Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Hello! Today has been a good day, apart from my grandpa being angry at my aunty for some reason :( (he said some pretty rude things too which I won't discuss for all the little kiddies out there)...

Woke up. I was supposed to go to the treatment centre with my aunty for hydrotherapy for her thumb which she cut sometime before I arrived here in Taipei but I woke up too late, so she taught me how to use the toaster and quickly boosted off. Then my 2nd uncle came back from wherever he was that morning and we went off on today's adventure.

1) Seal.

Me and William were brought to some place where this guy engraved chinese seals for us (you know, seals. Well if you don't know, I'll show you in real life sometime)...it was good. We are getting seals carved into oxen/buffalo horn that's been treated to go black or something...anyway. They also sold lotto. Only at the end, later on in the supermarket when I asked, did I actually find out they were handicapped. I totally overlooked it and they seemed totally normal. There you go, you anti-handi-bastards, they're just as much people as you and me. *shakes fist* (and I asked because I remembered that only people who are disabled can sell lottery tickets. And they were selling lottery tickets)

2) Computer.

We went back to the guy who we thought gave us the best price on parts etc. Changed the specs just slightly, got a video card in there as well (instead of the on-board one) and upgraded the HDD to 120gb, a Western Digital one which is the same as my portable hard disk. We should be able to pick it up sometime later tonight...^^ He was also originally going to add in Windows XP under the table (as in, not original), but then my 2nd uncle was talking about it too loud and attracted too much attention. :( My 1st uncle can probably do it for us anyway. ^^ End price: NT$22500. Right this moment, that converts into: $997 NZ. :D :D :D :D While walking to XiMenTing (West Gate Market), we checked the quote/invoice they gave us and realised they forgot to put down the wireless lan USB thingmie into it, even though it was put down in the price. We called them from a public payphone. My 2nd uncle used his card thing. It costs about 10cents for a minute...I think that's cheaper than NZ. I think.

I also bought a webcam here. It's a pretty cool looking one! It looks like a little robot thing. I wish I could turn it on itself and take a photo of itself but that doesn't really make sense. Dunno. Can't find a mirror. (ie im lazy you'll see it one day)

3) Music.

We went on from the computer place to find some shop which my brother wanted me and William to check for music CDs. I must say. They were horribly overpriced, I thought...most of them were around $NT 1000, which converts to roughly I dunno 50 NZ (i'm not loading the currency converter again...), when you can get it shipped to your house for roughly that price...I think. Dunno. But William bought something, I saw the FFT-A White Collection but I wasn't going to pay that much for about 50mins worth of music which I wasn't even 100% was good anyway. I'm going to go to the one nearer our house to check though. Near our house is a place called Guang Hua Bridge, and basically its a shopping mall built directly under an overpass. It's kinda old and "historic" now...but the music stall I speak of it only in the vicinity. Yeah.

4) After that we came home. William is sleeping now because a) he has a headache and b) he wants to wake up at 4am tomorrow morning for an ARSENAL VS MANCHESTER UNITED (his favourite versus their ARCH NEMESIS) soccer match. Yup. Then me and my 2nd uncle went grocery shopping...Taiwan supermarkets are really cool. In New Zealand they don't really like you bringing trolleys places, obviously, because they don't let you take them up escalators etc. BUT FEAR NOT because taiwan invented a solution. There's two major kinds here, both which support trolleys 100%.

1) Wheel lock escalators.

Instead of having steps, these escalators have a sloped incline and the wheels of the trolleys they use have automatic locks that lock onto the surface of this escalator to prevent slippage of your hard-bought bread, etc. The disadvantage is that the incline can't be very steep (otherwise people can't use it too) and thus it's longer. But YOU CAN USE TORLEY!

2) Sidebar thing carry thing

I can't even describe these properly but basically theres a line of little wooden post things that latch onto your trolley somehow and bring it with you, alongside your escalator. It's weird and I can't really describe it properly BUT it works and it's uber-cool.

New Zealand really needs those too. And a train system. And things on buses that tell you what the next stop is. Damn those are so cool right now. Seriously.

Oh yeah on our way in we had to go past this stupid protester guy. I hate protesters who protest in major entrances etc. Go and protest somewhere else, the minute you start inconveniencing the common people, you start being an asshole and nobody gives a crap what assholes are protesting about.

Fini. Going to pick up PC later tonight, seals tomorrow afternooon (seals you idiot not the mammals!)

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