New Year's Eve Best Engrish of 2010 Roundup

In the elevator of an office building on Minsheng/Dunhua Intersection

I thought I'd let 2010 out with a bang, by posting my favorite Engrish from four years in Taiwan and trips to Japan, Central America, Egypt, Indonesia and India. Most of this particular Engrish comes straight from Taiwan. As the year slips away into...well, another year...hope you are have great enjoy time of the Engrish!

First Bank ATM warning

Nothing is more delicious than curried Snoopy (from Japan)

...saideth the lady of the establishment as she doth print'd the sign.

Even though our cat has proven himself gloriously inept at catching mice, I still won't be using this on him.

Ahem. This is from a pet store.

Ah, Japan.

Ooh, that's the kind of care I want! My care wasn't horny enough before.

This coffee just makes me sad.

You can buy horny skin care next door. (near Shuanglian MRT)

There's no actual reason why this sounds as disgusting as it does. But it does. Yes...it does. (near Wanlong MRT...not far from Chili Lubricants which I'm also planning to get a picture of)

The Hsinchu subsidiary of Oh!God!Ya!

Near Wugong Elementary School. Oh, old folks. I thought we were sending them to Mars?

Get your pot plants here!

They've actually changed the name of this shop, you know. A different sign by the same company appeared on Engrish.com years ago.

Strangely well-named.

There will be consequences.

Yummy....coffee that tastes of coal!

I want to decry "WTF!" pretty often, I must say.

(it stands for World Taekwondo Federation...really)

I love everything about this 台妹 - from her ratty little dog to her plastic slippers, makeup and hair (she was smoking but you can't see it in the photo). But it makes it onto this post because of her glorious T-shirt.

If I were an ignorant American who decided to open a Mexican restaurant, I think I might just name it Restaurante Los Tacos. Try our Chupalito Maximo!

You'd think that screaming loudly would be enough for them to show their presence. Do they really need to defecate on people's heads as well?

From Egypt. "King Dude" is awesome, but "Managed by John&John" is transcendental.

This would be fine in Latin America, but it's a souvenir shop in Egypt. Err...

I got nothin' to say about this. It is what it is.

Little vanilla bimbos.

I thought it might be a misspelling of something but after seeing the picture...no, they really meant to call it "Snobs".

Worst camel safari company name EVER.

Ooh! A victorious flag will flutter for me!

A never-ending source of fun. Every joke I could make about this brand of nuts has been made...trust me.

I love reading classic 2009 works of English literature and soaking up the ancient, deeply-held traditions of Old England, which has been settled and culturally relevant since...2009!

It's hard to read, but says "Dipping into Boring Pie...Getting Out of Boring (something)"

These magnets are the epitome of selfishness.

I'm really scared of Grizzly Bears. (Sold next to Guts bars, which I also need to get a decent photo of.)

Really? Not ANY kind of panda union? Not even one?

What's worse than a disaster? A disastrous disaster!

Well no wonder the building fell down, if it had 1,234 floors!

I live in that house occasionally.

"Pocket Volcano: Science On Your Palm" is funny enough, but then they had to add "Perform 'volcanic eruptions' on the table top, in a bath or even in a glass". Top it off with a gem like "It's an awesome science gadget!" and you've got pure gold.

"If you are attacked by a swarm of bees, every second counts. Run away as fast as you can." Wow, making me feel really safe there.

Oh yeah, and don't hide underwater unless you can swim underwater. Of course.

I like this one less for the English (which is not so bad) than for the picture, which makes it seem like a giant laser beam from an alien spaceship randomly came and struck the cliff where that guy was hiking.

On Caoling Old Trail (Yilan side) - the thing about the "Horse Falling to Death" bridge is that it is probably named after an actual event that took place in 1904 or something...but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the average hiker.

Pingdeng Canal Old Trail (Yangmingshan)

Not long ago, on a fairly warm and sunny Saturday, we hiked the Pingdeng Canal Old Trail outlined in Richard Saunders' Yangmingshan: The Guide.

You can read about how to do it in the book, and anyway I'm not the best person to ask as we got lost, but here are some photos from that lovely day:

If you decide to stop and see Shengren Waterfall (聖人瀑布) on the way, you have to climb a lot of annoying stairs. The good news is that the views are nice.

...as well as amusing and homey.

Shengren Waterfall - technically prohibited to get that close but whatever. There are a few sections of the trail that are technically "prohibited" but you can go anyway; it's perfectly safe.

An old, not terribly attractive but legitimately antique, temple by the base of the stairs.

The stream we "illegally" crossed to get to the waterfall.

Yeah....um....yeah. Um. BAD naming choice, guys.

Later on you have to scramble over rocks along a low stream to get to where the trail picks up again, and oh yeah, the actual path to the trail is indiscernable so we had to scramble through brush and mud to get back to the part that was actually walkable, in prime snake-hole territory. Fun. Richard, you may want to look into that when you advise on taking a nonexistent fork to a path above.

We were confused later, and ran into this guy about an hour after our detour around a ridge (another unclear trail junction. Grrrr, Richard. Grr. It said bear right, and we did, and right took us up and over an unnecessary ridge). He looked like he knew what he was talking about and directed us to Qingtiangang.

Polluted sunset over Qingtiangang. You can't even see Taipei and its sprawl through the smog. I blame China.

For dinner, we had delicious lamb and other dishes at Ah-Guo's Lamb Restaurant － 阿國羊肉 - near Wenhua University, and mediocre kung pao chicken. Next time, we'll try the goose.

We did get to see some rare color-changed autumn leaves along the canal, though.

All in all, a lovely day hike but after months of not hiking (foot problems) it really wiped me out. Also, better directions would have been nice.