A Can of Worms

I had a grammar school teacher who made us memorize all the animal phylums. At the time, I think there were 17 and I remember the "worm" phylum making no sense. My college biology professor pretty much explained that the worm category isn't supposed to make sense - it's where scientists place everything that doesn't fit neatly into the other phylums. Hence the phrase, "a can of worms" (it's also my feeble attempt to include a link to something no one in Rochester has heard of but will find this interesting). So I give you the random things I've noticed in the past few days that weren't substantive enough to write about on their own:

• Three sheets of toilet paper will clog any non-commercial toilet in Taipei (read the "Bathroom Etiquette" post for more insight on this one).
• Public toilet seats are heated. This is so very important in a place where the temperature in March is already above 70F.
• Dentists wear sandals without socks (I think this would be a health code violation in the US), but wear the standard mouth guard. Maybe this isn't such a terrible thing.
• People driving on scooters will wear a fairly heavy winter coat and sandals...?
• People shopping indoors wear scarves. It's 70F, I'm wearing a tee shirt and I'm sweating.
• Taiwanese recycle everything. I'm not clear how this works yet, but the kitchen trashcan only holds a gallon or two and the trash bag hasn't been replaced since I arrived 3 days ago.
• "Go" is a popular game played by the father-in-law and looks like a bastardized version of "Othello". I play the simplified version against my wife and lose 3 times in 5 minutes.
• I'm not going to get much sleep tonight. The shopping district across the street from where I am staying is celebrating the spirit of their market. That means two things: bad karaoke and firecrackers. I love that they celebrate on a Sunday night. At least I would have if I went to college here.

Non-English

My wife's family doesn't leave the house until 1:30PM on weekdays. Well, the dad works a regular job, so he leaves in the morning, but the mom is a day trader and watches the stock market on TV until it closes. Thank goodness for her that it closes earlier than 4pm I guess.

Stocks are flashing across the screen and I really have no clue what's going on. To be honest, it's not much different than watching CNNMoney, and although I do understand finance, I never understood CNN Money. Why waste time day trading when you can throw your money into the S&P 500 and pretty much gaurantee a 10% return? Well the in-laws seem to make good money doing this, so maybe I'm out of touch...

Anyway, I decided to walk around town while the market was still open. To my suprise, anyone I walked up to would start speaking to me in Mandarin. I'm thinking, why the hell are they trying to speak to me in a language that I probably don't know? Why aren't they trying to speak to me in English?

If the situation was reversed, my thinking wouldn't be. Why the hell would a foreigner in the US try to speak to me in a langague that isn't English? Don't they know its rude to expect me, an American, to speak a different langague?

Idiots.