New Customs & More Random Musings

Why would I choose to publish my most recent post on a Monday morning in the US? Well, if the handful of you that regularly read this thing are anything like me, the first thing you do on Monday morning in the office is check the internets to make sure they are still functioning properly. And in this age of "social media", that most likely involves at least a cursory glance at Facebook. And where do I alert those of you that haven't figured out Blogger's reading list functionality? That's right, on Facebook. Here's to 5 minutes of procrastination before you begin your work day....

What is this, you might ask? Its one of two items I was greeted with around lunch time by one of my co-workers today. Apparently, new Taiwanese parents share gifts with friends/colleagues/co-workers when their newborns reach the one month mark. All the folks on our procurement team got a boxed lunch and what you see above.

The gift actually depends on the sex of the baby. So, I pose a question to you guys: what sex do you think my friend Ray's baby is? (This isn't a trick question people; but for those of you lacking intuition/imagination on this Monday morning, the answer is at the bottom of the post....)

Thanks Ray for the tasty lunch and inspiration to write this blog post!

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And once again, because I'm too lazy to put together an entire blog post on one single subject, here are a few more pictures and captions.....

A work colleague and I were headed back from lunch the other day when the subject of loose change came up. He pointed out that in the US, a penny is a pretty useless thing. As in, you can't even use one in a vending machine. Well, despite 1 NT being the rough equivalent of .03 cents, you can in fact use an NT dollar in vending machines. Gotta be honest, I think my friend has a point. Why bother minting a coin that can't even be used to buy a Coke?

OK, here's an easy question for you guys: What do you see pictured above?

If you answered a pint of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, you'd only be 50% correct. This, friends, is one ridiculously expensive pint of Haagen-daas vanilla ice cream. I dropped $330NT on this bad boy the other night. $11.40 US for a damn pint of ice cream. Talk about sticker shock. (For those of you that are into Where's Waldo?, yes, that is a bag of tortilla chips in the background. To be continued........)

Luckily, I was in a good mood, because I had seen this earlier......


...."want to touch the hiney!!!"

***Two red-dyed eggs. According to my co-workers, parent's of baby girls bring cake to work. Go figure!