The Seven Crawl

Some time ago I received this message in my facebook inbox:

Fact: There are 4,770 7-11 stores in Taiwan.
Fact: 7-11 has a wide variety of beer and alcoholic beverages.
Fact: Drinking alcohol on streets in Taipei is legal.
Considering all this, we are going to go on a Seven Eleven Crawl.

Ted Glomski, a real-live Wisconsonian, had organized an event which was so genius in its simplicity that I just sat at my computer, stupefied, wondering why I hadn't thought of it first. The plan was simply to walk from Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall to Taipei 101 while stopping to buy a beer at every single 7-11 on the way. To Americans this might not seem like so daunting a task, but in Taipei 7-11s are more numerous than Starbucks are in America.

Unfortunately, Ted organized a little to thoroughly, and about 30 people showed up for the introductory speech, in which Ted outlined the rules and publicly shamed all non-drinkers.
This is taken before the crawl officially began. If you look closely you might notice a handsome devil in green near the back.
This is taken at the first 7-11. (Hereafter referred to as simply "7" for brevity and Taiwanese-ness) We organized ourself into 6 man drinking teams to maximize 6-pack efficiency. My team's name is "Pivozerci" which is, supposedly, Slovenian for "The one who loves beer."
My turn to buy a 6-pack for Pivozerci. It goes without saying that I buy American. Factoid: Hiro Aki, the dashing looking Japanese gentleman in the bottom right, may or may not be an actual pimp who makes his manifold hos play volleyball.

More beer. Ted is the country club looking fellow in the white hat.
Congregating outside a 7. This might be the 7 at which the police rolled by. They said hi.
This is Chido. Chido is GBC (German Born Chinese.) He taught me how to say "Your mother sweats while she expletive deleted" in German. Despite being awesome, Chido proved unable to complete the 7 crawl, as evidenced by his red badge of shame. I picked up his slack.

This is the point at which everybody, in the very shadow of Taipei 101, collectively decided that we had had enough. Ted, along with a few devoted followers, carried on and touched Taipei 101, but I quit. It was sad.

Don't Jump!

A girl killed herself at my school yesterday morning. Some frantic school administrators came into my class to make sure it wasn't a student of the school. It wasn't. It was a twenty-something Taiwanese girl. One of my friends said she was on campus early in the morning and saw a splotch of blood and some far-flung shoes. My roommate Nathan was there later in the day and says he saw a patch of very clean asphalt about ten feet from the edge of the building.

I guess suicide is a pretty big problem in Taiwan. Work is really stressful here. I know that a lot of people work more than 10 hours a day. The Taiwanese authorities are not, however, without a plan. At the subway station nearest my house there is a sign above the escalators with a picture of a smiling monk, feet on a cliff and head in the clouds with a big, blue-lettered reminder that "You don't need to commit suicide!" and a hotline number.

This led to many questions for me. Why is the monk smiling? Was he recently dissuaded from suicide? Was he about to jump off that very cliff? If so, how did he call the hotline? Also, how do you talk someone down in Chinese? Is it customary to say "You have so much to live for?" Can you say that with a straight face to an old monk?

The Fees

In Taiwan, I bank at the post office. The same sane and reliable people that handle my letters also handle my negligible savings. The other day I was all out of blue Taiwanese Monopoly money, so I had to go to the ATM, but there was no Bank of Post Office around, so I went to the Bank of Taiwan and asked a teller how much a non Bank of Taiwan ATM transaction fee would be. She thought for a minute and said "6 yuan." Satisfied, I turned to leave, and as I walked away the teller yelled "Wait! It is 7 yuan." OK. Instead of $0.20 the Bank of Taiwan would charge me $0.23 for the privilege to withdraw money from their ATM.

And that was it. Less than an quarter to withdraw money from a strange bank. Although, to be honest, that fees haven't showed up on my statement yet. I don't know how American bank's justify charging $3, both from your bank and the other bank, but I hope they invested all the profits in sub-prime mortgages.