Smellin' Pretty in Yuchih City

I smell like a spring flower today. At least according to my new bottle of deodorant.

It all started the day before we left for Taiwan. Knowing myself and the fact that I am rather picky about my deodorant, I bought a bunch of it to bring along. As we packed our suit cases, we of course crammed as much stuff into them as they could possibly hold. Then came the fateful weight check. We were, of course, restricted to the standard 50 pound maximum per checked bag. Unfortunately all of our three big suitcases were quite a bit over the limit. We had to start making tough decisions. Hmmmmm... what will I not need for the next year? Eventually I ended up removing many of my auxiliary sticks of Old Spice. It was a sad and difficult decision, but one that had to be made.

We have been in Taiwan for three months now, and I still have not felt the pain of separation from my favorite Old Spice scent. (High Endurance Classic for those of you who are wondering.) My supply has held out, but it was beginning to dwindle. Last week I saw a horrific sight - the plastic base beginning to appear on my last stick! Nooooooooo! I ignored the problem for days, hoping that it would somehow go away. The situation became desperate. I had to do something. Heather and I took the 10 minute trek to Puli and headed into a pharmacy/CVS type store. I scoured the aisles for Old Spice. There was none to be found. In fact I couldn't find anything that looked remotely like any kind of deodorant. Finally with some help from the clerk, I looked over my options. There were about 5 choices. Two for women, two for men, and one semi-androgenous looking option. I read the ingredients (they were all in English!) and only the sort-of-androgonous one lacked aluminum (my missing element of choice). I selected this one with high hopes.


Outside the store I quickly opened my prize. As you can see, the bottle claims that I will smell like a "Spring Flower", which is pretty much exactly what I want to smell like, so my expectations were high. I lifted the bottle to my nose and my hopes were dashed. "It smells disgusting!" I told Heather. We laughed.