Fully Hair Salon

On certain main streets, there only exists the following stores (and nothing else): 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, English schools, Watsons (personal care store), hair salons, hair salons and hair salons. And multiples upon multiples of all of these. Therefore here, the most important things in life are fast foods and drinks, personal care, English and hair.

Speaking of which, there is something with Taiwanese hair salons and bad English.

"Fully" = 富麗! Not a grammar problem.

Haha - think of "scalp rituals" for one imagery, then imagine what "instant ritual" would be like!

There's a popular hair salon called: 亂剪 translated into "crazy/random cuts", which is quite cool, because cool people like to "wing" stuff and still look pretty cool. Like not study and still be all good, not patch their pants and still be all good, type.

Check out these staff names. There's Cora, Kiki, Mango, which are OK sounding. Then there's Wing... and Uni, Weico and BETA...hahaha.

P.S. a yakult here costs NTD $8 each (roughly AUD $0.29)!

A Lack of Bins Promotes Commerce

Does reducing the number of bins on the streets promote commerce?

Join these words together.
1. Flyer marketers handing out flyers.
2. People take.
3. No bins to throw unliked advertising.
4. Throwing rubbish on the ground incurs a NTD$1000+ fine.
5. Puts flyer in pocket, or holds flyer.
6. Flyers end up at home.

Overall effect, advertising material viewed more times by potential consumers - a positive outcome for marketers in the short run.

In the long run, as people learn, they stop taking advertising materials, which leads to more creative ways for marketers to distribute flyers - including giving out a packet of tissues with advertising printed on top of the stack. These are hard to refuse for some potential consumers. But once again, the lack of bins provide nowhere to throw the printed advertising once the pack of 4 tissues are finished.

Thus, a lack of bins affects commerce ambiguously, in the long run.

Favourite Christmas Song Live

It was required of me to write a recommendation letter for myself to my host before I arrived in Taiwan. After writing all the formal stuff, I wanted to add in my special interests, to give my host a better understanding of who I am. So I was thinking, thinking and I came up with the four following interests: 1. Eating fruits 2. Punching 3. Talking to strangers about special interests 4. Giving massages. I realized soon after that these interests can be connected and done all at once, as in: Eating fruits and punch-massaging, a stranger while talking to him about special interests. Of course, I didn't write any of this in the recommendation letter.

A lot of people in Taiwan wear mouth smocks to help reduce the amount of pollution being breathed into the body. I have tried a few times, and it not only relieves me of the traffic/factory/cigarette/general atmospheric pollution, but also gives me two new senses of freedom.

Firstly, there's the freedom which is similar to that of wearing sunglasses – which is the less people can see of you, the more secret you feel. Secondly, there's a freedom to say anything to yourself, and not be conscious of what other people think of you because people can't see your mouth move, and your voice is muffled. So for those times where I need to say things like “Oooh baby”, I have the full liberty.

I have discovered that Taiwan girls are prettier than I thought. Someone said a comment which I thought was quite fair: “Speaking of prettiness in the form of the makeup-less look, Taiwan girls come in the top few out of the typical Asian countries.” But, for me, unless I get to know the girl, there are only a few forms of pretty girls. In other words, to me, a lot of them look the same. This concept has inspired me to take photos of Taiwanese girls and label them into categories/types. If this does go ahead, I will NOT ask them if they would like to see their photos on my blog. Easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, some of the times.

My favourite Christmas song, live.

Taiwan breeds a culture of excellence. So therefore, one thing is for certain.

"English translation mistakes are very hard to find!"

In fact, i could find more mistakes in Melbourne taking a walk down a street of restaurants, Chinese or not.

But one other thing is for certain. That i will require to find other types of funny things to laugh at (and take photos of), and i also believe that every culture has cultural-specific habits/"traditions" that other cultures find ridiculous in humour.

The first sight of a welcoming Abe in Taiwan

I will update you often, about the new things that i discover.

Thanks.

p.s. a shower is not really required here...

Are You Sexually Biased?

This post uses the term: "sexually biased"

TBC...