Day Two - 28thFeb07

Today I met a guy whose actual honest-to-goodness, paid job, is to walk around with a board and offer people Free Hugs! How much would you love to be that guy?! Obviously I wanted one, since that was one of the main things I was anxious about in coming here – that I wouldn’t be able to hug anyone. In Scotland I barely go a day without a hug and never a week without a seriously good quality hug. I love them. And today I got one, from some random guy on the street with a billboard. I’m not sure this really doesn’t add to the problem, but for now I’m just going to savour it. So yeh, this all happened on a trip to Taipei today since it’s a national holiday and classes don’t start till tomorrow. I went with Brian (the American guy), and a group of Koreans, who laugh at me when I try and pronounce their Korean names, and have English names that sound like dolls or soap stars. (As far as I can tell, they aren’t translations of their real names, which, tend to translate into things like, ‘flower’ or ‘easy’ as in ‘easy going’.) (most are in the photo - taken on Ming Chuan campus) So anyway, we all took the bus, then the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit – kinda like the underground) to Taipei. We had a little help from some Taiwanese girls, since none of us speak Mandarin, and it’s pretty hard to negotiate the MRT on your first go, esp. with a group of around 15 people, ranging from 18 to 27 and all acting as though they’re about 12 (I, obviously, was far more composed.) Taipei is a lot like New York, tall buildings, very busy, lots of shops, except, although the shops are tall, you only seem to be able to see the bottom floor, which, is generally jam packed with stuff. And there are loads of adverts and skirie signs everywhere. It’s al a bit mental. But the thing that I couldn’t get my head around, at all, was that everyone walks really slowly. I mean really slowly. People stroll everywhere. To be honest, I started to find this pretty frustrating by about half way through the day. I walk twice as fast in normal situations and jet lag was starting to set in, so slow, monotonous walking was really not where I was at. Since it’s a prominent city, I automatically drew comparisons with London, or New York, where generally, people walk double my speed. And if I’m somewhere new I tend to be like, ‘Right! Early start, lets go, got to see as much as possible in as little time as possible, can’t waste a second…’ this was different. I found it kind-of funny. Although in all fairness, I still saw far more than I could process between the city and the night market. I tried so hard to stay awake on the 40minute bus ride home and was so sure I had managed, until 5minutes after we left when I woke up almost leaning on the poor random girl in the seat next to me, and we had arrived back at Ming Chuan.