May 20th, 2021

 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

May 5th, 2021

Hey there,

Cinco de Mayo!

It has been a while.  Have been quite busy doing nothing interesting (diary wise), so today will give a quick family update, then share some updates from our extended Taiwanese aunties and uncles.

I have been fortunate to have a ton of ball to coach.  At one point in March/April, I had 1 day in 30 that I did not have some for of baseball.  Our HS Varsity season ended with a weekend tournament trip to Hualien.  Hualien is about 3 hours southeast of Taipei and we had a great time.  Fields were nice, competition was good for us as all games were one run affairs, and every kids parents made the trip, which is always good for morale.  The weekend we went coincided with the awful train accident that killed 50 people  We were traveling the same day as the accident and passed the wreck site within 50 yards.  It was also a long weekend, so the 3 hour trip took 8 hours.  At one point, we were stuck in a tunnel not moving for a good couple of hours, and once we got out of it, we pulled over so we could pee.  A bunch of the boys apparently couldn't wait as they got off the bus with cups of bubble tea that were now filled with piss.  

I had a whole thing ready to write up about the weekend, but too much time has passed.  I will share the one picture I took, and that is this picture of the deconstructed breakfast sandwich the hotel made for us as we had to leave before the buffet opened.  No joke.  Three pieces of white bread with the crust removed, one sad piece of sweet pork meat, about a dozen shards of cucumber, and plenty of mayo.  This is a common occurrence on this rock.  Whenever there is pushback on my diatribe about how shitty the food is in Taiwan, this is exhibit A.  Not that this is unheard of in other places on the planet, it is just that this is absolutely accepted by everyone as being OK.  

The Coach did take an artsy photo.

 

We then had spring break and are now back for season 4, which is Middle School baseball.  I was able to catch on and now also get to work with the MS girls softball team, so am actively working with three teams this month, which is keeping me real busy.

The other piece of me news is that I booked May 20th as the date to get my left knee replaced.  They took this x-ray at the appointment and it had both of them in it. The stickers on the left knee are something from a previous ACL surgery. 

So ideally, this gets done and then I fly to Seattle the last week or so of June.  Betty is gonna go on June 4th and meet up with The Boy there.  He graduates from UVA in a couple weeks and is gonna drive across country with some buddies.  That is exactly what I did when I graduated too.  

And Babydoll is just three weeks away from graduating High School.  She had her last HS dance performance a week or so back.

So lots of changes in store for the clan to be sure.  The point is that we will be moving about the next few months.  We plan to get vaccinated as soon as our feet touch the ground, so stay in touch.

As for Taiwan...there has been a seemingly unending series of articles about how China is gonna blow this dump up, WWIII will start here, etc.  We see all of them so no need to forward any this way.  No one here seems particularly worried about that, but we do have some stories that everyone will weigh in on.  

They still love to freak on Covid shit.  This week, there were some pilots that had it and they gave it to some quarantine hotel people and the entire country is on tenterhooks waiting for mass outbreak.  I'm waiting for the school to cancel graduation as it wouldn't take much.  

There has been a bunch of weed news.  There were a couple of articles about the cops busting some grow farms...here is a link to the story about the biggest pot bust in TW history.  Then, there was news that the government reduced the sentence for growing pot for personal use...down from 5 years to 1.  And it is hard time here.  I heard there was a pro-pot rally in town but did not go and have to assume that all the facial recognition was out for that.  I said this 10 years ago and it is still true today, but Taiwan would be the perfectly suited to be the first place in Asia to legalize it. I get that the ultra-conservative faction of old timers would never allow it, but the kids are on board and once they get a load of the money they could make, it's just a matter of time.

I liked this article that details how the cops are using mobile surveillance cameras to catch "low-level offenders".  In the article, it says that 1/3 of the violations were of people "improvising bathrooms" on the side of the road.  You have to know I am gonna share an article about urination.

This article's tag line caught my attention...Belarusian entertainer falls to his death from 10th floor of apartment.  IT goes on to say that cops have ruled out foul play as there were no signs of "a tussle" in the apartment, but this scenario has to be the foulest of plays, no?  

And finally, Men in black hurl 1,000 roaches during Taipei police chief banquet.  They have arrested 5 suspects (4 men and 1 woman) and it says that they are in a dispute with the venue (not the police chief).  They bought the roaches at an aquarium supply store as the Turkestan roaches they dumped are used as fish food.  It is worth it going to that article to see the pictures and then you can scroll down to other articles about how people mess with businesses (spoiler, feces are involved)