Hey there,
It has been a nutty week. A week ago today (May 13th), I was preparing for my second knee replacement on May 20th and preparing for B-doll's graduation and then a trip back to the States the end of June.
So the big news in these parts is that Taiwan finally succumbed to the Vid. 29 local cases on Friday the 14th, another 180 on Saturday, and almost 300 a day since. Country wide closure of schools and non-essential businesses, etc....but you all know the drill. Quite sad on a personal level as B-dolls High School graduation ceremonies were called off, my surgery was "postponed" and pretty much everything else is kaput.
It really is a shame for Taiwan cause they had made it 14 months with nothing, and now full blown epidemic. Here is an article that details the causes of the outbreak...a series of bad luck and a couple careless moves, but I urge you to read that article as it talks about how the initial infections were supercharged by visits of some members of the Lions Club to the Tea Houses.
When we moved here, the lore was that at barbershops, the lady barbers would do double duty and perform rub and tugs on the clientele. Even though I would unzip my fly whenever I went for a trim, I never came across one of those. A couple of the perverted expat dudes I met at the beginning did talk about going to them, but it seemed as though they were a thing of the past. From what I gather in this article, and has been confirmed by my trusted sources, the Tea Houses, referred to lovingly in this article as "Grandpa Shops", are where old dudes go and get handies from old ladies. It is an open secret that there are a couple areas in town where these establishments are congregated and the old ladies stand all sexy out front. We went to a street called Herbertstrasse in Hamburg where the call girls stand in windows advertising their wares, which I imagine is the same as the red light district in Amsterdam. This Grandpa Shop district is like that only the women are 50+ year old Chinese ladies. The women in Hamburg all had big cans, tons of tattoos and were of Eastern European origin, which has never been my thing. I have always been partial to the mature Asian type (according to my browser history anyway). I'm not saying that I am going or anything, but I am intrigued.
It is stunning to see just how fast plans can change. For us, we shifted gears and are booked on a flight out of town tomorrow. We took our rapid test this morning and assuming all comes back negative and they don't cancel our flight, we'll be in the PNW Friday night. At the testing center, the line was filled with teachers from the American school all bugging out. Literally 40 people we know all with the same plan. A bunch of our friends with kids were gonna wait out the storm in Taiwan this summer, but most of them switched gears and are flying out this weekend. Since the teens can now get the Pfizer, and Taiwan is not only limited in the amount of vaccines they have but also only have the Astra Zeneca, which is not nearly as sexy as the ones in the States, the decision was easy. As for us, we are booked for our pfirst Pfizer on Saturday morning...at Costco of course.
Finally and totally unrelated, if you are a coffee drinker and always wondered why it makes you pee so aggressively, recommend to you this article from HuffPo on the science behind it. Any article that discusses osmosis is one that must be absorbed.
See you on the other side...one way or another
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