Sunday, July 12, 2009

Beer and Cats - Two of the finer pleasures in life


As everyone who knows me can attest, I am an alcoholic idiot who loathes Taiwan and its people, and I judge entire nations solely on the qualities of their beers. At least according to an anonymous commenter who I've determined is an expatriate Taiwanese living in Australia, and who has some serious issues vis a vis his homeland that he needs to deal with. Anyway, the photo at left above shows a bottle of Apple Hop アップルホップ Minamishinsyu Beer, from the Komagatake Brewery in Komagane 駒ヶ根, Nagano Prefecture 長野県 in Japan, which I purchased this afternoon from the lifesaving Capita'n supermarket on Chengde Road in Taichung 台中. The label says it's made with Fuji apples ふじリンゴ, but I can't detect much of an apple flavor. However, it does taste good, and with an alcohol content of 6.5%, leaves one with quite a pleasant feeling. After I'm done, as Taike in Oz suggests, I will be a terrible father, wake up my sleeping daughter and tell her how bad a place Taiwan is, just to give her an identity crisis when she gets older.

The black cat in the other picture is Happy. He will be two at the end of July (his birthday coincides with my wedding anniversary), and has been living with us for about 18 months now. I wanted to call him "Neko" 猫, but my wife, who found him online and brought him home, insisted on his present moniker, which comes from the Chinese words "hei" 黑 meaning "black", and "pi" 皮, which means "skin". I didn't really like the choice of name (though my suggestion wasn't much better, I admit), but I guess the last laugh is on me. Happy, it seems, will have nothing to do with my wife (or my daughter, though it's understandable why a cat would want to avoid a three and a half year-old child), and allows only me to come near him. I guess he knows something that certain anonymous hypocrites don't.

乾杯!

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