Our apartment and the school are both located on the Brown MRT line (there are five different lines with at least two more being built), and as luck would have it, one of the two MRT stations with shuttles to Miramar was at the end of the brown line (about four stops away from the school). What I didn't know was that the shuttle bus only comes by less than once an hour to that station on weekdays. They had a schedule posted with the exact times that it was supposed to arrive. I looked at my watch and found we had a fifteen minute wait. Not too bad. If it had been any longer, I would have just abandoned our quest for the day.
I had no expectations, but in a city with millions of people, I expected some other shoppers. It was completely dead. The salespeople probably outnumbered the customers by five to one. At least. It was a very upscale mall, the kind where I just let Michael play on the escalators as it's all I can afford to do. Well, I did buy him some expensive gummy bears, and we did have some ice cream. I still can't believe how many treats he's getting here.
Then we found the rooftop ferris wheel. There were five people in line. I wasn't sure if I bought a ticket at the front of the line, or somewhere else, but the line didn't seem to be going anywhere even though the wheel was turning. Maybe they were doing a checkup round?
At this point Michael started dancing around, which means he needs to go to the bathroom, so we ran back inside and found the nearest washrooms, then went back. Afterwards, I realize that I'm supposed to buy tickets at the movie theatre box office, so we buy my ticket ($5 Cdn, Michael was free) and stand in line again. Then I figure out why the line isn't going anywhere. There are two separate line-ups. One for the "transparent" carriage (which had a clear floor, seats and sides), and one for the regular carriages where you just look out the windows). I think there was only one transparent carriage, so those people were waiting ten minutes (the length of time it took to go all the way around) times the number of people in front of them. I got out of that line and went to the other line. Well, it wasn't really a line as there were no people in it. The guy in charge just ushered us into the next carriage and we were on our way.
Michael enjoyed it, but then half way through, he started pouting. I asked him what was wrong, and he said that he wanted me to take a picture of him with a sad face. So here it is. You can see Taipei 101 in the background, and the reason why the ferris wheel isn't on the ground. With so many highrises around, you wouldn't be able to see anything.
Then he started doing his silly fake laugh and told me to take a picture of that. The indulgent mother that I am readily clicked away. As you can see, there are plenty of windows. I don't know why anyone would wait forever in line to see the rooftop below their feet. But, as my husband tells me, I am far from being just anyone.
Miramar didn't even have a food court. Needless to say, I will not be returning there again until Robert and Jeremy come to visit and have their ferris wheel ride. Luckily, the shuttle bus was just about to arrive when we got down to the ground level again, so we hopped on and went home.
Before transferring onto the bus, we stopped at a pasta stand/restaurant to pick up some supper for later. I quickly chose the spicy chicken for me and the regular pasta and meat sauce for Mikey. Then as I looked more closely at the menu, I realized that everything seemed to be down twice, once under "Set Meal" (which was supposed to read "Entree" as the set meal cost an extra $2 Cdn) and once under "Grilled." Everything under "Grilled" cost an extra $0.75 Cdn. I had ordered my chicken from the "Grilled" side and Michael's spaghetti from the "Set Meal" side. I pondered and looked around for clues and finally figured out that grilled, actually meant baked. It's the same as the "set meal" (ie. entree), except they put cheese on top and melt it in the oven for a couple of minutes.
My mind now at ease, I proceeded to look around me and found a man sitting behind us just about to eat an apple. Now, I am pretty leary of buying apples here because they are fairly expensive and often soft. The kind of soft that happens when they are kept in temperatures that are too cold and then defrosted again. I like my apples crunchy. You can get crunchy apples here, I just don't know how to find them. Anyways, this man saw Michael staring at him, so he offers him the apple and Michael, of course, grabs it. Did I mention that these apples are also gigantic? So, Michael starts biting into this gigantic, soft apple, that I am sure has not been washed in any fashion, happy as can be. What am I supposed to do? Grab it out of his hand? So I smile, thank the man and was grateful that he didn't offer me one.
Michael only ate about an eighth of it and then decided he didn't like it after all, but by this time we had our supper in hand and were back at the bus stop, and out of sight, so I let him throw it out.
My spicy chicken pasta turned out to be rice, but it was still good. Who would have guessed that a pasta stand sold spicy spaghetti sauce with chicken on rice?
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