Taiwan tales...

The following little incident happened to me last Sunday as I was blissfully off to the laundry mat to do some wash.

Unfortunately for me, at least in this instance, the laundry mat is just far enough from my house that it's too far to walk, so I need to take a cab. I'm in the cab, get to where the laundry mat s and tell the guy to pull over. He stops the cab on the side of the road next to a store that sells, apropo to this tale, motorcycle helmets. Now there is about a two foot space between the cab and a rack of helmets stting outside the store (there is no sidewalk). I pay the driver and open the door. BAM!! Some dumbass woman crashes her scooter into the door and falls into the rack of helmets. I pop out of the cab to help her up and make sure she's ok. She gets up and starts screaming at me in Chinese like it's my fault for opening the door. Of course, I'm like, "What the ...?" I start pointing at the cab and the rack of helmets and gesturing the lack of space with my hands all the while telling her in English that she's a lunatic. The taxi driver gets out of the cab and, obviously not on my side, starts consoling the woman. The owner of the helmet shop comes out and starts pointing at me and adds his two cents to the growing din. Another woman, this one thankfully, or at least it appeared this way, took my side of the argument adding her voice and gestures to the confusion. By the time the second woman came up, I had shut up and called Rebecca on the phone to get someone who could translate (Rebecca would later say that it probably would have been better had I not called her and just stood there speaking in English. Eventually the woman would've given up and just gone on her way).

The woman wasn't bleeding or anything, but I did notice that the longer the conversation went on the more she played the poor injured person, rubbing her hand, flexing her neck, looking at me, and repeating the actions in a more pronounced way. Needless to say, I wasn't overly sympathetic. However, the end result was that, although the woman was totally at fault, I HAD TO PAY the cost of her going the doctor to get her hand checked. Cost me 300 NT$.

Apparently driving like an idiot isn't a crime in Taiwan. In fact, it seems that if I'm walking down the street here and push someone into traffic, and the person gets hit by a car; it's the driver's fault for not stopping in time!

...and so it goes!