Taiwan Day Ten: More Bloody Shopping

At last this morning I was able to get something on my wish list: a hairwash at a salon down the road. At salons here you can request a hair wash and only that for something like $4. For 30 minutes a young woman will soap up your hair and give you a long scalp massage, take ages rinsing it, then make a fuss over drying and styling it. Even someone like me, with not much hair to work with, can enjoy the treatment. It’s very relaxing, and near the end, two women were working on styling my hair, which for today was spiked all over like a modest punk.
Jessica and I had brekkie at this nearby vegetarian noodle shop, which had plenty of Buddhist posters all around (most vegetarian food here is linked to Buddhism). Mama is pretty vegetarian, and eats here a lot. She still knows how to cook meat for the rest of us, though.
The parents took us out later to a roadside antique stall, where you never know what will be on sale, from the exquisite (a lovely chest of draws in ancient wood) to the utter shite (cheap plastic tchotches)
We had a last minute shopping excursion today, taking in Carrefour, where we bought a new water boiler (exactly the same as the one we’re replacing), and then downtown, where I bought tons of cheap, ex-rental DVDs for about a dollar each.
One of these was Stephen Chow’s “From Beijing with Love,” his parody/appropriation of James Bond. Jessica suggested we watch it when we got home, which we did, with only Mike and Ken really staying around to watch (and Jessica, of course). Mama was in and out of the kitchen, Lynn was sleeping.