If you’re looking for me, you’ll find me in the walk-in freezer, because I blew it. I had a chance to take an amazing once in a year picture, but it didn’t dawn on me until it was too late. Boo, me!
The picture I wanted was the street with no cars on it, and the sidewalks with no people on it, all during the middle of the afternoon. The reason for this event is the yearly air raid drill. Yep Taiwan has an air raid drill, to practice preparedness for an air strike from China. What happens is the alarm will go off, and everybody has to rush inside, you can’t be on the streets. If you are driving a car, than you have to pull over to the side of the road, and just sit there until the drill is over (usually a half an hour).
To make sure this all happens, tons of police are dispersed around the city to make sure people stay off the street and that vehicles stop on the side of the road. The day and times are always told in advance, but naturally most people forget. Meaning I always hear stories from friends where they were in the middle of something important, but police wouldn’t let them out into the street until the drill was over. I myself have been pretty lucky in that I was usually either at work or at home, so I never was caught out. Although I remember last year I was outside and ducked into a car dealership, and they were nice enough to give me some tea and snacks while waiting for the air raid drill to be over. I’ve always thought about trying to do this with a fancy restaurant and see if they will give me some free food if I happen to come in during an air raid drill because I was forced to go inside.
But unfortunately I didn’t do it this year. This year I was inside studying. I was going to take the some pictures after I finished my current section in my textbook, but by the time I had finished, I had forgotten all about it. This is because now the alarm only sounds for a few minutes to signal the start of the drill, and then to signal the end of the drill. So after it stopped ringing, I forgot all about it. Although I must admit that this is better than my first air raid drill. Back then the alarm would sound the whole time. I remember being in the hostel and being a bit worried about what I should do, since I had no idea what that alarm was for. All I knew is that it was loud and kept sounding for a long time so it must be important. I was most worried that it meant there was a neighborhood fire and with buildings being so close together, it’s an alarm to let people know that the fire could spread. However since I could get out the window and climb down if I absolutely had to, I decided to just stay inside, mainly because it was also a thunderstorm and I didn’t have an umbrella. Which while a stupid idea if it was a fire, turned out to be a good idea because of what it actually was. I would have probably been even more freaked if I had walked outside and then a police office ran up to me and started yelling at me in Chinese. I probably would have thought some hugely horrible thing had happened and we were all going to die.
In the picture is one of the many speakers around the city which while used for the air raid drill sound, they are mostly used to broadcast important information. Which usually boils down to announcing that somebody parked their car in front of a shop or home and it needs to move.
