After deciding to get a breath of fresh air and maybe some tea with boba in it (which is really good by the way. Its got jelly balls and I like to chew it), Mike and I stepped out of the school to walk around the block. Immediately after exiting, we saw a Taiwanese man standing on the corner with a handful of pamphlets. In any city in the States, this activates a reflex to pretend like you are reading a sign on the opposite side of the street in order to avoid being guilted into taking an advertisement. In Taiwan however, while these birdcage-lining distributors are not hard to find, I don't have pretend these people don't exist. They see my skin and avoid me like the plague, not having the patience to try to explain to a foreigner about the incredible sale they are having at their store around the corner. Normally I walk by unscathed.
But not this guy. He saw me and Mike and smiled as he trotted up to us with two pamphlets in his outstretched arm.
"Do yoo wan Korean shoes?" He was obviously very excited to speak English to us, so I took the piece of paper hanging inches from my face and looked at it. For what? I don't know. I saw some numbers. "We Korean shoes," he insisted.
"Are they better than other kinds of shoes?" Mike asked. It was about that time that I noticed a number on the paper: 150 NTD, roughly $5 US.
"That's pretty cheap for shoes." I looked down at the man's shoes. "Are those Korean shoes?"
"No, no-"
"How can you try to sell us Korean shoes if you don't even wear them? That's not a good marketing strategy."
"Korean shoes!" He started moving his hand back and forth quickly in a scrubbing motion. Of course, only then did it all make sense.
"You want to clean our shoes?"
"Yes, yes! We korean shoes. Very cheap!" He even offered to korean my shoelaces and said he could lace them up exactly the way they are now. I tried to get a job weaving shoelaces, but no dice. We eventually told the man, "no thanks," we can korean our own shoes and walked away.
Moral of the story? Talk to strangers.
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2 comments:
i enjoyed this post.
i have finally turned on my other computer so i can post now. (it automatically signs me in)
hope you are having a grand time.
buy your plane ticket for my wedding soon~ only 90 something days to go!!!
After your previous post about quotes I can't believe you didn't site your boba line dude! You gotta give Feathers some recognition.
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