About ten minutes ago as I was serendipitously closing my bathrobe in the kitchen window facing the untrafficked road a school bus drove by at that very instant. As I was making this movement, before I thought about how perfectly timed it was and how I had just spared at least a dozen school kids from seeing my blue striped undies, I remember reminiscing about eating breakfast in Taiwan.

Not Taipei, Taiwan. I don't think I ever ate breakfast in Taipei more than once. I love eating breakfast. Generally speaking I love being up early in the morning, it's so peaceful, the day ahead is still chock full of 16 hours of productivity. Early was something I never saw in Taipei. Except for one particular day when my room-mate and I woke up at 6 or so to meet Yuan Dixiong and Tim Wen. We were all taking a car trip, in Yuen Dixiong's car, to another part of the island.

I don't have time to elaborate on that story, but I can tell you that I slept most of the time, waking up from time to time to look out the window and wonder where we were. I'm not sure I'll ever know. I'd ask them where we were each time I awoke only to be answered by the Chinese name of the place that I'd never heard of. Next time I'll bring a map and ask them to point for me, actually the next time I did bring a map come to think of it. But the first time I did bring my camera, but all the pictures I took were lost with my laptop's hard drive. Thankfully I only lost two weeks worth.

I think old people have it figured out, like my grandpa before he died, I think he went to bed at 8 o'clock so he could get up 5. Once you get over the childish desire to stay up past your bed time, so you don't miss out on any "fun" that could happen at night, once you do that, you can have hours of "morning time" to sip tea, catch up on the news, read your bible, and oh yeah: eat breakfast.

That's a picture of breakfast in Taiwan, one of three times I was up early enough to eat breakfast.