The Rain, Tile, Traffic and Tiawanese Dogs

02.19.2009 6:22p.m.

Where in the World is D Today?

Trying not to get got.

As an English Teacher I know that euphemism is going to be lost on my new Taiwanese friends. Let me just explain by saying that I am trying to avoid having something bad happen to me.

Let's begin with the rain. It has rained several days this week. It's depressing. When the funk of rain comes I sometimes just want to run to a place where the sun is shining. It doesn't matter what country I'm in, I don't like the rain.

Jhongli City is a place where tile is a major presence on walking surfaces both outside and in. Just for the record, wet tile can be very slippery. My walk to and from work is a whole new adventure.

I almost got killed in traffic the other night. It was the first time that I felt really in danger. Taiwan traffic is not for the faint of heart for sure, but I just about got crushed between two cars as I was crossing the street, in the crosswalk. One car was turning left, the other was turning right and the meeting point was me! You can surmise by the mere fact of me right this blog that I came through unscathed. But it was a very scary 3 seconds of my life!

Now here is just about the strangest thing I've seen in Taiwan. While I am a novice to Taiwan traffic, this pesky pooch is clearly unfazed by the traffic. Whatever he was trying to get out of his butt took presedence over the potential of getting run over.




You can't get a real sense of how far this dog was out in the street. I tried fairly unsuccessfully to catch cars and scooters flying by this dog.
















I saw the same dog a little later on the street up close. This dog looked like he had lived a HARD life. He just looked at me like, "Dude you have no idea."


As a closing note on the dogs in Taiwan. I haven't seen a lot of them running around, but the few I have seen look like the have much bigger issues on their little dog mines to be bothered with me. They do their own thing and people ignore them. Also there was a dog in a street restaurant I ate at the other night. It was the first time I heard a dog bark here. This sounds totally ridiculous, but when the dog barked I took a double take. I expected the dog to have a Taiwanese accent. It didn't of course, but I seriously expected it to. But I noticed he did speak Chinese when it obeyed the owner.

Just a few observations hope you enjoyed.

Peace