Kicking Up A Stink

One thing I can't get used to the idea of is how garbage from your house is collected in Taiwan.

In Australia, UK and Canada, one places garbage in one's garbage bin, leave said garbage bin outside one's residence on the designated day of the week and fabulously, it gets collected while you are conveniently at work. A wonderful system one happily gives credit, thanks and taxes to one's local council.

Not so in Taiwan. If you are not fortunate enough to live in a "maintained" apartment/condo then garbage, my friend, becomes quite literally a dirty word.

Instead of the delighted ease of "taking the garbage out the night before", denizums of Taiwan must prepare to dash, garbage bags full 'o goodies, out onto the streets at the sound of an approaching garbage truck in the evening to dispose their household refuse directly into the stinky rear end of the trucks themselves.

It can become quite an irksome ritual as you can imagine. Street corner neighbourhood watch meetings could take place impromtu as one can usually count on a representative of each household to gather at said street corner at said time at said day of week. Or perhaps housewives would look forward to a time out of home to meet and chat with fellow wives for their weekly gossips. Too bad though if you have to work late one night o' poor bachelor or bachelorette. You miss the boat and your garbage piles up for another seven days. And to endure the tut-tut-tutting of beady-eyed housewives for not keeping a clean enough house the following week.

So how does one know for certain a garbage truck is on its wafty way to your street? Cleverly an on-board sound system emitting a half melody on repeative loop alert you of its approaching presence. And the tune? Why, Greensleeves of course. Played in digital ring-tone like quality. For me, it took strips off my happy childhood. To hear Greensleeves in the warm distance, generating excitement, grabbing a handful of pocket change in my hot little hands to run down the street to discover it was just a fucking garbage truck.