The 7-Elevens in Taiwan are a necessity - not just a convenience

(The 7-Eleven that I used nearly eveyday in Taipei)

My wife and I recently spent a month in Taiwan. I gave some lectures at the University and helped to co-teach a course titled Biodiversity, Agriculture and Culture of Taiwan. We had never been to Taiwan before, so we were not completely sure what to expect about finding the basic necessities of life: coffee, beer, Twizzlers. Within hours of arriving, we were told not to worry about any of this — just go to any 7-Eleven convenience store.

We found the 7-Eleven nearest our hotel room, and that was not difficult. With nearly 5,000 stores in this small country, we came to realize that in the capital, Taipei, there must be a 7-Eleven every couple of blocks. In fact, several times we saw 7-Elevens on opposite corners of the same intersection. That’s right, two stores immediately across the street from one another. Was my mind deceiving me, was I seeing double, had I entered some parallel universe without knowing it? Could the coffee be better in one of the stores than in the other? Were Twizzlers the same price in each? Too many stores, not enough time!

Every morning, I literally skipped to OUR 7-Eleven, bought two American-style coffees (which I learned to order in Mandarin), a couple of hard-boiled eggs that were prepared in a bath of salty tea water (delicious) and, voila, breakfast was ready. After a while, the clerks recognized me (not difficult to remember a white-haired gringo in a Taiwanese convenience store), so they began drawing my coffee before I even placed my order.

But these “convenience” stores, which are spotless, attractive, and nicely lit, offer much more than my necessities of life. You can take your dirty laundry to a 7-Eleven in Taiwan, they send it out, and you return to pick it up. You can order items from Amazon.com and have them delivered to your local 7-Eleven, where you retrieve them. This apparently saves the delivery person from trying to locate your apartment among the sea of apartments in Taipei, and from solving the problem of where to leave the item when you are not at home. You can pay traffic tickets there and, believe it or not, you can pay your federal income tax there if it is not above a certain amount. These stores are also a social gathering place in the evening; all seats are taken and it is standing room only after dark. What more they offer, I’m not sure. Maybe you can find a wife or husband through the place rather than spending time with an online matchmaking service. The possibilities are limitless.  And did I mention that 7-Elevens in Taiwan are open 24 hours a day?

Of course, this all seems in contrast to the image most of us have of 7-Elevens in the U.S. I don’t go to ours after dark, because I don’t want to interrupt a robbery in progress. Ours are not as clean as those in Taiwan. Ours don’t have tea eggs. I can’t even remember where the 7-Elevens are in my town; in Taiwan, you simply walk a block and there one is.

So my impression of this Japanese-based company has changed for the better. People in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, and Thailand have appreciated the value of 7-Elevens for some time. Asians rely on them, they use them daily, and they seem proud to have them in their country. Taiwan also has Starbucks, but it seems that visiting one is considered a luxury, while the 7-Eleven is the staff of life.

Our 7-Elevens seem not as popular as they are in Taiwan. Maybe we have too many choices in the U.S., and we can drive as far from home as we need to get to any store we want. Maybe the name “7-11” is off-putting, because it reminds us of a casino, and who wants to go up against house odds when buying something you are going to put in your mouth. There are many possible reasons why 7-Elevens are not as popular in the states. But I’m putting my money on the fact that ours don’t have tea eggs.


Article first published as The 7-Elevens in Taiwan Are a Necessity - Not a Convenience on Technorati.

Biological prospecting in your own backyard

(The breast feathers from this dickcissel may be effective in treating ED.)

Picture this scene for a moment from 500 years ago, somewhere in Ethiopia or Arabia.  A man picks some ripe fruit from a plant we now call the coffee tree.  Inside the reddish fruit are two seeds embedded in a gelatinous material with the consistency of an 8-year old's snot in January, although it is somewhat sweet.  He removes the seeds, somehow dissolves the snotty material that coats each seed, dries the seeds, roasts them over a fire, grinds them up, pours hot water over them, and drinks the beverage so created.  Are you kidding me?  Although used originally only in religious ceremonies, coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world today, with over 100 million people dependent on coffee for their livelihoods. 

Or picture this from about 2,000 years ago.  Some Native Americans, and the early Greeks as well, happened to suck on the leaf of a willow tree at the time they had a headache or a fever and found that their symptoms improved.  Later, the bark was soaked in water and the solution used as a medicinal.  It turns out that willows contain a chemical we now call aspirin.  Aspirin, which is produced commercially these days, is probably the oldest and most widely used medicine by humans.  What are the odds?

Now, I don't know what the trial and error process was for these early discoverers of coffee and aspirin, or for maple syrup, bee honey, silkworm silk for clothing, tobacco for smoking, or any of thousands of other such examples.  The facts are clear: humans have been exploring and investigating the fauna and flora in their environment for a very long time, resulting in many useful products that we take for granted today.  This continues today in a highly technological milieu in an endeavor called "bioprospecting", which I will explore in a future post.  But to the ancients, there was a logic to many of these discoveries.  For example, willows are found in low lying wet or damp areas, which is also where the fever or "ague" was prevalent.  It made sense to them that there would be a treatment for the ailment that was found in the same area.  We will employ that same logic below.

Given that I spend a lot of time in my woods, and I know the plants and animals pretty well, why can't DrTom discover a really useful food or health remedy on his own.  Those early humans didn't even attend The Ohio State University.  I have some ideas that might work.

1.  Collect 8-10 earwigs, mash them up with a mortar and pestle from your kitchen, and add a teaspoon of cheap whiskey (for heaven's sake, don't use a single-malt scotch).  Strain out the body parts of the insects, gently warm the remaining solution, and pour it carefully into an infected ear.  It could relieve ear aches. (See the idea here: earwigs to cure ear aches.)

2.  Gather up 6-8 red fruits from a flowering dogwood tree.  Mash them in your mortar and pestle (but washed after the earwig procedure), blend in some fresh deer pellets, and add a splash of warm water.  This slurry can be used to spread on your family pet's coat and it might repel ticks and fleas.  (The dogwood is the active ingredient, but dogs love the smell of deer poop, so they will allow you to apply this liberally.)  I would keep the dog off your bed for about a week after application.

3.  For men over 60.  Capture a live dickcissel (the meadow bird of the midwestern U.S.) and collect several breast feathers.  (Can you guess where I am going with this?)  Soak the feathers in cheap vodka for about a day.  Strain out the feathers, add a shot of dry vermouth and a dash of Angostura bitters, and shake gently.  Imbibe slowly during Happy Hour.  Should work for ED.  If you maintain an erection for more than eight hours, rejoice!, and then consult a physician.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head.  If you can think of more, please write them in a comment to this post.  The right idea could make us millions.  But I want only "green" suggestions.  Notice I did not think the dickcissel liver would work, only breast feathers, which are renewable.  For those of you reading this who are economists or political scientists, if you remove the bird's liver, it dies.  Think broadly, dig deeply, and tread lightly.  Happy prospecting!

Coffee, candy bars, and Facebook

(They look really good, but DrTom has no clue what kind they are.  When he orders a coffee, he says "Give me a coffee.")

The Facebook (FB) phenomenon amazes me.  Of course, there are many aspects of it that we all marvel at and puzzle over.  It is really neat to be able to connect and reconnect with friends and family all over the world, and keep them up to date with our lives.  We would never write enough letters to do this, or even talk to them often enough on the phone to accomplish the same amount of information transfer.  My sons and I regularly insult each other in that public forum, for example, but I would never take the time to call them a "dickhead" in a hand-written letter, or call them up just to say "your mother wears combat boots". Whoa!  I guess that would be my wife.

In addition to our friendly "hellos" to one another, many FBers are obviously trying to sell something, or to inform us about a topic that is important to them---a social issue, like poverty or global climate change.  They want to tell us what is happening on these fronts and they hope to motivate us to some kind of action.  It is truly difficult to imagine a system that could alert more people in less time than a social networking site like FB, so it is tempting to use it to pass on messages, links, and photos that are near and dear to our hearts.  Alas, it is also not uncommon to read posts that are about as inane as one can get: "I'm bored", or "time to sleep", or "Guess what?", etc.  You know what I am talking about, and you know who you are.  But this just comes with the territory.



However, the most curious FB site I have found so far is Starbucks.  Many commercial enterprises have a page on FB, and the size of their fan base must be an indication of how popular that particular store or product is in the real world.  Target has 535,000 fans, Butterfinger has about 300,000, while the most popular Sears Group page I can find has only a couple of hundred fans.  (There is often more than one Group page for well-known names.)  Starbucks Group page has over 7 million fans!  Think of that.  A number that nearly equals the population of the New York City area bothered to find and join a FB site that is all about coffee.  What could all those people have to talk about, because at a site like Starbucks, no one knows anyone else?  What they have in common is that they apparently love Starbucks coffee, and they are willing to proclaim it to the world.

Please indulge me a moment as I go to the Starbucks site right now, where I will copy some of the posts there to paste here: "I love Starbucks.. BEST COFFEE EVER", "I'm a Cafe Mocha, Decaf, kind of gal!", "venti caramel frap", "Im loving it frappe mocha", "My new favorite. A grande quad skinny vanilla latte... Yum!", "caramel frappaccino w/ extra shot of caramel can get me through the worst day", "Mmmm - Peppermint mocha", "I LOVE Love Love Starbucks!! ♥", "Java Chip Frappchino Light.....YUM", etc., etc., etc.  At the Butterfinger page, posters simply tell everyone they just ate a candy bar.

Starbucks' management must absolutely love this self-perpetuating advertisement love-fest, and they must love FB for establishing this social network. (By the way, click on the title of this blog if you want to go to the Starbucks FB to which I am referring.  There are many of them, but this one is the biggie.)  Thousands of posts per day on that site, going on 24/7, telling perfect strangers either how much they love Starbucks products or which flavor is their favorite.

The question that intrigues a former student of behavioral ecology like me is why people post on a FB site like Starbucks.  My best explanation is that this is a format for being recognized, however insignificant it may be.  Facebook and other similar sites call what we do here "publishing".  When I am finished writing this post, I press a button, you can see what I wrote, and it is then considered "published", in internet jargon.  As a former academic, I think this is pretty amusing.  In academia, we work for years to collect data and analyze it, write a scientific paper based on those data, have our peers tear the paper apart, rewrite it a few times, submit it to a scholarly journal where it is torn apart some more and, if fortunate, it is eventually accepted for publication.  Good journals reject about 70% of the papers submitted to them.  If accepted, you are sent a bill for what is called "page charges".  These charges, which you pay for out of your research money, can be $125 per page of journal occupied.  That kind of publication takes a great deal of effort, and if you are lucky, maybe a few dozen other scientists will read what you wrote.  But here, anyone can be published in a millisecond, at no cost whatsoever.  And you can say anything you want, as long as it is relatively clean, even if you fabricated the idea out of thin air.  And that little publication, complete with name and photo, could be read by thousands.

Most people will go through their entire lives and never have their thoughts or written words heard by anyone outside of their immediate circle of friends and family.  The potential to have your voice heard far and wide is huge on the internet.  The fact that I may only be telling the world that I like mocha frappuccino is better than nothing and, I suppose in the case of the Starbucks example, there is a weird kind of camaraderie knowing that you are communicating with a group of 4 million people who like the same drink.

DrTom also has his motives for publishing on these FB sites.  I seek out FB sites regardless of their content that have lots of members because, to be perfectly honest, I am trolling for new readers of this blog.  A typical post of mine on the Starbucks site would be something like, "Get yourself a cup of Starbucks coffee, and then read about my black lab at http://lifeatdrtoms.blogspot.com/."  The more members the site has, the more likely I am to pick up a reader or two.  Why I want you to read my blog is the more interesting question, and I might explore that more in the future.  In the meantime, get yourself a nice hot cup of pumpkin mocha latte and reread this post.  Dig deeply, and tell me why you publish on FB.  If you don't publish there, the reason you don't could be even more interesting.

(Almost every cup of coffee that DrTom drinks is made at home with fair trade, organic French Roast beans ordered online from Cafe Britt. He makes it one cup at a time using an Italian Bialetti.  As they say on the FB Starbucks page, "Yummy".)