woohoo! made it to taiwan in one piece!

... for which really Eva Air should get the credit, not me, but still I feel bizarrely proud of myself.
The flight started off with a very unfortunate bang (on the head) - an elderly lady was trying to climb up to put stuff in the overhead bin, lost her balance & fell down and backwards, whacking herself on the head on the metal armrest of the seat across the gangway. She didn't actually lose consciousness, but it was not a good sign that she didn't say anything other than ohhhhhhhhhhhh and then start throwing up, so the paramedics arrived in short order and whisked her off the plane right before takeoff. Not that this is anything to do with me, but it was one of those situations where you realize just how entirely useless doctors are with medical situations out in the field: she fell practically right in front of me, and the sum total of my contribution to the whole thing was to say, oh my god, ma'am are you OK? before she was surrounded by five jillion stewardesses talking high-speed Chinese (I didn't, to be honest, feel I needed to be more aggressive about intervening, because they lay her down without moving her neck and then said chinese chinese chinese chinese chinese 911 chinese chinese chinese chinese paramedics, which is pretty much what needed to happen, but still.) I hope she's OK.
Flight to Taipei long boring long boring long boring eyeballs scratchy nose dry tired stiff, remarkable mainly for truly horrible food - I am usually vegetarian for airline purposes, and sometimes it really pays off, but sometimes, like this time, it, er, doesn't. My dinner was, I am not kidding, five different scoops of gelatinous goo, in varying subtle shades of grey: the entree was yellowy-grey, the rice was off-white (that's how I knew it was rice), the vegetables were just grey, and the pudding was purple grey (I think there might have been beans involved).
But hooray, here I am in Taipei airport. Highlights so far include the orchid garden inside the airport (how cool is that? will post photos later), the kids' play area that looks like someone vomited Hello Kitty all over five hundred square feet of space, the fact that all the dutyfree shop staff (not just food service people, but the people who sell overpriced luggage sets and ipod chargers) are wearing face masks - super sinister, as if there is an alien virus running rampant and only the duty free shop staff are going to survive the coming plague - and an exhibition of industrial design thingies intended to encourage people to save money. My favourite is the troche to help combat the desire to go shopping. it contains lemon verbena. i don't know if it works or not.
I am also very excited about the fact that the computers in the little internet connectivity station have Chinese character keyboards! I am using mon petit netbook maintenant, but I'm going to have to get a closer look at the keyboards of the other computers, because that's just flipping cool. Also, Google came up in Chinese when I first logged on. crazy, man.