A Morning in the Life   2005-03-29

Our first set of alarms goes off at 7:00am and 7:10am. They're a couple of Timex watches stuffed into the storage area of our cheap headboard and whether or not we hear them depends on how loud our neighbours were the night before. If we've been kept awake by their late night activities, their muted beeping often goes unheard and come 7:00am we're both dead to the world. If it was a quiet night next door, we just ignore their beeping and I make a mental note to turn off their alarms when I wake up.

Next to go off is the 8:00am alarm clock. It usually gets out a few obnoxious squawks before I whip it under the covers and mash it around until it stops. Then, it's back up on the headboard with it and we fall asleep again for an hour or so. Around 9:00am, and after a few, "Just a couple more minutes," we're ready to tackle the day. Five days a week start with a workout: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday at the gym, and Sunday at the pool.

Fitness centre membership fees are pretty steep here, but we're fortunate to have the ZhongShan Sports Center - a YM-YWCA affiliate - twenty minutes (walking briskly) from our apartment. We just pay a $1.80 CDN drop-in fee every time we go. There are no contract hassles, no fine print, and no guilt about not getting our money's worth if we miss the odd day here and there. It's a brand new facility stocked with great equipment: a pool, loads of badminton courts and ping-pong tables, a few yoga/dance studios, a cardio/weight room, and a cafe.

After working out for an hour with the usual suspects (Taiwanese guys in dress shoes and slacks on the treadmills, grandmas on the rowing machines, social misfit Westerners abusing the free weights, and "cute" Taiwanese girls in plaid dress shorts, neon knee-high stockings, and deer stalker caps pouting on the bikes), we head home. On the way home we pick up breakfast.

7-11s are everywhere in Taipei. You can't walk a block without walking past at least one or two of them. Just inside the front door of every one of them is a simmering crock pot full of tea, and bobbing about in the tea are loads of black, cracked, hard boiled eggs. The smell and taste of the eggs take some getting used to, but once you've made the transition from disgusting → strange → interesting → why not? you're hooked. Marlene always steers clear of the eggs and picks up some grapefruit juice and a yogurt. I usually pick up an egg or two and some vegetable or fruit juice.

A typical breakfast for people on the go, as far as we can tell, consists of milk tea and a sandwich. Sandwiches are a breakfast item here - not a lunch item. You'd be hard pressed (besides in a foreign restaurant or a 7-11) to find a sandwich for sale after 11:00am. There are loads of little carts on street corners and in the spaces between buildings frying, toasting, and grilling up all sorts of sandwiches in the morning. Just down the block from our place is one and we sometimes stop for a bacon and egg sandwich on toasted brown bread with shredded cucumber on the way home from the gym. For less than $1.00 CDN it's hard to beat the taste and convenience.

So, after showering, eating, and watching Keith Floyd get drunk for a few minutes, it's about noon and we're ready to head out the door again. At this point our day usually goes one of two ways: north or south. Regardless of the direction (or mood) we always end up at the same kind of place: a coffee shop. If we head south we usually end up at a Starbucks, and if we head north we usually end up at McCafe.

Having lived a relatively "consumer conscious" lifestyle before moving to Taipei (whatever that means — I do have GAP underwear, after all; I suppose we pick and choose our battles), the irony of choosing to habituate two of the most "unconscious consumer" haunts - Starbucks and McDonalds - is always savoured. In the case of McCafe, it's an irony savoured in the form of the best Americano in Taipei. It might sound strange, but McCafe (looking and serving nothing like a McDonalds restaurant) serves really, really good coffee. As for Starbucks, it has to do with the familiar smell of home. They must have a global purchase plan in place for washroom air fresheners. Walking into a Starbucks washroom always reminds me of the Starbucks at the Quadra & McKenzie intersection in Victoria. Sure, Starbucks' coffee isn't great, but sometimes the reminder of home is worth the price of admission.

Happily, our leisurely Taipei mornings are coming to an end. We'll soon be leaving Taipei behind for good — Japan beckons. I'm sure we'll look back on these Taipei mournings fondly in the future, but right now - well, we're looking forward to some leisurely mornings spent sipping coffee on the patio at Paradiso Di Stelle in Victoria.

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