#183 Daily Thunderstorms in Taipei

Transcript

Man, this is so weird, so I noticed at the beginning of the week that the weather report was basically the same every fucking day. It was extreme heat warning with a fairly high chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. And I thought I was just looking at the hour by hour, not the week. And now I'm at the end of the week, it's Friday, and it's stretching on into next week. The same as shit.

And it's true. I mean, it's like one-thirty in the afternoon right now. Behind me, the sky is the perfect cartoon sky. And ahead of me, in the direction I'm walking, unfortunately, it's just the evil gray death sky. I just, I don't understand. I mean, I don't understand anything.

But I definitely don't understand how can this happen every day, over and over and over and over. It's fucking weird as shit. Like, is this a weather pattern? I guess I would assume Taiwan being an island. The weather just moves on past, right? It moves over the island and it keeps going.

There's obviously something with just the way heat can build up. And again, probably all that humidity stuff that I don't understand. Something happens in the afternoon where everything builds up in just the right way to make a thunderstorm. But I don't know, it's just weird to me that it doesn't just move on past. I mean, there's a breeze. The clouds are moving. Like, is this going in a circle? Is this weather going in a circle around and around? Like, what the fuck? What is going on? It's so weird. It's so weird for it to be this way for weeks. It's such a specific seeming weather pattern. And yeah, like Atlanta, Canada, where I'm from, very erratic weather. But it's different all the time. It's constantly changing. You definitely don't get stuck in these weird patterns, these weird loops. Yeah, I just don't know what to do about it. Like, I'm just, you know, I've got my disposable rain jacket. I've got my umbrella. If I do get caught in the rain, it's really my lower body that's the bigger problem. It's going to soak my pant legs and soak my boots. I definitely don't want that to happen. I'd prefer to avoid that. But I don't know what else to do except just stay inside for the entire goddamn month of August. And I don't want to do that either. You know, I'm fine with my little teeny tiny Airbnb room to head back in the evening and lock myself in there, do some editing and stuff. I'm happy to spend half the day in there, but I got to go outside. I got to go do something. So I guess we'll see because yesterday, again, because of this weather, I decided let's not go head toward mountains or anything. I just stayed in my little neighborhood and I just walked a different direction. I walked west until I got to a river. Really nothing over there, but just checking out the neighborhood because again, you never know. Yesterday, I didn't find anything, but a couple days ago, I found a secret monkey path. You know, you just never know what's going to happen. So just did a little experiment and it was this exact same scenario with the clouds on one side of me and the clear sky on the other side. But it didn't start raining yesterday. So who knows, man, although the weather report, the percentage chance of the thunderstorm is very fucking high today. But I just don't know what else to do. I just, I guess I just got a Sally fourth and just see what happens across my fingers.

And yeah, I also noticed yesterday because I just walked around the neighborhood. I didn't go to any mountains. How I was saying that mountainous terrain is kind of, if you just had to boil it down to one thing, it is my favorite thing about Asia. Because I feel so much better about my day after I hike up something. It just, you know, kicks my body into gear. I feel much better about everything. And I noticed that yesterday, without that, just by, you know, I walked all afternoon through the incredible heat. But without hiking upward, without, you know, a nice cool 1,300 steps to walk up. It just wasn't enough physical exertion to kick my body into gear, you know. And I really can't do jogging and stuff. I have flat feet. I have a bad knee. I have scoliosis. High impact shit like that ain't going to happen. So yeah, I just never got my heart pumping. And I just felt that vague kind of like, woof. I just don't feel that good today. So yeah, I guess, you know, I'm just heading toward the mountain. Heading toward the mountain behind Sucha University, which I've been trying to get back to for ages now. And just something always goes wrong. 5:00 God, yeah, I don't know, man, these clouds are just brutal. And this is exactly what happened last time I was here. It just started raining like a motherfucker. Yeah, it's just weird. This is a bad idea. But I don't know what else to do. Just interfacing with the bad idea is all I got. Because the other options are just walk around my neighborhood and sweat and feel kind of bad. Or stay in my little Airbnb room every all goddamn day and feel kind of bad.

So yesterday I did stop in Louisa coffee at least and got back to my coffee shop life of just sitting in the coffee shop and doing some writing. So that was a bonus. I guess that's a benefit. It's a good backup plan. If my hiking plans get totally fucked, the coffee shop plan is nice. God, I just, this is not, this is just not smart. You know, because again, last time the rain hit before I went up into the mountain. And I was like, woof. It's a good thing that didn't happen while I was up in the mountain. And yeah, now I'm looking at those mountains. And it's just incredible gray skies out of a fucking Disney cartoon.

Man, I just don't know if I can justify this. If I go up there and it starts raining like crazy, I just fuck. What is happening type A? What is fucking happening? What is this weather? It's so weird. It feels like I'm in a weird dream that just keeps looping over and over again.

I don't know. I feel like maybe I should, maybe I should take my time. Maybe I should dawdle a little just to see just to see what's going to happen before I head up there.

Anyway, one other little thing I thought was kind of interesting is when the lady comes in to just kind of tidy up our Airbnb and just grab our garbage and recycling and stuff. Since there's so few people, there's really only three of us in this apartment. And one guy I've only ever seen once in my life.

He just stays in his room all day in order's door dash. I think him and Cody from America both are like working remotely. Seems to be it's why they're always on the phone. They're like doing work stuff while they're here. Which makes sense. Not everybody can just travel around like my pampered ass. Some people gotta have jobs. But because there's so few of us, it's easy to tell what the cleanup lady has done. And she's obviously from here so she knows how stuff works better. And I noticed in the bathroom, the sink has this little kind of built-in stopper I've never seen before. Where it's built right in, normally in North America, we just have like a separate plug. You can just plug the sink, at least with old sinks. I guess new sinks maybe have different mechanisms. But this one, it's just like a little coin sort of shaped thing. You know, built right into the plug that you can just tilt one way or the other. And I had it tilted 90 degrees so there's, you know, just the water would flow down the sink. But I noticed she tilted it almost closed. You know, so the water would drain but more slowly because the opening was almost entirely closed. And then that reminded me when I was looking up stuff about these monstrous cockroaches. And I read about this paste you can buy that they eat. And it kills them and then their poisoned corpse. They go back to their home and die and then their friends eat them and they die as well.

I also remembered like, oh yeah, it did also say on that to plug your drains, keep your drains covered. And that was the bathroom that had an enormous mega cockroach in it. And I had no idea how it got in. And I started piecing it together and I'm like, oh man, did that cockroach climb up through the drain? Maybe it did. If that is a thing that they do, that is the most obvious way for it to have gotten in because I honestly don't know how else it got in. I mean, it's a cockroach. I'm sure it finds a way. But the apartment seems very sealed off and it's, you know, on the third floor and stuff.

And it was such a specific thing. You know, it was clearly her that moved the little stopper on the sink and she moved it so specifically to cover up the drain. So yeah, I think that might be what happened. I think maybe that cockroach came up through the drain and you're supposed to keep your drains sealed up. So these cockroaches don't get into your house because you have the other like the sink in the kitchen has like a permanent kind of, I just like a food catcher, but that would also stop cockroaches from getting in. 10:00 And it's just like, man, what a wildlife, the cockroach life, where you just are like, oh, hey, there's a fucking, I don't know, some kind of opening out in the world, some weird tubes and tunnels in the pure dark. Yeah, why not? Let's just climb through. Let's just climb through, see what happens. And then if they get to the other end and there's an opening out into a sink and it's like, wow, I'm in a new world. Whereas if they get to the end and it's blocked off, I guess they just go like, well, whatever, guess I'll just turn around and go back. You know, that's the cockroach life. But yeah, there's a little thing that I learned is because I did definitely read that about blocking your, your sink, but it just didn't sink in. I was just like, I, whatever, okay. But then seeing evidence that somebody from Taiwan went out of their way to make sure the drains were not open. And that is, and that's, that was the cockroach room.

Eerie and creepy, but also interesting, kind of cool in a weird way.

Oh, oh, oh, yeah, I saw it before I heard it. Lightning gray. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, never mind, turning around, going to Louise a coffee. Yeah, I don't know what to do, man. I don't know when this is ever going to stop.

It wasn't like this when I was in She-Man, and it's like as soon as they moved out to this other neighborhood, just coincidentally, the mid to late August weather is just daily thunderstorms every afternoon. Fucking weirdest fuck, but yeah, that was definitely thunder and lightning. There is no debating that.

What the hell, man, watch the hell. I guess that's why I just got to get over it, just got to accept it. But it is just a little annoying when the only solution, the only answer, the only option is nothing. Just do nothing, just do nothing. Not just for today, but for who the fuck knows how long, for weeks. Just do nothing. It's like, all right, all right. I guess I should just be glad for what hikes I've gotten in so far. Yeah, every fucking day with this shit is fucking weird as fuck.

You know, first up, I just do a quick little McDonald's update. So in Japan, I didn't go to McDonald's at all. So, you know, first up, I just do a quick little McDonald's update. So, in Japan, I didn't go to McDonald's at all. I kind of wanted to go just one time just to say that I went But I didn't want to because they didn't have I Need a menu with a number. I need to just point it a number Anything more complicated than that. I was not willing to do particularly Formic Donald's you know I've found things a lot less tricky In South Korea and Taiwan even if we have a complete 100% language barrier It just doesn't seem that tricky. Where in Japan? I don't know. It's just always tricky It's amazing. I kind of think one of my theories is maybe in Japan They're just not willing to infer or they're just not willing to proceed unless they're 100% sure that they're doing the right thing maybe So that's why you can like point right at a steamed bun and somehow it's not enough Anyway, I just wasn't willing to deal with McDonald's in Japan And then in South Korea, I went to a disgusting amount of McDonald's burger King KFC I just never got comfortable with the day-to-day food routine in South Korea See, I was more fast-food than I've ever eaten in my life but you know whatever Ultimately it wasn't the worst thing. I was still hiking around all the time. It seems like I didn't die from it And then here in Taiwan I started hitting McDonald's semi-hard at first because they had this squid burger Not only the squid burger, but at the same time they had taro root Mcflurries But then I moved out Of the Shiman neighborhood where even there they were really big McDonald's down there But they were still oftentimes really really packed with people Where now that I'm a little farther from the center They're just little teeny ones like Mick Cafe's or whatever. They have a little bit of seating but no like upstairs extra seating area So I just stopped going to McDonald's because there was no room So today I checked out my map and it's like yeah, there's a just for an excuse to walk somewhere new again Just to random walk to a new part of town 15:00 Found a big McDonald's by a highway or something But unfortunately, both those items are gone now. There's no more squid burger and there's no more tarot root McFlurry even. They both went at the same time. So yeah, I had like the super McDonald's, and now it's just a McDonald's. It's like, ah, that's kind of a bummer. You know, I just got some McDonald's, but it's like, all right, I guess we're done. I guess I won't be back to McDonald's unless something else cool pops up. Because normal ass McDonald's is not exciting. You know, now that I'm, how Taiwan is very similar feeling to Japan, I have no problem at the convenience stores here. It's not awkward like it felt in South Korea. So I got no real reason to go back to McDonald's. But now that I've had plain old normal boring McDonald's, I'm doubling down on the idea that if you happen to be in a place that has a squid burger McDonald's, I fully recommend it. It's like not even like McDonald's between the squid burger and they're so in to tea around here. So you know, you can get like a nice honey tea. There's all kinds of different kinds of teas. And then a tarot root McFlurry is pretty interesting. It's a lot more interesting than just a normal McFlurry. Yeah, I'm putting my stamp of approval on all that stuff. That stuff was really cool and really interesting and really neat. The only thing that felt like McDonald's was the fries. And I mean, hey, that doesn't hurt either. You know, have some McDonald's fries with your tarot root McFlurry and your fucking squid burger.

Why not? So yeah, that was very cool. I liked it a lot. But unfortunately, they're both gone. If even just the tarot root McFlurry was still around, maybe, maybe I'd talk myself into McDonald's.

But yeah, I don't know. The new special burger is like spicy angus burger or something. It's like, this fucking sucks. This is boring as shit. But I got a good six or seven squid burgers under my belt while they were here. That's quite a good number. Now I gotta figure out how to get home. But there's the subway line so I can walk in that general direction. I should get me where I'm going. But all right, I did some research. So instead of just pontificating and not knowing the answers to anything, for a rare event now, I actually learned some stuff. So first off, we'll get the creepy one out of the way. First, the idea of cockroaches coming up through the drains. I looked into that and yeah, that's major, major common. I even saw a site say it's the most common way for cockroaches all around the world to get into buildings is if there's a, you know, there's so many things that can happen in your water pipes, just cracks and stuff. Plenty of stuff going on down there that you just never see. It's just underground. See, not only do they commonly climb up water pipes, but there's cockroaches that just, they just live in the pipe. Like they're just happy to just live there forever. And that's so eerie because I mean, I know, obviously animals don't have hopes and dreams, you know. They're not striving for a greater tomorrow. Only human beings are doing that shit. But there's a difference. There's a difference between like, you know, just being an animal running around in the woods or something and living that kind of life to just like, oh, I'll just live in this pipe forever. Enough moisture and food particles come down this thing. I can just chill down here. I can lay some eggs. I can never come out. I can never see the sun. I'll just live my whole life in a fucking pipe. Like man, at that point, the distinction between animal and computer program is like very small, you know. Oh, all my needs are filled. Good. I'll just stay here. That's just a very creepy idea, man. Insects are truly alien. They really are just like, wow, what a weird life form. But you know, it's nice to learn about that now. Now that's something I know. And their story's about sometimes if, if maintenance people put pesticides in certain parts of buildings, there could be a lot more cockroaches in the pipes than people realize. Because it'll drive them to the pipe that doesn't have pesticides and suddenly a bunch of fucking bugs come flowing out of a fucking pipe, you know, in like a school or something like a big building, highly disturbing. But the other thing I learned about are the daily thunderstorms. It was a little tough to find information about initially with just a generalized web search. 20:00 But then I found a reddit thread about it where I don't really like spend time on reddit. But for stuff like this where you just pop in and out, I'm surprised how often it's handy for stuff like learning about the pollution in South Korea or this weird weather in Taiwan. Reddits really good for this type of thing. You can just find someone else who had your specific question. And in this case, the guy this post is only from two months before I'm recording this and he was asking exactly this in Taipei. It's like, what the hell is going on here? How is there a thunderstorm every day? So I've only been noticing this the last couple of weeks, but apparently it's been happening the last couple of months. So maybe I just got lucky while I was in the Shima neighborhood that it just happened to be a time when this wasn't happening as much or maybe I just wasn't noticing it as much because I was just staying in that neighborhood and there's tons of awnings under all the buildings. I mean, it definitely wasn't happening as consistently, this like every single day stuff for days and days and days. I definitely hit a patch where it wasn't that consistent, but I think maybe I just didn't notice it as much because I was just generally in the city where it's really becoming clear lately because I'm trying to go up into the mountains and stuff where I just cannot get caught in the rain. It just, you know, it'll just fuck me over so hard. There's nowhere to save yourself.

But it turns out I was closer to my two ideas that the same weather pattern just keeps blowing across Taiwan or the idea that it's somehow a circular weather pattern that just goes around and around. They're both wrong, but that second one was closer because what it is is a recurring weather pattern that goes up and down basically. Throughout the day, as things get more and more hot and more humid, the humidity rises. And then in the afternoon, it's built up to such a point that it has the rain, turns into a big thunderstorm, and then it calms down until the next day. And in fact, I've got the very reddit thread here. So I thought, let me just pull it up to get some slightly more nuanced information about this because I think it's very interesting. It's an interesting phenomenon and it's not just a Taiwan thing. It's an ocean life thing. Well, a hot weather ocean life thing. Again, East Coast to Canada. This shit is not happening.

So this was posted by Jason two months ago. How has it been so consistently sunny in the morning followed by a huge downpour in the afternoon? I just moved to Taipei about half a year ago, and I'm simply baffled by the weather these past two weeks. What is the explanation for this? And little did he know, I guess, that this was going to go on and on and on because yeah, it's two months later. And it's happening enough that I then had the question of like, yeah, what is fucking going on? What is this? Someone said it's island peninsula climate. If you go to Florida, it's that way as well. And someone else says that's true. I'm a native Floridian. This kind of weather reminds me of home. You can basically set your watch to it. Someone else said a thunderstorm is formed when a combination of moisture and warm air rise in the atmosphere and condense. While overland, thunderstorms are most likely to occur at the warmest, most humid part of the day, which is usually the afternoon or evening.

Hot humid mornings equal afternoon thunderstorms.

And someone says they welcome the storms since then they know it'll at least be somewhat cooler later. And yeah, somebody mentioned that since they're so predictable that it really helps to obviously carry an umbrella. But if you just wear shorts and flip flops, if you just get caught in that weather as you're tromping around town, it's really no harm, you know. The umbrella protects your upper body. And yeah, that was it was my pant legs and my boots that were really taken the brunt of it. But unfortunately, you know, the whole reason this is a problem is that, you know, since I'm going hiking, pant legs and boots are important. I can't be hiking around it in the mountains with shorts and flip flops on. But that does sound nice if you're just in the city. Yeah, and yesterday when I turned around and was like, okay, fuck it, thunderstorm, heading to a head into Louisa coffee was only like a 15-minute walk to Louisa coffee. But the storm kept, you know, the thunder rumbled more and more often. And the storm was like following behind me. It just was getting closer and closer. And it was really eerie. And before I got to the coffee 25:00 shop, I didn't need to pull out my umbrella. I didn't make it. Like it just, it's so distinct. It's almost like the edge of it is just like a cone that just passes over top of you.

Someone else said this is a really normal thing to expect, especially in the subtropics.

Someone else said this is kind of a weird catch-22 thing because the weather is generally inconsistent in Taiwan. So this is a peculiar phenomenon once this starts hitting that yeah, it's like every fucking day at the exact same times. Yeah, and someone brought that up. Sunny in the morning, cloudy by noon, raining it to sunny at four, Taipei summer. And yeah, that was basically true. I got to the coffee shop somewhere around two o'clock and hung out for a couple hours. And by 4.30 it stopped raining. But I mean, yeah, that's sort of almost by five. It stopped raining. Yeah, that's what's tricky in my case is that's just not enough time to head up to the mountains because it gets dark by seven. So five to seven is just not enough time. But when it starts raining it too, it just fucks me so good because it's so hard for me to wake up early. I tend to get rolling by around noon. So yeah, this thunderstorm, it just hits right in the middle of my day exactly perfectly just when I'm getting uncomfortably far from civilization. But I mean, it's so consistent that I really don't know what else I can do except get up early. I'm just going to have to try and force myself to. Somebody here mentioned amongst these other difficulties of Taiwan, the insatiable biting mosquitoes. And yeah, I still, I don't know if I'm just lucky or what. I still have never experienced mosquito problems anywhere, not in Japan, even in 2019 when I was there in the summer, not in South Korea, not here in Taiwan. I don't know, it's a weird man because Atlantic Canada has insane mosquitoes. I'm well acquainted with what mosquitoes are like. Here, it's not even like like mosquitoes. It's just nothing. I can count the number of mosquitoes I've even fucking seen on my hands and my toes besides the ones that got into my hotel room in in Jeju. But out in the world, I don't know, man. I just don't see them. I don't know why. I'm not complaining though. All right. Someone else said it's the summer weather pattern. Humidity and vegetation giving off moisture gets hot and rises. It forms clouds at higher altitudes and comes back down as rain. If you're in the mountains, you can actually see it steaming up. You can like see the steam rise. When it gets going, it'll start at about 1.30 or 2 p.m. and go for an hour, very regular. It's kind of neat how consistent it is. Taipei is in a soup bowl of jungle mountains. That's a lot of water. So yeah, I mean, it is neat, right? It's kind of a cool thing. It's kind of fucking me over, currently. But I mean, there's no sense fighting it. At first, I was like, this is just the weirdest weather of all time. I can't believe the weather is just saying this every day for weeks and weeks. But now that I'm realizing, like, yeah, this is not some bizarre phenomenon. This is not unusual. This happens every year. And it happens for months. It's like no sense fighting it. Either I just need to fucking get up early or I need to get rained on. That's it. Even that though, I guess, is kind of neat. If I do get stuck in the rain, I definitely don't want to just stand there under an umbrella, under the shade of some trees for two fucking hours. But I could, you know, I could do that. That person who said an hour, I would say two. Way more like two, two and a half. But that's kind of neat too. That it's so consistent that you could do that. You could just stand there under something that's protecting you and just wait for it to stop.

And yeah, someone else said it's both kinds of weather sunny with a downpour at the same time. Yeah, that's kind of true. I mean, it does cloud over like crazy, right? As it's raining. But basically you can see, like I was saying, it really is just like a cone, a cone of weather, a big circle, a disc. You can see the blue sky and then you can see It's a gray sky. Today, unfortunately, I didn't go off and do anything except go to McDonald's today, because today is my phone home day of the week. So I didn't go off in any adventures, but today it didn't rain at all. So today was the one lucky day. I mean, it's still lucky. I'm still walking home right now at quarter to five, and I'm not being rained on. I'll take it. It's fine. But... 30:00 But it is weird timing, because yeah, tomorrow, I'll bet you dollars to donuts. They're just going to be all crazy again. And yeah, someone else just laughing at how their weather app says it's excessively hot, but also with an 80% chance of rain. I was like, yeah, yeah. And then the final comment is welcome to Asia, my friend. So yeah, there we go. I actually learned something. This wacky, bizarre weather is actually totally normal. Totally normal weather, right here. And yeah, that is one thing I love. I love about traveling around, even though I really keep it on the down low, you know? I don't know, I was saying to one of my friends the other day, like he's just like, wow, so cool. You're doing all this stuff, going to all these places, all this stuff that I would never do. And it's like, I know what he means, because it seems very, it took me a long time to leave North America. And it took me a long time to get up the gumption to come to Asia. And like, there's obviously stresses. I mean, like, I was so stressed when my flight here got canceled due to the typhoon. It's not easy. But it's also not hard, you know? It's just another place where people get up in the morning and go buy groceries and go to work and go to school. And like, it's just normal, you know? Like I've heard people say that about like South America and stuff. Like you hear these stories about like, oh, this happened to a tourist and that happened to a drug cartel this crazy event that. But then you get there. And it's just people going to work and people buy and bread. And it's just like whatever. You know, if you don't seek out a adventure and crazy shit, probably everything's just going to be normal and everything's going to be fine. And that's generally what I strive to do. I like to go try to find places to hike and mountains to climb up and stuff. But as for like the fabric of society, I'm more than happy to just go to a coffee shop. You know, I don't want to fucking make any waves. I don't want to cause ripples. I don't want things to be tough. So I was kind of staying to my friend like, yeah, I mean on the surface, this is really cool that I met these places and doing all this stuff.

But it's, it's so like what I actually like about it, what is actually valuable about it is that it's so day-to-day, so slice of life. You know, it's just that it un-exoticizes these other places. And it's like, oh yeah, it's just another place where you just hop on your bicycle and your bike around and you go do whatever. You know, everything's just like, like there's still, did I say this already? But I probably did. But there's still this thing in my brain of like when I was a kid and I imagine these other places. And I imagine what they're like, but I'm imagining it like it's some kind of adventure movie. And there's still a part of my brain that has that thought, even though my actual brain has been here now. And it's seen that it's, well, I guess I go to a good example. Speaking of the South America thing, that's the example that specifically comes to mind for me is North Americans talking about like, oh geez, I don't know if I would go to Brazil. I've heard it's dangerous. But then people from Brazil saying like, I don't think I would go to New York City. It's dangerous. You know, it's just the, the worry of this other place of this exotic foreign environment. And like, yeah, you can easily make the argument that New York City is violent and dangerous. But it's not, you know, it's just a place where you get up in the morning and you go buy milk and you go to work and you just, it's just like whatever.

I'm just seeing on my phone. It still has the little thunder warning. It still has the little thunder sign on Google Maps. So yeah, they're not willing to give up yet. They're not willing to claim that it won't rain at some point today, but it hasn't yet. So I feel like it probably won't.

But yeah, the point I'm trying to make is just that by going to these places, even without trying to seek out anything special or without trying to seek out anything like severe, without trying to get to the extreme corners of the blah, blah, blah. Just by literally doing nothing special. Just walk around, soak it in, just walk, just walk around, soak it in, do basically the same stuff everyone else is doing. You still just learn stuff, you know? I mean, maybe it's arguably stuff I should have learned a long time ago. Like why don't I know how cockroaches work? I don't know, there's just not that many in Eastern Canada and what we have are very tiny and non-terrifying. They're not spilling up out of drains and shit. Why don't I know how thunderstorms work? Because you know, it only happens like a handful of times a year. When you get to the west coast, it doesn't happen at all. They just never have big storms really. They just have little pittedly annoying rain all the time. So yeah, I just like it. I like accidentally learning stuff like this. It's neat, tandy. But yeah, it's not for a change, for a change of pace. Instead of me just wondering. Since I got such concrete answers on both of these things, I thought this could be an episode about learning stuff.

I feel like that can be an episode just mainly about daily thunderstorms, but with a side of cockroaches and a double side, an even tinier side of McDonald's information.

I guess for another little teeny bit of pointless information, that Louise the coffee I went to to avoid the rain, how you know, a lot of the other ones I found are huge. They have like three floors and tons of seating. Where the one I've been going to doesn't have that many seats, but they always seem to be available. But I guess I found out why is because it actually had a downstairs. There's a whole bottom floor I didn't realize that has tons of extra seating. So even more points to Louise the coffee. I love Louise the coffee. It's got everything that I could possibly want.

It's also kind of neat because I've only been there a couple of times, but I guess being a tall gauky white guy does help you stand out a bit because I got like a caramel macchiato with no sugar, which was still very sweet because you know, it's still got caramel shit in it. But I got a matcha latte yesterday. And the lady remembered that I didn't want sugar. I was like, oh, how delightful. It's only been here twice than already. She knows my regular order and the matcha latte with no sugar was delightful. And yeah, even that, even a fancy pants large matcha latte. Because again, I was saying how the Starbucks is here are just, it's bananas have expensive they are. Even that thing was only four bucks totally reasonable.

I love Louise the coffee. It's the best. It's the idea coffee of Taiwan.

Yeah, that's the interesting thing too is that I mean again, it seems like, especially now that I know how this weather pattern works. I guess checking the weather is kind of worthless because it just says thunderstorms every day. And like I just said, like it says that today still, but you can literally tell just by looking. Like I'm looking in all directions on the horizon and like, nope, not today. It's not super duper hot. Maybe that's why it just maybe wasn't hot enough to form the storm brew. But yeah, it looks clear in every direction where yeah, all these other days you can literally see it. You can just see it on the horizon. You can walk into it or away from it. You know, it's like storm town. It's like the fog of war.

But all right, there's again, very rare occurrence of literally learning something. Let's not get used to it and hopefully I'll see you next time to learn nothing. Yeah, join me then. Thank you, Adios.

Oh, here's one last little thing. So I just stopped in a 7-11 to get an ice cream bar. I got a plum bar, green plum ice bar. That was my favorite in South Korea was the green plum bar. And this is a different brand, Wungjin W-O-O-N-G-J-I-N. But it is made in Korea, it says, with a nice Korean flag and Korean writing. It's like, oh, that's kind of neat. Just like, I guess Korea just has green plum fucking popsicles.

They got this shit down. Green plum ice bars.

I've seen some Korean influence around here, but not a ton, you know, mostly Korean barbecue. But I've seen some Korean, like, beauty type places, which also makes sense now that I think about it. They are the land of being body conscious. But anyway, I just thought that was kind of cool. Because my personal association with South Korea in the summer is very tied to fucking green plum ice cream bars. And it's just kind of cool to come to a different country. And it's the exact same situation.

Well, it's a variation on the exact same situation. Because yeah, these aren't as good. They don't have like the dried plum bits inside them. I guess they keep the super premium plum bars for home, for home turf. But the exported ones, they're still pretty good.