8/28/10 Indian food in Taipei?

As I mentioned already, the weekend in Taipei was just as much of a vacation for space and Iris as it was for me; a chance for them to try different things too.  There isn’t any Indian food in Hualien, you need a cosmopolitan city for that.  So we found ourselves in what was described as the best Indian restaurant in all of Taipei… and there are three of them!

It was there that I met Jim, a friend of a friend of Space’s who over the years had become Space’s friend.  You know how it goes.  Dinner was pleasant because of the company, but Taipei’s Indian food offerings have a long way to go if they expect to catch up with Toronto’s, let alone Mumbai’s or even London’s for that matter.  I’ll take Toronto’s Dhaba, The Host, or Lahore Tikka House any day.

We left the restaurant and made our way to the next destination, a blues club, I remarked to Space that I would have never pictured him being friends with Jim.  There seemed to be a clash in personalities.  Then, once again, clarity washed over me when Space rightly pointed out that sometimes you find friends, real friends, by just being in the same place; a small English speaking community in a foreign country is just that kind of place.  When I look back on the friendships made from my couple of years at McMaster, it’s the exact same thing.  I bet that nobody would have pictured Space and I becoming and remaining friends after all these years, 16 to be exact.  Proximity has strange results and one must leave their pretensions at the door to fully appreciate the company of others.