Hey Doc

There must be some good business opportunities for a place to open 24 hours a day. Near where I live, we have 24-hr supermarket, 24-hr karaoke club, 24-hr dim sum restaurant, three as matter of fact. I can see why all that but now we have a brand new 24-hr travel agency.

I bet you don't see this anywhere else in the world except here in Taipei. One of the hundreds of buses I take has this little daily records of the alcohol level of the bus driver posted on a bulletin board behind the driver's seat. Its telling the passengers that "don't worry, you driver was tested zero level this morning". Did I missed something? Was there problem of bus drivers go to work drunk? Would you object to a breathalyzer test every day before you go to work because of someone else's screw up? Or this was the case of the PR department running out of things to sell?

Should there be a time limit on how long an "Out of Business Sale" can go on? There is a clothing store in our building who is having OBS for the pass two months and I don't see any end of it. I live one block away from one of the busiest districts in Taipei city. There must be thousands of small shops trying to make a living here. From the stuff I read, the rent for a store front on this street is astronomical. That is why I see stores change hands so often. Imagine how many cups of coffee or how many bowls of noodle do you have to sell to even pay the rent. There are some exceptions because they have been there for as long as I know. I think part of it is they must had a lock on lower rent since they have been there for a long time.
It is quite interesting to see how fast a store can change from one to another. Once the construction starts, it takes a day or two to completely gut the place. Depends on the lay out of the new store, a week to two weeks, a brand new store will re-appear. The workers normally work over 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Jobs are hard to come by so some will just accepted as the fact.
I am so used to being constantly reminded about safety when I worked at Intel, I always using the same standards to evaluate what I see. Safety is not always on the top of these people's priority list. Many were due to the lack of education and some were just felt as inconvenience.

Photos for your entertainment

I really enjoy the simplicity of the Japanese cooking. The presentation of the food and the tableware that serves the food. Its a lot of visual then just the flavor. Romankan Yokohama started as a fast food place that serves katsu sandwich - deep fried pork cutlet in a piece of white bread with some kind of sauce. Now they have opened a full service restaurant at the top floor in the same shopping mall.

I had the pleasure to try it out the other day. The menu selection is limited because of their specialty on katsu. But you have a choice of different cut of the meat, I prefer the tenderloin so I ordered the bite size tenderloin with a piece shrimp and asparagus roll.

Something you don't see often is that you get a small portion of black and white sesame seeds in a bowl that you can grind up to mix it in the dipping sauce. Because I have the shrimp so it came with a little tartar sauce too.
Very well worth the visit.

Women with short legs and long torso should not wear low rise jeans or low rise anything. It's not a pretty sight.