Merry me!

i can't resist. someone was asking his girlfriend to merry him by dancing with cheerleaders and mascots during the break. it was a little embarassing to see him dance, but his future wife probably thought it was sweet for him to humiliate himself for her. hope you can see the sign clearly.

Coors girls

One of the joys of Taiwanese baseball is cheap beer brought to you by pretty girls. Here, Michael and I pose with our beer girls, one of whom seems to have a halo. I abhor coors generally, but what the hell.

companeros

Note my ridiculous yellow noise makers and suave black shirt from Thailand (perfectly matching the black and yellow coloring of the victorious elephants). Seated next to me are Michael (teacher from New Jersey of cuban descent - gave me his family's recipe for black beans), Dan (from Canada), and his girlfriend Rebecca (from Taiwan).

bows

At the end of the game, the losing team (losers!) applauded and bowed to their fans to thank them for their support. I was sitting with the losers as my yellow team enjoyed their triumph.

my baseball lunch box

Because the fried tofu wasn't enough, I also ate this "lunch box" at the game. It's pai gu fan (pork cutlet rice). On the left you can see a yellow thing (pickled radish - tastes sweet) next to a hard boiled egg (brown because they cook it in some stock with spices). On the right are pieces of sea weed tied in knots with carrots (salty - not the best version of this I've had), next to gray bamboo shoots (they have an interesting vegetal flavor) and a kind of pickled cabbage in the back (salty, this stuff shows up a lot. you might remember it on my gua bao).

drums and flags

without seeing my video, it's hard to understand the cacophonous nature of sound at a taiwanese baseball game. I bought stupid plastic horns that can be used to bang together or yell into like a bull horn or make terrible trumpet sounds with. The taiko drum and the marching band drum combine with the plastic noise makers to make a tremendous racket, over which the distorted mike pumps crazy cheers in mandarin. These pics show one of the drummers and the flag waver for the brother elephants. By the way, in the color sympolism here, yellow can sometimes mean perverted, which just adds to my enjoyment of the "think yellow" signs.

baseball 2

so, I made it to another baseball game a couple of weekends ago. My team (brother elephants) playing the La New Bears (who i don't like). Unlike the last game, it was a pitchers battle - we won 2-1. This is a picture of me (looking awfully scruffy) eating fried tofu on a stick covered with pickled cabage. yum.