SWEET JESUS! Do you know where YER car is?

I recently bought a car in Taichung city and anyone who's tried to come to my place by car will tell you that the parking is less than optimal to say the least. I remember Karl the Kind, friend and guide to an acknowledged group of computer dumbasses, helped me out way back when and I distinctly remember him asking about parking. ( By the way, welcome back hope to see you at retro hat night. Bread said you got new boots and J-Hole wants to know about HTML. I've heard Aaron's got a new hand rubbing friction glee indicator and you know Kevlar's gonna be silly. )
Red A's strategy had been to park at the the YuMaoWu nearby and validate it through purchases. Those 3 to 5 hour stints were easily rectified by picking up a few beer, a French bread or diapers. This seemed genius for awhile as Sandy effectively implemented A's plan until it turned into a 43 hour stay one weekend not long ago and the vigilant staff at said supermarket wondered why it took so long to buy diapers and wine. They wanted to charge 3 grand in parking fees but Sandy, with a great performance from Ivo, bartered it down to 2 grand in shopping fees and a promise to never do it again. I'm convinced without Ivo there we'd have been nailed. So since then it's been a search every night.
Last night Sandy parked next to the upolsterer across the street in an arguably legal spot. We've parked there before as do others in the neighbourhood. I woke this morning and went to the smoking room overlooking the parking spot to have my coffee and noticed that at some point during the night some asshole had had the same idea as us and parked across from the upolsterer next to the Japanese restaurant effectively blocking the alley to any 4 wheeled traffic. Shit. I could also see people huffing and puffing up and down the alley, the upolsterer taking long mean drags from his cigarette staring intently at my car. A well dressed and important looking man looked especially pissed yelling at the barber ladies 20 yards further down the alley. Shit. I went to other end of the apt. and checked out the other end of the alley. Big tent set up. Damn. Trucks with poles and stuff ready to move in backing up. I could see the tickets on my car the other dude's. So I waited til I saw people weren't milling about so much and went down and moved the car. I'm pretty sure no one saw or followed. Parked, bought breakfast and was home discussing what the ticket might mean when I went to the window again and saw the other guy's car getting towed by one of those big North American style red pickups. 5 minutes and gone. As they were driving away I looked straight down from the balcony and saw the second red tow truck idling cargoless.
So I was thinking all day how lucky I was and how quickly that tow truck took off with that car.

Check out this video of a couple of Taiwanese car thieves.