Phone Photos

Today I will show you the pictures I had in the phone.

This is a plate of fruit. We went to a local grocery store and Yvonne showed us some exotic fruit. The thing that I am cutting is an apple-banana. It is short and stumpy but otherwise shaped like the bananas we all know and love. Except this one has that slightly tart ester of apples ... and is a little juicier. I wish we could get them here, instead of the Cavendish ones we have.

The star-shaped fruit is Star Fruit. These have a consistency of crispy pineapple, and taste like an apple/cucumber/pineapple mix. 

See the white fruit with little black dots? That's Dragon Fruit. It's very moist yet crisp, like a cucumber, and has a mild and neutral flavor. 

Dragon Roots. They are purchased with a skin on them like a coconut .. in fact, the dish in the photo to the left has some in it. Once peeled, they look like testicles and are slimy like peeled grapes. In fact that they taste like that too. Grapes, not testicles, unless testicles taste like peeled grapes. I don't know and don't intend to find out. Except they don't have much grape flavor. Imagine eating a grape that doesn't have any grape flavor. Unlike testicles, they have a smooth hard nut in the middle shaped like a kidney bean.

Here we are enjoying a Hot Pot. This is essentially a pot on a heating thingy with boiling water and spices. The red side is spicy, the clear side is not. Then we go to a refrigerated display case and select mystery food to lay in the boiling water to cook, and then we eat it. It was generally very good, except when the dumplings turn out to be full of diced squid or whatever. This is primarily a social event though .... that's Dave and Yvonne socializing with Jenn, and I took the picture. Note that the nastyass honey badger isn't here. He don't care, he's still eating cobra.

Jennifer and I went for a walk, and found this exercise area. Here she's using a lateral back roller. Behind her is the perpendicular back roller. They're just black tubes that rotate on steel tubes, with raised bumps on them. Weird.

We went to Starbucks and there was a bunch ... eight maybe? .... Ferrari's parked out front. 

The greater Taipei area has 7 million people. It is the capital of Taiwan (formerly Formosa). It is a thriving, modern and clean city. And nowhere to drive these cars the way they are meant to be driven. I guess going to Starbucks is a consolation.


OH .. on the red apple thing ... see that "Wego" logo? "Wego" is a hotel behind us where the cars drive in and are lifted up to their rooms (I think it has eight - ten floors). Maybe so the boss can take her secretary on clandestine dates.

Not far from Dave and Yvonne's apartment there is a river, and spanning that river is a one-sided bridge. Kind of neat. Along both sides of the river are biking/walking/running trails, with tennis courts and tai chi facilities. We came down here frequently to exercise. Even at 6am there were lots of people here, mostly bicycling. And smoking. We often saw bicyclists in their wicky spandex suits and helmets sitting on a bench puffing away.

 On this particularly windy  Sunday there were sailboats and "sunfish" boats on the river. They were tacking into the wind up and around some markers upriver. 

Under the bridge there were larger boats and little ones going in circles. We think they were learning how to sail. And waaaay over there, under the bridge, was a drum-troupe, which provided us with a soundtrack as we walked.