Well there'll be other days

Last weekend I had gone out with a few friends to a pub called the Brass Monkey. Lots of fun. It is a sports bar that caters to westerners and had a huge pool table in the back. Everything was in English and all the staff spoke English. It was nice to go there for a little break from Taiwan.
Tony and I had been talking about going to a town called Ying-ge that is famous for pottery and ceramics. We decided that this weekend would be good. Saturday in fact.
So Tony and I both teach on Sat mornings and get done around noon. I figured I could get into Taipei by 1:30 and hopefully be on a train to Ying-ge by 2:30.
Wes and I meet up at 1:15 and get on the bus to Kunyang which is the first stop (or last depending on which direction you're heading in) on the blue MRT line. We meet up with Lauren and decide we need to eat lunch before we head out. Excellent. Lauren takes us to this little restaurant that serves Mediterranean food. It was quite tasty.
While we were eating there was a guy taking pictures of the food. As we were leaving I asked him what the pictures were for and he told me that the restaurant is updating some of its food and its website. Some of the pictures may also end up in a magazine. He did not tell me which magazine or what his name was. He was quite friendly though.

Now that we've eaten and are feeling pretty good we head to the MRT to find the train station. The train station is in the Taipei main station. Once we get there we have to figure out how to get tickets to where we are going. The lines for the tellers are pretty long. There are many ticket machines on the wall. We just have to figure out how to use them. After staring for a few minutes Lauren realizes that there is a big sign next to each machine in English. It's blue and kind of hard to miss if you're actually paying attention. der!
We finally get our tickets, head down to the platform and there is a train waiting, but we don't get on it because we're not sure if it's the one we want.
It was all clearly marked in Chinese. So Lauren, who is taking classes and is able to communicate fairly well, started asking questions. Turns out that train is the one we wanted and the next one going to where we want won't be here for an hour. Well shit. Okay, we can hang out for awhile so I call Tony, who's supposed to meet us there to update him on the situation. He informs me that all the shops and things we are going to do start closing at 6. Hmmmm. So if we go through with this we'll get there at about 5:30. Oh yeah, that'll be worthwhile.
So we decided to scrap that idea and went and got ice cream instead.