Late afternoon, after having dinner, I rode my bike to nearby Carefour Market. Wearing grey hoodie, jeans and an empty grocery bag in my back pocket.
Crossing an intersection to Carefour when the pedestrian crossing showing green.
From opposite direction, a dude, looks local, carrying a grocery bag as well, half running to opposite direction. I am going to Carefour, he is going from Carefour.
Somehow, after passing each other, from corner of my eye, I feel someone approaching me from behind. Lo and behold, the dude, making u-turn and half running to my direction.
I give a cold stare, and he stopped.
I look different direction, he comes again to my direction.
I stare again, all the while avoiding him. He seems trying to get to behind my bicycle.
I keep trying to put him in front of my eyes, few seconds, he walk/run away.
I enter Carefour, and notice he is inside. After buy some grocery, I go out and crossing the same pedestrian crossing.
Guess what, he approaches me from Carefour, with same movement, going to the back of my bicycle. Again staring at him, after a few seconds, he run/walk away again.
Going home, putting grocery, I change clothing and going back to Carefour, this time, walking. Cannot find him.
So weird.
The looks on his face as if, he got chip in his shoulder to approach me from behind. If that make sense, he looked either demented and/or troubled,
That sounds scary, I’m sorry you had to deal with that
It is possible he just forgot to buy something, or maybe was trying to work up the courage to say hello?
Either way, even though Taiwan is relatively safe, I hope you make an effort to stay in well lit areas (I have done this, and more, at times), I also carry my keys on a carabiner that fits comfortably on my knuckles, though fortunately it has never come to that.
The police here are, generally speaking, exceptional at dealing with exactly these situations (mentally il people in public). personally I would get the police to go talk to him before going home. the last thing you want is a truly crazy person knowing where you live.
I looked like local, so definitely not for saying hello.
The looks more on the troubled, less on the demented.
I was trying to get a recording, before going to cops.
But cannot see him after going back prepared with cellphone.
There was a video and news article in Japan a while back about losers who purposely seek out women in crowded train stations then forcibly bump into them, pretending it was an accident. Seems really deranged, but there are these kind of weird people out there who just seem to have a “chip on their shoulder” like that. Glad that you managed to get out of the weird situation without any trouble.
Maybe you angered him on earlier day (like having a near-miss with him on your bike), and ever since then, he remembered how your bike looked and held a grudge against you.
I used to ride a scooter and parked it at my apartment. One day, I found that my scooter’s gas tank had been emptied by someone who had picked the lock and drained the tank. Nobody else’s scooter was affected, so I guess someone must have had some kind of a grudge against me. Maybe I was parking in the wrong spot or making too much noise or something.
I never taught the kid but she would pick him up, never speak to me and every time I saw I’d tell my wife, that’s crazy Janet, and she laugh it off. Kid paid tuition on time.
I have seen on a few occasions obviously demented people waiting at bus stops. When a bus approaches they join other people who want to get on the bus and when it’s their turn to get on they turn around and go away, just to come back later and do it all over again. Mental doctors probably have a term for that kind of behavior. If he is one of those types, I wouldn’t worry too much. I am more worried about deranged people carrying razor blades or melon knifes out there to slice someone open.
I had a run-in with some guy talking to himself in an attempt to get my attention. I was at a crowded street corner in Taipei talking with my wife in a foreign language. From the corner of my eye, I could see that some unkempt guy dressed in stained, worn-out business clothing was listening to us and staring with an unsettling grin and wide-open eyes. He circled around us twice, with his hand up to his ear as if he were holding a mobile phone, and shouted into his make-believe phone some words, using our foreign language. My wife fell for the trick and said, “hey, that guy with the phone is speaking our language”, but I pointed out, “he isn’t even holding a mobile phone – he’s just talking to his hand.” All the while the guy continued to stare at us, waiting for a reaction which we didn’t give. Nothing beyond that happened, but it felt weird nonetheless.
If he wanted to talk to us, that would have been fine, and he could have just said something, but the whole schtick with the make-believe mobile phone, talking to his hand, and his unsettling grin and wide eyes, watching for our reaction, made me less than eager to interact with him.
How do people like that survive, I wonder. It’s not like it’s easy to make a living if you are so far beyond repair. But they manage to find their way home, get the calories they need, etc.
