{"id":158,"date":"2008-06-29T16:48:36","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T15:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morbidcornflakes.ch\/thduggies_blog\/?p=158"},"modified":"2008-06-29T16:48:36","modified_gmt":"2008-06-29T15:48:36","slug":"back-to-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2008\/back-to-normal","title":{"rendered":"Back to normal"},"content":{"rendered":"

I slept until 12:30, but got up feeling well enough to drink an orange juice.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of my day I frittered away aimlessly, and it wasn’t until around four o’clock that I left the hotel for the Jianguo Jade Market<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d seen some beautiful pieces at a store called “Rich Jade” located in the underground shopping center of the Sheraton hotel, right next to the fatal restaurant, but it had looked a little too rich for my blood and the attendant kept repeating “we specialize in jedi,” so I checked the internet for alternatives.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first thing I noticed was the heat.\u00c2\u00a0 The market is a large collection of stalls located underneath a freeway with nothing but fans and mist-sprayers to keep the atmosphere bearable.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, but I think it would have gotten into my way.\u00c2\u00a0 I know nothing about jade, but I know whether I instinctively like or dislike a person, so that’s what guides my purchasing decisions.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t find anything particularly wrong about the pieces I was shown at the first stand I stopped at, nor was I unimpressed by the vendor’s lightning-quick jewelry design drawing skills, but I took the opportunity to disappear when an Asian couple showed interest in a jade bracelet and distracted him.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure that the shopophobes among you will understand when I say I prefer shopping at a booth where the salesperson doesn’t speak English…\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I bought\u00c2\u00a0two mangoes on my way home and a dove bar with high cocoa content – the dove bar cost twice the price of the mangoes.\u00c2\u00a0 When I picked up my key at the reception, the receptionist took a peek at my purchase and handed me a sharp knife to peel the mangoes.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s excellent service – and the reason I shouldn’t ever operate in the service industry, because I hadn’t even thought of how I was going to peel the mangoes.\u00c2\u00a0 They tasted – oh, I’ll just advise any visitor to Taiwan to try the mangoes.\u00c2\u00a0 Juicy, messy, but unfortunately still fibrous.\u00c2\u00a0 The dove bar… I’d bought it because high cocoa chocolate has a constipative reputation, but after eating just a bite of it I had had enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Later on I would even move it away because I found the smell disgusting.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

At 8pm I made my way to the tailor’s, where I was to pick up my custom suit.\u00c2\u00a0 I realized on the way that (a) the mangoes were still inside me and (b) they weren’t enough, so I went to McDonald’s and had a fine meal of Chicken McNuggets and Coke.\u00c2\u00a0 I figured that if McDonald’s is bad for you<\/a>, but failed to affect my gastrointestinal system, that would prove I had regained my health.\u00c2\u00a0 (So far, QED.)\u00c2\u00a0 I also learned some Chinese: Kungfu Panda is\u00c2\u00a0\u00e5\u0160\u0178\u00e5\u00a4\u00ab\u00e7\u2020\u0160\u00e7\u0152\u00ab – which literally translates to Artful Bearcat<\/a>, or character-for-word achievement husband bear cat.\u00c2\u00a0 No wonder Eastern Mysticism has so many followers.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I got my suit, and took a few pictures of the impressive display of name cards on his desk, including the only one I recognized (thanks to Dave Barry<\/a>) – Tom Tancredo<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 There was also the Governor of Tennessee and the Vice President of Nicaragua.\u00c2\u00a0 What are all these people doing in Taipei?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m here because of business – isn’t theirs to mind business at home?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I must too – so I will stop hunting for more links and give Janet a call instead.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I slept until 12:30, but got up feeling well enough to drink an orange juice.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of my day I frittered away aimlessly, and it wasn’t until around four o’clock that I left the hotel for the Jianguo Jade Market.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d seen some beautiful pieces at a store called “Rich Jade” located in the underground shopping center of the Sheraton hotel, right next to the fatal restaurant, but it had looked a little too rich for my blood and the attendant kept repeating “we specialize in jedi,” so I checked the internet for alternatives.\u00c2\u00a0 The first thing I noticed was the heat.\u00c2\u00a0 The market is a large collection of stalls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}