Diary of an Asian Kid

8 Feb 2011

8 February 2011, Tuesday

Darn. Mom, Victor, and I have to go to the "International Book Expo" as volunteers for the Tzuchi pavilion. We've been there for two times before, and I've never really liked it, seeing as we mostly just end up standing around doing nothing there or trying to draw customers in (which I absolutely hate. Social interaction phobia, remember? This applies).

Even worse, the other kid volunteer who we're friendly with, a girl who's one grade below me, got sick and couldn't come today, so I have to make do with just Victor for company. Horrible.

But I can't back out, because Mom probably wouldn't allow it, and I'd feel all guilty inside. Even though we have to get up earlier than my usual time during holidays, and I've got an insane amount of homework to finish by Single Awareness Day. And we've got mocks the week right after that (it actually used to be on the second day of school, but the Ministry of Education decreed that mocks were to be held at least a few days after school starts. Phew. Though it doesn't affect us too much, just this once).

The expo was held at the Taiwan Trade Center, which doubles as Expo halls. There are three of them, and they're all next to the Taipei 101 (the second tallest building in the world, only recently surpassed by some tower in Dubai), in the busiest area of Taipei, the Xinyi area. It's quite similar to Singapore's Orchard Road, seeing as they both have tons of department stores and ridiculously expensive housing there (my district, the Da-An area, is actually second in the price of land, primarily because we have a lot of good schools, including the top university in the country, National Taiwan University, which is right outside our alley. The whole area is, or was, a residential area for the faculty. Like grandpa, who is a retired professor of botany).

We took the bus there. Being the rush hour, the bus was rather crowded, and half of the roads were dominated by motorcycles/scooters (they're one of the most favored private transportation here, mostly because they're much cheaper than cars).

Today's actually only the decoration day for the various stalls, as the Expo starts tomorrow. So, thankfully, we don't have to deal with any actual customers, and we might have something to do except stand around feeling uncomfortable.

Anyway, it still turned out to be beyond boring, and there were almost no chairs. Half of the time, Victor would sneak away and read on a plastic chair in the corner. I didn't blame him.

Halfway through the morning, we were already sick and tired of it all. Besides, there were almost sixty people present, so it wasn't like we had so much to do. Victor and I decided to get out of here at one thirty in the afternoon, because Mom said that this would probably end at around five.

Lunch was had at the third floor rest area, which was part of the Taiwan Trade Center. There were loads of little storefronts of different companies, I think, for foreign visitors to inspect, but there were very little people there and the overall effect was a little creepy.

Luckily, today's lunch was much better than last time's: fried noodles. I can take them, even though they are vegetarian. Did I mention that Mom became a vegetarian sometime last June? She still has to cook meat for the rest of us omnivores, though.

Victor and I managed to escape somewhat later than our planned time, at two. We each borrowed 500NT from Mom because I wanted to go the bookstore "Page One" (they have tons of English books) in the Taipei 101 mall to buy books, and Victor wanted to buy another Lego Hero Factory set (he's already got three, and I've got one, of the 2.0 series. They're much simpler than Bionicle, to our disappointment, but are already an improvement from the earlier Hero Factory sets) at the toy store there, so we both went to the mall. It's actually more like a department store, or a collection of high-end boutiques, which meant that most of the things there we could not even dream of buying.