Well, I thought that since Nathan turned 18-months-old on 8/5, it was time for us to tackle the almost 3-hour-long round-trip subway ride to visit the Taipei Zoo. Thankfully, I was correct about his ability to endure the trip happily & we had a fantastic time. I didn't get many photos, which is all right, I guess. We paid visits to the (1) Formosan black bears, (2) a group of monkeys whose exact name I am forgetting right now, (3) the white-handed gibbons (where there was an infant gibbon!), (4) some koalas, &, last but not least, (5) some elephants. Interestingly, Nathan was usually much more curious about water effects/elements in the enclosures of the animals we visited than the actual animals - he has a thing for waterfalls, fountains, & such. I wish he could have played in said water sources, as it was hot as hell outside! Summer in Taiwan is a serious matter. Nineties, nineties, & more nineties - humidity, humidity, & more humidity. Without very much cloud cover that day, we weren't visiting with the above animals for too long.
Oh, & before I let the McDonald's thread that's been started in this blog die, Nathan fell asleep on the subway just before we arrived at the Taipei Zoo Station - which gave me just enough time to consume a Chicken McNuggets Value Meal! His nap was cut-short just as I was beginning a crossword puzzle by a middle-aged, seemingly wealthy woman yelling/conversing at-length right next to us with some friends across an aisle at McDonald's. She had clearly seen that Nathan was sleeping, too. Grrr. Oh well. One cannot expect McDonald's to be a peaceful oasis of some kind & it was time for the zoo anyway.
In other news, Amy's uncle David is a very successful dentist in Taipei City, &, now that we are all card-carrying members of the Taiwan national health insurance program, it was time for this writer to pay Uncle David a visit for some dentistry. Well, after a routine cleaning & check-up, David suggested to me that one of my wisdom teeth, which had erupted & started to grow at an angle into a molar, needed removal. Apparently in Taiwan, this procedure can be done right at the dentist's office, whereas, if I'm not mistaken, wisdom tooth extractions in the U.S. are often done by oral surgeons. I might be wrong - it's happened before. Anyway, Uncle David told me that the procedure would take "5 to 10 minutes" & that I wouldn't need any pain medication afterwards - both of these reports contradicted all of the stories I had heard about wisdom tooth extraction, which, by the way, were all horror stories. Well, I'm happy to report that, a little over 72 hours after the procedure, I have a viable clot in my mouth where the tooth had been, I have had no pain, & I ate two meals of solid food today without incident! The man was right. Thank you, Uncle David!
Learn a bit more from the captions at http://picasaweb.google.com/jamie.parker/80807
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