Living in a different country it's interesting to see what things local people envy about your country, especially when those are things that you dislike. For example an Australian friend always says that he gets annoyed when people think kangaroos are so cute and cool, cause he says that they are essentially larger vermin who cause trouble everywhere.
An example for me is gardens. So many people in Taiwan, especially in Taipei, say to me "i want a garden." Which is very nice, gardens can be very beautiful, and people can get a nice feeling of tranquility from maintaining a garden. But to this day i can't hear the word "garden" without having a slight shudder.
My mind will flash back to when I was young and my mom would wake me up early every saturday morning to go to the flower store to get a list of things and then come back and toil in the garden. Her thinking was that early on saturday morning there aren't long lines, and the weather is cooler so it's not so hot when gardening. But I would have gladly traded five more hours of sleep, for standing in long lines and being out in the hot sun.
Despite my aversion to maintaining a garden, I decided to pop into the flower market to take a look. Yes the sign says "holiday" meaning the weekend, but it's open pretty much every day.
At first i was a bit underwhelmed, as each vendor seemed to have the same few things. However as I walked on i was surprised to see a wider variety of flowers and plants. I decided not to look at the prices as I'm sure it is sky high for plants that are practically free in America. The idea of paying so much for the punishment of gardening would probably have given me a headache.
The shame though, was that nobody was really buying anything. It was mostly just people taking a look. Which is to be expected because most people don't have any space for a garden. The best they can do are potted plants on the balcony, which some people do quite well. But even those people who live outside the city and have land, they will grow rice or vegetables, and not a garden. Which is understandable as any space for a garden is space that you are not making money from. Also the government has some pretty strict rules on farm land and what you can and can't do with it.
Oh and i saw a lady with a pet pig. It wasn't one of those small tiny pigs that people have as pets, it was a real normal size pig. It was also quite willful and the lady had to smack it on the bottom with a stick to get it to do what she wanted. I felt bad for the pig. Something so delicious should not be treated so poorly.
