Time Flies When You're Having Fun

 Sister DeVictoria writing:

The weeks are slipping by quickly now.  We are almost done with our third month, leaving only twenty to go.  I do think time seems to pass more quickly when you are older.

One thing that I had forgotten about Taiwan, but which is wonderful to see is how rule and law-based this society is.  When we are crossing the street, no matter how narrow the street or lane, people wait until the "walk" sign flashes before crossing.  Even when no traffic is coming, people wait. Also, in this old neighborhood many of the streets are very narrow, so they painted a green lane on the streets for pedestrians to walk on.  It is really convenient!

In this photo the characters roughly translated (from top to bottom) say "Pedestrian walk way".

Also people are generally honest.  Some time back there was an Elder whose bike was stolen.  He announced it on Facebook.  The people here got quite upset about his bike having been stolen!  Even the nightly news featured his story.  He got his bike back!  This past week we had several incidents.  One Elder had his bike stolen.  He reported it to the mission office.  The office elders suggested he make a police report, which he did, and look around the neighborhood.  He found it nearby in the neighborhood!  The police came and took fingerprints.  They took this very seriously!  In two other incidents, two other Elders on separate days lost their wallets.  Each of the wallets were turned in to the police station and weren't missing any money!  I was glad about that because their alien resident cards and health insurance cards were also in their wallets and it costs a lot of money and effort to request new ones.

This week I think the city must have sprayed the streets for roaches because all of the sudden we are seeing tons of those huge kind of cockroaches!  Usually I never see any, or maybe occasionally one.  We came out today and there were 5 or 6 in the area just inside our apartment gate.  And as I walked down the street I kept seeing them.  And we are seeing a lot of dead ones.  I HATE roaches!!  Frankly, I only have three phobias in life:  deep water, floating in space (think of the movie Gravity), and roaches.  The giant spider didn't freak me out as much as roaches do!

I wanted to explain more about the call boxes.  All buildings here have a locked front door or gate, and a call box where you can buzz the buzzer to get permission to enter.  When I was a young missionary, we would stand at the call box of an apartment building and push the buttons one by one asking if we could go in and talk to people.  Then if they let us in, we would knock on each individual door.  More expensive buildings also have security personnel who monitor who goes in and out.  Here at the mission office we have two call boxes.  One is wired to a phone on the wall, and the other is connected to our desk phones.  I'm trying to get the missionaries to use the one connected to our desk phones so that we don't have to get up and down from our seats to answer the phone on the wall.  

These are the call boxes on our building.  There are 7 floors to this building, so the gray box buzzes the wall phone in each of them.  But the small one on the right is the one that is hooked to my desk phone.

 I put a little sticker on it that asks people to use that call box.  No one seemed to even notice it, so I went back later and highlighted it with an orange marker.  I'm considering laminating another sign and taping it on the top!  Lazy?  Maybe, but it's just so much easier to just answer the phone on my desk instead of walking across the room to answer the wall phone, especially on transfer day.

We had zone conferences this week.  There are 8 zones, but to minimize the number of conferences the mission president has combined some zones together so that he only holds 3 zone conferences.  We kind of took the lazy way out this time with the food.  Since this hadn't been done before, we ordered Costco hot dogs (polish sausages) that came with a drink.  A senior missionary elder and two young elders went together to pick them up.  The only problem was that they had to fill all of the drinks themselves.  Over 100!  Costco said that the drinks are basically free, so they weren't willing to do it an easier way.  We also had some big beautiful green salads (they couldn't eat all we made) some watermelon (once again, the melons were HUGE so they couldn't eat it all) and some delicious carrot cake made by one of the MLS senior missionaries. 

We have one missionary (Elder Harwood, shown above) that is around 6'4" and can never seem to get enough to eat, so he took a lot of leftovers home (here he is holding 5 hotdogs) as did some other missionaries.  I handed out a lot of leftover hot dogs for Elders to take home.

Elder DeVictoria writing:

 The hotdogs from Costco were OK on Wednesday but what I liked discovering this last week was a Mexican burrito shop called Macho Taco located in the Shida night market neighborhood, it's within walking distance of our apartment.  It's not perfectly authentic, but close enough to enjoy on occasion, maybe we'll go back in another couple weeks or when the craving becomes strong enough.  Sister DeVictoria is losing weight.  I'm not.

Here is a picture that I snapped of some Sister Missionaries riding their bikes home through the traffic of Taipei after an evening of church activities.  They are wearing their reflective vests and their helmets which I was glad to see.  They saw me and waved.

In this picture you can see one of the many 7-11 stores in the background, this one is about 50 yards from our apartment.  There are two more 7-11 stores at similar distance from our apartment in different directions.  There are three or four more 7-11 stores a little further distant, really in every direction surrounding our apartment there are 7-11's, altogether I can think of 7 that are within easy walking distance.  To the left in this picture are a couple of small restaurants, I estimate in our neighborhood there are at least 100 similar sized small restaurants and coffee or tea shops.  In this neighborhood the restaurants tend to be slightly upscale, a little more expensive, or higher quality (?) than in other neighborhoods around Taipei.  People come from all over to visit this neighborhood, it's a kind of "destination".  The Dongmen subway station is located on the north side of this neighborhood which makes it very accessible, and there is one of the largest city parks (DaAn Park) to the east.  There is a fair amount of foot traffic around here especially on the weekends and in the evenings.  

It always surprises me to see how many foreigners are in the crowds here, and on the subway.  The English Ward that we've been attending is going through their annual turnover of expatriates that are leaving.  It seems the most of them are employed with the US Government in some way, and they get rotated out to move to their next assignments during the summertime.  They usually stay here for 3 or 4 years, I guess.  Today at church it was fast and testimony meeting and there was a lot of goodbyes and tears.  I think expats love living in Taiwan.  I enjoy it myself.

I will say that serving and living in Taipei in 2024 as an office specialist in the mission office is a lot different than what it was like for me serving as a young proselyting missionary in southern Taiwan 40+ years ago.  I think Taiwanese society has changed a lot.  I just remember how deeply alien the society was (and just everything was) to me back then, and now everything seems so normal.  Perhaps I have changed?  Probably it's both.  Taiwan has changed, and I have changed.  Some of the biggest differences I see in Taiwanese society now, and this could have a lot to do with where I'm located now compared to before, are:  richer/more money/more worldly; less Taiwanese language spoken; much more concerns now about bodily health and exercise and pollution and recycling and and diet (the food is less salty now, less oily than before); less political propaganda/slogans/rallys/fervor; far less Buddhism or other traditional religious practices; less consumption of beetlenut with its chewing and spitting; less smoking (although still plenty of people smoke here).  More scantily dressed immodesty in the young girls, and far more tattoos.  Of course technology changes have happened everywhere throughout the world and Taiwan is very modern in this respect now with excellent internet speed and access, great cellphone coverage, wonderful mass transit system, ATM's everywhere, just lots of super convenient innovations and modernity.  Like air conditioning in every apartment, in every room. Which is a huge from before and it's wonderful. 

This week our apartment coordinator, service missionary Sister Chen mentioned that she stubbed her toe in the night.  We laughed and talked about how many times I've stubbed my toe in the night over the years.  Lo and behold, on P-day when I was doing the laundry I stubbed my little toe!  OUCH!

"And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."  Mosiah 2:17