It must be because of all the 'effin cute Asian babies

In case I haven't told you, I now live in a warm, bubbly world where cartoon characters rule the streets. Taiwan's infatuation with cuteness can best be explained as a Disney Princess that met Pokemon, fell in love, had babies and then started an advertising firm. Everywhere you go you will be surrounded by cartoon logos and Asian caricatures. From crossing the street where the crosswalk symbol is a little man in a rice paddy hat waddling two and fro, flashing green, to ordering dinner by pointing at the precious baby cow cartoon on the menu, you will find life is increasingly adorable (much like Sarah Palin). Nearly 80% of all reputable companies' logos are composed of a baby animal or make believe creature with giant enticing eyes. Ohh ok, I'm making that up. But I dare you walk down a street in Taipei and not see an adorable construction man cartoon telling you to wear a hard hat. It's impossible.

From Happy Chan to Domo, Doraemon to the walking talking head of sushi that represents Sushi Express, life is nothing but cuteness on a stick here in Taiwan (or so they want you to believe). Yet the cartoons don't stop with the logos, nope. They are plastered across the bodies of grown women, women covered head to toe in Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. Not an ounce of shame in their eyes as they make their way to the office in the morning, prancing around like a 5 year old on Christmas day in their new Hello Kitty pajamas. And its not just women! Grown men walk around in clothes and hats covered in crazy monkey cartoons, wearing shirts with teddy bears that are holding hands and kissing (and you wonder why my gaydar is officially broken).

Unbelievably, it gets even worse. Even the government here has taken a liking to all that looks fat, funny and happy. Informative and critical emergency protocol is often presented in hysterical cartoon form. MRT escalator warnings are shown by what looks like the waist down of Mickey Mouse (if he were to accidentally get his foot caught in the machine that is). And as for elevators, well just imagine, as the elevator doors open you watch your friend walk into not an elevator, but an open shaft of doom. This fun scenario is cheerfully represented in most elevators by a cute cartoon man, screaming his face off and freaking out as his friend plummets to his certain death. Nearby a cute puppy naps in the corner. I'm not joking.

The amazing thing is, from a business perspective, this kind of thing had to be approved by not just one high up executive, but passed through layers of account managers and designers before each detail was refined and settled upon. These hilarious cartoon warning signs probably took months to develop and approve, each time, some brilliant government employed designer saying to himself "Yes, this is perfect. The cartoon freaking out reminds you of the gravity of the situation, while the puppy reminds you life is worth living." Meanwhile the MRT public service announcement designer thought, "Indeed, this weird animé subway rider has just the right look to motivate individuals to check the balance on their prepaid metro card."

It's these geniuses that also go around approving TV commercials compiled of complete nonsense. I know, I know, you're saying to yourself, "you don't even speak their language of course it doesn't make sense to you." But believe me when I tell you, no spoken words could make sense of an iced tea ad where a nerdy life guard teaching old women water aerobics is smashed in the head with two giant lemons, falls in love with a human sized penguin and then falls down an iced tea waterfall with his new penguin friend. But alas, all of it is so darn cute. Perhaps they're onto something. Wouldn't you want to dance with a life size penguin? I know we all would if we were being honest with ourselves here.

I would like to state some kind of amazing fact about the happiness created by these cartoons here in Taiwan, like 'suicide rates are among the lowest in the world due to happy baby animals enticing me to deep fry their delicious carcasses', but a quick google search proved that theory wrong pretty quickly. Instead, I'll just leave you with some of my favorite day to day images from the cutest advertising execs in the world:

Local Steakhouse, "Come eat me, I'm all dressed up for dinner!"

Mister Donut: "Come eat me, I'm a baby lamb/cruller"

Japanese Steakhouse "Come eat here, you have the choice of adorable baby pig or adorable baby bull on a platter, both cute, delicious and viciously slaughtered for your convenience"

Local sandwich shop "Come eat me, I'm a piece of bread with a bow in my non-existent hair"

Hello Kitty Cake: "It's not enough that you wear my image plastered all over your body, come eat my face too!"

Sushi Express: "I'm a walking talking piece of sushi, I have raw fish for a hat. Eat me"

MRT informational animé. I mean really, just picture animé at Grand Central informing riders how to check their metro card balance and try not to laugh

Moving truck company: "Why hire someone that looks like a reliable, strong individual, when you can have a funny panda clumsily move your valuables while attempting to walk upright instead, teehee"

Construction site warning: "bricks may fall from the sky at any moment. Wear a hard hat or end up retarded and legless like this guy"

Elevator warning. (Sorry this pic is so bad! I'm too embarrassed to openly take a good picture in front of other elevator passengers and admit I'm not actually laughing about a funny joke I heard earlier) Actual translation from above: "Holy FFFFF, dude you just fell down the shaft! That's what she said."

And this one has nothing to do with cartoons, but just cracks me up. I love old people (when they're not walking in front of me) because they're just so out of it and so funny. Just look at these two in an MRT ad promoting respecting ones elders by giving up your seat on the subway. They're so happy about something as they stare off into the distance, dazed, confused, having no idea that subways even exist now. Grandpa is thinking about prunes for dinner and Grammy is just waiting for the bitter sweet end to it all. Next time you see these two, you'll do the right thing, I'm sure.

And that's when someone said, 'Why the hell not?'

After playing a long hard game of tennis, you ache for something that can quench your thirst and only one thing comes to mind, ice cold, delicious, Lactic Acid Drink. Nothing says sweet relief, like acid in your mouth.


Lactic Acid Not your cup of tea? Are you in dire need of making your piss stink immediately? Try some sweet and healthy Asparagus Juice in a carton. When you're on the go and need some funky smelling piss asap, this drink is for you! If you're still thirsty there's avocado smoothies, fish eye ball lemonade (not really but it looks like it) and good ol' poisonous tap water.


For those of you with a big appetite, freshly made Belgian waffles topped with a scoop of day old tuna fish will leave you satisfied. After all, 72 % of people who like waffles also enjoy tuna fish. This courageous combo was created to meet everyone's needs. It's available at high end coffee shops where we found most consumers expressed a need for a Belgian waffle tuna explosion in their mouth.


Pork ear cookies look gross, and taste like nothing! Why waste precious calories on food that tastes good, when you can eat things that resemble something gross and taste like salty sweet cardboard?

And for those of you sick of everyone beating around the bush, let's just get to it then. Yes, this meat on a stick came from an animal as filthy and vile as this thing pictured here. Yes, we all know, deep down, you want that thing in your stomach. Sure, maybe it could be an endangered animal, perhaps the last of a prehistoric breed of boar, but look at it, don't you want to eat it? I mean we cut it up real nice and then put it on a stick, you know its good.

Very potent, not so potable

Ugh, I'm so bad! It's been a month, so I'm sorry!!! It's not that I haven't been eating, because I have. Actually quite a lot. Actually the personal trainer at my new gym even told me I'm a mere 3 percent away from being in the obese category. He also told me that the muscle in each of my arms only makes up 1.6% of all the muscle in my body. This may explain why I can't do a single pull up. His name was literally Sparky so I don't really care what he or his electro pulse machine has to say about me and my lack of muscles and abundance of fat :)

So most of the reason I've been so busy is because of work, but I was also sick. My stomach finally gave way to the bacteria of the new world and I spent 3 days struggling to keep anything in my stomach. Initially I was confused. I mean, I'd been eating random meat products from street vendors for 2 months now, so why was my stomach defeated from a bowl of rice with vegetables? It didn't fit. And after three days of pain and discomfort I saw the key to my illness: my roommate. Kind, but clueless, he had been feeding me tap water for weeks. Tap water in the U.S. can be laden with lead and other eventually harmful trace elements, however it won't make your intestines curl into a tightly wound spring ready to burst at any moment. In Taiwan however, the water cannot be consumed without being boiled first due to harmful bacteria the government says is drinkable but really isn't (it's on their website, the big liars!) All Taiwanese boil their water, and thus usually end up drinking warm water even though its 95 degrees outside. But the roommate, god bless him and his unfathomable logic, thought since I was a foreigner, I was impervious to the Taiwanese water bacteria and told me to drink freely from the Brita filter he filled daily with unboiled tap water. I assumed he boiled it. But we all know, assuming makes and ass out of u and me. Amazingly enough my stomach lasted two weeks on Taiwanese tap water. After that it gave way and punished me for my stupidity. And after three days of watching me dying slowly, my roommate refilled the brita filter in front of me, with tap water and I asked him, "Have you been drinking that too?" He replied "No, of course not, I never drink water unless its boiled." Too weak to strangle him, I was relieved; I finally had my answer. Upon refilling my body with amoeba free water, I quickly returned to my normal state and took solace in the fact that I can still eat anything, its just the water I need to watch out for.

Ironically a week later I took my kindergarten kids on a super fun field trip to the Taipei Water Treatment Facility, half education/half water park! During our tour of the park we watched an educational film all in Chinese that toasted the achievements in water filtration in Taiwan and even showed children drinking straight from the faucet at home. I was appalled. It was worse than the blatant lies that the U.S. government feeds us. They even have a museum here called "The Museum of Drinking Water," what a farce! Such a place should surely not exist yet, as there is no water suitable for drinking still. Yet for such a ruse they have going on here, everyone on this island still seems to know that you must at all times, boil your water. Our field trip ended with my 15 toddlers, sweating in the midday sun, eyes agape, watching the other children play in the sprinklers and wading pools, not allowed to go near it, not even stick a finger in it, because my school deemed it all too unsafe. My thoughts exactly...



http://www.twd.gov.tw/watertravel/wpark/english/museum/museum.htm

The museum of drinking water. The website is so cute with its happy water drop mascot, yet note, not once do they mention dysentery.

Where for art thou, oh sushi love of my life?

I’ve been meaning to write about Sushi Express for about a month now. Anywhere that gives you instant access to as much sushi as you can eat at the rate of a dollar per plate is incredible right? It really is a magical place where you sit in front of a conveyor belt loaded with a rainbow of raw deliciousness, where plates of sushi come marching your way, two by two, hoorah hoorah; A veritable endless parade of fish, rice and seaweed.

However, now a month has gone by and in that month my immediate infatuation with Sushi Express has dwindled into just a fond memory of what could have been. After such a perfect first date, I should have known not to have such high expectations for our second encounter. After all, it was a rushed, impromptu meeting, just a quick bite before heading to work, not like our first leisurely dinner date where the green tea was sipped and my stack of 6 plates took an hour to form. Date two was just business, and four plates of mediocre sushi (and one plate of questionable sushi) later, my infatuation with Sushi Express was over. Maybe it was because it was 3:00 in the afternoon, too late to have fresh sushi from lunch and too early for the dinner rush. Maybe it was my placement at the end of the sushi circle where I was left to dig through the plates examined and rejected by all the other sushi-goers. Or perhaps, like all second dates, the rose colored glasses had been lifted and I realized, much as I had realized when grabbing the one perfect looking plate of sashimi that actually was the plastic sashimi display, anything too good to be true, usually is. You really should see the plastic food displays in this country though, they are seriously exquisite! It really wasn’t until I was trying my hardest to pry the clear plastic cover off the sashimi and was holding it sideways, that I realized, “Wow, this sashimi defies gravity, oh wait, it’s so shiny, oh I see, its not real, damnit.” I then had to coyly slide the fake plate back onto the conveyor belt, squishing it between the questionable looking sashimi, hoping no one saw the stupid foreign girl who tried to eat the plastic display.

In any event, I’ve decided not to see Sushi Express again. As my mom always said there are more fish in the sea, fresh, raw, delicious fish that won’t leave me wondering if I should find a toilet soon. Hopefully I’ll have more successful sushi tales soon, a true sushi love story. Here I come prince Nobu.

Jess and Stephanie's sea slug sushi selection (say that 5 times fast!)

the damage

An expat's view of Taiwan's cultural quirks

Taiwan's Dos

• Riding a bike while carrying an opened umbrella, while its not raining, to block the sun and also the view of where your going or who you’re riding into – acceptable
• Wearing a mini skirt all the way up to your non-existent butt – acceptable
• Locking a two year old out of the classroom and watching him cry all alone in the hallway for not being able to put on his shoes fast enough (by himself mind you, and he’s 2!) – highly acceptable
• Serving kidney beans atop of lentils, atop of mangos covered in some sugary syrup atop a pile of ice shavings – acceptable and popular
• Children remaining in school from 9am until 9pm at night if not longer before going home and doing homework until midnight- acceptable
• Drinking alcohol freely in public areas – acceptable (just not on the subway)
• Driving children around on scooters without helmets, seat belts and or anything strapping them in in any way – acceptable
• Driving like a crazed maniac on your scooter down the sidewalk at 60 miles an hour almost running over a class of toddlers – acceptable
• Garbage trucks playing misleading ice cream truck music, only to be a garbage truck – acceptable
• Taking your pet bunny, unleashed, to the beach or the neighborhood restaurant to hop freely amidst the other diners – acceptable
• Dressing as a power ranger to go surfing - acceptable
• Being 95 degrees out when its only June or raining for 48hrs non-stop - acceptable, apparently really normal
  

Don'ts

• Daring to drink water on the subway – not acceptable
• Showing shoulder or back skin, let alone cleavage! – not acceptable
• Serving beans in a savory fashion – not acceptable
• Maintaining awareness of those around so as not to maim or potentially kill them while, walking, biking or scootering – not acceptable
• Having garbage cans for public use in public areas – not acceptable (yet somehow the streets are so clean!)
  
• Using toilet paper and then flushing it down the toilet – not acceptable
• Swimming in water over 2 ft high – not acceptable
• Making pizza without topping it with corn – not acceptable
• Putting a leash on your dog before leaving the house or while crossing major traffic intersections – just not necessary

Lastly,

• Being exceedingly nice and accommodating to the stupid American slaughtering your language, getting annoyed at your culture she chose to live in and expecting you to help her lost, confused, giant butt regardless – accepted and dealt with more politely than any New Yorker could ever muster