Wild Taiwan

A lady of leisure writes about wildlife in Taiwan.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Taipei World Trade Centre

One of the things we like to do on weekends is to visit the Taipei world trade centre to see the trade shows. Today, two exhibits interest us. One was the kitchenware, renovation, furniture expo at hall 1 and the other the pets and aquarium show in hall 3.

Before we even went into hall 3, we were seeing all dogs of different breeds with their owners walking along the side of the Songzhi Road. I was wondering why were the dogs going to a pet show. Later then I figured out why.

Hall 1 exhibits appeared to be a miscellaneous, left over from previous furniture design exhibition last month. There were jewelleries, organic waste processor, leak-proof window manufacturer, earthquake proof home, floor polish, curtains, vacuum bags, one kitchenware and kitchen designer, water purifier, the machine that sucks and cleans humidity in the air and convert to drinking water etc, etc.

Both of us were most impressed with the organic waste processor. It looked just like a rubbish bin but it had to be connected to electricity at all times. Inside I guessed was a mixture of bacteria or fungus and basically it broke down whatever kitchen waste that was poured into the bin. It could treat fish, chicken, pork bones, vegetables, milk, etc. It could process rice within 4 hours and bones in just a few hours more. It also consumed very little electricity (used to run a slow moving rotor to turn the food waste and mix with the fungus), maximum cost per month on continuous run on the rotor was 130 NT but usually it would be less than that because the rotor need not run all the time in normal household use. When the food is processed, the rotor stopped turning. The processed waste, looking like wood chips, could be taken out and used as compost. The smell was like dried wood chips. Not at all unpleasant.

Within the same hall was the chinese food festival. As one of us was still fasting, we skipped that part all together.

After we were done with hall 1, we went over to hall 3. It was packed! With humans, dogs, a few cats, a few ferrets and a few sugar glider (short-headed possum) that the shop owner was trying to sell. Sugar glider see:
http://www.angelfire.com/mo2/animals1/kangaroo/sugarglider.html
We saw the golden retriever was shaved almost all throughout except the back leaving some slightly longer hair the shape of a heart. This only happens in Taiwan, I mused.

The pet owners were bringing their pets for free grooming sessions, training sessions, clothes and accessories fitting, pet food tasting etc. One dachshound's nails were being trimmed and either it moved or the groomer cut too deep, there was blood spewing out from its paw and it jerked hard and wanted to run away! It was a good thing that the mistress held on tight. Anyway, mistress and dog soon left after the groomer put some kind of absorbent granules on the bleeding toe to stop the bleeding. I so pity the poor animal.

We saw two St Bernards. The two owners were obviously pleased to know of each other's existence I supposed as they were eagerly chatting with each other while people formed a ring aroudn them and fire away with their cameras. Taiwanese seemed to love Labrador retriever, golden retriever, chiwawa, dachshound, Ainu, collie, huskies etc.

We had more fun outside the pet show exhibition than inside. We were like bird watchers, or rather dog watchers sitting by the wayside admiring or commenting the dog breeds and owners. Dogs would be dogs! We observed this wee little pomeranian which was so ambitious about marking territories. It lifted its back leg and wanted to pee on every available tree, bush, left over dog pee but it was dryer than the sahara. It just raised its leg and never gave up!

Some dog owners cleaned up after their pets but others didn't do a thorough job. We observed the size of the poop decreased with each passing wave of humanity. We pity the cleaner after this show with all the bags of or tissue covered poop. The smell would challenge the patience of the stoic nose.