Oh dear, it appears
I am sick. I sit here tonight, coughing,
sniffling, and armed with a raspy voice, what a terrible feeling.
I don’t really know
how to go about explaining my weekend, because I like to think I am a little
classier than the following story is going to imply. There is no sugar coating it, my weekend
consisted of a pub crawl, and while many have seen their variety of pub crawls
(zombie-themed, mystery bus tour, subway crawls), but living in countries with
public drinking laws has probably prevented you from traveling between
7-elevens. You didn’t even know until
today that you have been missing out on this sort of experience.
Let’s start at the
beginning. Saturday night was my
friend’s birthday, and to celebrate he created a game. The game is simple, as long as you have a
partner, a love of walking, and a tolerance for alcohol. Over the course of a few hours the players
would take a walking tour of Yuanlin, starting at the train station and ending
in High-Relax (a local bar). Along the
route, there are 9 convenience stores, and at each convenience store a short
interlude was planned, but rather than being relaxing interludes, they were
drinking interludes, and a different mixed drink, beer, or wine, was assigned
to be consumed. Each person on the team
was awarded 10 points for successfully drinking the assigned drink, 5 points
for drinking an alternative drink, 0 points for drinking a soft drink/juice,
and -5 points for drinking a water.
Furthermore, the entertaining aspect is that each person lost 5 points
each time they went to the bathroom, so people were constantly monitoring each
other’s bathroom behaviors. At the end
of the night, the team which completed the route with the most points was
rewarded with the remainder of the ‘drinks kitty’, as well as the much deserved
bragging rights. As prestigious of a
title as ‘convenience store pub crawl champion’ would have been, I think I can
sleep soundly knowing that my team did not win.
Well, by ‘sleep soundly’ I guess I mean ‘only sleep for a couple of
hours’, I almost forgot that it took until 8am to get back to our beds, and by
that point I had spent hours singing solos in karaoke, lost my voice, and seen
about a thousand marathon runners show us how productive mornings can be.
 |
| A few hours of sleep later and we're off to the bowling alley! |
My cultural thought
of the week centers around an experience you almost certainly put very little
thought into: taking out the trash. Picture
most public streets near you, or any local business, do they have a garbage
can? In most places I have visited it is easy to dispose of your garbage, and
yet you still see streets, rivers, woods, all littered with trash. Here in Taiwan, it is exceptionally difficult
to find public garbage cans. So what do
you do? I still don’t know, I usually
hide mine in my purse until I’m at home or in a convenient store. Now think, what do you do when you need to
take out the garbage or recycling from your house? Throw it in a bin in your
driveway? For me to take out my garbage I need to take my bags not only
downstairs, but down the street and around the corner to a public dumpster, and
the really crazy thing is that I consider myself to be lucky. Everyday (except Sunday I believe), in the
afternoon and early evening, a team of garbage trucks blaring ‘Für Elise’
travels each of the cities collecting the trash from swarms of residents who
have run outside with their bags in hand.
If you work or are busy during the collection period, you have to
continue holding on to your rubbish until the next time you can chase down the
truck. With all of that hassle, you
would think people would refuse to participate, but Taiwan has a highly
successful disposal system, and is considered one of the most successful
countries in the world for recycling rates.
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