What about my Christmas? Let me tell you about my Christmas.

From late morning to late afternoon, the K clan kids had lunch chez V with our cousins, their significant others, and baby. We feasted on Lawry's 2005 Turkey To-Go Package (which included cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes,and traditional turkey stuffing), a pumpkin pie, and a tiramisu cake. Let's not forget the After Eight mint chocolates that aren't sold here. After the Secret Santa exchange and some sleeping on the couch, it was off to the Sogo department store to walk around and get some free chopsticks.

Then I went down to the Taipei 101 area with A to walk around and to see a performance, whose poster said "Capoeira Taiwan" which intrigued me. As I road my scooter with A giving directions on the back, I made a left turn coming out of a street and immediately got pulled over. I decided to try my "speak English only" tactic to see if I could get away with it. As he pulled me over, I immediately started speaking in English... and he got mad! He pointed at my face and said loudly in Chinese "講中文! (Speak Chinese!)" I just looked at him blankly and shook my head. He pointed at himself and said "I am Chinese Police. 你講中文! (You, speak Chinese!)" But I was having none of that, as I looked at him shaking my head as my non-Chinese-speaking facade continued. He told me in Chinese that I committed a traffic violation because I made a left turn through double-solid yellow lines, and that he was going give me a ticket. Mind you, he was speaking far too quickly for someone who couldn't speak Chinese to understand. He asked A if she could speak Chinese, but she said nothing. He asked for my license, which I gave him after acting as if not knowing what he meant. He asked me "你是台灣人嗎? (Are you Taiwanese?)", and then answered his own question "喔, 不是. 是 O 開頭的. (Oh, no. [your ID number] starts with O.)" I asked him "So, what did I do wrong?" and he said "I English very little". As he was filling out my ticket, he asked me if I could understand Chinese, and I responded "小小. (small small)", which is grammatically incorrect. And he said "'一點點' 不是'小小' ('a little', not 'small small')". Anyway, he still gave me a 360nt ticket, and at the end of it (which was a very long it, with all the playing around I was doing), he told me "中文要多學一點. (Learn more Chinese)." So, as much fun as it was pretending not to speak Chinese, getting a ticket wasn't much fun at all. In fact, in hindsight, I would have been better off speaking Chinese and saying that I didn't see the double lines because there were so many cars, which was the truth; but I was too focused on making my lack of Chinese understanding look realistic. Anyway, you can't really go back once you start faking that you don't understand. Then you're a liar and you'll probably get another ticket. :P

Moving on... after a stop at Starbucks, we went to Warner Village where they had some street performers to entertain the crowds (and collect money, of course). The performance I went to see turned out to be by a group of street/hip hop dancers that I think I'd seen on TV before. And I saw one guy (Allan) doing a few Capoeira moves, so I asked him where he'd learnt. He told me that once a week, they have an instructor teach them and if I were interested, he could take me there. As we talked, I learned that the instructor was not only from the Capoeira School I trained with (Axe Capoeira) but was also someone I trained with, although I didn't care too much for the guy personally. Allan said he hasn't had much roda (the circle where two people play Capoeira) experience, so he wouldn't play with me, but he said I could freestyle if I wanted. After much internal debate, with willingness and nervousness battling it out, and with A's encouragement, I decided to do it. So, I had my minute of not-quite-fame showing off some Capoeira in front of crowd of Taiwanese. Glad I did it actually! I have Allan contact info, so I'll fire him off an email sometime to drop in on the Axe Capoeira Academy in Taipei.

So, that was my Christmas Day.