Living in the shoebox, a trip to hospital, and the new arrival

Well we have been in the new apartment for 3 weeks now. What looked like a sizeable enough space when completely empty, soon filled up.

The apartment is much smaller than what we are used to in Australia and there have been some teething problems. For the first week there were boxes everywhere, no furniture other than our beds, and one chair, and we were all a little touchy operating in this crowded environment.

We still have lots of things in boxes. One of the bedrooms is full of boxes and is basically a no-go zone… unless you really want something very badly and have some idea exactly which box it might be in. Even though we only brought about one third of our belongings from Australia, we still brought too much. If I had to do it again I would bring much less. I believe most of us in the west have too much stuff. Much of it clogs our life and becomes a hindrance to us.

I had a 20 foot container to bring our stuff from Australia, We pretty much filled it end to end, but only to about waist high for part of it and very low at the other end. I brought 2 pushbikes – a road bike and a mountain bike. They can be rather awkward to store in a 3 bedroom apartment. One bike might have been a better idea.

I noticed when we were first looking at the apartment that we were about 400 metres from the local telephone exchange building. This has meant that I have scored great internet throughput. I am getting 22.5Mb download and 2Mb upload. Internet access is important as I am now using Skype a lot to talk with business contacts as well as friends and family around the world. Also I have had a couple of small bouts of homesickness and I have been listening to Australian radio over the internet. I have also started experimenting with internet TV – I found a couple of good channels – but there is a ton of rubbish there too.

We now have a new lounge suite, refrigerator, washing machine, microwave and various other items to make life more comfortable. We are still waiting on the kitchen table which should be here next week. Furniture is very well priced compared with Australia, but they also have crazy over the top priced furniture as well if that is your cup of tea.

When we moved in we had no gas – so the first few days was all cold showers. Not a huge issue given the heat and humidity. There is a gas bottle on the balcony which we have to get someone to replace with a full one each time it runs out. I don’t know how long it will last but they can typically replace within 24 hours so it’s not a major problem. Our stove has 2 strong gas burners – these are great for cooking.

The government website for the Taipei Water Department says you can drink the water out of the tap – but all the locals say no way. We were boiling all the tap water before drinking it but this is rather tedious, and it also has a terrible taste to it. When I used it for coffee it made it taste like burnt plastic. For a couple of weeks I was buying 6 litre bottles of drinking water from the local supermarket. These were quite well priced at NT$45 (AU$1.55/US$1.40), but a little inconvenient carrying them on the motor scooter. (I am getting better at loading the scooter up. I can get quite a bit of shopping on it now.)

Rather than carry on with this kind of water trouble we lashed out and bought a high quality water filter that can do all kinds of fancy things. It normally sells for around NT$40,000, but Edwina haggled and got it down to NT$33,000 (AU$1160/US$1030). It gets installed by a plumber and allows you to have filtered drinkable water straight at the tap. The water flows through a series of filters and It removes all “bugs” and bad tastes. You can even program the PH of the water that you get out. Not sure how it does that but you can get high Ph water (alkaline) for drinking which my wife tells me is good for you and for washing fruit and vegies. You can also get low Ph water (acidic) which apparently is good for cleaning your feet if you have athletes foot. I have been sticking with good old Ph 7, and the water tastes fine now.

In amongst all the mayhem of moving in, unpacking, finding and ordering furniture we had the unexpected arrival of our new baby daughter who arrived 3 weeks early. My wife was booked into a hospital located close to her mum’s place which is about 1.5 hours drive from our apartment. When she went into labour at 4AM, I wasn’t prepared to risk having the baby on the side of the road if we didn’t get to that hospital in time. So I played it safe and we went to the military hospital that has a civilian section and is about 500 metres from our apartment. At around 4.45AM my wife got on my scooter with me and I drove her the short distance to the hospital. Five hours later our beautiful daughter arrived… Angelique. (pronounced On-gel-leak. But she is called Angel for short.) Her Chinese name is Bai-Wei (pronounced “buy-way”) which means white flower or Jasmine flower.

When I first arrived at the hospital with Edwina she was taken in to a labour waiting room. She was put on a bed and after and initial examination left to progress further with her labour. I was quite concerned with the cleanliness of that room – there was blood on the stirrups and on the toilet seat from the last patient. I insisted that they get someone to clean it up. Given my new business is about hygiene, I have a heightened awareness of bacteria, viruses, super bugs and all the microbial dangers that lurk in hospitals. So when Edwina was moved to her recovery ward after the birth I went into that room and sprayed it with our germ killing products.

That was really my only concern. No one at the hospital spoke English apart from the doctors, but all the nurses were very helpful the whole time. During the birth I was allowed into the delivery room and it was all over very quickly in the end. They made me wear a medical gown, hat and sleeves over my shoes. These items were made for midgets – not a big Aussie like me. The gown was more like a straight jacket and the sleeves only covered half of my shoes.

There were a few minor issues as she was quite small at birth and weighing in at just 2.2 Kgs so Angel was placed in a humicrib in the intensive care ward. She was incredibly small but always appeared to be strong and I never felt any real concern for her. Angel and Edwina were able to come home just 3 days after the birth. Since arriving back home Edwina has been keeping the milk up to her and Angel is growing rapidly. Both are well.