Drinking Tea, Shooting Pool, Playing Majhong

This past week the local news television stations  have been buzzing about a story in which at least 9 policemen were recorded on camera to be associating with gangsters in a private nightclub in Taichung city.

The story breaking two weeks before the election isn’t a coincidence, and is influencing public opinion. But  there’s no new insight here for locals as to their being strong links between known criminal elements and the police force and/or government.

Four or five years ago while entertaining some friends from Mansfield, Ohio, one them asked to be taken around to a local police station in Taichung. He just happened to be the chief of police in his town back in Ohio and wanted nothing more than to introduce himself to his counterpart in the local police station and maybe drink a cup of tea with them. When I introduced this gentleman the officers present wanted nothing to do with him. Don’t know if they were just embarrassed with associating with foreigners, or if there might have been a fear of being exposed of something else. We met with similar responses in two places.

A few days later on that particular trip we were escorting our guests back to the airport and had to spend the night in a motel a half hour from the airport to accommodate everyone’s  early morning departure.
That night I went back down to the kiosk outside the motel rooms to get an internet cable for my computer. I was shocked to see 3 or 4 police cars come screaming over, put a sign on the kiosk and rope it off in what was evidently a raid.

A while later I went back down again because I still needed my internet cable. I assumed the police had left as I didn't see their squad cars. Knocking on the door, I opened it and went it only to see a couple of cops standing over the attendant, who had taken a big wad of money out of the cash register/drawer and was in the process of counting it. I received my cable and quickly and quietly made my exit….

May God somehow help some of the most honest and upright politicians to win this Saturday. Please pray for Taiwan’s election.

Happenstance Occurrence?

Tonight I picked up my friend a little before 7 and we headed over to North Harbor to get something to eat. She wanted to try a small eatery stall near an elementary school her coworker had told her about. We could not find it from the sparsely scrawled directions at right,  so proceeded without a clue several hundred yards down the same road toward the temple side of town. Our thought was to just park along the main road there and eat something at a random eatery in front of the temple.

As I was looking for a parking place, out of the corner of my eye I saw someone who looked like our intern's wife (they live an hour north of here) walking up the road. I could not get her attention, but called her husband in Taipei and verified that it was indeed her. She was in town to deliver goods (she apparently comes here about once every two months). After 10 minutes or so we had gotten in touch with her and met back by the road in front of the temple.

The store she had been to was one I had accompanied our intern to late last year. The son of the shop keeper lady's younger brother has been in the same drug rehabilitation center our intern graduated from.

Anyway, our intern's wife and the shop keeper invited us to join them for dinner. They piled into my car. Without us saying a word, guess where they led us?

They instructed me to drive back over to the main traffic circle and park near the 7-11/Watsons. We then walked through a back alley between taller buildings to the same small eatery (Beef Noodle Soup) we    had  been  looking for in the first place! It was only a little after 7:30 and we discovered once we got there it did not open until 8:00. So we had a long time to chat. 

I don't know what God accomplished through an appointment to such an out-of-the-way place that was according to His ultimate purposes, but it clearly seemed to be of His doing.

By the way, the Beef Noodle Soup in front of this small stall was the best I’ve had since I moved here.

Unrecognizable to Acquaintance

 

The other day when passing through Taipei I thought I saw a young lady whose family I’ve known ever since I first came to Taiwan 13 years ago and lived that first year in ShenKeng in Taipei County. She would have been a young teen then.

She came into the 7-11 while I was at the check-out counter and I looked over at her 2 or 3 times. She only stared blankly past me, so I assumed I must have mistaken her for someone else.

The next day I was talking to the whole family up in CiDu in Keelung where I visited for church. Indeed it was the same young woman. Her mom told me that the evening before her daughter had come home and said: “Mom, I saw someone who looked a lot like Mr. So and So today. But it must not have been him because he was so fat.

Ouch!!!

Afternoon Bike Trip to Chiayi County DongShi YuRenMaTou

I took this afternoon off and took off on the bicycle for DongShi YuRenMaTou in Chiayi County （嘉義縣東石漁人碼頭）along the Puzi bike path in LiuJiao. From my house and back I rode about 73 kilometers.

In my last post I talked about “Red Forests” in the water. Along the low-lying waters of the Puzi river the red forest is much taller—maybe about 5 meters.

The view along the river was pleasant, although I had to settle for using my cell phone camera and you can’t really tell from these pictures.

Since there’s not a lot to see or do in this immediate area, we take guests sometimes to the park/play area, seen below.

At the harbor, students were busy practicing for the Dragon Boat races which will be held on DuanWuJie in a few weeks.

 

Dwindling Red Forests

While I loathe to see what is already happening with the ecosytem this week in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the disastrous BP oil spill, here in my own neighborhood are equally dramatic (though much slower) ecological and environmental shifts in the making.

First, this morning the students at the local junior high school were talking to me using English about the environmental pollution that is occuring in our neck of the woods as a result of pollution emanating from Formosa Plastics on the coast.

Second, when I asked my friend Roger this afternoon what differences he has noted in the local ecosystem between he was a boy and now, he cited how the land is sinking all along the western plain of south-central coastal taiwan. Because the land is sinking, beautiful “Red Forests” (actually look more like large sets of dense bushes) growing in the shallow waters have been dying out at an alarming rate over the years. The reason for this is because the sprouts you see pictured here fall so deep below the low tide they can never survive to grow in to trees.

 

Roger took me to see a healthy “Red Forest” not too far from his house in coastal Mouth-of-the-Lake Township this afternoon.  Above and below you can see the pics and description.