You've got a friend...

... when your friend is willing to travel from the US to Taiwan carrying a bag of Fritos, 20 cans of Kodiak, several cans of Campbell's Double Noodle Chicken Noodle Soup, grape Dimetapp, toys for the kids, a Hokey-Pokey Elmo, a six pack of Sierra Nevada, 4 branches of apple wood and Reese's Pieces. All that for a 10-day stay.

Bread rolled into town this morning with 3 bags: one for him, a computer case and one filled with our requests.

He also brought one more item, something that I requested.

My first year in Taiwan my mother sent a care package loaded with goodies and one surprising item - a bottle of Accent. Now my mother had not yet visited Taiwan and couldn't know that MSG was cheap and everywhere. Bread, however, lived here for several years and I thought he would understand that I was joking. But being the good friend that he is, he looked hard and finally found a small, 4 dollar bottle of Accent. He handed it to me this morning and I asked him to read the list of ingredient - monosodium glutamate.

Thank you Bread for your effort and I'm sorry you're out 4 bucks, so I'm going to give you 5 pounds of MSG to take back home with you. The street value of it can probably pay for your trip.