You know the drill. "I never update, but I did something exciting so here's what I did, what, you wanna fight about it?"

I had a very stressful 1 hour of work today, playing Eye Spy and Chutes and Ladders. I mean honestly... no human should have to play games, err, work, an entire hour each day. My new coworker Joanne had mentioned there is a curiously tall ferris wheel somewhere on the Wenhu subway line. I decided that was as good a reason as any to venture out, and friend April volunteered to come along.

I had planned to take the subway the whole way, because subways are awesome. But she had a better idea. We could go to Shilin, then take a bus on over, cutting the time by about 15 minutes and the cost by about $10. Seemed like a literal win win, so why not? We took the bus over, and it turns out this ferris wheel is on the roof of a big gorram shopping mall. We explored the overpriced stores for a bit (seriously, $50 US for a shirt? DIAF) and popped on up. I was excited to see the ferris wheel is not the only thing up here. They also have a life size Batman (awesome), a LEGO store and merry go round, as if you needed anything else in your life. LEGOs are pretty expensive here as well. I mean, they are in the states too. But even a basic, small set that should be $300 TWD is $700. I just feel that at this price you are depriving kids of LEGOs, which I believe is banned under the Geneva Conventions.

My UK student ID has again served me well as it saved me $50 on the ferris wheel. ALSO, April was able to use it to get me a student transportation card. That means now all subways and buses in the city are half(?) price to me. This is beyond amazing, considering I use public transit 4ish days a week.

Listen, I'm a student of life. It still counts.

So yeah. It's a really high ferris wheel. We waited on the clear cabin, because how often are you going to come out here? I also knew there was a restaurant nearby called the 5 Dime Driftwood Restaurant, which photos on the internet have showed me were crazy awesome. After a detour to the MRT to find our bearings, we walked the grueling two blocks or so. The photos on the internet or my phone do not do this place justice. It's kind of a mix of Native American, New Age, and China all rolled into one. We sat next to a lake with a canoe in it, filled with white koi fish who became my eternal friends when I threw a piece of food into the water. They pretty much never left the side of the table since. Also there were carvings of wooden boobs everywhere. But they made a great marinated chicken, and April's shrimp and noodles weren't half bad either.

Afterwards we stopped by Shilin Night Market, which I've written about before but never ceases to amaze. We went to a part I had never been to before, which had 18% more absurd T-Shirts than normal.

And now I'm having a beer while cobbling back together the pieces of my laptop. Mom sent me a cable to fix my screen, which is working, but the screen is on one side of the desk and the keyboard is on the other. So, progress?