Coffee

So far I've been talking about many essentials of living in Taipei, now I'd like to share with you one mine, Coffee. To me Coffee is the only thing which gives me the energy to face the children everyday. (That and the tasty blueberry bagels they have in 7/11 and Family mart) Those little children have minds that go at 100 miles and hour, and the only method to keep up with that is Caffeine

So far I've been drinking the 7/11 café lattes since they're a lot cheaper than buying real coffee from a Coffee shop (for 25NT it's not a bad deal). The Coffee in Asia is also notoriously bad, and it seems normal to burn the milk.

The downside to the coffee drinking is I don't sleep well at night, and have 'What is there in your living room' and other kindergarten Hess songs, stuck in my head until three in the morning. To combat this I've been listening to Taiwanese TV shows. I also had what can be describe as a brilliant mind moment late one night when I suddenly that all the furniture in my apartment was wrong, and that it had to be statistically placed based on it's function.

So thanks to Coffee I can now face the Children, my Chinese listening has improved, and my apartment looks a lot better, but unfortunately I'm so exhausted by Friday that it takes every inch of will power not to strangle the children.

I discussed this with a fellow member of my training group the other day, who said that instead of Coffee he had been trying the Red Bull method with a local Taiwanese knock off. So anything that works for you and contains caffeine is probably the way to go.