Taiwan car shopping

Two of my goals in life are to live without a car or a TV. I've owned or possessed a car pretty contiguously for 22 years. In 1996, I had to surrender my first car, a '77 Pontiac Grand Prix (monster) to a junkyard when leaving Florida (was only road worth by Florida's standards) and soon after got my hands on a used Chevy Caprice (also a monster) after moving back to CT. Then there was the time, in said Chevy, that I was in a head on collision with a lady who veered into my lane and left me with no where to go but through her and her car. She survived, at least long enough to inform the authorities that she had no license or insurance. Neither car survived the crash...

When arriving in Taiwan my company set me up with a rental which they provided for a period of time so that I could get a permanent car. In the meantime, a friend of mine was trying to sell my Tacoma back in the States. It's difficult for foreigners to get car loans here so my plan was to sell the truck, get the cash here and then buy a car. I swore I would never buy a new car again but I had my heart set on the Honda FIT as the whole "magic seat" idea seems really cool and I need to be able to haul a bike around. The FIT has only been in Taiwan for 2 years and the residual is so great with Honda it almost makes no sense to buy one a year old as it's not much cheaper than a brand new one so why take the risk? I've owned a Pontiac, 2 Chevys, a VW and a Toyota. My wife once had a Honda Prelude with 220k miles on it that drove perfectly fine the day she donated it to charity and got a Mini Cooper. A set of plug wires for that Honda was $21 shipped to my door! What a great car. So I am a real fanboy of Hondas and Toyotas, even though sometimes the gas pedal stick on Toyotas but that's what they make airbags for, right?

If I ever buy another German car I give you permission to restrain me and check me into a psycho ward. Upon arriving in Taiwan I had a Toyota Altis which is a Corolla, of sorts. For those that don't know, the selection of cars in different countries is not equivalent to the U.S. I had people suggesting cars to me that were shocked that certain models were not available in Taiwan. Europe is similar. In some cases they rename the car, in other cases it's just not available. After a few weeks in the Altis it was getting expensive as I was now bearing the 800NT/day cost, which is actually not bad for a rental, but I found out that my company has a shuttle from downtown Taipei for 50NT each way which is only 10NT more than the toll so it's almost free, other than the fact that I need to take the MRT to get downtown. But I arguably need a car, long term, for many reasons; pretend that they are valid for the sake of this story. Oh, I have to pick my wife and cat and quarantine inspector and luggage up from the airport, how's that?
The thing that sucked about the shuttle bus is I lost at least 1.5 hours of my life each day due to the commuting time and the inflexibility of having to live by the shuttle schedule. Once I had some cash on hand I set off for the Honda dealer in Beitou to check out a FIT. I walked in and there was plenty of staff standing around at 8:05 PM but I was informed that the sales staff goes home at 8. There were 3 or 4 people in Honda polo shirts hanging out and chatting so they weren't mechanics. How do you operate a business that sells stuff and send home all the people that sell the stuff and keep the business open? If you would find this as frustrating as I did, you will find such circumstances all over Taiwan. It's the land of 100% employment. I will gripe about this in many future posts, get used to it.

I came back the next day and made sure to get there a bit sooner. I went to the same desk of Honda staffers and they brought me to meet the salesman, who introduced himself as "Mr...", a bit formal, especially since he was only 25 years old, has been with Honda for 3 months, and this is his first job, ever. Typical for Taiwan so I'm told. This poor kid was shaking and terrified from the moment he laid eyes on me; it was the "oh no he's going to speak English to me" reaction. He was constantly apologizing for his poor English. I thought the Honda dealer would have a sales rep with strong English since being able to lie fluently is a key trait for a car salesman and I would think being able to lie in as many languages as possible would increase profits. He instantly asked me if I wanted to look at a CRV. I guess most Westerners must go for the CRV.

Oh, by the way, I am kinda surprised that big cars are common here. Gas is pretty cheap by world standards and only a bit more expensive than in the U.S. I asked to look at the FIT and he showed me the showroom demo car. While it's kinda neat that the seats fold flat, it falls quite short of worthiness of the term "magic". Make it disappear into the floor; now, that's magic. We messed around with every feature in the car and I asked him if we could go for a test ride. He said I need to have an International Drivers License to be able to go for the test ride and I know I spoiled his night when I pulled it out of my murse. I thought he was going to vomit.

He was practically shaking when he handed me the keys to the test car. I wasn't sure if it was because Americans are bad drivers in his mind or he was feeling the weight of the responsibility of being in charge of the test car or what. But near the end of the test ride, after trying to informally chat it up with him to ease his nerves and maybe give him some English confidence, I asked, "So does anyone ever crash the test car?" He said, "very often". Now that I think about it...there's no way you could get me to take a job riding around with random Taiwanese people. The only Taiwanese I ride with are bus and taxi drivers and I figure, they must be the cream of the crop. They may drive like inconsiderate maniacs, but they can handle the vehicle, unlike those who crash on a Honda test drive. I think he was just shell shocked about the test drive regardless of my nationality.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed. The car barely has any features to it. The knobs and fixtures seemed a bit cheap, and the car isn't even made in Japan but rather, Taiwan. There were none available for immediate purchase, the sticker price was 630k NT and it is supposedly non-negotiable, and I couldn't even get free money out of the deal as they were dead set on 4.5%APR (if I could get a Taiwanese guarantor to even get the loan and put 40% down or thereabouts). I basically decided I was NOT going to pay $20k USD in cash for THIS car. I suspect it's still a quality car even though it's made in Taiwan but knowing that they are getting some sort of kickback from Taiwan, it's a tough pill to swallow to give them THAT much profit. I decided to focus on a used car.

There is a good website for used car searching in Taiwan at http://www.ocar.com.tw/. One great thing about it is the menu system is all ASCII based so it functions well within Google Translate and allows you to filter by many options including region. The problem is almost all of the cars are in Taichung and many have testified that those prices are false advertised just to get you to come down to Taichung for some bait n switch action. You'll see in those ads that the dealers are all to eager to come pick you up at the rail station and then drive you to their lot. Sounds to me as painful as a timeshare where they haul you away somewhere and then don't let you leave until you buy some condo across the street from the beach with some crazy management fee.

Another option was: our company uses a guy who handles corporate leases, rentals, etc. and sometimes offers the leftovers up for sale. I had a colleague contact him to get the list of what was currently available hoping to strike gold but there was nothing with less than 100k mileage (or is it called "kilometerage"?) and I would be hesitant to buy a rental car anyway as most people beat the crap out of them. This guy claims to let you know the pedigree and lists which ones were rental fleets and which were lease to corporate types. We have also had leases within our company get transferred as a sale coworkers leave this division, which is the safest bet but only comes along every once in a while. I also was really set on a car that could transport my bike with some ease and most of this guy's cars were Toyota Corollas. My boss said I might be able to get a good deal through this guy on a 5 series. Does he know how much he's paying me?

My next option was a guy that I got in contact through the Taiwan web forum http://www.forumosa.com/ who is a professional vehicle sourcer/inspector. He charges an up front deposit and then a finders fee when you actually purchase the car. If you tell him the car you are looking for, his job is to find it (typically on a used car lot), inspect it, negotiate, and do everything else to seal the deal.

So I contacted him and had some discussions and honed in on the Nissan Tiida (aka Versa in the States). After a few days and reading some reviews on the Tiida, I switched over to the Suzuki Swift. The Swift being a little more stylish, a little cheaper, and perhaps a bit better equipped for the price. After about a week the guy had found 2 models that he thought looked nice, a 2005 and a 2007. We made plans to go look at the 2005 as it seemed the better bang for the buck. He conveniently picked me up at the Shilin MRT and the lot was close by. We gave it the once over and I gave him the thumbs up to do the full inspection. He brings along some tools, a jack and jackstands and does it all right there on site. Very thorough, not just major mechanics but he goes through every electrical feature down to the radio. He quickly found that the driver door power lock mechanism was broken but everything else looked really good, save for the wiper blades which the dealer replaced.

Since it was Dragon Boat festival holiday they couldn't get the lock fixed so we made arrangements to come back in a few days so it would be ready to go. He also handled haggling over the price as he's fluent in Mandarin (and fluent in "car salesman") and the amount he was able to haggle off exceeded his fee so unless you think you are going to successfully haggle with a Chinese speaking used car dealer, his service pays for itself. We came back and squared away the financials, reinspected the repaired door lock, and made arrangements to come back again the next night to talk insurance.

On top of the price of the car is tax, registration and insurance at about $10k NT for the rest of the year but the insurance laws here are really lax. So I'll talk with an agent about actually getting insurance that may be of use. I was advised not to wreck the car tonight, wait until I have real insurance.

It was nice to be able to drive to work again and not take the MRT all over Taipei to get a shuttle bus to backtrack to work. Costly, but nice. The one mishap I had was fumbling with the key-less ignition. You have a fob that you carry somewhere on your person. The car senses it and you can just press a button to unlock the door. The ignition looks much like a regular ignition except you can just turn it with your hand. But you have to press it in, turn it until it stops, then release the pressure, and continue to turn it in the same direction and the car will start. Took a few times to figure that one out as it was already started for me when I drove it off the dealer's lot.

Things I like about the car:

• It's Japanese (at least in some fashion)
• Unlike my rental, the head unit can play MP3/WMA CDs so I can get back to learning Mandarin on CD
• Has a live fuel mileage that reads in km/liter so I get a good workout on my metric math skills
• You press a button and the side view mirrors automatically fold in so they don't get sheared off in the mechanical car park
• 60/40 split rear means I might be able to come up with a scenario to transport my wife, cat and quarantine officer from the airport to the vet hospital that doesn't involve strapping the cat carrier to the roof
• Key-less entry means I can just stuff the FOB in my murse and not have to worry about forgetting my car keys but instead, forget all my other keys now that I'm desensitized to keys
• Better gas mileage than any other vehicle I've owned
• It has climate control and I can pretend that I actually think it's that much different than just adjusting the coldness and fan to a setting that makes you comfortable.
• Like my cell phone, it's not available in the U.S. I can always get a Versa or a FIT when I get back. Actually the Swift is supposedly coming to the States in 2011 so I can accuse anyone that gets one back home of being a bandwagonner.
• And the best feature of all, when you open the door there is a chrome rail along the floor that says Swift on it, and it lights up! But that's not all. There's a button in the console that allows you to change the color of the light!

Wouldn't it be great if they had that feature where the entire car body lit up and you could change the color? I bet such a car would be road legal here. I talked to the shippers yesterday and it should be about 5 more weeks before the TV shows up so I can continue to live half of the dream... With that said I'm headed out to find a TV at a bar tomorrow night to watch the U.S. World Cup game.

Driving in Taipei

I'm sure bellyaching about the driving in Taiwan is quite cliche but I'll at least make some comments about it since many ex-pats may be debating whether or not to get a car here.. My company is outside of Taipei and the MRT line out that way is not complete yet (2013) and since my wife will be working in Taipei, one of us needs a car. Part of the whole point of coming here was to enjoy a big international city and the excitement that comes with it so we have chosen to live in Shilin which is equally convenient to MRT, highway, and bus line up through Tian Mu.

Therefore, I will be commuting 22km by car to work. I have never driven in the Far East before. When my company sends us to Korea or Taiwan, we are highly discouraged from attempting to drive. They have no problem paying for taxis and limos to take us wherever we need to go. But since I'm here for the long haul, I must take on the task of driving.

If there is one succinct rule of thumb I would give about driving in Taiwan it's, Do not look at the lines on the road, ever. Like the points in Who's Line Is It Anyway, they just don't matter. You know how when you are speeding through a corner with a jersey barrier on the side, you're not supposed to look at the wall, otherwise you'll hit it? Same thing, follow the lines and you will hit something, because nobody else follows the lines. Cars and scooters intertwine and basically follow the path of least resistance down the road. If there is an opening in front of you, you take it.

The layout of the roads by the traffic engineers is merely a suggestion. On my way home from work I am on a main road, you need to make a left to get to the highway, the road has four lanes, 2 marked to turn left, 2 marked to go straight. During rush hour, all four lanes turn left. And once you come around that corner, all four lanes of traffic need to fit back into two lanes. The crazy thing is, it all seems to work. Very rarely do you hear a horn honk, people just let each other in, and I haven't yet seen a real wreck. A couple rear-end fender benders, but that's it.

One possible reason that there aren't accidents on top of accidents is there is extensive traffic monitoring, remote speed cameras, stoplight cameras, and cops on the side of the road running camera based radar traps. You get a ticket in the mail and you pay it at 7-11. You do EVERYTHING at 7-11 (more on that in the future). I didn't quite realize the photo enforcement scenario until I read it on someone else's blog a couple days ago. Now I know why every so often, the GPS makes a "BONG" noise and something red in Chinese flashes on the screen. It's probably alerting me to a known traffic cam. I guess I'll be paying a visit to 7-11 soon.

Speaking of GPS, before leaving the U.S. I wanted to have a GPS in hand that would work in Taiwan. Since Garmin is based in Taiwan, I figured that would be a good choice. I previously had a TomTom, which was OK, but support is nearly non-existent. After buying a Nuvi 765, I was surprised to find out that Garmin refuses to sell me a Taiwan map for a U.S. serialized Garmin. There are ways to pirate maps, and I am not advocating piracy, but I attempted to pay for the map and my money was denied so I boarded the plane with Garmin in hand. Be warned, there are Chinese maps and English maps for Taiwan. If you are reading this blog, you probably want the English maps. Taiwan City Navigator 8.63B works well,  if you can get it.

I noticed in my rental car agreement that it would come with a GPS so I had that as a fallback plan not knowing if mine would actually work. Upon delivery of the rental car, I looked through the favorites stored in the Nuvi 205 and it already had my apartment and my office stored in its database, nice! I used it to make my way out to the office and it worked fine. After using it throughout Taipei for a couple weeks I have noticed a few issues which may be generically applied to GPS in Taipei:

• Inputting an address can be an issue due to the different forms of romanizing Chinese, that it, converting from Kanji characters into words that look more like English. There were different standards used which result in different spellings, Chung, Zhong, and Jhong can all be the same thing as far as I can tell so when you attempt input an address, it may be spelled differently than what the Garmin will recognize.
• Another issue is that the Garmin does not treat Taipei as the  "city", you must further input what we would refer to as the neighborhood, for example, Shilin, which in Garmin is spelled Shihlin (note above bullet point). Often you will find an address in a guidebook that will not specify which neighborhood it is in so you may have to guess. One saving grace is the POI database is quite extensive and you can find most things, from big department stores to small mom & pop coffee shops.
• Navigation itself can be troublesome. First of all, the technology of GPS is not accurate enough to always figure out what street you are on in Taipei because the streets are so close together. A variance of 30 feet can easily put you on 3 different parallel roads.
• With narrow streets, tall buildings, and cloud cover, maintaining a signal can be difficult. It also takes time to lock a signal and when coming out of a parking garage right into traffic, you may be on your own for a few turns until the GPS can acquire satellites. I have found the Garmin 765 to be much better than my old TomTom GO 700 in this sense. That TomTom would require you to sit still for a minute before getting a fix on your position. If I just drove out of my garage, I could cover 10 miles without locking because I could get that far before a long enough pause in my travels.
• Couple the previous 3 points together, and once you deviate from the intended route, the CPU speed in the GPS is sometimes not fast enough to easily get you back on track. By the time it recalculates the next route, you're already 3 turns past where it wanted you to go and you have to cross your fingers for a red light.

All in all, the GPS will get you to your destination. I also find it great for walking and the Garmin has a pedestrian mode. You can plan on visiting a certain neighborhood and load up some destinations from a guidebook and use the GPS to find you way around and most importantly, not get lost when you get twisted around in small narrow alleys. I'm hoping to soon replace the pedestrian value of the GPS with a smartphone and Google Maps. Unfortunately you can't get turn by turn directions in Taiwan via Google Maps on a phone yet.


If you can handle driving in New York or Boston, you should be OK in Taipei. If those places make you white knuckled, you will have a hard time, at least that's my opinion after a couple weeks driving here, I'm curious to see if that changes over time.

Mechanical car park

You've probably heard me do some whining about how difficult the simple things can be in Taiwan and the mechanical car park is the perfect yin & yang situation, the sweet and sour. On the day I was about to receive the rental car, I went to the apartment manager and asked what the parking situation was. It started with a response of, "I don't have a parking spot available" and I eventually worked it to, "I don't have a spot available in this wing of the building right now but if you come back at 2PM I can set you up in the wing next door and move you over to this wing on Sunday." I liked the second answer much better as for a brief moment I had that sinking feeling like, "What the hell am I going to do with this car?"

After learning the drill with parking next door, on Sunday I went to arrange the switch. I thought I would just exchange swipe cards and she would tell me my new spot #, but it could not be that easy. She said to go get the car and meet her curbside in three minutes, three, not five or ten. I scrambled to get the car and she met me on the ramp heading into the garage below my wing. Earlier in the week when I was out apartment hunting, one of the landladies noted that her building had a "real" parking garage and not a mechanical car park. I didn't know exactly what she meant but thought a parking attendant must take your car and bring it somewhere else where cars are stored on top of each other like you see in some places in Manhattan. I was partially right.

The reason why the apartment manager had to take me down to explain it to was that the garage in my wing is a mechanical car park, and there's a system to it. First of all, you turn from the street down a ramp, and unlike the other garage where you had a sensor mounted in the window to trigger the gate, at this one I need to press a button on a remote control on a keychain. Right beyond the gate is a metal garage door that covers the entire entrance. A different button on the same remote operates this door.

She motions for me to pull up to one of two garage bays and to put the car in park. Then I have to get out and use a new scanner card to walk up to a sensor by the garage bay door and swipe it. The light above the door turns red and it takes about a minute to open. I then have to drive the car into the bay and into a specific depth at which point a sensor indicates the car is in the right spot. The manager tells me I need to fold in the side view mirrors, if I don't they will probably get sheared off. How long before I forget? There's actually a button in the car that automatically moves the mirrors. With the car in place I can turn it off and lock it up.

In the meanwhile the garage is talking to me, a female voice in Chinese, perhaps telling me that the car is in the right spot or "Don't forget the mirrors idiot!" In English, automatic voices are typically female, soothing and pleasant even if frustrating, i.e. "Press one for this, press two for this, press three for this..." There's something about Chinese that just sounds mean, especially when you are being told what to do. Shirley and I were at a dim sum place in Boston once and one of the cart ladies shouted, "Cheezy Mussel" at me. I was so scared I took the cheezy mussel. Who would ever think it was a good idea to put cheese on mussels? I guess as long as I'm in the restaurant, there's a market for "cheezy mussel".

So after the car is all buttoned up I have to step out of the garage and reswipe the card. The door closes and I can leave. What threw me for a loop was, the manager pointed toward two garage doors on the other side of the parking facility and said, "When you need to leave, you go get the car over there." For some reason, I had a hard time wrapping my head around that. How does my car come out over there? Where does it go? How does it find it? Are there elves behind that door running this operation?

The mechanism comes up, grabs the car, takes it down into a multi-level parking grid, stashed the car on a shelf, then comes back to get it out, and sends it op a different elevator into a different garage. I left the car there for the night and  the next morning went to get my car. I swore there was no way that car was showing up. Especially since she told me if I had a problem and the garage attendant wasn't around I could go ask the lobby security guard for help. I swiped my card, a low and behold, the door opened and my car was there, pointing outward nonetheless.

I love you, mechanical car park!

Rental Car

My second day of house hunting was cancelled as David didn't have anything else to show me and encouraged me to explore other options with RE Agent #2, Hope. I was scheduled to receive my rental car which was to be delivered to my building and needed to figure out some parking solution. There is a garage entrance right below my building but I can't tell what the deal is. Can you pay by the hour? Or are the spots all private? Such things can be difficult and frustrating to figure out.

I went to the management office and there was a different person working there. Luckily she was pretty good in English because this situation is a little complicated. I asked where I can park a car and she asked, "For how long?" I explained that I need to park this thing here for a month. At first she said no spots were available and I said something like, "This car is coming in 15 minutes and I need to put it somewhere. Is there a public lot anywhere?" She quickly jumped on the phone and said that she had a spot available in the building next door that I could use until Sunday. On Monday, she would move me to a spot in my building. She told me to come back to the office after 2 and she could show me how it works. I think I again explained that this car is coming in, now, 10 minutes. What can I do? She directed my to a public lot down the street that charges by the hour. Perfect!

The car guy was on time and brought along the GPS that my company had requested. They didn't have any 1.5-1.8 liter cars available so I was upgraded to the 2.0 class, a Toyota Corolla. I hopped in the car and drove it to the public lot down the street.

I went back down to see her at 2 and she said to go get the car and pick her up in front of the building. I grabbed the car, pulled around and scooped her up. She directed my into the garage where there is a gate and a guard. She put a transmitter device on the dashboard that automatically opens the gate and she directed me down, 4 floors below the ground level. I have been assigned a particular spot. We parked and she directed me to get out so she could show me how to get back out. She handed me another keycard device and a remote control. The keycard device allows me to unlock the door to enter the stairwell. From there I use the same keycard to access the elevator up to the ground level. She also explained that after midnight, this big metal gate closes off the entrance and need to use the remote to open that gate.

I went back to the room and grabbed my stuff to head out to the office, for the first time. It was now about 2:30 and I figured traffic would be light and I could ease into Taipei driving.

Finally getting all of my travel plans sorted out

Once I came away from TECO with a sense of confidence that my visa would be ready on Tues I gave my travel group the "thumbs up" to book our tickets. I'll be taking the redeye Sat night on EVA from Newark through Anchorage on to Taipei. It will arrive Monday morning 5:55A local time, and I will somehow make my way to work to settle in; that's my plan, anyway. When travelling intercontinental, it works best for me to just go straight to work. If I try to rest up for a bit, I end up crashing out for 16 hours and it just takes me even more time to get over the jet lag.

The other reason why I took this flight is Shirley will be travelling with the cat in July and she will take this same flight for several reasons:

• A connection in a foreign country, say Hong Kong, with the cat is just asking for trouble. I would guess that would mean more paperwork and I'd be worried about something going wrong.
• China Airlines does not allow pets other than guide dogs so that rules out travelling with them through LAX or SFO.
• EVA will allow you to check a pet as extra luggage. The good thing about the Anchorage flight is they only stop to take on fuel (and maybe some cargo), so there is no plane change and we don't need to rely on the cat being transferred from one plane to the next.

So I figured I would take the same flight and see how it goes. It will also allow me to get in early in the morning rather than mid-day like the Cathay Pacific flights that were available. Unfortunately you cannot fly direct from New York to Taipei.

Friends of ours threw us a going away party on Sunday which was awesome (sushi, wine, cheese and bacon-everything is better with bacon) and we got to see some more friends and family before leaving.

My HR group in Taiwan has been working to shore up my arrangements in Taipei and have confirmed a temporary home at The Spring and they got me a taxi from the airport to the apartment. Now I have to work with them on a car.

This afternoon I'm heading back down to TECO to pick up my visa.

Selling the truck

I changed the oil in the truck this weekend as I am close enough to my departure that I can offload it. I had this guy, Dave, lined up at work who really wanted it and we loosely kicked around some #'s regarding price. I even had it washed on the way into work yesterday and the car wash attendant was asking me how much I paid for it and said he wants one. I should have tried to sell it to him right there, might have saved $23 for the car wash.

I got in to work and emailed Dave and got an autoresponse that he's out until April 27th. If I was sure he would pay something reasonable for it I would hold off but I really don't want to leave Shirley with any extra work so I'd like to sell it before I leave. I listed it this morning on Craigslist.

I visited several sites when attempting to derrive a selling price. Kelly Blue Book, NADA and Edmunds had different values with KBB being significantly lower. I also scoped out some Ebay, Bargain News and Craigslist ads to get a feel for the market and listed it @ $10,500, which was very close to the Edmunds price. If I can get high 9's I'll be happy. It's a 2002 Toyota Tacoma, 4WD, which should be an easy sell around here.

In the first year of living in our house I often got stranded at the bottom of our driveway in my VW Jetta during the winter. The next fall I decided to get the Tacoma. It has served me well and has been very reliable (knock on wood). I hope it will be a quick sell. If not, I can probably fall back on Dave taking it off my hands. I wonder what sort of creeps Craigslist will stir up...

taiwanderyears.blogspot.com

"In a perfect world, every dog would have a home and every home would have a dog."

This past weekend we set out to tackle one of the remaining milestones: getting Kramer into his new home with my Mom in Niagara Falls, Canada. We still have to find a home for Ozzie so Kramer is the first of two pets to make a departure. We packed up the Mini with Kramer's crate and set out after work. When we travel with Kramer in the car, he is usually just loose in the hatchback which typically results in a lot of restlessness, whining and him stuffing his snout in your face as best he can from the back seat. This time we actually had the crate set up back there and put him in it. He was much more comfortable and rested the best he could considering the Mini + Pennsylvania highways is not the smoothest ride in the world.

We made a pit stop every couple hours at a rest area to let Kramer out, and arrived at the border in Niagara Falls around 11PM. I had read on the internets that you just need a rabies certificate to get your dog into Canada. We had that along with Kramer's entire vet record, just in case my Mom would come to need it, but I was still wary of customs. Going through the border always results in some sort of dumb question that I must trick myself into NOT answering literally.

I think the way she phrased it was, "Are you bringing anything in?"

"Well, this here car, for starters!"

Sometimes I get, "Are you bringing in any gifts?" "Is there anything NOT coming back with you?" "Do you have anything to declare?"

So I answered, "A pound of cheese and 2 boxes of cortizone cream, apparently difficult to find in Canada (probably not as tough as tires, though). I made no mention of the 50# dog in the back but had his rabies cert in hand. She let us pass asking nothing of the dog. Not sure she noticed. Not sure "this dog" was what she was looking for in her questioning.

We got to my Mom's place around midnight. She recently got a German Shepherd puppy, "Barkley", who is a year old and probably just under a hundred pounds. I had Kramer on a leash as we went through the door and Barkley lit up when we came in. He came charging over to Kramer a bit aggressively, upon which Kramer latched on to Barkley's ear until I yanked him back.

I think this set the stage perfectly. Kramer proved that he could hold is own and he and Barkley got along very well afterwards. It was funny to see Barkley follow Kramer around with an inquisitive look. Whenever Kramer did something new, Barkley would come charging over to see what was going on. As soon as Kramer would go outside, Barkley would go charging out the door after him. Kramer got along with Dan pretty well, too, as you can see them practicing their napping skills together.

In the morning Shirley and I went down to the local YMCA which is amazing. They have a nice pool, actually two pools: one kiddie pool and one 4 lane 25m pool with a water slide. Above that there is a huge weight room, loads of cardio equipment, yoga room, spin room, basketball court and some classrooms. They let you in for free the first time and thereafter it's 10 bucks a day as a drop fee. There is also a coffee shop and library on site so I come here often when visiting my Mom. I don't think this is the type of YMCA the Village People had in mind, but you can, in fact, get yourself clean and have a good meal.

After working out my Mom joined us for a trip down to the falls since Shirley has never been. We lucked out and had great weather, albeit a little chilly. I swear it rains constantly in Niagara Falls; my Mom swears it's only when I'm visiting. I hear the same thing from people in Seattle-never rains there, either. If you've never been to Niagara Falls, I think the Canadian side is the tackiest place on Earth. Shirley thinks Vegas holds that title but at least Vegas has an authentic Madame Tussauds Wax Museum whereas Niagara Falls has the "Louis TussaudsWax Museum". Cheezy.

On the way home the check tire light illuminated in the Mini and we stopped to get air but found the air leaked out as fast as it would go in. The Mini has no spare and uses runflats, tires that you can drive on even when flat. We made it back to Mom's and I crawled under the car to find that the tread and the sidewall had become separated at the seam. This tire had seen it's share of mileage and needed to be replaced (probably 10k miles ago) along with its rear conterpart on the passenger's side. It was 6PM on Saturday and we couldn't get a hold of a tire shop. I made some calls on Sunday and could not locate a tire in that size anywhere in the vicinity. I was quoted a lead time of 10 days. There was a Mini dealer a few miles away in St. Catharines and we would have to use that as a last resort on Monday.

On Monday morning we called some real tire shops (as opposed to Candian Tire and Wal-Mart) hoping that might be a better option. Found a guy who could get us a tire in 5 days. The Mini dealer had them in stock and we bit the bullet and headed up. We wanted to avoid the highway as with the damage to the tire, it got a bit wobbly above 40MPH so we needed to take backroads which were under construction. With Dan leading the way we limped in to the dealer and were directed to the lounge area to wait for them to look at the car. Here is Shirley waiting with her blue Mini through the window in the background. An hour later they assesed the situation and gave us a quote. 2 tires, mounted...guess how much? Over $800, Canadian! So with today's exchange rate, $787. It was actually around $820CN so we broke the $400 per tire barrier. Insane! But we had no choice to get us home that day. So we waited another 2 hours for them to mount the tires and were on our way. They even washed the car, for free!

We already had to skip a day of work, keep Ozzie in the kennel another day, and have someone come up to our house to take care of the cat. The price of the same tire in the U.S. on Tirerack=$144. So we can look at it as a $500 car wash, or ammoritize the cost across the few cups of "free" coffee we drank in the dealer lounge. Warning: if you ever go to Canada, bring tires. I will forever have 195/55R16 burned into my brain. Oh, and these are STOCK tires. We don't have any wacky low profile or huge spinner rims or anything like that. Next time I buy a car, I'm checking the tire size and making sure it is readily available in places other than a car dealer.

We at least were able to leave knowing that Kramer was comfortable in his new home and had made a new friend in Barkley. I think it's more like, Barkley made a new friend in Kramer. Here is my last moment with Kramer. Not sure why he's licking his lips. The food must taste better in Canada. Either that or he secretly ate that tire to get revenge on us for deporting him.

We hit the road for home and were planning on stopping in Buffalo for chicken wings since we've never had a "real" Buffalo wing and it might be something that we can't quite get in Taiwan. My buddy Brett is from Buffalo so we asked him where to go. It seemed to be a tough choice between Duff's and Anchor Bar but when pressed he suggested Duff's. There are two places that we go to for decent wings: TK's in Danbury,CT and Frankie's in Melbourne,FL.

We each ordered a lunch special which is 10 wings in your choice of hotness and 2 sides. The menu indicates they have a scale factor in their hotness, like a "chicken wing exchange rate". They tout "Medium Hot is VERY Hot" so I ordered Medium Hot and Shirley chose Mild Medium. We asked for chili and fries as our sides and they had run out of chili and gave Shirley the last scoop. Bummer. Our wings and fries arrived. Fries were shoestring which I like and you could smell the vinagar in the air from the wings.

In a nutshell: the meat of the wings is superior to anywhere else, but the flavor of the sauce is very basic, Frank's Red Hot in butter with some white pepper and probably not much more. I thought the assesment of the hotness was pretty accurate. Duff's Medium Hot is comparable to a TK's "suicide" and Frankie's 4 or 5, depending on which cook made the sauce that day. Frankie's sauce is rated on a scale from 1-9 with each level having a moniker, e.g., level 9 is called "Dial 9-1-1". The thing with Frankies is not just the hotness of the sauce but with the flavoring; it's not just a jar of Red Hot or Tabasco but I think it has tomoto paste in it and other secret ingredients, probably stuff with a very short half-life.

I easily put down 10 Duff's Medium Hot but even one 7 at Frankie's can disable your digestive tract for days. I've witnessed someone vomit on the table at Frankie's when trying to ingest just one level 9. Folklore says they make a level 10 but you have to be "in-the-know" to get them as they are worried about the side effects and potential lawsuits. All said and done, Duff's was good, but Frankie's has the best hot wings I have ever had. I think Frankie was from NY so maybe he was originally from the Buffalo area which might add to his wing cred. Frankie died about 5 years ago. I wonder if it was in the act of researching a #11. They should name it, "Call the coroner".

taiwanderyears.blogspot.com

And we're worried about texting while driving...

I've been wondering what we'll do about a car. We want to live near the MRT and my company is outside the network of subway stations so I will need a car to get back and forth to work. Shirley will assumedly be within the grid of public transportation so we'll at least be able to get by on one car. My plan is to purchase a car used, which should be the most economical solution, rather than lease or buy new. I'd like something small to navigate the city (park), fuel efficient, yet big enough to transport bikes to races, either inside or on a rack.

We currently have a Mini Cooper which fits the bill but the import tax on cars is crazy so it will not come with us and, anyway, is probably not the easiest or cheapest to maintain in Taiwan. I started doing some research into Japanese Mini-substitues if you will, cars like the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Mazda 3, Suzuki Swift and Nissan Versa, which is apparently the "Tilda" in Taiwan.

I'm fascinated by cars that have different names in different countries. I mean, the names are generally meaningless to begin with. What's a Corolla? a Prius? Impreza? Hummer? well, forget that one! How is the "Tilda" more marketable in Asia than the U.S.? Maybe they need to make it less likely for the factory to accidently ship a Tilda to the U.S. because it has a feature that would bar it from the road in the States. What would that be?

Oh, just an LCD TV screen with a DVD player built into the dash; this is stock! Driving in Taipei is insane enough. Now we need people watching movies while driving? And with subtitles?!?!

When I was working in Korea there were three of us travelling to a factory in Icheon, a couple hours east of Seoul . We made the trip out in a small taxi, with all our luggage, most of which I ended up sitting on. During the week out in Icheon, we saw a cab parked at the curb which was a nice looking roomy minivan. We asked the driver for his card and called him to come pick us up at the end of the week for the journey back.

We hadn't seen the inside and were pleasantly surprised to find that it had multiple flat screen TVs and a crazy surround sound system with fiber optic lighting. I made a comment to my coworker that involved "Pimp my ride..." and when I said that, the driver's ears perked up and he gave me the thumbs up sign in the rear view mirror. I guess they get MTV over there. I also noticed that the driver had a screen for himself up front, much like this Nissan.

I wonder if it is interlocked such that when the car is in drive the DVD turns off. Anyone know? Apparently another feature in cars in Taiwan is wall-to-wall carpeting, on the dash! I think the carpeting is aftermarket, though. Maybe they watch MTV in Taiwan, too.