#190 Exploring New Taipei City at night

Transcript

I'm just strolling around Ximen. Man, it is really cool just being across the river from here. Yesterday was my big beetle juice related adventure in the super heat, so I mostly stayed inside today. It's just so cool that just as the sun was going down, as it was getting toward the end of the day, it's like, yeah, I'll just go outside, go for a little stroll. All I got to do is hop across the bridge, and I'll be over here. Do it just as the sun's going down. Don't need to wear suntan, lotion.

Not bad, man, not bad. It's nice, too, where I don't know, I'm not sure which I've been focusing on more pollution-wise. You know, pollution was obviously a huge deal when I was in South Korea. It was always on my mind. Whereas around here, I feel like I've probably referenced pollution more just on bad days, because the bad days are quite shockingly bad, like they're real bad. But I was just noticing today, because I walked across the bridge.

It was beautiful today. Just perfectly beautiful weather, just the best view ever of the city, as I was walking across this bridge, and the mountains in the distance, and everything was perfectly clear. So I think that's just kind of worse. Bringing up is that it's both ways around here. It's not just... It's not polluted the way Seoul was polluted, where, like a Koran, quote, non-polluted day in Seoul, winter, when I was there. I don't know, did that even exist? Was that even a thing? Maybe. But functionally not, you know, like not really. Where around here, I guess it stuck out because I was thinking of, you know, I've had some days recently, where I got some views of the city that were just sad. It's like, oh, geez, look how bad it looks today. So then seeing it today and being like, yeah, but today it looks perfect. And I've seen that plenty of times, too. So it's at the very least 50-50. I thought I'd just bring that up, because it might not sound like, I don't know, maybe that sounds like damning with faint praise. But I think that's worse a lot.

It's just immeasurably worse a situation, if it's just constantly polluted all the time. You know, when it's only some of the time, it's just a lot more easy on the mind.

This is a lot better. And today is beautiful. You had noticed, too, as I was walking down this strip by my old Airbnb, there was a huge line for something. And I was like, oh, I wonder what's going on here, like going all the way down the block. And it was one of the movie theaters, because it's Friday today. So it's like, oh, shit. I fucking, I think I did the right thing with that. Going to a movie theater out of the center. Because yeah, it's nice. It's nice how movies around here are still big business. Still a major thing. And yeah, that definitely confirmed it. I don't know what they were going to see. I don't think they were going to see Beetlejuice. I don't think it was even playing at that theater. But it was definitely like, yeah, I would not want to mess with that shit. This giant line.

I'm also starting to piece together since, you know, convenience stores. It sounds so silly, but it's literally why I came here. Well, I mean, firstly, it was just that I realized the flight home was insanely expensive. Oh, yeah, fuck here we go. Like I'm going back down the street now. This is worse than it was before. The line used to go down the block. Now it's somehow curved so that it's across the street. It's like taking up the whole street to go to this movie theater. Man, how do I get past these people? But yeah, I realized the flight home was wicked expensive. So I was like, I'll just stay in Asia. Obvious thing is South Korea. Then the next place seemed less obvious. And I saw somewhere online, somebody mentioning that there are 7-Elevens and family marts on every block in Taipei. And I was like, good enough, man. I love convenience stores. Let's go. And then I got here and I love it. It's great.

But I'm finally starting to piece together the minor differences between the convenience stores here. And which one is the best, quote unquote? The smaller local branches. I think they're called High Life and OK Store. And they're so rare. I've only been in each of those a couple of times, each two or three times. So nothing has stood out specifically. So it's really the battle of 7-Eleven versus family marts. And I've started to notice that a couple of key items that I especially like were just not showing up certain places. So I started focusing more and I realized they are items specific to the franchise. So for 7-Eleven, it's yogurt green tea drink. Basically everything is tea in Taiwan. Inventors of bubble tea. Coffee saturation is a lot less than usual around here. 5:00 It's still around, but tea is the dominant caffeine-based drink.

To the point that it's like basically just imagine any drink and then add tea. Like that's kind of just like the drinks you would find in a convenience store other places. Just imagine all those drinks plus a version that has tea in it now. And one of those is yogurt green tea. It's like a not a thick yogurt drink. It's quite a thin yogurt, but then with green tea in it. And it's super fucking tasty. It's so good. Because you just get that little bit of the sort of sour sweetness of yogurt. However you might describe yogurt, a yogurt, but with green tea in it. It gives you a little caffeine tea boost. Delicious yogurt-ness. So good. But yeah, I just noticed today. I've never seen to be able to find that at Family Mart. So I got one just now and I looked closer. And yeah, it's a whatever the 7-Eleven special brand is. Because they're called like 7-Eleven in Japan. So the special items is like I select. I don't know what the I means. I don't know what that's all about. Yeah, it's a 7-Eleven item. So for drinks, 7-Eleven is winning just because of that one drink. It's so good. Whereas the other thing that I couldn't find at 7-Eleven, and I looked closer and it turns out it is in fact an exclusive Family Mart item, is Family Mart to me easily wins in the bread category. Because there's all kinds of different breads you can get, but you can get these breads with fruit in them. Like a bread with cranberries or a bread with just tropical fruits. And then they also have just kind of a cheese kind of kind of cream cheese type thing inside them as well. Just give the whole thing a little, make the whole thing a little easier to chew up and eat, not just the dryness of bread. And yes, like really fucking good. And they're only at Family Mart. So basically my recommendation, because that person wasn't kidding about these things being on almost every block, just go to both. Go to one, then go to tether. And I'm in one of these little claw machine places. I finally tried going back to the claw machine to a claw machine. I went to a different one to try to win toilet tissue because I just needed to buy some. And as a guy to be more fun to get it from a claw machine, I finally gave up and I just bought some from a convenience store because I just can't, you know, cake at this dumb ass claw to grab stuff. Which of course, you know, that's the game. But I'm looking in here now. I'm like, like there is some serious stuff in here, electronics and expensive vast little anime statues and things.

And I was thinking like, you know, it seems so weird if you got your coin and you could pick between tissue and a fancy expensive thing. Why would you pick tissue? But I ended up putting an okay amount of money in just to try to win a stupid packet tissue. And I was thinking like, you know, it would be nice. Obviously for the expensive items, it should work this way where you got to keep pumping money and your claws only going to work eventually. That's how these things are. But for something stupid like tissue that's not worth shit, it'd be nice if they just let you play it straight up, you know, like they didn't fuck with the claw. What if they just made it work better? But then I realized I actually don't know maybe it does. I mean, it definitely still deliberately releases. But maybe it is like a much more trustworthy claw than the other ones. I don't know. Maybe the other ones are even worse. Claw games, man. They're neat to walk past and just be like, oh, there's a claw thing.

But the actual game of playing the claw machine, the shit fucking sucks. But anyway, that's probably my whole update for today. I'm just going to fade out now, but I'm going to walk around She-Man and soak it in. Have a nice evening.

Holy fuck, man. I got to give Taipei enormous credit, man. They get enormous bonus points. These are like special super garbage-based bonus points.

I don't know what to call them. Anti-garbo mega points. This is fucking unbelievable. So I noticed right away how extra clean things seem to be in Taipei generally.

And how impressed I was. And how much I like that shit. I love when people pick up their garbage. But on this walk across the bridge from New Taipei City into She-Man, the walkway takes me, it is weird, just along this little walking, along this little walking path where it's only scooters going by next to me. And it's all one way, so they're all heading toward me right now. But yeah, going across this thing, spit me out on this little walking area behind an on-ramp. And I was like, ah, here we go. Here's the hidden secret garbage under belly. And I remember saying it's like, because I read that there used to be quite a garbage problem back in the day in Taipei. They called it Garbage Island, apparently. So I was like, you know, I bet back in the 70s or whatever. This is what they meant. This is what Garbage Island looked like.

Because I mean, you know, it's easy to litter. And because this is just hidden behind an overpass on this walkway where I've only been across this a handful of times, but I've never seen another person. I saw somebody on a bicycle the other day, but I'm the only pedestrian I've ever seen on this thing.

So people took the opportunity to dump garbage, which I mean, it's this way everywhere. I mean, Japan is also very famous for its lack of garbage. But if you get out into the countryside, like I remember when I was in West Tokyo, I'm a way to Musashi Itsu Kaishi Station.

There were a bunch of signs imploring people not to dump their garbage. And there was random, some random garbage strewn around and stuff.

Everybody wants to litter. Everybody loves to litter. That's why it's so impressive and notable when they don't litter. That's why I wanted to give Taipei special commendation for how unliterary it is to rent here.

But yeah, this place behind there was totally fucked. There was a big guy, like a life size. She probably bigger than life size, stitched all from Lilo and Stitch. It was like an old mattress, just random bottles and stuff all over the place. So on the way over today, I ducked under the on ramp and just avoided that whole thing. But on the way back, I was up by the beginning of the walkway, head to walk down the whole walkway. But I noticed as I was walking, I mean it's very dark back there too, which probably also makes littering feel like more of a victimless crime when you can just toss your garbage in the dark and you think no one will ever see it. But I was walking through this quite dark area. And I just started to realize like, where's all the, there's garbage still, there's some, but not nearly as much as before. And by the time I got to the actual stairs up to the bridge, they did have proper lights. I was like, the mattress is gone. Stitch is gone. Some mad bastard, some local probably city worker people, they fucking came in and cleaned up this shit. That was only like a few days ago I commented on that. That podcast is not out. But that's what it feels like. It feels like they not only heard my podcast, it feels like they heard the raw audio of my podcast that nobody heard but me. And they were like, oh fuck, there's garbage. Someone go clean it up.

And obviously whoever the locals are that have made it, they're happy to litter back there. They've gotten directly back on the case because there's still little bits of stuff. It's like a, a little cardboard box for like a personal pizza and a bottle here and there. A couple little things, you know, it's building up again. But it's 90 or 95% cleaner than it was. And I'm just impressed as fuck because I just assumed like, well, that's just going to be like that forever. That's how it would be in Canada. Canada is like relatively clean. Most people don't litter. But if there is an area like that, it's never getting cleaned. Never. It'll just be full of garbage till the end of time if someone finds a nice little corner in a weird little spot where they can just dump shit. That is now lost forever.

So I just think that's impressive as fuck, dude. I would have bet, I would have bet $100,000 that I don't have, that that was going to stay that way for a long time. And it didn't even stay that way for a whole week. That's fucking impressive. That's awesome. So that's why I'm giving Taipei super mega extra bonus points. 15:00 Maybe this all just timed out just right. Maybe it's been a mess back there for two years and they just happened to clean it up when I got there.

But man, that's delightful. That is just some delightful shit. I'm getting a lot more used to walking across this bridge too. And it's always going to make me feel a little weird, I guess, just being the only pedestrian walking out over the water. But it ain't so bad and it's so convenient. On one side, the cool, fun neighborhood. I saw a guy doing one of the shows in the square. There's a square where people do shows and this guy, he was balancing. He set up some boxes and stuff and then he was doing a handstand on top of them. And then I had muscles that I've never seen before. It's just like, whoa. So that's on one side of the river. And then on the other side is me. It's where I live. I just realized too, like I haven't quite, I don't quite know exactly how long I've got in Taipei.

I just assumed I was going to head off somewhere else. But it just occurred to me like, I know I could just, we'll see, I've only been there like a week, but I could just extend my time at this particular Airbnb. It seems pretty good. If I want to stay in Taipei the whole time, it seems pretty good. And just the way it's set up since she doesn't actually have bookings set up for specific rooms. So the only way I wouldn't be able to extend this booking is if literally all the rooms were full. And I don't even imagine that's going to happen. So that's nice. Just takes a little, because I'm already at that point where I've got to think forward of like, how long am I here? Where am I going? What am I doing next?

You know, the standard stuff with travel and I've just like got to sort of figure things out a bit in advance, because if you wait till the last second, it's going to cost you.

Yeah, this all seems pretty fucking cozy, and I could just hang out. But let's give it another week and just make sure nothing calamitous happens, but so far so good.

All right, let's do a little leaving the Airbnb. These things are so I haven't done one of these in a while, but I don't know. I mean, these probably are the stupidest little segments.

For the average listener, because what the fuck I'm just leaving a place, but I always like these because it reminds me of the Airbnb I was at at the time. So I'm just going to do it once this one time, but I'm in my room in Taipei. I got a big super fan going. Actually, there's an even bigger fan in the ceiling. This one's above the door.

So first off, let's turn off the fan.

Turn off the lights.

Whoops, I turned on. I reversed the fan.

There we go, all the way off. See, that'll remind me of like, oh, yeah, that's how the switch worked on that fan out into the hall.

And then there's a little kitchen that I haven't actually used at all. This doesn't seem like that bad of a kitchen. I don't really know what I would make in here because that may be some instant noodles. Maybe I should do that at some point, but there is a garbage here, but they only pick it up like once a week. So I haven't been doing anything like that where I'd have to throw away, you know, I have to deal with the whole noodle thing. Because I generally take my garbage with me and just dispose of it out in the world when I find one of the rare garbage cans. But obviously I can't do that with a whole cup noodle. However, cans and bottles, that's fine.

So drop off a coffee can, lock this door.

There's actually a door back here connected to the kitchen. I do have a third key that I don't know what it's for. Maybe it's for that door. Maybe I could sneak out into the back alley and sneak back in. That would be interesting.

There I put on my boots. Even with all this crazy heat and stuff, I still only have one pair of footwear. 20:00 So I'm wearing my cool boots that I bought in the shoe district of Seoul. Although they are starting to, finally, the souls, speaking of souls. The souls of these boots are starting to come off a bit. I bought some crazy glue from a dollar store the other day and I just squirted crazy glue in all the spots where the boots seem like they're starting to come up. I don't know that that really helps at all. I was like, I don't know why not. Now there's this long, long hallway. There's like seven rooms here. I'm the seventh room. All the way past these other seven rooms. And it's kind of cool because it's a little hard to find this doorway. It's just a non-descript doorway in a random side street in New Taipei City. But it's clear. So as I'm walking down the street, I can always just look through and then I see this big, long hallway. And I'm like, there we go. That's where I live. So we'll just head outside to the scooters. Man, so there's a little mini car parked right by here. It's always here, so I'm not sure who owns the car. The scooter just went by in each direction. Here's another scooter turned in the corner. Let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 scooters. Just that I can see without moving and two bicycles. Scooterville.

Oh, there's two more scooters. Next door. And two more scooters. Two doors down. There's more scooters and more scooters. I went around the corner and more scooters. So let's go this way. I'm not totally sure how to navigate. I know how to get to the bridge that goes over to Sheenman. Actually, maybe I should do that today. Basically, it's really late in the day. It's like 5.30. It's going to be dark in an hour and a half. So there's the park near here. A pretty good park. It's the park I went to the first time I came over to this neighborhood. It's nearby. It's not a bad park. But basically, the reason it's so late in the day is I got sick. This is like three days later. And I probably don't sound that bad because I'm really not that bad. But I still want to stay away from people. I don't want to get on a subway or anything and go near anybody and possibly get them sick. So that park, that's not the worst idea. But no, I guess I was thinking if I walk across the bridge, that'll keep me away from people. But once I'm in Sheenman itself, that'll put me around people. So yeah, no, not a good idea. I shouldn't do that. Not yet. Just in case I'm contagious. I'll just go to this big park this year here. Where I can just walk the park and not have to be near anybody.

But yeah, I got a little sore throat, felt it coming on. And I was like, ah, you know, that sucks. But when's the last time I got sick? It was right when I got to Jeju. So it's been a little while.

But it didn't seem that bad. And it's like, ah, well, you know, it's got to happen eventually. I had a really good run at first, where I just never seemed to get sick. And then it really hasn't been that bad. But it's been just bad enough. That last night, it was ridiculous. Not because the sickness was that bad. And I mean, right now, I barely feel it at all. I woke up, I drank that little can of coffee, I had stashed away. I feel pretty good. But last night, I was just coughing just enough that I just could not get to sleep. Whenever I'd try to fall asleep, I would cough and wake up. And then even when I did fall asleep, usually once you're unconscious, then you're good, right? Your body just stops with that shit. But I woke up from coughing up on shit times. And it's just like, man, this is crazy. I just can't get any sleep. It's fucking exhausting. So I finally fell asleep.

And I don't know. I don't know when. It's 10 a.m. 11 a.m. And then woke up at 4.30. And it's like, whatever, I'll take it. That's good enough. Because all I'm doing anyway is just a little, little stroll while it gets dark.

Because this is a great time of year to have my schedule be fucked and stuff. Because it's just still, still pretty goddamn hot out. So this time of day is not as bad. And you don't have to wear suntan lotion because it's the sun's on its way down. This is actually kind of nice. This is the perfect time to just go outside and go walking for a little bit. The very tail end of the day. But yeah, I don't know. I'm hoping tonight the coughing will pass. This seems like a minor enough cold. Obviously, if you can tell, I don't sound sick or anything.

I suspect I probably got a little more coughing ahead of me tonight. But maybe it won't be that much. And then I should be fine after that. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see a good time to do laundry too. I'm trying to decide I found a laundromat around the corner.

Maybe I will do laundry at the apartment. And then just take the laundry around the corner and use the dryer. It's close enough. I think I can pull that off. 25:00 But anyway, whatever. Whatever. Just some right-off days basically. Got a little sick. And yeah, man, I don't know. This is pretty... Well, I guess the thing is, this isn't that weird, I suppose. I have had times where I can't fall asleep because I need to cough. But what I would always do to my great detriment is take a cough drop and just lodge it in my cheek like a chipmunk. And that would just create a cough drop environment in my mouth. So I wouldn't cough and I could fall asleep. But then, you know, it distinctly gave me a cavity. When I did this in 2019, especially when I was mega sick. The first time I went to Japan. Whereas just coughing for weeks, that was insane. Because, yeah, having a cough drop just melt in your... In your... Lausage melt in your mouth while you sleep. It just is like very terrible for your teeth. And I just don't want to do that right now because I still have this loose filling. I have bad dental work. I really got to be on top of it. I'm really being careful to keep my teeth tip-top all the time. I just cannot fucking do that. I cannot have a melting cough drop mixing with my teeth that have a loose filling, you know. So I just... I didn't know. I don't know what else. Didn't and don't know what else to do except just be miserable. And just wait for this cough to pass on its own. But I'm a little confident. I mean, I feel pretty good right now. I'm not coughing. But yeah, last night, what a weird nightmare. Yeah, it's amazing. Just that little bit of just... Just that little prod of like, nope, you can't quite go to sleep. Nope. Nope. Not yet. Cough, cough, cough, wake up, wake up. Over and over. It's like 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. It's like, what is happening? It's goddamn insane. Like, I'd fall asleep for little bits here and there. But it's truly, truly mental.

However, though, I am starting to make plans for once this passes and the heat is slowly getting a little better. The feels like temperature. It's only 32 degrees today. It feels like 38 down from 46, 42 while this crazy shit. Like, maybe it is slowly getting a little better. So hopefully, once this cold passes, I can go attack the National Park again. And I figured out the routes. Basically, there's a subway station near my other Airbnb, where you can take a bus, take a little under an hour, up the big main road, up the mountain that I've walked down before, or it turns out my first attempt was not such a bad plan that Beethoven plays B-E-I-T-O-U. I believe it's written. That was the first place where I saw the mountains and I just got out of the train and just tried to walk toward the mountains because they seemed so close. And I found the sulfur hot springs. And it turns out there's a bus that leaves from there, too, about the same. Each route takes a little under an hour. But yeah, I was going the right way. And in fact, I guess I kind of made it. Now that I think about it, I did actually see the sign that was the official here's the beginning of the National Park sign that day. It's just that there was no good way to get there on foot. So I think it'll be a similar route just on a bus this time. And I think I'm going to try that one. That one just seems cooler to me. I don't know. That one feels who can explain why. Just the main route straight up the street to the McDonald's just seems less cool. The Beethoven one seems neat because I almost found that one. I almost, like, that almost worked. So the idea that it's an actual bus route you can take. It's kind of exciting to me. The whole thing it adds up to quite a bit. Going on the yellow line, then the red line, then the bus. It's going to be a long journey. But that's fine. That's fine anyway. I don't mind having extra transit time. Read comics on my phone, do some writing. It has to be a pretty long trip before I give a fuck. But all I can do till then is just wait to not be sick anymore. So... Gonna go...

Walk around the park. Try not to get too close to anybody. You know.

Don't touch me, I'm sick. What is that from? Why do I know that term? There's don't hug me, I'm scared.

No, it's touch me, I'm sick. That's like the name of an old punk song, right? I don't know. Anyway, don't touch me, type A, I'm sick. Gotta go hang up by myself today. Incidentally, I just stopped at this little square because, again, nice little... nice little area where there is no people around. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 18, 18, 19, 20, 21, 18, 4, 5, 6, 20, 7... 28, 29, 30, 31, 38, 23, 3, 3, 4, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, like... Like, that's how many scooters I can see. 30:00 Those ones toward the end were the moving ones, so new ones kept popping up. I'm at like 30 of those are just parked. Scooter town, man. That first night that I was here, and it was kind of rainy, and I just remember thinking like, is it a fucking scooter convention? What is happening? Man, the man did that turn out to be true. It really is a scooter convention, but it's the scooter convention that never ends. 24, 7, 365 fucking scooter town.

Oh, well, here's another walking out of the Airbnb recording after all. But I have to be quiet, because it's 2.30 in the morning. And I can see by the shoes outside people's doors that it looks like, it looks like I don't have a neighbor right now. So that's handy. So four of the seven rooms are full, including mine. Three empty ones. And out onto the street. I've actually never done this before, in my time in Taipei, which has been a while now. I've been thinking about, I don't know, going to like the botanical gardens and stuff. And it's like, yeah, that was actually a little while ago. I've been here for a while. But yeah, unfortunately, I'm definitely getting better, which is good, because this is only day three of being sick. It's going by pretty fast. But I ain't better yet. It's just the just laying in bed. And it's just like, oh, God, I wish I could fall asleep, but I just can't. And things have progressed where I'm not coughing too much. Just a bit though, still a bit enough to kind of fuck me up, but it's definitely getting better. But now I'm at the point where my nose will run on the side that I'm laying on. So then I have to roll over onto my other side and let the other nostril start being gross instead. Just the weird stuff that happens as you progress through sickness. But I'm also miserable feeling enough that I couldn't like sit at the computer, sit in front of a screen and do editing or anything. Just like my head hurt when I was near the computer screen. Hey there, fucking cockroach son. You're not the biggest I've seen, but you're big-ish. Then my room does have hidden in the corners like anti-cockroach stuff, which that's one of those things like, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess it's a good thing because it will keep away cockroaches. But it's also a clear sign that there's cockroaches that need to be kept away. But yeah, I was just going to lay there and be miserable again. And like, that's what I did yesterday, like literally all night. And it's just like, fuck me. I just don't want to. It's miserable and it's such a waste of time like just getting nothing done at all. Just laying there being sick. So I was like, you know, I'm pretty sure the laundromat I found said it was 24 hour. Now I just need to actually find that laundromat. Got a little dot on my phone. So hopefully I'm going the right way. It has like, fuck it. It's 2.30 in the morning. Like I've never been out at night that I wasn't even sure if the convenience stores I assume they're open 24 hour because they're all 24 hour in Japan. But in Korea, a lot of them weren't 24 hour. Generally they were in soul. Not sure about Busan, but you know, in smaller places in Jeju and Jeju. Plenty of them closed up at night. Yeah, here's a family mart on the corner with nothing but scooters lined up in front of it. And it seems to be open. Oh, and there's a 7-11 across the fucking street. And there's a high life, fucking shit. This is right around the corner from me. This is everything. What the hell?

I'm not going the right way. Okay, I think I'm going the right way. I hope this place is open because if it's not, yeah, it's like whatever. It's going to be a little miserable to get up and do laundry. Obviously this time in the night I can't use the washing machine in my Airbnb. So I just got to do both at the laundromat, but at least I could get that done because I really do need to come on my last set of clothing. I'm wearing them right now.

There we are. Sweet. So yeah, I can get the laundry started and then head to a convenience store because the other thing going through sickness, the other thing that I passed through was on the way home tonight. Usually I stop in and I just grab some, you know, just a couple of little bread items or something. The cranberry bread from Family Mart is like my favorite. About one of the elements of being sick is yeah, just real bad stomach rumblings on the way home today. I had to rush. I almost didn't make it. I was like, what did I eat? I don't think I ate anything weird yesterday. And yeah, no, I realized I think it is just, it's just part of being sick.

I think that's all that was because it was just, I don't know, one big wave of fairly severe diarrhea and then that's it. Now I feel fine again, but I had to rush home. I could not stop anywhere to get anything. I could not risk it. So I'm pretty fucking hungry also because I don't have any food tucked away at home because that's one thing I realized, I guess in Fukuoka, is when I started realizing like, like why am I piling up stuff? It wasn't a lot of stuff, but I'd always have a little bit of stuff stashed away in my apartment and it's like why? Why do I need to do that? There's convenience stores everywhere and yeah, here it's no different, like I said, it just passed all three. The two major chains and one of the two minor chains.

So yeah, it's win-win. I can do laundry, I can get something to eat. I cannot just waste the whole night doing nothing and yeah, I just feel better being up and about and around. Laying down, man, oh, I think it's just like that's when the sickness is like, hey, he's uh, he's vulnerable. Everybody gang up on him. Not, not it's cool, but I'm getting better and yeah, now I get to wander around in the middle of the night a little bit so far. It's pretty fucking quiet, although I have walked by a couple of people on my way here. Yeah, there's actually a couple people doing work down the street for me. I don't know what they're doing. Scooter just went by, but anyway, yeah, I'll explore the night time a little after I get this laundry started.

There's actually a sort of okay number of people out tonight. I mean, you know, it's half of one percent or something who would normally be out here, but that's not nobody. It's just people kind of wandering around here and there. Oh, shit. Here's the square where I was just standing in that last little part where I was counting all the scooters and realized that connected up like this, one of these triangle parts when the streets connect in a triangle, confusing. Wow, up here is another family mart and then down the street is the 7-11 because those ones over by the laundromat. I didn't see anybody. They appear to be open, but I didn't see anybody ready to roll at the cash register at any of those except the 7-11 did have a guy, but he was stocking shelves on like the far end away from the counter. But I did stop in, but there's just a, I don't know, I'm just kind of in the mood for they have these little lemon, lemon pies in the frozen section or in the chilled dessert section. I could really go for one of those they didn't have any. So I'm like, ah, he's busy stocking shelves and they don't have the exact thing that I want. Yeah, there's some people in this family mart chilling. I'll try that next. Also when I'm doing laundry, last time I forgot to take, because I got my little day bag that I always have this recorder in and now it's got my passport and stuff in it too. I forgot to take the strap off and wash the strap last time. I had to make sure to remember to do that this time because yeah, it's not optional every time. I never thought about that ever. I never washed it once and it just never, I never noticed it always seemed fine now. Yeah, within days I can smell it again because of the constant sweating. It's just like fuck. I remember today though and yeah, I realized that the people that were doing work type stuff near the laundromat, it's this really cool thing that it took a while for this to sink in for me to realize that this is how it is here even though it's super common. Right now, just on this one street, even though they're all closed, I can see like half a dozen examples of 40:00 this. It's like an inside-out restaurant in the sense of like this is one of these things I love, these little details that you'd never even think to make up because why would you? Where it's basically instead of the kitchen being inside the restaurant and then you know, you got to deal with how to ventilate it and how to keep everything flowing, etc, etc. What they do here super commonly is there's all these restaurants where the kitchen is outside on the street. The kitchen is set up. It kind of looks like I guess if you've been to like a buffet at a hotel or something and they have like you know, heat lamp type stuff set up or like a little like somebody working at like an omelet station, that kind of thing. It's like a like a small little kitchen that is just you know, just got the basics, just the basic necessities of what you need and it's out on the street and then the restaurant seating is inside. So that place it's open tonight except it's the inside seating is closed. They just have limited seating out on the sidewalk but they got a guy who's just he's still working away still making stuff and it's just so neat because like that's one of those things like like again, I just would never even think to imagine that and if I did it would sound I don't know it would sound like kind of a weird idea like oh well you're just like you're trying to write a corny sci-fi novel or something like oh here on the alien world they have reverse restaurants. The people are inside and the kitchen's outside it's like oh great genius so clever it's just the backward thing but here that's really what's happening that's really what it is and it's just cool as fuck because it makes a lot of sense with the climate around here and just how packed in everything is like yeah why would you want the kitchen buried away in the building everybody super hot all the fumes getting caught in there when you can just do all that stuff outside and just let the air push it away so cool one of those neat little things that just like I would never know if I didn't didn't travel here who knows how much I'm learning who knows how useful the stuff I'm learning is but I'm learning stuff hmm you know there's also a McDonald's around here I just realized it's like in like oh even though the McDonald's doesn't have any fun items right now no more squid burgers it's like oh maybe it'd be fun to go to the 3am McDonald's but but McDonald's is so salty and then I'll have to drink tons of liquids and then that'll just keep me up more so yeah that's probably a bad idea stick with the convenience store here's another little restaurant still open so yeah there's an okay there's an okay amount of stuff going on at night and at first I don't know what the actual temperature is right now at first it was building up a little I was like wow even at this time in night I'm still getting that feeling like I wish I could take my shirt off I don't really enjoy this level of heat but it's passing that she feels pretty good now oh yeah I remember this family mart I've been here before all right well let's go in let's get some fucking food

See, this is actually a little tricky. I mean, obviously, yeah, there's so many, so many convenience stores that there's a lot of places where from the convenience store you're at, you can see the next convenience store. But not quite. Like, that wouldn't be like a fun game to try to connect them because you would get stymied pretty fast. But I think if you gave yourself one block, if you were allowed to walk to the end of the block, just started a convenience store. I mean, in this case, in New Taipei City. And I bet, if you can't see another convenience store right away, and walk to the edge of the block, you'll see another one around the corner. And I wonder how many you could chain together. Probably tons. That's like, I used to think it'd be like, I'm not an official game I made up when I lived in New York, that in Manhattan. At any point, if you just stop randomly at any point in Manhattan, I bet you will see loose garbage on American flag. And I could never totally come up with a perfect third thing. It's like, I don't know, steel shutters or something. That's pretty common.