I just got back from Fuzhong, where I met Eric and Anita, we met at exit 3, then we waited for brother from their hall. Coming up from the MRT platform to exit 3 is kind of like going to the top of a very tall building, I rode I think 3 escalators that where at least 3 stories high, one more like 6, then I climbed about 3 stories worth of stairs and finally came out to see Eric and Anita waiting for me. When I got to ground level I think I had risen about 15-20 stories. The MRT is very deep in Fuzhong, I commented on this to Eric and Anita and they said they were thinking the same thing. So I'm not crazy. Their friend after a few minutes pulled up in his shiny black car, pretty exciting to get to ride in a car for us foreigners, and usually cars are really nice here if people have them, so we hopped in. Then he drove us to "Global Mall" where we met his wife and two kids at a "Ceschwan" restaurant. It's a pretty fancy place, we got our own little booth, which is almost like a little room.

What I'll remember about the booth the most, if I remember a booth for some reason, will be the long tubular pillow that went all the way around the U-shaped booth. It was very comfortable to lean back into, but also the kids, 6 and 8, towards the end of the meal got a little restless and tried to lay lengthwise across it, balancing themselves on it, or they'd slide under it and hide from each other.

Frankly I'm a little jealous that they got to do that and I didn't, I'm too heavy and big for the pillow to have been as much fun for me.
The food was, of course, different than any ceschwan food I've ever had, which judging my my inability to spell cezwan, sichuan, cezhuan in English, doesn't mean too much, since I haven't ever had much of it. It's spicy. But the highlight of the meal was the boiled stinky tofu. Not prepared the same as the stinky tofu I usually eat, which is crispy and fried, and I must say, I like it my way better, boiled tofu is extra stinky, and has a stronger taste. During the meal I leaned back and said to Anita, "Can you imagine parents trying to make their kids eat this stuff?" Sure enough, we got to witness it ourselves a few minutes after I said it, our new friends made their 8 year old son eat some. He seemed OK afterwards though.
Of course the brother, Paul or Yang, who drove us there insisted on treating us tonight, the brothers here are very generous and it's very rude to refuse.
Afterwards Yang Dixiong drove us back to the MRT station where we all met. And we said good-bye and thank you to Brother Yang.
Eric and Anita then decided to treat me to... I forgot what it was called, ice-something, shaved ice with all kinds of hard to describe sweet type things. I think it's kind of funny, they have, at this food shop, a numbered picture menu on the counter close to the customer so you can touch it and point to exactly what you want in your little ice bowl. But of the about 24 colorful pictures I saw, I recognized zero, I had no idea what anything was, I'd ever seen any of it before. I can only describe it all as colorful beans and puddings. Not the same as the pudding I've already had here, but similar.
Eric expertly pointed to numbers 5-12, he'd been here a few times before, he knew what he wanted. Anita though, only pointed to 6 and 22, 2 items (I don't remember the numbers exactly, just where they were on the picture menu). Anita turns to me and says to order what I want. As if I have any idea. I laughed at her scornfully and turned to the Laoban (shopkeeper) and said "Yi Yang" (The same) and pointed to Anita. Works every time.
Well my ice-something was good, strange at first, but then just plain good, and conversation with Eric and Anita is always good and interesting too. As we were finishing our icy deserts it was about 9:30 and I had already learned new information about reconnecting a vas deferens. Anita works at some sort of medical clinic. So Anita and Eric walked me back to the MRT, which was good because I hadn't been paying any attention to where I was as usual. We turned through a narrow alley, jumped over a little wall into a park, someone had made a little step out of loose bricks to make the jumping easier, this was Eric's short cut I think. As we neared the MRT entrances we could still see 20 or 30 women doing some sort of choreographed dance in the middle of a closed off street to music coming from a little pink boom box. We said our good-byes and good-to-see-yas, and I hopped onto the escalator sinking down deep into the earth under Taipei County where the MRT trains would carry me home as Eric and Anita walked off in the direction of their apartment.