Smog returns to Taipei

On Saturday morning, the city woke up to a beautiful, sunny day, but the mountains in the north began to disappear from view around noon. It was as though a dark, grey film were hanging outside my window. The return of smog could mean only one thing: the mainland’s factories had resumed production.

Life in Taipei, in the meantime, has been carrying on as usual, with only barely noticeable adjustments for the majority of the populace. Besides the omnipresent facemasks, which are now mandatory at school and on public transport, as well as temperature checks at the entrances to many important public buildings, little has changed about the life of the city. I suppose people wash their hands more frequently and longer, and err on the side of avoiding public gatherings a more diligently than I remember, but that is all.

My trackpad has been annoying me lately, so I bought a mouse the other day. A few friends and I also went to a boardgame café on Friday, which was very fun.     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Southern Delhi and Other Bits and Pieces

Image
On my last day in Delhi, I managed to cross off the last few items on my sightseeing list. I began by packing my luggage, all the while congratulating myself on having remembered to ask the hotel to do my laundry in advance. That finished, I ordered an Uber to Akshardham, a massive Hindu temple east of the Yamuna River. The opening hours of the temple are not well advertised, and when I arrived by the front gate, I learned it was still closed. For a few minutes, I took pictures of the temple from afar, when suddenly an autorickshaw driver approached me. He reasoned with me that since the temple would not open until ten, I had better come with him and see other sights. I had to admit the soundness of his reasoning and gave him my next address.
Read more

India: Day 9 – Independence Day

Image
Tuesday the 15 th was Independence Day. I woke up in the morning to find a scorpion in the bathroom, whom I clobbered to death with a flip-flop. I figured that leaving it alone to go seek help might give it a chance to hide somewhere and threaten us later. I paid off my karmic debt in a few minutes by letting a trapped cicada out of the house. Having lodged itself between a shoe and the door, the insect zoomed off into the garden when I threw open the door and pushed the shoe out.
Read more

India: Days 5-8 – On a tea estate in Darjeeling

Image
I woke up a few minutes after four this morning as Sparsh began to rouse the house for our journey to the train station. Frantically but methodically, we washed ourselves and packed the last of our belongings before loading them into three cars and piling the fourteen-headed group inside them. The ride was smooth. Although I had been woken up a few times that night by the loudest thunder I had ever heard, the roads did not seem dangerously wet, and indeed, it was early enough in the morning that the lack of traffic added considerably to my feelings of safety.
Read more