Les amies d'enfance

小時候的朋友

Yesterday, I woke up at the call from Aki, my childhood neighbor kid. He called to invite me out and meet at Taipei mainstation. I okayed his invitation and brought Vicky along with me. We left the house at 11:00 am and got to Taipei MS at about 11:30. I gave Aki a call and he told me he was waiting on the second floor of the station while having his lunch. I approached second floor, we could not recognize each other but finally met and sat down in a Taiwanese restaurant. They had already ordered their lunch, Aki, his aunt, and his baby girl Zhenghui. I extended my gesture by handing him a small gift, a Chinese Squabble for her little girl to play. His youngest sister arrived and joined us in a bit, while we were already having our drunken chicken and noodles. The food isn't good there :-( don't wanna eat there no more. We left the resto and walked down the stairs. Aki took his daughter to the toilet while we were having a small chat at the lobby and vicky went to buy some cold drinks. From the Station, we walked thru Shinkong Mitsukoshi, Nova, etc, and reached 2-28 park. We lazed around in the tidy hut near the fish pond. We caught up on our nostalgic childhoon. Aki is 4 years older than I. When we were kids, his father sold noodles next door. I really love his noodle, we called it "Jam mian." I can still see his dad, on a big table in front of an old wooden window, kneading the noodle mixture, and put it thru the cutter to make the thin noodle. On sunny day, we the kid, me, Aki, and Pophin would build small playhouse in our backyard under those banana trees. Aki's father will get angry that he didn't help the chores and didn't come home but stayed in our wooden house. He came one day and tore down our house, and that was the end of it. I also remember we went fishing, yeah always the three of us. We went to the backyard and dig into the earth to find worms. We brought a can of worms, a bamboo rod with the bait. I'm not good at fishing, but Aki is very good at this. We caught some "sapat" and "lele" fish and brought it back to his place. We used her mom's wok, fried the fish after we cut and salted it. It was the good old days. Aki has 3 siblings. His elder sister Asian is currently married and living in Yangmei, his younger bro, Pophin is working and living in Jakarta, and his youngest sister is living with his aunt.

Aki's mother passed away very young. I was 7 at that time, Aki was 11, and his little sister was only 2 years old. His father couldn't pull himself together. He sold his business and went to Jakarta. The kid's all went away with him. I only saw Aki again when I was in Junior high, he came back from Jakarta for a visit and brought the fashion of big cities to this little town. I've not seen him ever since he left that time, until yesterday.




From the 2-28 park, we walked further down to Katagelan road, joining the mass of the people protesting the "Truth" of A-Bian's assasination. We were there in the midst of the crowd taking some pictures. We were waving flags and wore stickers. At about 14:00 we bidded goodbye to eachother. Vicky and I waded thru the crowd and after 30 minutes, we finally got into the head office of KMT. We expected to have a glimpse of Lian Soong, but they took the back door to avoid the paparazzi. We went to the souvenir store and bought some brooches.

Taiwanese demo is way different than what I've seen in Jakarta. People are orderly and civilized, they turned the demonstration field into nightmarket. I saw people sellling souvenirs, flags, trumpet. I saw hawkers selling sossages big and small, and what would you know. I saw betelnut girls selling "Pinlang" on the spot too. This is real Taiwanese culture, the nightmarket culture.

We left the demo field and took MRT down to 市政府 [shizhengfu]. We arrived at about 5:30 and walked in the breezy afternoon to 春水堂 [chunshuitang] restaurant to have an afternoon tea. But instead I had a full meal, since I was exhausted walking all day. We ate and chatted in the restaurant, reading the Apple daily and sipping my 香片 [xiangpian]. Vicky went to work later and take the MRT going to 昆陽 [kunyang] direction, while I went back home going opposite direction.

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