I guess life got boring after I got over my initial shock at living in another country and we settled down into our swim and zhuyin class. This post was a whole week later than the previous one and I didn’t talk about what we were doing at all. I think it was around this time that we got mighty sick for 3-4 days, with a high fever and lethargy, one after another.
The kids almost always catch a foreign bug when they visit. I bring ever more remedies and medications each time I visit.
We’ve been here almost 3 weeks. Since we haven’t been doing much I thought I’d write down some of our daily encounters, impressions, and also what’s hot in Taiwan now. There are always waves of what’s popular, like how egg tarts were so hot 10 years ago you see them selling everywhere.
What’s HOT
1. Soft Serve.
Taiwan’s latest food craze is apparently soft serves. Please don’t ask me why. It’s not Pink Berry yogurt kind, those those are apparently here too. But more like the ones you see at McDonalds. You can buy them at 7-11 or really, just anywhere. I’m not sure what’s so great, though we’ve tried a few of them so far.
2. Yellow Duck
Some artist blew up a HUGE yellow rubber duckie (see the link), and it’s traveling the world apparently. It made stops here in multiple sea ports, and it’s BIG. But what’s bigger is the merchandizing. You see rubber ducks merchandize being sold everywhere.
There was controversy because some merchandize were being sold non-authorized and the artist did not like it. I read an editorial that basically disparaged the fact that Taiwanese people find a huge rubber duck (which is something that existed before said artist blew it up) something to go crazy over. Plus the fact that people try to make money off of anything. I find both to be true, but not in a bad way. I think that’s the interesting thing about the culture.
3. Real Estate
Real estate is what I read ALL the time about and see ads for in the papers. The cost per 35sqft is something like 20k in Taipei. So for average old apt space, it’s around $668K. That gives you about 700-900 square feet? Some paper I read said it takes people an average of 14.6 years of their yearly salary to pay full price for their apartment. And that on average, mortgage takes up >50% of their income. It’s amazing considering the country has a negative population growth.
I talk to different relatives and they all have very different takes on the market. Some say it’ll always be hot, others say it’ll cool. I don’t know who’s right. What I do know is, it’s very expensive to live here!
4. Freshly roasted coffee
Leave it to the Taiwanese to take a concept and run with it. Coffee shops are even more prevalent than it was the last time I was here. My aunt says that in the popular areas, the rent get raised so high so businesses go out. I wonder if this is why I don’t see so many traditional Chinese breakfast place anymore. The more traditional food start at a lower price point than western food like coffee.
Anyways, I see a lot of tiny coffee shops that are roasting coffee same day and selling coffee. My cousin says that the point isn’t selling coffee drinks but to lure you in to buy their roasted coffee. I find the whole concept amazing. In SF, you’ve got Blue Bottle and I forget who else who’s selling premium (and expensive) coffee drink. I need to double check, but I think here, so many people are doing it, it pushes the price point lower. I also wonder if it also makes it something that regular people drink rather than for those “gourmet” foodies.
Another interesting thing to note, very few people sell decaf coffee here. Everytime I ask, they always look surprised like, “why drink coffee then?”
Other Interesting new things
Here are other interesting things I find that I did not find last time I was here.
1. Apparently lemon flavored tea and other lemon flavored drinks are in this year. I have not yet tried any.
2. White bubble tea & cane sugar
Taiwan was rocked by several food scandals last year and one new bubble tea chain I like (Come Here) now has white bubbles because then you’re not adding anything to make it black. And many stores I see advertise the fact that they use cane sugar. Except those are all in syrup form so I’m not sure how cane sugary they are to begin with.
