Something I didn’t expect to see:
This morning as I drove along LinSen Nth Rd, I saw police attending to a dead guy, who was maybe just a teenager, slouched inside a phone booth. It looked as though he’d been shot at, as the booth glass had shattered around him.
There’s a news report I’ve just seen from Tainan…
A guy buys a NT$10 toy bow and arrow for his young son, appears to be about five. The bow and arrow breaks (of course) and puts the kid’s eye out. “What a stupid thing to buy your kid!” you might think. No ! This is Taiwan, and this news story has it all ! Rank stupidity, gullibility, the Taiwanese obliviousness to safety issues, incredible tight-arsedness, and China bashing.
Now get this. The father is blaming the company that made the bow and arrow (remember it cost NT$10) for making an “unsafe” bow and arrow. It turns out of course, the bow and arrow was made in China. Therefore it’s China’s fault that some idiot bought a bow and arrow for his child, which put the child’s eye out ! The dimwit father points to a safety sticker on the bow and arrow…
You can’t make this stuff up ! What’s next ?
“This Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun I bought for my five year old has put his eye out ! I blame Germany !”
“I bought this pointy stick with nails in it for my preschooler, and he’s gone and poked someone with it ! I blame…!”
About time to drag this puppy by the ears back to the fore.
Here’s a double whack for ya. Subject matter: How much can you carry on your scooter?
Runner Up: The guy with a 29’ Sony Trinitron zipping thru YongHo.
The Winner: The guy with not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 car tires strewn over the speedometer, the tail light, 1 between his legs and of course, 1 around the driver himself. Not so much whack as…pure genius?
I have always been amazed by the guys who can smoke, talk on their cell phone, chew betel nut, and pick their nose at the same time while driving a scooter.
Those guys rock!
Or having a scooter of KIDS on it with a dad, mom and 4 kids!! One in front of the rider, 2 in between the dad and mom, and one more on the Mom’s back. That is total of 6 people and the tires were FLAT!!!
Taiwanese, you gotta love them! 
for their creativity, bravness and stupidity…
Recently I’ve seen a white skateboarder literally whizzing on the street. Last time I saw him moving around cars and auto bikes like a salmon in a river. Very brave but dangerous. I really hope he has an insurance policy in Taiwan.
That could well be a strange American guy named Josh or something like it. I knew of him through a mutual acquaintance and exchanged a few words with him once on a bus, and then one evening a short time later (a year or so ago), I was watching the news on TV and there he was, featured in a little story about this weird adowa who skateboards through Taipei in the midst of the traffic. And as he was filmed skateboarding along Roosevelt Road, he was also calling out “flirtateously” to pretty xiaojie pedestrians that he passed, though he didn’t seem to get a very positive response from the ones they caught on film. I’m not sure if he’s dangerously deranged, drugged out of his mind, or what.
one day i saw a guy drinking a can of beer while driving his scooter… i know this isnt that whacked… but it jsut made me happy to not be dead when i saw it
I’ve been appalled by the number of times I’ve seen young kinds standing up in the car, with their heads and upper bodies out of the sun roofs, while the car is travelling down a busy road or highway. It is bad enough that many parents don’t strapped their kids in or keep them on their laps here. But, to allow then to do this is even worse.
Accidents happen in a split second. There is usually very little time to react. So there would be no time for them to pull their kids back in and strap 'em down. In fact, in many cases the kids would probably just go flying out the sunroof landing beside the road or in the path of another car.
I can just see these parents… they’d be the ones trying to sue the car manufacturers and the manufacturers of the sunroofs for not telling them how idiotic they are to do that.
The other bit of parent stupidity that gets me is the parents on scooters who wear a helmet, but don’t put one on their kid. Like Lil’ Wen-yu and Lil’ Pei-ying’s heads are harder than Mama or Baba, so they don’t need it.
What is equally ridiculous is the reverse, where they give helmets to the kids, but don’t wear one themselves. Their kids heads will be safe, but theirs can get slammed on the concrete. That way the kids can possibly end up with seriously injured parent. That should drastically improve their kids’ lives, making them… oh… so much better.
An even whacker thing was that I once got an email, protesting about those horrible japanese, not putting a safety warning in their instruction manual for Mitshubishi Savrin. The car had that problem that it closed the sunroof automatically, when you turned the engine off.
A local einstein allowed his son to stick his head out. When he turned off the engine, the son got stuck. He later complained, as the Japanese had only written that no body parts should be stuck out and that the sunroof would close automatically when turning off the engine. They had not a specific warning about getting the kids down before turning off the engine.
And they used that topic to pick on the Japanese? 
Kids sitting on a parents lap on the front seat while driving are normally called “missile kids” by me, as the missile will take off, when the car brakes.
What the hell happened to this thread. Why was it re-topic’d?
Missiles are kids on the backseat with no seat belts, kids on the parents’ lap in front are air-bags.
How much can you load on a scooter? Never enough!
I saw this guy driving passed Sung Shan station on Pateh Road. He had overloaded his scooter with recycling card board and plastic bags that he was sitting at the rear end, just above the tail light reaching way over the card board. He couldn’t even see his handlebar. His feet dangling besides the scooter.
And…I believe he wasn’t wearing a helmet, why should he anyway.
Scary, but hey it’s on Sunday morning, no cops around.
Recently saw two high school students on a bicycle - the one on back standing. Both were on cell phones at the time. As I came along side them I was marvelling at the ability of the one in front being able to drive his bicycle one handed with a passenger on board, talk on a cell phone and put on the brakes for the upcoming light only to discover that they were talking on their phones to each other! Communications technology at work!
saw the mitsubishi boys block a car and driver in the alley front and back. when the guy got out to see what was up, the mitsubishi boys pulled out samurai swords. naturally the blockee tried to jump back in his car and secure the door. he wasn’t fast enough. the mitsubishi boys proceeded to poke and jab and slash at him. somehow he managed to keep the door ajar only a few centimeters. after a minute or so of poking and jabbing at him the mitsubishi boys gave up and drove away. man, chungli is great.
So you live in Zhongli?
That place should be called the gangster capital of Taiwan. You never knows what might happen there.
Another wack thing from the Zhongli area:
The gangster boss drives around in a rolls royce. If you scratch that, you might want to get off the island… FAST.
i recently witnessed an old woman, riding a scooter, circa 1978 or so, back from the market loaded with vegetables and suchlike crap… unsurprisingly she was riding much too fast, but surprisingly using only one hand since she was holding a helmet about 20cm above her head so as to protect her frizzy grandma hair-do…
the ridiculous part was that she was doing it since she was riding past a group of “cops” ticketing people for not wearing helmets… apparently being underneath a helmet, whilst partially controlling your vehicle with only one hand satisfies the Taiwan police’s rigorous safety standards since they allowed her to weave dangerously past, before stopping the next helmetless scooter rider…
sheesh…
Wonderful!
That’s one shape of helmet Arai don’t make; one that accommodates (and does not flatten) a frizzy grandma hair-do. Something for the boffins to start work on maybe…
I saw an unfastened helmet catch the wind and fly off a scooter rider the other day. I was very happy to see that at least she fastened it when she put it back on. And that type of helmet probably doesn’t deteriorate after dropping; it was pretty useless when she bought it and roughly the same now.
When I finally do get a licence, I am gonna drive around helmetless. If a cop has the Yon Chi (courage) to try and communicate thru my Texas-like "Wo Ting Bu Dong"s and give me a 500NT fine, it’ll be fine with me.
No, no, it’s you that would need courage to look the possibility of serious brain injury or worse in the face.
You seem like a nice guy; I hope what you wrote above was just joking or bravado.