Lee got back last night from Bangkok and brought with him the cold I seem to have passed along. My version never got bad, just a croaky voice and low energy. Lee's is a bit worse so we asked for advice on finding cold medicine from Daisy, the school's secretary. You know the type - when she went to Taipei for a couple days to drop her daughter off at college I figured the school would have to shut down until her return. It turns out the school can run without her, but it was a surprise to pretty much everyone.

So Daisy is the go-to person for virtually every question, including the location of the closest pharmacy. When we arrived we asked the first clerk if he spoke English and he immediately went off the find the designated English speaker who fitted Lee out with three boxes of drugs - cough suppressant, nasal decongestant, and a sleep aid. He's now toddled off to bed at 7:30 pm and will hopefully wake up refreshed and recovered.

But before he drugged himself up we headed out to dinner at our now-favorite restaurant:

It's a hotpot buffet. For NT$400 (about US$13) you get all-you-can-eat choices of beef, pork, seafood and veggies. (Forgive me if this sounds familiar. I went there last week with some friends while Lee was gone. I enjoyed it so much I wanted him to try it too.)

Here' the spread after our first trip through the buffet line:

The tiny little quail's egg was especially good, along with the pork dumplings and squid.

The restaurant is about 4 blocks from us and I took a picture of a familiar sight along the way: Cranes!

They are everywhere. This section of Kaohsiung is apparently one of the more recently popular places to live and they are putting up apartment high-rises as fast as they can. I'm a little worried that the empty lot right outside our balcony has been earmarked for construction. A fence was installed during the summer and every now and then a truck will park on the grass and someone will poke around for awhile. 

I am not interested in living next to the kind of construction I've seen in the neighborhood. I may have to convince Lee of the need to move, however. He likes the fact that we've gotten to know where everything is nearby. I loves this location and really like the apartment complex but we'll see.