Another thing I like is going to see a movie at the Breeze Center here in Taipei. The Breeze Center is a somewhat high-end shopping mall on Fuxing Road. There is really nothing in the mall itself that I would ever want to buy. Most malls in Taipei are like that. If you gave me ten thousand US dollars and sent me into one of the malls here, I’d probably come back out two hours later with nine thousand nine hundred and ninety seven dollars. I’d have spent three bucks on a cappuccino and nothing else. I simply don’t need jewelry, perfume, designer handbags, and designer clothes, which is pretty much all that is sold in the malls.

However, there are three things in these malls that I love, and it is a combination of these three things that make going to the Breeze Center such a pleasure. The first is the Ambassador Breeze theater. The theater is up on the seventh floor and is easy to get to by one of the three elevators near the Fuxing Road entrance to the mall. Some lovely young women are usually stationed there to guide people to the elevators and generally be ambassadors for the mall.

To be honest, the theater is a pretty standard theater for Taipei, but that’s no bad thing. It’s easy to buy a ticket and they have assigned seating, which I prefer. I rarely sit in the seat that is assigned to me, though. The assigned seats are usually in the center block of the theater and they seat people right beside each other. My assigned seat is usually jammed in with a bunch of other people even when much of the rest of the theater is empty. The great thing is that few other people mind sitting so close together and they all want to sit there. So all the other people in the theater sit in a tight block in the middle rows toward the back, and the rest of the theater is empty. I grab a seat nearer the front or on the left or right. I can relax and not have to worry about people sitting beside me, in front of me, behind me, or anywhere near me.

It’s a modern theater, and the sound and picture are excellent. There is one theater in particular that is their premier digital theater. The picture and sound are noticeably better in that theater, and I try to pick a movie playing there. Finally, there are huge and clean bathrooms right there on that floor – always a good thing when you are going to be sitting in the dark and enjoying a movie for two plus hours.

The second thing I love at these malls is underground parking. I drive a scooter, and it can be a challenge to find a place to park it. I’d probably drive it a lot more places at night and on the weekend inside Taipei if I could be confident that there was parking there waiting for me. At the Breeze Center, however, it is a breeze and I’ve become a master at the system.

I usually go to the Breeze Center directly after I finish work at 5:45. Depending on the day of the week and the weather, that can be either difficult or deadly dangerous. Last night, it was just difficult, and that worked very much in my favor. The movie I wanted to see was Moneyball and there was a showing at 6:00 p.m. and another at 8:30 p.m. I didn’t think I could make it in time for the 6:00 p.m. showing, but I thought I’d give it a shot and right from the start things went in my favor.

I have to cross Bade Road to get to my scooter, and I just happened to get there when the lights changed to green. That saved me about two and a half minutes. I nearly always face a red light at that corner, so I was pretty lucky. I also managed to hit a green light at the corner of Dunhwa and Bade. That almost never happens. I don’t know what it is about my routine, but I always hit a red light there. This time, I caught just the tail end of a green, and I made my two-point turn in seconds when it normally takes a solid four to five minutes. (You can’t generally turn left in Taipei on a scooter. You have to make a two-point turn – which means waiting for two traffic lights.)

Traffic was surprisingly light, and I made it down to Civic Boulevard in no time and I got a green light there, too. I made the turn easily and before I even realized it, I was at the parking garage for the Breeze Center. The main entrance is, of course, for cars, but just past it down a narrow lane is a tiny concrete tunnel for scooters. A big sign at the top tells you how many parking spots are free (there are always free spots), and you drive down that narrow, twisting tunnel until you reach an automated gate. Push the yellow button and a card with a magnetic strip pops out and the arm goes up.

I guess it doesn’t take much to make me happy, because I love driving down that tunnel and parking my scooter down there. It feels like an amusement park game. Driving along the tunnel is fun in a roller-coaster kind of way. Then driving underground up and down the narrow passageways amongst the hundreds of other scooters looking for an open slot is fun.

The first time I did all this it was a bit more of a challenge, particularly figuring out how one pays. The gate was completely automated, and all I got when I entered was that card with the magnetic strip. I saw no people around and no counters or booths where one would pay to exit. After much wandering around on different levels and watching other people, I discovered that on each floor of the parking garage (except for the scooter level) there were big yellow machines that looked like vending machines. You simply inserted your card with the magnetic strip, and the machine told you how much you had to pay. It’s in the range of NT$10/hour, I think. I’m one of these guys who makes a point of having change in his pocket for just such occasions, and I popped in my coins. The machine spit my card back out, and I assume it had adjusted the magnetic strip to say that I had paid. To leave the underground parking area, you drive up to the gate and insert your card into a slot. The machine reads it and when it sees that you have paid, it raises the arm and you can drive up the tunnel to the surface.

Why is this so much fun for me? Part of it is that I like systems and order. I like knowing exactly how things work and being able to drive somewhere and not having to worry about parking when I get there. The steps of the process are kind of fun, too. Like I said, it’s similar to playing a game – you do the right thing and the system lets you progress. The automatic payment machine makes a lot of satisfying clicking and whirring and buzzing sounds as it processes your payment and issues a receipt. Then it’s fun to reemerge back into the outside world. Perhaps I imagine this is how rich people feel. I associate underground parking with rich people, like those in my office building who simply drive their car directly into the underground parking and then get on the elevator directly from the parking garage. They get to stay warm and dry year round and avoid the crowds in the lobby.

The final thing that makes my trips to the Breeze Center such a pleasure is the food court. Food courts in the malls in Canada are a horror story by comparison. They really can’t even be compared. They barely serve food at the best of them. The food courts in the malls in Taiwan are wonderful. They feel to me like restaurants more than food courts. The food court at the Breeze Center has fifteen to twenty different restaurants serving a wide variety of food. Most have photographs or even plastic models of all the dishes, so it is easy to decide what you want. Ordering is as easy as pointing. You do get your meal on a tray, but that’s about the only thing the experience has in common with eating at a food court in Canada. In Taiwan, the plates and bowls are real and the cutlery and chopsticks are real. The food is presented well, and, in my opinion, delicious. Meals range from NT$120 to NT$180, about four to five dollars. For that, what you get is incredible – a full meal with soup, fresh vegetables, plus the entrée whatever it is. In Canada, you’d be lucky to get a coffee and a muffin for that much.

Three things that add up to a pretty good evening after work.

 

Tags: Breeze Center, Fuxing Road, NT, scooter, Taipei, Underground Scooter Parking