No shit?

Taipei is nice. Very modern and very Chinese. I must admit I was quite nervous before I got here: how would I deal with the enormous language difference? Well, so far it has been fine. Street names and signage at stations (including the very handy metro system0 are also in English and make navigating Taipei rather easy. How this will be once outside Taipei I will find out tomorrow, when I start my Tour the Taiwan. I am sure it will involve asking English speaking people (who are far and wide between) writing things on pieces of paper in Chinese to present to other people. Only just now I asked someone at the tourist information booth "Can you write 'a one-way ticket to Fulong please?' for me, please?" Thankfully the Taiwanese are very friendly and very helpful indeed. For instance:
A few days ago I went to the City God Temple. Once there I discovered that not only was this temple home of the City God, the matchmaking God also had his residence there! What a golden opportunity. I decided to buy some stuff to offer to this deity; some paper money and inscence. While I was buying this a woman appeared by my side and said:' I will help you. I once lived overseas and I know it can be complicated finding your way around a strange environment". Gratefully I accepted her help and once I explained my purpose it turned out that the set I just bought was only the beginning of an intricate ritual to ask the assistance of the matchmaker. There was a special matchmaker kit and rituals to perform with it. So with the help of Sophia and a temple attendant I made a tour around several deities in the temple, praying, bowing, introducing myself to the Gods, offering insence and sugar, drinking tea and eating engagement cookies and wedding cake. To finish it all I received two lead coins tied together with red string and a pink pouch to keep this in. After I waved the pouch three times clockwise around the inscence burner the ritual was finished and the matchmaker is now busy finding me the exact right partner. Once I get engaged and married I have to send some of my engagement cookies and wedding cake to the temple to give thanks to the matchmaker. These in their turn will be used for the ritual of other people! What a lovely thought. Just like the sugar someone offered the day before was used to sweeten the tea I drank.

Here are Sophia and me after the event, when she told me that 2 years ago she had done the same thing and, actually, her boyfriend had proposed to her just last week... Spooky! Surely this meant extra luck for me!
I must say that I really like the Chinese temples. Not only are they beautiful to look at, but there is always stuff going on. Very serious stuff, but at the same time they seem quite informal to me. People are walking in and out all the time, burning inscense and offering food to the gods. This can be anything, it seems fruit, a bottle of 7-up, a loaf of bread, chocolate bicuits, some snacks, rice, whatever you think will please them.
You can even buy specially prepared high protein 'breakfast trays' with some raw meat, a few eggs, tofu etc:
And ofcourse there is always an old lady hiding behind a temple door, a photograph waiting to happen...
Apart from visiting temples I have of course paid other tourist sites a visit, such as Taipei 101 (until recently the highest tower in the world, but now overtaken by Dubai), the Royal Palace Museum with one of its most important exhibits: a jade carving of a paksoi cabbage - I am not kidding! I also went to see/hear a piano recital at the National Music Theatre which was in fact so boring that some-one behind me fell asleep and started snoring! I felt like joining him.

Apart from being full of Starbucks-type coffee shops (who would have thought?) Taipei also has a lot of foor massage/reflexology shops. This afternoon I decided to give it a go and see what the fuss is all about. What can I say? It was both painful and nice at the same time. A lovely lady expertly tortured my feet for 30 minutes in a friendly and professional manner.
There was good news and bad news. The good news is that my head is alright. (Nothing new here, as far as I'm concerned!) The bad news is that my lower back and abdomen need serious attention. She told me that I have been eating and drinking too fast and therefore my lower intestines are blocked, making it difficult to shit. I was amazed she could tell all this from just squeezing my feet: it was all true! The solution is to drink more - and more slowly - and to chew my food better so I will shit more easily. You can imagine the non-verbal communication involved in transferring this information, seeing that she did not speak English, nor I Chinese! Needless to say we had a good laugh as well and parted the best of friends.