Summer Vacation Day 23: Houses and Dinner

Hello, Tim!

Ah! Weekends, days of relaxation!

Although this Saturday is mingled with a tinge of the house hunt.

Spoiler alert (not that it matters much): Status of the rental house in search: Yet found.

7/21, Saturday

My mom and I set off in the morning and headed for Eliza’s house. Our appointments with the owners of the houses were in the afternoon and in the evening, but my mom visits her sister (which by context, is Eliza’s grandma) as frequent as possible because she likes being with family, even if sometimes all they do is chatting and nothing else. Some other time, mom would go over to help her sister with some chores, dye the hair of her sister, etc. They also go to the theater for traditional Taiwanese operas with their other sisters! They have close relationships, and Mom doesn’t usually feel lonely because of them.

Before going over to Eliza’s place, we made a detour to a nearby not-so-traditional traditional market. It’s called the Shih Dong Market. Ask Angela, Cathy, Selena or others who live near Tianmu about this place, and they would probably tell you the same thing: The market is for wealthy people. True, different from my mom and I, Eliza’s family is actually quite affluent, and they have most of their groceries bought over at the market. 

Different from normal traditional markets, Shih Dong is indoors, with a large and well-air-conditioned area. The vendors are comparably more hygiene, but it does share the traits with that of a traditional market you can see scattered all over the map of Taiwan: the big volume stall owners use to attract customers, and the vegetables for sale are unpackaged, spread across the table, waiting to be picked by customers.

My cousin came back from some work she was working on, and we headed out to have a look at the first item of the day (while at the same time we left Eliza at home to deal with her report). The first house we went to watch is one on a small hill, on the third floor of a five-story apartment. When we arrived, we saw a couple just leaving after taking a look at the house. The house itself is old, but I don’t say like I am implying it lacks furnishing. It was a cozy place with a view outside the window a small exquisite park and a miniature river. From the window of the study, you can see who is trekking up the hill and approaching. One problem is that the bed and sofa, the dining table and the wardrobe are not to be moved away, according to the owner, which means all our current furniture would be left for our current house owner. It might be convenient at first, without the need to move the large and bulky furniture we had bought before we moved into the house in Xindian, but what about the further future? What if one day we would have to move again? We would be left with no furniture left and would turn out to be a much bigger problem.

We didn’t readily push away the idea of living at the place, but the restrictions about the furniture is a hard problem to find a solution.

We had dinner at a Hongkong restaurant, which is the favorite cuisine of my aunt, another of my mother’s sister. We gathered to celebrate her birthday. Eliza’s mom just kept ordering food, claiming that the boys (i.e. me) were able to finish it. As delicious and as much as I also love Hongkong cuisine and snacks, I just don’t eat as much as I used to. Granted, I still take in more food than the others have, but the now me is no competitor to the me in the past who could finish five bowls of rice.

A table-full of food

Hand-made birthday cake by Eliza!!!

After dinner, we went to the next item, which is located nearer to Sophie’s new home (she and her brother are one of the main reasons we moved, after all). This house, located on the fifth floor, is even more furnished than the one we saw in the afternoon. The walls painted with a lighter shade of apple green, accompanied by the soft light gave the house a warm and welcoming feeling. A big panel of glass is set in the living room, outlooking the neighboring middle school’s track fields. It felt like it would have a nice ventilation system, but no. There is a long narrow hallway adjacent to the kitchen which is where the balcony is set and the living room. The hallway is too long for the wind to go through, so the indoors is also hot and sultry and a bit uncomfortable. This place also had the same problem we had in the item we saw in the afternoon, which is now dubbed (by me) ‘the dilemma of the furniture’.

Tomorrow Mom and my cousin will continue the house hunt, but not m, unfortunately,tely have the math tutoring to attend to, so it is not possible for me to join them…

This is all for today.