Up late watching the World Cup

I find that my sleep schedule has shifted quite a bit in the move as I have become more of a night owl than I have been in quite some years. To begin with, my company's work day starts a bit later here. Back in the States, I would roll in at 8:55 and be the last one in the building. Here, I roll in at 8:55 and I'm among the first. Just a difference of work culture, I think.

Considering that my commute in the States was often >1 hour and now that I have a car in Taipei, I can count on 30-35 minutes pretty consistently, which translates into leaving home at 8:15AM. I also find that I naturally wake up around 6AM here. I think it's the early sunrise coupled with a rapid change in temperature in the bedroom as the A/C attempts to catch up that always wakes up, typically only for a minute or two.

Add the World Cup on top of that and it has not been uncommon that I'm up until 1AM on weeknights. I am surprised at how many bars there are that have been showing ALL of the games, which means a start time of 2:30 AM for the second game. As far as I can tell, there is no "last call" either so as long as the bar is willing to keep staff on and power the TV set...game on! On Tap and the Village Cafe have been my soccer hangouts as of late. Each has had a good mix of expats from whomever is playing, England, AUS, US, even some Dutch.

Tonight I found a cafe of sorts which provided a non-alcoholic venue for the England/Germany match. There were only a couple Westerners there (unlike the pubs) and surprisingly, the Taiwanese were rooting heavily for Germany. The place was called Lattea, near the Shilin MRT, and they had this one extremely popular specialty drink which was an iced tea latte made to look like a pint of beer. The place was packed, they had several TVs showing the game, and they were serving these up as fast as they could make them.

Switching topics...one thing I really like about the location of our apartment is there is a huge fruit market 2 blocks down the street which is open surprisingly late as they capture some of the traffic from the Shilin Night Market. They sell many kinds of fruit, no vegetables that I am aware of. They cut up some of the fruit and sell it in a container with a fork to eat on the run which is great for me as I do not have a knife or a cutting board so for things like pineapple and watermelon, I have an option. Also, since it's just me, I can't possibly eat an entire watermelon before it spoils.

I came home at about 2AM after the Brazil/Portugal game and was shocked to see the market still open. Then after the last U.S. game, it was already daybreak by the time everyone spilled out of the pub around 5AM. I thought for sure I had the market beat this time, but no way. The market was still open at 5:30.

I wonder if my impression of Taipei nightlife is being falsely bolstered by the World Cup. Will all these pubs be packed at 2AM next month when Tour de France replays aren't exactly the biggest hit?