9/28/10 Escaping the Heat

Those who know me well know that I despise trite discussions about the weather.  They are the last topic of conversation when you have nothing to say to someone.  As far as I’m concerned any conversation that includes phrases like “So, how about that snow?” or, “Lots of rain lately, huh?” should be ended by pushing the other person in front of a bus.

As much as it pains me to bring up the weather, I must, but only after looking both ways to make sure there are no busses coming.  Taipei is hot, really hot.  There, I said it.  As a big city with not a lot of green, it radiates on you from every concrete and metal surface.  It bakes you in an unrelenting fashion.  Combine that with the fact the city essentially sits in a bowl surrounded by mountains and the problem gets worse.  The Taiwanese are used to this and live their lives accordingly.  They spend little time outside during the hottest hours of the day and frequent the markets at night when things have cooled down… slightly.

To escape the heat we stopped at a small restaurant for some traditional noodles.  Keen to try new things I also ordered some pig head skin (not really new to me, but new for Space) and some pig diaphragm (you can eat that?).  Tasty.

A brief walk after lunch proved that the heat was unbearable.  I was on the verge of my second shirt of the day (I was strongly advised to carry a spare) so we decided to camp out for a bit in a coffee shop.  It was hard to get a seat because many of the patrons were sleeping (see previous entry on sleeping in public).