Week of October 11th, 2013

Couple of 'firsts' this week.  First...had my first experience with ramen.  Was talking to a buddy who was raving about a ramen place, so we reserved a night and booked the ladies to go check it out.  As I'm walking in, had to confess to the group that I had never had ramen before...that includes the little bag of instant noodles that the kids eat and people (Walter White included) claim to have lived off of in college.  Seems bizarre no?  We went to Ippudo and it was delicious.  Big bowl of noodles with pork, seaweed, mushrooms, and an egg...ordered spicy.  Of course I know about sushi and teriyaki, but how did I miss an entire genre of Japanese cuisine for so long.  Apparently, there is a whole ramen culture and the way the broth is prepared and the ingrediants are marinated is considered an art form.  At Ippudo, they also offered other treats.  I enjoyed the mini pork sandwich but absolutely loved the spicy sizzling tofu soup.  Have been craving it ever since.  Add to the mix the big bottles of Asahi served in shot glasses and you have yourself just about the perfect dining experience.  They just opened a branch of another popular ramen place called Ramen Nagi around the corner and know that I will soon be descending deep into the black art that is Japanese ramen.

The second event of the week was being involved in my first car accident in Taiwan.  Driving Betty to work and at exactly 7:45, and we pull up to a line of cars stopped for a red light.  As soon as our car rolls to a stop, we hear and feel another car scraping along the drivers side of our rig.  The dip shit rolls down his window and I motion to him to pull it over to the side.  As we pull over, a third car does the same.  Turns out that the guy tried to split the gap between me and the third car and clipped us both.  The reason I know it was 7:45 is that it was recorded on our dashboard cam.  Was able to upload some of the videos from the SD card and here is the event...it's at the end of this one and the only way you can tell it was an accident is the car shaking a little bit. 

This next video is of us all pulling over.  Not terribly exciting except that at the end, you can see the dude getting out of his car.  His appearance reminds me of my friend Spranger, only the Chinese version, and we will refer to him going forward as Chinese Spranger. 

In the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, there is a scene at the bar where they identify celebrity look-a-likes from other nationalities...Brazilian Billy Bob Thornton and Native American Joe Pesci.  Funny scene and a decent movie.  We play this game a lot.

So we pull over and call the cops...the people that leased us the car said to do that and then call them.  A scooter cop shows up and we all run through our version of events.  Thank my lucky stars that Betty was in the car and could do the translation thing (and also to witness that it no way was I at fault cause I know she would consider me guilty until proven innocent).  I do know that if she wasn't there that I could ask the cop to send a Foreign Affairs officer that speaks English to help me out.  She hears the Chinese Spranger claiming it was my fault as I started moving when he was in front and scratched him.  What a dick...not only did I have Betty as a witness, but also the other guy he hit and our dashboard camera. 

The scooter cop then calls an incident cop who arrives in a nasty looking Toyota of some kind.  He goes through the group interview process again and takes our dashboard cam SD card to his car to review.  He comes back and proceeds to encourage us to settle the claim on the spot.  I had read about this cultural trait before we moved where most fender benders are resolved on the spot by the two parties where guilt is assigned and money is exchanged.  I learned this week that most people do not have car insurance and this method works better to stay out of the eyes of the law and keeps costs down.  As we are in a lease situation, no way does that work for us.  I think it would be way easier for the cop to avoid work, which was his motivation for us to settle.

After that, we all get called separately to be interviewed by the cop in his cruiser...our conversation recorded on his smart phone.  His nasty on the outside looking Toyota was worse on the inside...smelled of BO and was full of food an other junk, like he was living out of it.  I asked him what the video showed and he said (through Betty) that it was totally Chinese Sprangers fault.  By this time, the guy who leased us the car had arrived and got all the details from the cop so he could figure out how to get money out of the dude.  While this whole process took close to three hours, all in all it was a pretty painless event.  The car goes in on Monday to be repaired and I don't have to do a thing.  Well, I do now have to go and obtain a Taiwanese drivers license cause the International one is only valid for a year.  If you want to share what I'm up against, you can take a practice test here.  I taken (and failed) it twice. 

One more thing on the road topic...since this was the first time I've seen the output of the video cam, thought I 'd share the below clip so you can get a glimpse of what we battle every day.  This is an example of the d-bags that sweep around in front of the left turn lane cars and inch into oncoming traffic in an effort to save 5 seconds.  Buttholes

I hope this video upload thing works, cause I can't wait to show you more.

Finally for today, have a couple of household tips that I recently learned that are quite useful and want to share.  First, when you buy a bag of potatoes, to help delay the time when they start growing eyes, put an apple in the bag with them.  Works like a charm.  Second, when we were visiting my mom this summer (and doing laundry at her place), she said to make sure and zip up the fly on shorts and pants as it will reduce the strain on those seams during the agitation processes in the washer and dryer.  Thanks mom...learn something from you every time we talk.