What's that you say? Acid Rain?! Can your umbrella handle that?

      So not only do I live in an armpit... I live in a big sweaty armpit that perspires acid!  One of Greta's older classes informed her that there it acid rain's here in Taiwan.  And the largest amount of it occurs in good ole Jhongli! (Yes, that's where I live).  It makes sense once I stop to think about it a bit, tons of factories with pollutants going up into the air, mixing with the clouds, incessant rainfall, BAM. There it is. Acid drops falling on my windoooowww.
       After some looking into the issue, I've also discovered that China is a contributor to our dirty downfall.  This too, makes a lot of sense.  Farmer's crops are dying! Where these crops are located to begin with, I know not.  The normal Ph level of water is around 7, the rain here is usually at about a 5 or less.  
     I wish I were still oblivious to this newly discovered reality.  I quite enjoy walking in the rain every now and then (for a short amount of time), it's also damn near impossible to keep an umbrella alive for an extended period of time over here.  Although I believe Typhoon Season is on the way out, it's still very windy, which is not a friend to the umbrellas.  Anthony has had the same umbrella for SEVEN years, mind you maybe it hasn't had a very eventful life, but after being here for less than 3 months.. it's dunzo.  I brought an umbrella with me as well, it has seen better days.  I'm trying to keep him alive though.  It's been buckled upwards from the wind and half of the metal poles on the inside are snapped, which causes that half to droop down, whatever.  I'm not giving up on it yet though! It now makes sense why there are umbrella's sold EVERYWHERE, like seriously, everywhere you go, even out on the streets, umbrellas!  
     This leads me into another point.  The Taiwanese use umbreallas, at ALL TIMES.  Whether it's raining acid rain, or over 100 degrees ( I was going to try and use Celsius, like they do here, but who am I kidding) the people are all about the umbrellas.  This is because when it's sunny, they don't want the warm sunshine on their skin, apparently it's not a nice feeling for them?  They just don't want to turn brown. It's crazy coming form a culture that is so obsessed with being tan that people have their own tanning booths in their homes, going to a place where they literally sell "whitening" lotion, bye-bye Jergens natural glow, it's all about the pastey porcelain!  The umbrellas start to really piss me off because obviously they take up more space than a person, and they are held around my face area, it's hard to get around them without being darted in the head.  When it's raining, fine, I understand you don't want to be covered in acidity wetness, but when it's just a little sunshine?!  I bet their rates of skin cancer are non-existent compared to the States.