Saturday, November 03, 2007

Taiwan trip Pt 2

Some interesting things about Taiwan:

When buying things at Watsons or 7-11, plastic bags would not be provided. You have to pay NT20 for a bag, which is usually unnecessary unless you buy many big items. The reason? To save the environment and I'm all for it.

All the dustbins I saw comes in two, one for recycling and the other for normal garbage.



People actually queue orderly for the MRT, unlike here in Singapore.

The sales staff are really friendly and nice and will go out of the way to serve you. I could really feel the warmth and friendliness

I love their milk tea! I had at least three cups a day, bought from either 7-11 or the tea stalls which can be found almost everywhere! I love the Oolong Milk Tea, Red Milk Tea, Green Milk Tea, Jasmine Green Milk Tea and I so miss them so much! There's nothing like that here in Singapore! (Or if there is, please let me know where!)

Taiwanese boys, I feel are cuter and they give me this feeling of being more cultured, more courteous. They dress waaaaay better too!

Some memorable things which happened:

We attended a local LGBT film festival on the weekend. Films shown were Formula 17, Kinsey, Spider Lilies and Transamerica. We chose to watch the local one instead, as I was curious to see what the local independent gay films would be like.

The entrance to the LGBT film festival.

However, I didn't manage to stay long enough to watch. There were 2 short films before the main one and when the time came for the main item, I had to leave for dinner with my ex-manager.

The two short films I watched, I would say they were quite interesting and managed to grab my attention, though I didn't understand 90% of the dialogue. One was about this guy from Taichung, who is an insurance agent by day but an opera performer at night. He talks about his life with his boyfriend and his mom, whom he is out too. Quite a charming short film, and it helps that the main character was quite cute ;P

The second was a condensed version of an upcoming Taiwanese film, which the title I can't recall. It's basically about how a guy whose boyfriend was away, started to organise sex parties at their shared apartment. The film snippet ended with the boyfriend walking in amidst a sex party. It seemed interesting too, but I felt it was more titillating than an experiential film.

By the way, all the films including the 12-minute trailer shown on that day, were by the same director.

I also noticed quite a few lesbians and I don't mean just at the film festival. Lesbians don't usually fall within my area of err ... view (sorry to lesbians!). Anyway, I don't really notice them in Singapore as I suspect it is because they are less conspicuous. There was the time I was on the on the bus and there were only so many people I can look at and it was not too difficult to not notice. Not just the bus, I saw a number of lesbian couples on the streets too.

Of course, I think most of my readers aren't too bothered about lesbians, so I shall mention the few incidences of gay sightings. On our trips to the outskirts of Taipei, we had to take buses. Three guys boarded together and right away my gaydar was ringing. Two of them were quite cute. One of them was wearing his jeans so low that one third of his butt was showing. The unfortunate thing is that I couldn't join the previous two sentences with AND.

But at last, my Mandarin sucks big time. Need my dear to start speaking to me in Mandarin already, like QueerR and Apollo. Haha ...

6 comments:

Ganymede said...

Man sounds like you had fun there. I've always wanted to go to Taiwan. Need to improve my Mandarin some more. :P

Jaded Jeremy said...

Yes, I did notice the prevalence of cute guys in Taipei. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to do anything other than fleeting observation. Oh, oh, you got no pictures to show meh?

As for milk tea ar, do you mean the one with pearls? Off my head, I can think of two in Singapore: one is opposite Parkway Parade in Marine Parade and the other one, I think, is at Easpoint Mall in Simei.

Will said...

There was a Taiwanese film in our LGBT film festival called "Eternal Summer." I didn't get to see it but heard it was a cute love triangle story (he loves her, she loves him, he loves him) so I am renting it this month now that it's out on DVD. Yay for gay Taiwanese films!

savante said...

Sex parties while the boyfriend is away!? :) Muahaha.

Jason said...

That sounds like our Savante hor? :P

William said...

Yet to find out how to talk dirty in Mandarin le... :P