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Woops. I guess I wasn’t supposed to do that.

So, not only is it embarrassing to always need to ask for help reading the Chinese menus we are handed at restaurants and overall not having any knowledge of normalcy in Taiwanese life, I make things worse. So, we went out to eat at this Japanese restaurant and we were filling out the menu (at many of the smaller restaurants, you order by filling out a piece of paper).  Since we made an error on one, we got another one and I decided to keep the other sheet so that I could later look up the words to figure out the other half of the menu that we couldn’t read. Little did I know that was a big no-no.

Afterwards, when one of the waiters brought out one of our dishes, we were confused as to who had ordered it so I took my menu out of my purse to look up the name. Immediately, the waiter said (in translation), “Sorry, can I have the menu back?” I was taken aback; I had a strange feeling of as if I had stolen something! He continued, “Each of the menus are numbered.  My boss needs them.” Jessica: 0. Restaurants: 1.

Sorry, can I have the menu back?

That same day, we went to my favorite coffee place here in Yilan, KOI Coffee.  It’s actually a franchise from Singapore and there are a total of three branches in Taiwan.  Two are in Taizhong and one is in middle-of-nowhere Yilan.  Why they chose to place it in Yilan, I’ll never know.  But, I’m glad they did. Anyway, one of our favorite set of drinks are iced coffee, chocolate, milk tea, or latte with a delicious scoop of ice cream.  The ice cream slowly melts as you drink and you can break it up for little pieces of creamy vanilla bits of ice cream with chocolate chunks.  So, we always joked that it’d be great to just order the ice cream because it’s so delicious.

Being the Americans we are, decided that we should at least try and ask.  So, this time we went to KOI, after ordering our drinks, we asked the sales guy if we could order just ice cream.  He asked, “Is the ice cream good?” Of course, we answered that it was absolutely delicious.  But then he said, “Sorry, we have rules here. We can only serve what’s on the menu.  My boss can see me. (points to the camera).”

Sorry, we have rules here. We can only serve what’s on the menu. My boss can see me.

Jessica: 0. Restaurants: 2. Gosh, I’m such a trouble-maker.