You can't park on a red line or in the middle of the road. If you can find anywhere else that's not a big road with lots of traffic or has a red line, you can park there. Even if you can find a place with a red line, but enough space between the red line and nearby trees or houses, then you can park inside the red line. Just make sure your cars wheels don't touch it. Otherwise your car is going to be towed away.
This guy is really smart. He found a place just between the roads two lanes that was big enough.
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I think this picture shows the core values of Taipei pretty good.
Wherever you look, you can always see cars parked, scooters, road intersections, construction sites and at least one public parking garage. Only thing this picture needs to be perfect is a Seven Eleven.
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Okay: No more fooling around. Dunkin' Donuts is an American brand in competition with the (now primarily) Japanese Mister Donut around these parts. As far as I know Dunkin' Donuts assimilated most of Mister Donut stores in America but here they're still competitors. Anyway, I went to Dunkin' Donuts this time to taste something different and use a promotional offer they have with 7 donuts for 158 NT$.
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So that's the stuff inside. They really have a lot of different kinds. Compared to this, Mister Donut is nothing, and they're also just a few NT$ cheaper than the average donut from Mister Donut.
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That's not all just yet...
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Phew, so much there. I'm lucky this Tianmu place is kinda located on the mountainside so there's a lot of workout available to you if you like to explore the streets. If not, I'd probably be getting fat quite quickly by staying around these parts.
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What a strange donut culture I've developed with Joni actually.
After I got home and cut out the donuts, we put them onto this cute setup of plates that Joni bought in some hellish christmas-themed department store a few weeks ago.
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Put a lot of effort to make a blast of a tea party out of the visit from rotary. Unfortunately, since parking a car is completely impossible around these parts for anyone not having the experience of living here, they couldn't stay for long due to the fear of getting their car towed away. They got some snacks and a single donut (we tried to give them more. After all, all this donut eating is going to make us fat if we eat all of the donuts we buy every time). They also got some napkins with danish flags on (the ones that I got in a parcel on my birthday). Wauw, they were really happy with those I tell you!
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So yeah... They were just here for a few minutes, having a short conversation with me completely in Chinese (I am so awesome) and taking a bunch of pictures of the house. Instead we saved the tea party for later and ate the donuts with Alex and one of Joni's friends who live nearby.
So, I'm happy with my Google Wave and Chinese abilities and everything for the time being. I hope you have an awesome time too. I can hear Alex is busy on my Japanese Super Smash Bros Brawl game in the living room. I guess it's a hit (of course). But I'm going to sleep now. It's 1AM. Goodnight.
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