A challenge of living abroad is that you never know what is going to be easy or difficult to find. A few months back I really needed a thimble.
"Why?"
Oh because it's hard to push a needle through jeans, and if you use your thumb it hurts a lot.
"Oh wow you can sew? You are a man of many talents!"
Why thank you, that is very kind of you.
"Wait, why do I get the feeling that you weren't the one doing the sewing."
Excuse me? I can say for sure that my jeans were being sewn in my house and it was difficult to push the needle through them.
"Wow Mr. English Grammer, using the the passive to hide the subject. I'm wise to your trick. So were YOU the one doing the sewing?"
Yes, I would like a sandwich.
"Huh?"
Simpsons reference.
"Ok, ok. I give up. Continue with your blog post"
You would think that a thimble is easy to find, but you'd be wrong. I went to all the usual places (supermarkets, megamarts, dollar stores, DIY shops) to find one, and no such luck. It got to the point where I questioned if Taiwan even has thimbles.
As with most things I can't find, I just dropped it and moved on with my life. Months later i happened across this shop that sells sewing supplies. Lo and behold they had not one, not two, but three types of thimbles. Unsurprisingly though, since this is probably the only store in the whole eastern hemisphere that sells thimbles, the price was high, so I walked out without one. Better to have a hurt thumb than a hurt wallet.
