I had an ‘altercation’ on the highway this morning with a van load of dick heads. In order to make my exit while driving on highway 1 (3 lanes of which were occupied by slow moving trucks) I squeezed in front of this van, safely though perhaps too close by Canadian standards. My mistake and I berated myself for the maneuver. Unfortunately I somehow made the driver lose face in front of his tribe, who instead of simply cursing you silly f*** decided to take action. First came the repeated horn blaring, then the speed quickly past maneuver, followed by the dumping of garbage out the window in hopes of hitting me tactic, and then the rapid slow down whilst in front move. And I had my two kids in the car. No doubt they wanted to follow me to a stop light in order to give me a ‘talking to’ but I made the light and they didn’t.
Sadly this didn’t phase me as it’s a common occurrence on the highways around Hsinchu.
Too bad I’m not more like Alec Baldwin who in a profile in the New Yorker said:

He recalled a day, a few years ago, when he was driving through L.A., saw a car run a red light, smash into another car, and keep moving. Baldwin gave chase and, eventually, blocked the culprit in a cul-de-sac. Before the police arrived, the driver got out of his car — “Typical drug-addict, alcoholic, fuckhead look on his face. He was, ‘O.K., what? What? You’re chasing me. What?’ This nineteen-year-old kid, his eyes blazing. I’m thinking, I’m going to come over there and knock your teeth down your fucking throat just because you’re asking me ‘What?’ You know what, you little fuck? I saw you. I’m a pretty liberal person, but my liberalness comes from what the government should be doing with its excess of wealth. That doesn’t mean I’m not a law-and-order person. I’m the kind of person — you catch the kid who’s drunk and high and he almost killed a girl, let’s take him in and beat the shit out of him for a couple of hours. Then he’ll learn.” He laughed. “I believe that!”

In fact too bad there weren’t a few dozen like him driving the roads around Taiwan. We have no police so this might be a good substitute.