Luxury

This week was a write-off. We were complete zombies all day Monday after being kept up until 6am the night before by mofo mosquitoes, and then Monday night I came down with a bad flu. I got sick and then got sick again.. and again. This kept happening until 6am Tuesday morning (thank god for having Tuesdays off) and I hardly ate for the next two days. On Thursday, as I was starting to come around, Mel got sick. And then she got sick again. You get the idea. We worked because we had to (you get zeezo hours of sick time at our school) and slept our evenings away in front of the computer (yay, American Idol is back). What a week.

On Friday night we were feeling better and went out to celebrate our last day of classes for the semester at a classroom themed restaurant. Why not, right? Well, the classroom restaurant turned out to be a bust. It didn't have an English menu, and although sometimes you can get by with pointing at pictures of food that looks good, there were no pictures on the menu either. So I took a photo of the restaurant and then we left.

We went to Outback Steakhouse instead, and it was awesome. It was my first real meal all week and the bloomin' onion, steak and baked potato were delicious. Enjoy a picture of Mel picking delicious steak from her teeth.

On Saturday morning I got my Christmas package in the mail! I was so excited. It took 2 months and 29 days for this thing to get to me... even for surface mail that's pretty ridiculous. The selection of food in Taiwan is pretty great, actually, but it was nice to get a few things from home that I'd been craving, plus a few bonuses like an autograph from Ron Jeremy. Score! Never mind that the All Dressed chips are now expired and the sour soothers were rock hard, I couldn't wait to tear into this package. We opened it on the way home from the post office over breakfast at Ikari Coffee. At Ikari they serve bagels, but they microwave them. WTF. The waitress seemed to have pretty good English so we asked her if she'd toast the bagels for us, since we could see into the kitchen and knew they had a toaster. She was a bit flustered and disappeared for a minute and then returned to our table with two spoons. Giving it one more try, I took the microwaved bagel in my hands and charaded a toasting action. You could see the lightbulb appear over her head as she disappeared again. She returned to the table and boldly asked "you want me make this become toast?" We cheered and minutes later we were presented with 2 toasted bagels. Yum. We gave her a Lindor chocolate from the Christmas package as her reward.

I could have easily spent the day eating from my package, but we'd spent enough time stuck inside this week so we decided to go to the Living Mall. The Living Mall is a proper mall with a big sphere-shaped department store stuck to it. People refer to it online as the Hell Mall because it's so easy to get lost in, and I can see their point. The mall doesn't seem to follow any one clear walking direction and it's pretty big. We got a snack in the food court and then did some window shopping. The majority of the stores are luxury brands like Hermes, Bulgari and Armani but there are a few floors with mid-range products as well. This is a nice touch because every other shopping mall I've visited in Taiwan seems to sell nothing but luxury brands, and although I enjoy fancy things as much as the next person, they aren't the most inviting stores to browse in. It doesn't seem to matter how fancy the store is, though, the majority of them all seem to be full of Christine sweaters. I like it- it makes for some funny window shopping.

Inside the Living mall there's 12 floors of shopping including the basement levels (although the 3rd floor is "coming soon" and we were chased off floor 7, "Tom's World", for not having a ticket).

After we were done at the Living Mall we went to a new Thai restaurant near the 101 and had an *awesome* meal. There were so many dishes to choose from, it was cheap and the food was all awesome. After supper we went to the 101 to pick up a few groceries. In the basement of the 101 there's a supermarket called Jason's that sells a lot of foreign foods. I wanted to get some Ruffles and some sour cream to make chip dip with the onion soup mix my family sent me. The 101 mall is a really fancy looking place, but other than Jason's and a good book store on the 4th floor, it's entirely full of luxury stores. I honestly don't know how these places stay open because a) the rent must be ridiculous, b) I never, ever see anyone actually shopping in any of the stores and c) I never, ever see anyone carrying any shopping bags from these stores. They sure are pretty to look at, though!

We left the 101 with our sour cream and walked back toward the station, past two more clean and beautiful malls full of luxury stores with no one shopping in them. There is a really nice atmosphere there right now because there are a lot of lanterns hanging between the buildings for Chinese New Year and there are street performers providing some free entertainment as well.

As we walked towards the MRT station we decided to go into the Bellavita building to look around. It's a really nice European-looking structure and we have decided that it's our favorite building in Taipei. It's just as nice inside as it is outside, with a large and open ground floor where people were resting and talking to friends. The stores are all of the luxury sort and, once again, there wasn't a soul shopping in a single one of them. People were just coming into the mall to hang out and feel classy in a beautiful space but no one was there to buy. Maybe they're waiting for a big, ugly Wal-Mart to open there just like we are.

We were happy with our fancy day out and headed home where we had all the luxury we needed: a bag of sour soothers, some chips and dip and a marathon of Celebrity Big Brother episodes. Ahhh, it's nice to have it all.