Yuan Dixiong, our book-study conductor, asked me after book-study today if I had experienced culture shock yet. I had to say no... not yet. I'm not really sure what culture shock is, maybe I have experienced culture shock but I just didn't know it at the time. What is culture shock? Do you pass out? Does the room start spinning? Should I carry a warm blanket with me? Does it only happen one time?

Tonight is the second time I've had Stinky Tofu in Taiwan, and it was good, it seems to be growing on me already, I scarfed it down pretty fast. Maybe the place we ate at just makes it better, it's about 75 ft from my apartment. I just found out, an hour ago, on my way home from that Stinky Tofu place, that there is a "Wellcome" grocery store 1 block behind my apartment! That's about 1/5 the distance I've been walking to get groceries, when I bother to get groceries. The 5 block walk already seemed so close to me. With school and meeting 5 blocks away, and if it wasn't for service, I could live comfortably for a long time without ever traveling more than 5 blocks from my apartment. I should make it my goal for next month. There's even an MRT (subway) station 3 blocks away, so I could extend my radius an additional 2 blocks from any other MRT station. Unless I counted the MRT trip as 1 block, then that would be a 1 block radius from any MRT station... but counting the MRT trip as 1 block would be ridiculous.

I do have one mundane detail to add to this entry, it's about napkins, or tissue, to me there is a difference. I'm going to put my foot down on this issue. When I wipe dumpling grease or beef noodle soup off of my face, I don't want the "napkin" to leave little pieces of itself snagged on my whiskers. But here in Taiwan every restaurant I've been to so far has bathroom tissues at each table. I've seen it written in English right on the package "Bathroom Tissues." But I have to be fair, the square packages of "Bathroom Tissues" are way cooler than the vulgar cylindrical "Toilet Paper Rolls" of America. I'm glad they don't have those at each table here. (edit 287) Permalink