Pushing my 2 year old on his stroller. At signal of 4 way intersection. Green walk signal turns on, but a steady stream of cars are turning right on green failing to yield to pedestrians (aka me and son).
Taiwanese guy on UBike comes up from behind, swerves quickly in front of me into the path of cars turning right. A car tries to push around him, but he slams his fist down on the hood of the BMW and yells something at the driver in Chinese.
He points to me and my son and thoroughly curses out the driver some more. Then motions for my son and me to pass safely through the crosswalk.
Quite surprisedâŚin a good way.
Thank you kind bicyclist for sticking your neck out to help us out.
I swear itâs 5% of the population here who screws things up for the rest. This place could use a lot more guys/gals like this one to stop these folks from ruining things for the rest.
Scooter drivers and especially cyclists seem to think that yielding to pedestrians is a job for cars, not them. A few days ago, me and this old man were going over a pedestrian crossing. Some little fuck on his scooter acted like we werenât there. I wasnât yielding, and carried on walking. He had to slam on brakes to avoid hitting me. I gave him my adoga death stare and he reciprocated with his taike death stare. I indicated that weâre on a crossing and he continued with the death stare. Then shit exploded. The old dude behind me went ballistic and started screaming at the punk. A whole lot of pie says later, we continued on our merry way. Thanks, old bloke!
Today I saw two and personally experienced one moment of awesomeness on a bus in about ten minutes:
An older lady was sitting in the all the way back of the bus and the seat next to her (next to the window) was open. A women and an elementary aged daughter make their way to the back. The mom looked visibly exhausted. The older lady reaches out her hand to help the daughter sit in her seat (because, we all know itâs easy for anyone to end up flying across the bus.) At the next stop, a bunch of people get off and the older lady moved over so the mom could sit with the daughter.
There was a different older women sitting in the priority seating who got up to quickly move to a seat in the back of the bus so that an even older woman could have the first seat. She said âććŻĺ§ĺ§!â when they did the whole âoh no no, you stay in your seatâ thing. I thought it was cute.
My personal experience: I had a huge box in my arms that wasnât heavy but obviously a pain to be trying to hold on to with one arm while getting out my easy card for getting off the bus. I tried to balance the box on the railing next to the card swipe thing and an old man sitting in the seat closest reached over and held on to the box and said in English to me âtake a rest, I got this until you get offâ. (and obviously there was no where that he could have gone with the box, so it was a clear gesture of âlet me help this person right nowâ)
I got off the bus feeling like humans in Taipei really can look out for total strangers sometimes.
Not wack, but rather heart-warming: I saw a guy walking a dog that had his rear legs amputated, but now had a harness with wheels. The dog seemed so happy and playful, it absolutely made my day seeing him.