Clever Taipei Civil Affairs Bureau officials find a way to attend wedding banquets on the clock, under the guise of the city’s “Everybody Show Up On Time Campaign” [全民守時運動].

Will our tireless civil servants bring red envelopes for the happy couple? Will they sit through the PowerPoint presentation on how the lovers met? Will they join in the traditional conclusion of a banquet: the undignified scramble to snatch leftovers away in doggy bags? Will they avail themselves of the candy and cigarettes the bride offers the departing guests?

I wish them luck in improving our punctuality, but honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is. To my mind, the most urgent problem at modern wedding banquets is the dismal Johnnie Walker-to-guest ratio.

The seating of the guests also leaves something to be desired. At the last banquet I attended, I sat with four couples— happily married, by all appearances—while all the single women were seated together at a table on the other side of the room. The ladies looked terribly lonely.

The previous three banquets, I sat with my boss. Not the sort of frisson that makes one lose track of the hours.

Solve these problems, however, and people will surely show up on time. At the least, they shan’t notice any delay in the start of the festivities.

Nice to see the Hakka held up as a model minority at the bottom of the article, though.

Mea culpa.

Badhummus strives for fairness and accuracy in every post. He therefore grieves that the previous post may have given the impression that only women in Taipei fear the sun. In his pulse-pounding race to Starbucks, he came across this gentleman:

Apologies. In every other regard, he feels that he has written the demonstrable truth:

“…all those umbrellas are being carried at my eye level…”

“…one umbrella takes up [the sidewalk's] entire breadth…”

Brollies

It’s an unusually clear and sunny day, the first in weeks. Every woman in Taipei with any vanity will have her umbrella out, to prevent the sun from turning her black and ugly. Looking out the window, my eyes meet the following scene:


Bad news for me, because all those umbrellas are being carried at my eye level. My lunchtime trip to Starbucks, normally a five-minute stroll, will today be a perilous fifteen-minute obstacle course.

I know from experience that I walk faster than most people. I also know that few bother to close their umbrellas even when the sidewalk is shaded by an office building. The sidewalk is so narrow—well, it isn’t really, but the abundance of parked scooters leaves little room for pedestrians—that one umbrella takes up its entire breadth. When one umbrella-bearing woman meets another coming from the opposite way, it is simply impossible for either to pass, bringing pedestrian traffic in both directions to a standstill.

Fleet of foot and desperate for caffeine, I could duck under their umbrellas, but this maneuver frequently startles the hell out of them and elicits disapproving gasps. I would arrive at Starbucks too sweaty and grouchy to enjoy my newspaper, and anyway by the time I get there, it will almost be time to head back.

There is another option, which is to walk in the street. This is slightly more dangerous, but much faster, and I can work on my tan. Here I go…