Learning the culture - pets

So, the vet at the National Taiwan University Veterinary Hospital left us free tickets to the Pet Expo at the Nangang Convention Center. Believing that it might be considered rude to not accept the gift, and that when we went to pick up the dog we would need to have an answer to "How did you like the show?", we accepted the tickets and on Sunday, we went to the show.

It was in a major convention center and covered about a third of the first floor. This is at the scale of something like the Javits Center. And it was packed. People brought their dogs, many off leash and abundantly in strollers.

The show also included sections for cats, fish, rabbits and, well we gave up half way through the dog section. I think one of my favorite signs was singing the praises of dog food that came from Vermont.

People in Taipei are serious about their pets, who were astonishingly well behaved. One little guy (no photo) off leash, waited patiently outside the bathroom for his mistress to return. As soon as she came out, he took off, looking back periodically to be certain he was going the right way. This was amidst a crowd of hundreds. She did pick him up to go up the escalator.

While most of the dogs were small, there were exceptions like these two guys.

Holly will certainly not be unusual as a small dog, but now that I think of it, I don't think we saw any other chihuahuas. 

Sorry, the box spring won't fit in the elevator

We moved in yesterday, which turned out to require a crane. Folks here are clearly quickly adaptable. They discovered our queen size box spring would not fit in the elevator. The seven story stairwell had too many too tight turns. The leader for this project was called, arrived within 1/2 an hour and had a crane on site in about another 20 minutes.

This is looking off the living room balcony. The orange square in the center is the crane. There's a motor scooter to the right for scale. The white oblong rectangle next to the building is the box spring.

What impressed me - besides the fact that they had unloaded and unpacked in less than 4 hours, was that someone could say, "I think we need a crane, I'll check with the boss." The boss shows up, looks around and orders a crane. Boss comes and fills us in and then helps unpack. Crane arrives 1/2 hour later and within minutes, box spring is in bedroom.

Trying to imagine how long that would take to organize in San Jose.

Not ready, but on our way.

Well, now we've gone and done it. Sold the house in San Jose, bought the house in Maine, put our USA stuff in storage in the new house and have a tenant moving in today.

The last two weeks have been so much about accepting the love and support of friends like Glen & Sarah and Joanne & Michael, strangers like the team at Land Rover of Monroeville, PA and our family of Kat, Grace, Keda and Raoul. I can't imagine how we could have done it without them.

The Hudkins jackass gene was definitely in play as I worked at Harker until 2 weeks ago, took a week to drive across the country and then took a week to move our lives into storage. Now after checking the dog in, we're waiting for our flight and wondering, "Are we really moving to Taiwan?"

We may not be ready, but we're jumping off the bridge again. So far we haven't hit the rocks!