Personal Dork Assistant

Chop Chop

Now that the funeral is over, we're now into meet-and-greet mode. I can shave and cut my hair, now, too. Aunt Dai's restaurant folded. Taiwan isn't really ready for real French food and Taiwan-ified French food isn't very good, frankly. So she's gone back to being a landlord, and rented the place out to a slick new hair salon. Being the way she is, she's still pushing the services to friends and family, even if she's no longer directly involved in the operation. Not real big on fancy salons, but there's something to be said for having a pretty girl give you a long scalp message as she shampoos your hair. Carson's the hairburner in charge, although I thought it was "Cousins" at first, but as long as everyone was sticking with the Chin-glish pronounciation there was no confusion. Didn't want anything too fancy and he was obliging. A shorter (but not buzzed), cleaner look, but with some care and fancy scissorwork (it's all about shears in the hip holster) to shape and texturize. I'm usually wary about having the hair too short as the stiff strands tend to pop up all over the place, but the new cut really bounced right back into place after a quick rinse. Felt kinda bad for him being browbeaten into cutting the hair for free, so I left a tip (which was about what I would've paid for a cheap haircut at home anyway), and bought some ($) styling cream. I've been meaning to get some nicer products anyway, and Kyan is very anti-gel.

Rest of the family met me at the salon and we walked down the road to the restaurant to meet one of dad's old army friends (and his wife) for lunch. The haircut ran a little long, so they'd already ordered a long list of dishes, and he kept trying to make us order more food. Would've been a perfectly pleasant (if a little heavy) lunch otherwise. Mom finally deflected the pestering by ordering half-portion's worth of dessert. Unfortunately, she ordered the one thing that had to be slow-cooked for 40 minutes. Oops. They had plenty to talk about anyway, so it wasn't totally awful.

Mom and dad took the taxi home while Sam and I walked back along ZhongXiao East Rd. (中孝東路). Tower Records was next door to the restaurant, and they were blowing out the inventory in a door-closing sale. Too bad all the good stuff were already cleaned out. Sam wanted to look into jeans, but fashionable stores really aren't the place to look for deals (yes, Polo Ralph Lauren jeans cost just as much, if not more, in Taiwan than in the States). Also stopped in at a bookstore. Browsed through the magazine racks. Funny how the Leading Fashion section were filled with Japanese and English mags. Talk about imports, there's the Louis Vuitton magazine in Japanese, and there was even a Beckett's Baseball Monthly, although I don't know how you would find baseball cards in Taiwan. Sam got some classic Chinese stories for kids with ZhuYing on the side. He was inspired by how many characters he actually recognized in the Buddhist sutras. Let's see if he actually grinds through the books when not being forced to speed-read by chanting monks. He picked up some Sanrio (but not Hello Kitty!) stationary for Michelle, too.

Got home and went out with Uncle #3 to the local hyper-mart to look for some jeans. Apparently they take the overstock from Taiwan factories left over from their OEM clients, rebadge them and sell them cheap. Mom got me a nice pair of khakis that way last time. But no go with the jeans, as either the size or the style (or both) were all wrong. That wasn't going to stop mom, though, not when she's in a store that's a three-story monstrosity filled with every (cheap) necessity of life. Some girl ran away from home and managed to live in the place for a month without anyone noticing. Mom decided to go with the snack-food plan and filled up the cart with cookies and things. We passed on the wall of dried fish snacks, though. I hit the CD section, which was small, but I was looking for pop stuff anyway. They had cheap anime soundtracks, too, $3 compared to $10 in the U.S. They're even legal, when you buy them in Taiwan.

Uncle #3 is the only one who can still handle the gladiatorial bloodsport that is Taipei driving, which is totally cool, although I've already gotten kinda used to being chauffered around in BMWs and Mercedes instead of being crammed three-wide in the back of a Civic. Got home just in time for dinner, as Uncle #5 is leaving that night back to the States (he's already been here for three weeks and he figured he should at least show up for the company Christmas party), although Aunt and Abby are staying another week or so. Would've liked to get everyone together to see Return Of The King, and Abby was dead-set on going anyway, but we have to go out to eat with people for lunch and dinner, and Uncle and Aunt declined for Alan as he had three papers he had to finish, since he left school before finals were over. It was a thought, anyway.