Taipei Wine & Gourmet Food Expo 2012

Honestly this one tasted like licking the butthole of a civet cat. Not that I'd know what that tastes like. It was a like a "civet cat butthole licking fantasy", if you will.

                                        

Taipei is a fantastic city for the sorts of big-venue "come and get a discount" expos that draw average consumers (unlike where I'm from, where you'd generally be a huge gung-ho hobbyist, dedicated pro or industry specialist if you were to actually go to something like that). When I have the time, I love "expo surfing" the various trade shows and events that pass through Xinyi and Nangang's exhibition spaces. 

                         

So far I have to say that the wine expo we went to yesterday was the best one I've been to, even though it was also one of the smallest. Taking up only one portion of one hall in Xinyi's World Trade Center complex, it wasn't as packed as the travel expo, as chaotic as the pet expo or as bewildering as the book expo (I'll be honest, the book expo left me a bit cold. I love reading, but almost all of the booths sold books in Chinese. That makes sense, I've got nothing against doing that in Taipei where most expo-goers will be native speakers of Chinese wanting to buy books in their main language, but it meant there wasn't much for me there and we didn't stay long. I can read Chinese, basically, but I don't really want to shop for books written in it).

People sniff truffles

This was for a group, not just her

It cost 400 NT to get in, but it was worth it. There were crowds but few lines (unlike the open-to-the-public food events and restaurant fairs and "Taste of Wherever" events in cities in the USA, where you often line up for 30 minutes to get a little bite of something that isn't even as good as it would have been had it been served in the restaurant itself). You get a free wine glass - not a bad one, either - and you would go around and get free tastes of any wines you wanted from any booths. My sister was impressed - she said that in Portland you'd go to something like this and pay $10 to get in, only to pay 50 cents or a dollar per tasting once inside. 

The discounts were also pretty good - we got thousand-NT wines for maybe NT$500 and some other good deals (we came home with four bottles - three Portuguese reds and one Spanish white). The selection was impressive - some local companies, some importers - German, Slovakian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chilean, Californian, Australian, South African, Italian - all good stuff, with a wide selection from sweet frizzante moscato to super dry cabernet. 

#stuffwhitepeoplelike

They didn't just have wine - other than a booth full of women in Neoprene dominatrix outfits hawking delicious Dictador Colombian rum (and it was REALLY GOOD), there were booths featuring fine meats, cheeses, honey, jams and truffles, as well as coffee and fancy mineral water. They had booths selling wine storage devices, but we skipped those.

It was easy to take a break, which is good, 'cause we got pretty tanked and would have been far worse off without those other options.

All in all, this expo is my most highly-recommended one to visit in Taipei. Go, drink, enjoy, have fun, and take a taxi home.

The first rule of wine expo is "don't talk about wine expo"

Life is Quiet

There's not much going on in life right now; haven't been to any good protests, have been out to a few good restaurants and will write about those later - although at least one is famous, so what's the point? - and generally been either working or sick in bed with a cold.

After a week of working my butt off (including on Sunday, in Taoyuan of all places), having Monday off really brightens things up. I'm finally not sick anymore, either!

While in convalescence, we put up the Christmas tree. We have a little fake one from Canada that a coworker gave us, and ornaments from IKEA. As you can see, the cat likes it too. Very homey. We even put on holiday music and had some millet wine afterwards, enjoying our 'fireplace' (a space heater). We're "doing" Christmas this year; having about 25 friends over for food, drink and talk, so I'm happy we've got the tree.

Oh say can you see...

...by the dawn's early light...

...hundreds of expats, hungover from last night.

So I work in Taipei 101 twice a week. In between classes I tend to hang out at the Starbucks in the lobby if I'm not hungry enough to go to the mall and eat. This gives me a killer vantage point from which to observe the comings-and-goings of Taiwan expats who work in business.

What did I see late this morning?

1.) A line at Starbucks, and for once the majority of customers weren't Taiwanese office folks gearing up for yet another 12 hour workday. Peppered between them were slack-faced yet smiling foreigners with stars in their eyes and dark circles under them.

2.) Other expats - the older ones - looking somewhat downtrodden, probably because their man had been cast aside like an old lion (thanks, Christopher Hitchens) about to be retired from slashing gladiators.

3.) Taiwanese office workers sitting in said Starbucks talking about foreigners ("How strange," one young girl in a purple suit and eye glitter with the telltale ID tag dangling from her neck, "they elect a black man and then they all go get drunk. Nobody's doing any work today! Foreigners! I just don't get it.")

4.) More expats, the happy ones, wandering around like sleep-deprived zombies, occasionally shuffling down to Watson's for more Panadol, silently commiserating about their massive collective hangover.

I was one of the hungover ones. Still am, at 10pm the next night. At least it's a good hangover; the Belgian beer kind, not the nasty Chinese chemical beer kind. We stayed at Red House pub in Shida until it closed, talking, laughing, hoping, drinking and singing the national anthem. Red House was otherwise quiet - we wanted a gathering of friends, not a liberal, libertine throng. The party was going on much louder at Jr. Cafe, Carnegie's and The Brass Monkey, but the only one of those places I actually like is Jr. Cafe and still didn't really feel like dealing with it.