A few months after I started learning Chinese, I went to the store to buy the thing pictured above. I remember speaking with the clerk in chinese about this product. It wasn't just the normal chinese I had picked up from my at the time seven years in Taiwan, but rather using the chinese I had been learning over those first few months. It was the first time I was actually proud of my progression in the language.
I also remember this experience because the clerk and I spoke about another product. The impressive thing is that she went out of her way to point out a very small mostly unknown fact that would only be of useful to me. While I already knew this fact, this was a level of customer service which I had only experienced in Taiwan two other times. She'll definitely be invited to work in my store/company if I ever start one here. Interesting how all three of them at the time were under 25 years old. Maybe it's just because they were young enough to not yet be beaten down by a lifetime in customer service.
As for what this is, it's a small addition to the controller for the Wii, which makes it more accurate and is required for a few of it's newer games. I bought it because at the time Chinese New Year was coming up. This holiday is celebrated at the end/beginning of the chinese lunar calender, and is essentially a week off where everything is closed and everybody must spend time with their family. There are even rules on which family members you go to see on which day. normally you eat big meals and play mahjong which is most like a gin/rummy type card game but played with small tiles instead of playing cards. It is not at all like the matching tile game that most of you probably played once or twice on your smart phone, but it does use those same tiles.
Anyway I figured since all my friends/tutors would be busy with their family, and the restaurants would be closed, I figured I'd spend the week playing video games and eating stored up junk food. Basically a week of debauchery deserving of Saturnalia itself, but after a few days I felt too guilty so I went back to studying Chinese and spent the rest of the week eating carrots and apples.
