I was at the flowershop downstairs a couple of day…
I was at the flowershop downstairs a couple of days ago, chatting with the people who work there. An order came in for a dozen roses in a bouquet for a girl in Taipei. “Ooh, that’s nice,” I said. “Is someone getting married?” The shopkeeper shook his head and smiled.
“We get all kinds of orders,” he told me. “After a while you’re able to guess what’s going on behind the scenes. This order came from a career soldier in Kinmen. Looks like she wants out of the relationship. I’d say her chances are pretty good.”
Would-be detectives take note! The flowershop network is more informed than the government. Smells better too.
I would have posted over the past few days but something told me that you wouldn’t be interested in hearing about me doing a lot of walking around. Last night after work I was supposed to meet Berta at Amigo for dinner, but she was late. That was ok; I just sat and read, trying to ignore my growing hunger after a depressingly light vegetarian lunch that afternoon. When the food arrived, though, a feast was had, leaving us both feeling, according to Berta, “disgusting, but in a good way.” Afterwards we went to the Estrogen Mall so that I could introduce her to the Caramelitissimo Caramel ice cream, and I was reminded that I shouldn’t be eating any more of that stuff when we went outside to eat it and my ass wouldn’t fit into the chair. Then again, from the look of most of the customers at the Estrogen Mall, you’d have to have an ass the size of a Kleenex box to be considered average there.
Steve is supposed to be coming up to Taipei today, so we will probably have lunch or something. I keep thinking that I need to get down south again one of these weekends. Ideally it would be at a time when the weather up here sucks and I can feel all superior about being down there in the pleasantly sunny yet not overly hot climate.
Latest Housing Report: I went to look at a rooftop apartment one evening a few days ago. It seemed quite nice. Not large, but big enough, located fairly conveniently. The landlady, a woman in her late 40’s, seemed to want me to leave, though. “Have you seen enough? Can we go now?” she kept saying. She told me that she lived in the apartment downstairs with her husband and children. She also wanted to see my ID card and demanded a lengthy explanation of my job content.
This was all well and good, and I was just about ready to take the place, but my previous experiences with insane landpeople have made me skeptical, so I came back the next day to have another look. Taking my time looking the place over, I discovered cracks running from floor to ceiling in several places. Noise from the MRT and Fuxing South Road seemed louder than it had the night before. Two air conditioners attested to the fact that the tin roof would most certainly be an oven in the summer. The water pumps on the roof made a constant and annoying clicking sound. But the most disturbing thing was that when I asked the guard downstairs what the family renting the place out was like, he told me that the landlady was single and lived alone. And I’d have to share a mailbox with her.
All of this tipped the scales just far enough against the place that I ended up calling the landlady up that night and saying the place was a little on the expensive side for me. “Well, save your money, then,” she told me and hung up.
That was close. A good landlord is an absolute necessity here. I’d rather rent a box on the street from a nice, reasonable landlord than a luxurious downtown apartment from an insane one. In fact, I just saw an ad for a basement locker at Sogo…maybe I’ll check it out. I understand from the IKEA catalogue that even department store lockers can be quite roomy if you just know how to decorate them.
