Diary of an Asian Kid

10 Dec 2010

December 10th, 2010, Friday

Today is our field trip to the Floral Exposition. Because I neglected to actively look for any group of my own, and no one invited me, I ended up on a group of 'leftovers': Eric Shi, Shaun Liu, Ben Zheng, and Mark Liang. Luckily, I get along pretty well except the last one (no comment). I do actually seem to have some luck, occasionally.

During the long walk from the G6 entrance to the Yuan-Shan exhibit area, I talked a lot with Eric (i.e., we were both abandoned by our best friends in the class, with mine being Debbie and his being Michael. And both for the same person: Martin. Isn't it hilarious? Not. The only difference is that I have friends in other classes, while Eric doesn't seem to. I really feel for him, the poor thing). Initially, he was going to spend the trip with all the form teachers, then decided that staying in our group wasn't so bad, after all (I am so touched. Somebody in this sodding class actually likes me, well, a bit, anyway).

We decided to go the maze first, where we spent around twenty minutes alternatively plodding after each other or avoiding other people from our class. Not too bad. Then, seeing as there was so much people everywhere, we decided to go the Zheng-Yan pavilion (forgot what it's called in English) first. After taking a good look at the queue, with was horrendous, we decided to go the souvenir shop. There wasn't anything that I wanted to buy, regretfully. We eventually had to go get into the, thankfully, fast-moving queue.

We got in after spending around twenty minutes queuing outside, during which I got out my Kindle to play with. Of course, the boys were fascinated by the device, and were even more so when I told them that it can access the Internet for free. I tried successfully to locate an online comic website at their request, but, unfortunately, the system did not support 'opening multiple tabs' or something. So it couldn't be done. I then remembered that Dad had downloaded a Chinese book by Jin-Yong, so I got it out for Shaun to read. He spent practically the rest of the day with his head buried inside the e-book.

The Zheng-Yan pavilion consisted of lots of 'scenes' with flowers, plants and the like. Of course, it was unbelievably crowded in there, but at least the ventilation was okay. The scenes were also really beautiful. I ended getting Eric to take photos on my camera (he'd forgotten to bring the memory card for his).

When we got out, some thirty minutes later, we made straight for the shops, not wanting to brave the crowds in the canteen yet. We visited a place with a few stalls inside. Shaun and I each bought a 'fleshy' plant. There was a stall of butterfly specimens that were absolutely beautiful: the glittering blue Morpho butterfly inside an airless transparent acrylic box. Ben was instantly entranced, and kept muttering about it all through lunch. Unfortunately, the butterflies' price mostly started at 1000NT.

I had a corn dog for lunch. The others mostly had minced meat rice. We couldn't find a spot anywhere in the canteen, so we ended up on a bridge in an outdoor exhibit, along with a bunch of students from Long-An (my elementary school!). We stayed up there for a while, listening to music/playing on an NDS (Eric)/reading on my Kindle (that was Shaun)/still musing about the butterflies (Ben). It turned out that he had brought enough money for the specimen. So, after asking him a few times if he really wanted that butterfly, we all accompanied Ben back to buy it. The clerk gave him 80% off instead of the regulated 90%, because, as he put it, 'you really seem to like it'. Well, that helped Ben save around a hundred dollars.

After that, we decided that the other exhibit which the school wanted us to see, the EcoARK, also known as the Pavilion of Fashion (it is made out of PET bottles), wasn't worth the even more horrible queue, so we went back over the pedestrian bridge to the "sea of flowers". I rather think that we managed to visit most of the souvenir stores; I bought a very nice bookmark (silver, with a black tassel) as well. Of course, after walking for such a long time, everyone's feet was aching. We took a break in one of the bamboo huts outside the maze, then decided to start back early.