Stop Raining Continuously On My Parade!

Stop raining continuously on my parade, Taiwan! First it literally rains, then it's bitter cold (okay, mid-fifties) and damp and gale-force winds--which are both very cold and hard to bike against--and my movie's sold out of the first time in like the history of the country and I'm miserably sick and we tried again today to go to the movie and it was sold out again and dubbed into Chinese so we couldn't even go to the next showing. We tried to go buy sandwiches at Casa Minierva, but it was closed. Then we tried the new restaurant next to it and it looked great--except everything was at least 500 dollars (NT), which would have been acceptable if we had more than a couple hundred on us total. We then contemplated out food options since a) food street is still closed for the freakin' New Year (which was Thursday) , b) sandwiches were out, c) we couldn't make much at home; also, we have no bread which has been sold out since New Year's, and d) the only things open were McDonalds and KFC, neither of which appealed, but we had to eat somewhere, so McDonalds won out on the basis of its heat and menu diversity.

Before we could eat, we had to go to the train station to pick up our tickets for Tainan, which had been successfully ordered online the night before. The first clerk, apparently freaked out by our foreignness (and presumed no Chinese abilities) kicked us right quick over to information, which was okay because I wasn't sure if you picked up the tickets at a special window or something. The information lady passed us onto the Deputy Station Manager, who said we could pick up our tickets at any window. So we got back in line and picked a new teller, who was baffled by our request, despite having Paul's ARC card (the tickets are reserved under your ARC or passport number, not by name) and my repeated statements in Chinese that we had already ordered our tickets online and we were trying to pick them up. (Note: Paul was not impressed with this teller, considering him to be possibly new and grumpy.) He passed us over to teller #4, who was being surpervised by our friend the Deputy Station Manager. He at least did not seem baffled by request, although it took him a minute to figure things out on the computer. (He seemed very pleased when he realized we had two sets of tickets because they were round-trip tickets.) Once that was clear, everything moved along quickly, although we had to pay by debit card, which we had not planned on, because the tickets were NT$1100. (They don't tell you the price when you reserve the tickets.)

Anyways, that's enough of the grumbles from me. I feel better now. I am excited to go to Tainan on Monday and both Paul and I are enjoying our New Year's "gifts" (Devil May Cry 4 and the Sims 2 Seasons!), so life really is worth living (in case you were worried).