I’m not sure if this is whack as it is likely mental illness, but I saw an old lady talking to the air and then she went in the middle of intersection (of a small neighborhood) and got down on her knees and starting offering her jewelry and gifts to the air, like someone was there in front of her (but nobody was)
A couple of cars went around her to avoid hitting her and she still stayed in the middle of the street.
I have seen those lizards. And turtles on a leash too.
BTW, in the ol country it is not legal to keep poultry within city limits. Being woken up at 4am by a rooster’s crow ain’t everyone’s cup of tea. But how about Taiwan? I’d love to have daily fresh eggs.
I saw a full-on HUGE hog (not one of those Vietnamese pet pigs), and it wasn’t that many years ago, just strolling along the sidewalk all by itself one evening right in the heart of Taipei near Liuzhangli MRT station and no one was even batting an eye.
Not only whack in Taiwan, but all over the world:
Not even Halloween yet…
Now that is what you call going for a leisurely stroll!
I knew somebody in Banqiao who kept a chicken as a pet. Nobody would know. Only the roosters crow. Hens just gurgle to themselves.
It wouldn’t be easy though. Chickens peck, and if they don’t have something on the ground to peck they’ll peck each other. It would be cruel to keep a chicken on concrete.
It is kind of nice to have all the yellow taxis running around on the street to choose from when you need it, but often when I am just walking along and minding my own business, they horn a loud ba-ba from behind, to catch my attention, just ‘in case’ that I need a taxi at the moment! That always gives me a shock. Man…how many times do they really get a customer like that among 100 ba-ba?
I was zipping through Taipei City Mall–the long underground passage directly beneath Civic Boulevard extending from Taipei Main Station to Beimen MRT Station. Up until now I had walked on the southern side of the mall, which features an impressive array of Indonesian eateries toward the Beimen end. Today for some reason I walked on the northern side, and noticed for the first time that the Beimen end also boasts a cluster of maid cafes!
I had no idea Taipei had a maid cafe district. As Yogi Berra might say, you can really see a lot in this town just by looking.
Guy
Every day is Christmas in Taiwan.
Our local Mos Burger has Christmas carols playing all year round,
And decorations abound around the town.
Where Christmas decorations are never taken down, but stay around for another round.
I’m getting dizzy here.
I’m confused. Maid cafes as in Indonesian maids clustering there in their free time? That wouldn’t exactly be whack, especially not with Hong Kong a few hours away.
Or maid cafes as in Japanese style cosplay waitresses? Again, not particularly whack, with Japan just a few hours away.
Or both at the same time? Now that would be whack. 
lol brilliant!
the monitor lizard on a leash is amazing too. the weirdest pet i’ve seen here was a squirrel on a leash. it wasn’t even walking like a dog would. it was just crawling up stuff.
i’ve seen plenty of parrots on shoulders too pirate style. its nothing, i see that all the time!
as for the maid cafes i’ve seen them too. the customers looked pretty happy. the whole underground malls are amazing and huge. you can walk all the way to shuangliang station through the underground streets. theres a couple of meat cleaver massage places too.
taiwan is definitely a place with a lot of eccentric people. i’ve even seen one guy shaving at the bus stop.
It’s the latter–I discovered cosplay city in an underground mall in Taipei. OK, maybe I need to up my game here, but the concentration of them just blew my mind!
Guy
You’re also right around the corner from Taipei Underground Mall where video games, anime, manga and anything that falls under that hobby category is located.
Maybe not whack in my perspective, but sure is a nice discovery!
Spitting into the urinal before taking a leak.
What’s that all about? Sorry ladies, for introducing you to the amazing world of the men’s room. Usually I couldn’t care less about what other dudes do when relieving themselves, but today I went in there to do my business and a moron had done the spitting again and had missed the target. Now his slimy spit hangs there at the upper rim of the urinal dangling about, seemingly not quite sure whether it is ready to take the plunge into the yellow abyss or not or maybe waiting for a “stepping stone” to easy the fall. Yikes.
Not better inside one of the stalls. There is fresh spit on the wall. And all this is in a decent office building. Gro~~ss!
In a semi-related complaint, and I may have mentioned this years ago, am I the only one who finds it frigging gross for people to wash their faces and hands and brush their frigging teeth in the office kitchen sink rather than the Men’s room right across the hall? Seriously, I’m standing there making coffee and this frigging 8-ball comes right up beside me and starts vigorously brushing his teeth. I had to quickly grab my cup and everything and practically Heisman the sumbitch to avoid it getting sprayed with his frigging toothpaste spit (FWIW, I see guys doing this all the time, but I’ve never seen a woman doing it, ever).
Props to them for taking care of their hygiene, but yeah that crap does not belong in the kitchen sink!
I think personal hygiene activities (including, yes, nail clipping, tooth brushing, combing, saliva disposing, and what not) should not be conducted in the office or the office toilet, do it at home.
Office kitchen, yes, another great location to observe people’s behaviors, haven’t seen any tooth brushing yet, but it drives me up the wall when people clean their biandang containers and leave all the leftovers in the sieve of the sink. The sieve has like this very gross “forest of disgustables” at it’s bottom, and I am only one of a selected brave (stupid) group of people who picks it up and disposes the leftovers in the garbage bucket which is only about 10 steps away. I don’t like selfish behavior.
Uh, yeah, I guess I should be grateful people don’t poop on the floor too, but that’s a pretty low baseline.
Listen, there’s this serious prevailing attitude among middle-class Taipei people that they aren’t responsible for their own mess.
Definitely with you about the drain basket, whether it’s their bien tang leavings or shitty dirt tea leaves, they’ll just walk away.
Like walking out of the Family Mart, unwrapping their smokes and just dropping the cellophane and foil where they stand.
The first time my kid ever slept away, she was in about Grade 4 or so, and one of the newspapers had a weekend Writing Camp.
And she came home astounded at the way that all the other kids would just drop their bien tang boxes and chopsticks wherever they were eating and just walk away, when there was a big trash can right there.
Yeah lots of selfishness around. I often wonder what the parents or grandparents–or teachers!–are doing. I suspect this behavior just looks normal to them.
Guy
At my previous job some women would step out of the pantry where they were brushing their teeth so they could watch the television next to the elevators. I did mention to them that the CEO’s visitors getting off the elevators have to walk by you while you are brushing your teeth. They did not care.
Today I saw a woman holding an about one year old baby in one hand and a carton of eggs in the other. She walked to her car and opened the back seat door. I thought she was going to put the baby in a car safety baby seat…but no…she very carefully placed the eggs on the back seat adjusting them before closing the door. Then she got in the driver’s seat still holding the baby with one arm and drove off.