7-Eleven Doesn't Have Drugs

Chris woke up the next day with a nasty cold, so my first objective of the day was to find some cold medicine for him. No problem, I thought. There are 7-Elevens on practically every block in the city. I walked to the one across the street from the Hyatt, fully expecting that household brands like Tylenol and Advil would be readily available. If not, there were two other convenience stores next to the 7-Eleven (funny how they cluster like that), and surely one of them would have something recognizable, right?

Wrong. Can has none.

Turns out that convenience stores in Taiwan do not carry any medicine. My cousin An An later explained this to us. The explanation went something like this:

Typically, educated people here don't buy themselves random medicines from stores. Some people still do it, but they are mostly uneducated countryside hicks who don't know better. I mean, what if you choose the wrong medicine? We think it's much better to see a doctor to get medicine. But in America, your health care is too expensive, so I guess I understand why you have to do it.

Ouch. So us high and mighty Americans are living like Taiwan's poor and uneducated because our health care system is so inferior.

It's not so bad, I said, trying to defend our system. Most of the time, you know when you have a minor head cold, so why waste the time and money to see a doctor? Oh that's true, my cousin replied, trying to agree with me. But after a few seconds, he added, it's not like it takes much time or money to see a doctor here. You can just walk into any doctor's office to be checked (no appointment necessary) and it's practically free. They only pay $5-10 US dollars per paycheck into the health care system too.

On the other hand, in separate conversation with my cousin, Shuen Shuen, I found that people in Taiwan don't necessarily trust their doctors to do more advanced procedures. Shuen Shuen actually has the same chronic arm-dislocation problem that I had before my Bankart repair. (Hm, this may be evidence that my family has genetically weak rotator cuffs.) She asked me about the surgery, and concluded that it sounded good, but that she was afraid the doctors and hospitals in Taiwan would mess it up.

Anyways, we eventually went to a special drugstore and found a box of pills for Chris. We couldn't read anything on the box, except for one word in the ingredients list: "acetaminophen". Thank goodness for medical words not being translatable into Chinese! I also found some ibuprofen for my shoulder, although those were sold as individual pills and were quite expensive.

Burned Cheese, Italian Food in Taipei

Since Chris was sick and craving some western food, we stopped by an "Italian" restaurant for lunch, called Burned Cheese.

We ordered spaghetti with beef and tomato sauce, a dish where we thought we knew exactly what we would get.

Wrong for the second time of the day.

It was indeed spaghetti with beef and tomato sauce, as marketed, but with a distinctly Chinese taste. Or maybe this is how it's actually served in Italy and we Americans are eating the wrong stuff. Anyways the beef wasn't ground beef. Instead, it was chunks of tender beef like you might get in a beef stew. And the tomato sauce wasn't thick and full of spices and tomato paste. Instead it was thin and watery and full of diced tomatoes. Of course, it was still very good -- we were just surprised that even spaghetti with meat sauce in Taiwan was different.

For dessert, we ordered the "Burned Cheese" on the menu, which turned out to be like cheesecake, but less sweet:


Big Dinner at Fang's Restaurant

Every time I have visit Taiwan, my grandfather treats us to dinner at Fang's Restaurant.

Lots and lots of tasty dumplings here! The main difference on this visit was that Chris and I got to sit at the grownups table. I guess we count as grownup now that we're married. :-)