New here, looking forward to membership

[WeedHopper]

I know that's right.

 

[RosterMan]

I know that's right.

I hate when a lil PO S car jumps in front of my Truck and I almost hit them.
Scares them good when the see me rocking and rolling right up their rear because my truck does not have the new super braking systems some new cars do. These people think all cars now have self braking for collision avoidance

 

[Unca Walt]

One of my coworkers and I went to a bowling alley in Linkou one day. On the next lane was a father and his son. They kept looking over at us and watching our every move. I thought it was because we a) were horrible bowlers but b) were nearly throwing the balls like they were softballs(all the bowling balls were lighter than any I had ever seen). They left about 15 minutes before we were done. When we left, the man and his son were patiently waiting outside for us. The father walked up to us and, in pretty good English, started chatting with us about where we were from and why we were there. He waved his son over and he started chatting with us in broken English and his father pulled out his phone and started taking pictures and video of his son talking to us. Then he wanted us to pose for pictures with he and his boy. I think he thought we were like a couple of Sasquatches come to town. He was so happy with his scoring pictures of he and his son with ‘round eyes’ he asked if we would come meet his family at his home. Genuinely great people. Any time I would be standing somewhere with a map looking lost, people would walk up to me and ask if I needed help. You won’t see that in any big American city. Never felt unsafe from the residents at any time of day or night.

I gots a fun story. There were some visitors from Taiwan to my company in Boca Raton. My boss told me he needed me to show them around for a day so we could complete our preps for the meeting.

So I took them down to the beach. They were taking pictures of things like palm trees and flowers in the road dividers, etc. as I was driving there. We walked on to the beach, and as luck would have it, there was a gorgeous, low-mileage honey laying there on a towel with her top off getting her back tanned.

The two guys nearly had heart attacks. I got their camera and had them stand up by her head while I went so I could get the whole thing. Took several pictures of them grinning like they'd just had fresh lobotomies.

And here is where my vaunted Mandarin failed me: We were driving back towards the Boca plant, and a bobcat darted across the road. They asked me what that was.

I didn't have the faintest idea of how to say "bobcat" or "lynx" in Mandarin, so I simply said, "syau lau fu" <-- "little tiger". Their eyes went wide again.

They took me and my Scottish Witch to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Holy Smokes! The two guys rattled off a bunch of stuff to the waitress, and the whole staff came out. I did not understand a word. It was Cantonese, a language which must be sung, not spoken (if you can believe it). <--TINS

There is a gradient to Chinese cooking way outside the menu with pictures for Big Noses. The higher level is Chinese cooking for Chinese. The highest level is Chinese cooking for Chinese hosting foreigners. That wuz us.

It took a while, but what came out was something I had never seen in America. Fantastic jade-green broccoli with sliced duck and puff pastry filled with something wonderful to eat with the duck. Wonderful.

I got a blue ton of Brownie Point Attaboys from management. The reps from Taiwan were absolutely effusive with praise for my shepherding. They said they'd been all over the world and no one had come close to showing their real country to them.

 

[oldfogey8]

I went out to dinner with some of my Taiwanese colleagues. They would rattle off a bunch of things and the waiters would bring out a spread that looked like a Taiwanese version of Thanksgiving dinner and it was all served family style. I am a picky eater with a shellfish allergy so that saved me from some of the more weird looking dishes. They only serve Australian beef there(or did at the time due to some sort of disagreement). Good stuff but I prefer ours.

 

[Unca Walt]

A "social" note for the above little story:

In Taiwan (when I was there last), a naughty picture was one that showed a pretty girl with the back of her neck exposed. Or one holding a sword partially removed from its scabbard -- that level of tease.

So you can imagine their reception when they got back and showed the beach pictures!! They were rock stars. Oh... and they took pictures of my movie-star beautiful (and photogenic) witch. <-- Redheads, d'ysee, do not exist in Taiwan. Come from 'nother planet. She was exotic enough to them to be a Vulcan.

 

[Hippie420]

"....... grinning like they'd just had fresh lobotomies."

Fair warning, Walt. I'm gonna steal that one from ya.

 

[Unca Walt]

I am a picky eater with a shellfish allergy so that saved me from some of the more weird looking dishes.

HAH. Then you got the top of the top from them. Rare for us da bz.

JUST HIGHLIGHTED THE ABOVE TO ADD COMMENT: I am fortunate in that I just love to try new stuff. So I have had chicken feet (meh), hundred year old soup (good), birds nest soup (good), sea cucumber (pew), century eggs (yummy), and drunken shrimp (LOVE!)

You most ricky-tick have to shelve your cultural bias to get along in China, no error. Drunken shrimp is made by taking live shrimp... no wait. Lemme show y'all the street version (delicious):

The vendor takes a net and scoops up a bunch of active shrimp. He dumps them in a jar, and fills the jar with some yellow wine. The shrimp go nuts for a while, but eventually all of them imbibe a lot of yellow wine while trying to get oxygen.

The vendor takes them outa the jar and lays them on a plate in some special sauce. Peel and eat. Amazing.

 

[joeb631a]

Lmao haven't been hear that long but everyone here has been awesome great group of ppl

please ..you're making me blush ...

 

[joeb631a]

Venom I watched my mom die from Lung Cancer in 2016. It was fking horrible. Never cried so hard in my life. She was an awesome mother. Something about a Son and his Mom that nothing can touch.
Okay,,,let's change the subject.
What do y'all think about 4 way stop signs.

Oh stop.......

 

[oldfogey8]

Those century eggs were available in every 7-11 which means spaced about a block apart(some busy intersections would have 2 kitty corner from one another). We used to do 7-11 crawls which would be to grab and drink a Taiwan beer at each 7-11. After a few blocks we would stumble into a bar(not as numerous as 7-11 but they were close in count to Clinton, Massachusetts which at one point had the most bars per capita here. Never got very far from the Fullon hotel that was ‘home’ for months at a time.

 

[Unca Walt]

oldfogey -- I just tumbled to this:

oldfogey8 said:
"One of my coworkers and I went to a bowling alley in Linkou one day."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That went right by me until I remembered Linkou was a dinky little berg that din' even have a hotel when I was over thataway last. I had to look up Linkou... WOW. They made a fargin big city -- even call it New Taipei City -- there!

I stayed at the Lai-Lai ("come back") downtown. Freakish coincidence: I was crossing a street in Taipei (7.5 million people) and coming toward me was a guy I knew from flying around Boca Raton Airplane Patch in C152's!! What are the odds.

 

[Unca Walt]

Just thought of another Chinese dish that is actually gobble-yummy, but does not exist in the West:

When a chickum is laying eggs, there is a strip inside the chickum that has a progression of lumps that form a growing chain until at the end there is an egg in a shell. This strip is fried. It IS just eggs, but... different.

Oh. One more: Unhatched chicks. Fried, and you eat the whole crunchy thing. Pretty good, once you get past your cultural bias.