November 30, 2021
November 30th
Supermarket and Printers
It's a shame the weather is iffy as I don't have a class today. It was raining heavily early in the morning and the air was damp when I strolled over to 7-Eleven for a coffee and newspaper.
Once Debbie had gone to work at about 1:00, it looked alright outside, or at least it seemed dry, so I decided to venture out and see if I could find a printers, as having a calendar made is on the agenda before 2022 comes around.
Carrefour is the country's main supermarket and there's one just a couple of minutes' ride away and the mall at the front has various places to eat. There's what the Japanese call teppannyaki and this one gets my custom at least once a week. The Chinese names means something 'hot plate' and the food is cooked on a heated metal counter right in front of where customers sit. It's something health and safety officers in the UK would frown upon.
After that I ride to where I saw a printers on Google Maps. It's close to the charity shop. It's possible I will call in there. We'll see.
The sky is quite dark.
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Tepanyaki restaurants were fairly common in the States when we lived there. One was tried here in Dijon, but after a few years it died out. It’s something I miss, but not hugely. Your photo brings back fond memories though of nights out with friends and beer and tepanyaki being prepared by a knife wielding Japanese chef. Would that you could send along the smell!
Cheers,
Keith
2 years ago
According to Google Maps, on the black south of the charity shop is 'record shop' but this is hard for me to believe so I make a little detour to find out. sure enough it is as the images on Google show. It's huge, with who knows how many records in racks, ranging from Bach to Johnny Cash.
There's only me here today and it'll be surprising if the place survives a year. Maybe in Taipei there's a market for used vinyl, but Zhongli seems a bit parochial for this kind of enterprise. The prices are reasonable, with many priced at the equivalent of just a few US dollars.
The woman at the desk near the front ignores my presence and I leave after five minutes of browsing to ride to the printers place, which is one or two away minutes' ride away.
I skip going to the charity shop and explore some back streets instead.
The sign outside the small store says Printing Studio - in English - and it all looks pretty new, but inside it's chaotic, with cardboard boxes and whatever piled waist height, with a gap just wide enough to walk to the back, where I can see a twenty-something guy sat at a desk.
There's a big ginger cat curled up in a cardboard box on his desk and he says no when I ask if he can speak English, but he soon understands I want to have a calendar printed and rummages around for some samples. I don't want a small desk one, and the large ones he shows me are too big.
He uses his phone to translate and then shows me some prices. It seems pretty reasonable: printing 11 x A4-size ones would work out at NT$100 each... that's roughly US$3:00, so I get his business card and will ask Debbie to have a chat with him later about how to get some done.
Today's ride: 5 km (3 miles)
Total: 907 km (563 miles)
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