Thursday 25 December 2008

Move It!


How to move:

First, You will need two jump ropes and enough broken Chinese to borrow a dolly (hand cart). Then, you need to get hyped. Real hyped. Drink some coffee, chug a red bull, chew some beetle nut, crack, speed, whatever is going to give you the vein pulsating burst you need to move a refrigerator down five flights of stairs with no one but your need-for-speed self to do it.

Now that your wide eyed and bushy tailed or drooling and muttering to yourself about something you found on the moon, drag the dolly up to the fifth floor. Put the refrigerator on it and tie them together with the jump ropes. Make sure the jump ropes are real tight so the fridge is secured to the dolly. You don't want a tumbling metal box to obliterate any unsuspecting neighbors walking up the stairs. Take a deep breath, forget about the riddle on the moon, and proceed down 5 floors one stair at a time. Exhaling while you move down each step helps. Once you get down to the bottom you might want to rest or just take whatever it is that happens to be your cure-all.

Walk the fridge to the subway station. Buy your ticket and go through the handicap turnstile. That's the only one big enough for a fridge to go through. Next, ride the subway for 13 stops or about 25 minutes. Make sure you sit on the fridge in the empty area of the last car. This way, your not obstructing passengers from pushing and shoving each other to fit on the subway. Sit back and observe some riders laugh and joke quietly about the foreigner sitting upon the refrigerator on the subway (called the MRT in Taipei).

As more people crowd into the subway, the smell of old farts and damp clothes folded and put away before they were dry start to permeate the small car. In a culture that looks down on DIY labor and moving on your own, especially by subway, as "low class" you ponder how it can be acceptable to smell like farts and cabbage. You might be "strange" for being a foreigner perceived as "more well-off" due to your white skin for using the subway to move, but at least you saved a lot of money in the process and reassured yourself that your worth a damn when it comes to doing what must be done; work.

Finally, you arrive at your stop. All that is left to be done is ride a series of elevators in the station that get you to your building, located right above the station, then ride your buildings elevator to the third apartment on the 12th floor. Unload the fridge from the dolly, put it in the right spot, plug it in. Congratulations, you finished moving into your new apartment located in downtown Taipei. Go out and buy some beers with the money you saved moving your self and go back to analyzing that riddle you found on the moon.

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