Villa with Sandy and a super-sized martini

I relaxed with Sandy at The Villa Herbs until 1 a.m. the other night, drinking red wine from Italy and eating cheese with raisins and sugared cashews while talking about how finicky men and women can be.

I tucked my feet under me in a cushy arm chair in the candlelit lounge which makes you feel like you're a guest in someone's well-appointed home.

Sandy sat on a leather chaise-lounge in a cream-coloured chiffon blouse and skinny jeans, smoking cigarettes that were slim and elegant like she is and blowing smoke out the patio door over a fish pond.

She said she is looking for a meaningful relationship and will not "have the sexy" with just anyone. But her male friends have told her that she scares Taiwanese men.

For a moment, I thought of an ideal Asian beauty based on what a Chinese friend recently told me - a soft and subtle woman, a feminine and delicate woman, the kind that you have to lean into to hear her sweet voice - and then I considered Sandy and I and how we explode with laughter, throwing our bodies against our chairs and slapping each other's knees.

I wondered to myself if we appeared to men in the restaurant as being obnoxious where as, maybe in Canada, we would look like we were fun.

"I think in another life," Sandy said suddenly, "I was a foreigner." She would date the foreigners in Taipei, the English-language teachers, the Mandarin students, but all they want is "the sexy."

Later, a reporter and photographer for a travel magazine asked us to pose with a gargantuan martini.

Be more happy, the photographer said.

And I was happy to have a giant glass of free booze but it was hard to smile and sip at the same time; those are completely opposite actions. I'm pretty sure that I was making a chimpanzee face in every shot.

Before I left, I promised the bartender that I would e-mail her the recipe for a Caesar.

"Do people order them often in Canada?" the bartender asked through Sandy.

"What?!? Restaurants have Caesar specials. And they come with a stalk of celery or olives and sometimes pickled green beans. They are so good."

Sandy couldn't figure out the translation for clam juice and worchestershire sauce.
That's Taipei's only flaw. God, I miss Caesars.