Today, I was about to head out the door for language – and the emergency horn went off. So I checked w/Jackie over Yahoo messenger if he knew of anything going on and if so, is it ok to go to language. He said he knew of nothing, so I hit the street. As soon as I got on a major street – I thought, this is really weitd. All Busses were stopped on the side of the road, all cars & scooters and even bikes pulled over, all pedestrians stood around talking on the phone – no moving foot trafic. So I get my cell out, and called Jackie again, describing my observations, adding, there are also a few police on the streets, and an ambulance has gone by. So he inquires, and a local at the office tells him it is a drill – could last as long as an hour. Well, I’m thinking, I’ll just walk to languge class since it’s a little cooler any way; I should be able to make it in 10-15 min. Well as soon as I approach the first major cross street – I hear a policman blow his whistle and lots of people hanging around at both intersections. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize – I’m not going to be able to cross the stree to walk on to class. So I hang back from the crowd and asked a man nearby if he spoke English. He said, yes, a little, so I asked, “what is going on” ? He said it was a drill and should be over at 2:30 (this would make it a 30 minute drill, not an hour). so I’m thinking, I can wait 8 minutes. As we make small talk, a couple of more ambulances go down the street at top speed. Beleive me, that must be a first, because under normal circustances in the traffic, an ambulance probably can never make it over about 30 mph. At 2:30, the emergency horn sounded again and everything set in motion again. The man did share that it was just in Taipei, when I asked if this was going on all over the nation. He also told me that other than a brief announcement over the news, and in the paper, many may have not known about the drill. So here is an artile I found to help me understand.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/09/15/2003202967
Fran
freaky-weird