Taiwan's produce markets sell eggs loose. You can buy as many fresh chicken or duck eggs as you like. The supermarkets, like supermarkets everywhere, sell eggs in cartons. I must have brought eggs from the supermarket twenty times before I realised that a Taiwan egg carton is exactly two eggs short of a dozen. Eggs are sold ten to a carton.
The association of dozen with eggs is so strong in my mind that the two words almost seem glued together. I certainly never questioned this, until the day came when I needed exactly ten eggs. After I had prepared whatever dishes I was making, I went to put the remaining two eggs from the carton into the fridge but found they had vanished. What followed was five minutes of utter confusion before I decided to count the cavities in the empty carton. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten … ten?" No wonder a dozen eggs had always seemed cheap.
by Stephen, Taiwan
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