When I stepped into DS Music Restaurant, I found it to be an extremely well-put-together, professional establishment with good food and a pleasant atmosphere that is night-lifey but not overwhelming. This disturbed me.
The reader is invited to consider the nurse fetish. It is an institution that lies at the heart of DS. And so I entered DS prepared to immerse myself in sleaze and then write ironically about it. What I found, though, was a disquietingly congruous marriage of unabashed hedonism and well-funded good taste.
Overall, DS looks like many other posh restaurant-and-bars, with lots of spot lighting, funny-shaped chairs, and clear alcohol bottles lit from underneath. Except that many of the tables look like sleek hospital beds, there are a few wheelchairs and crutches sitting around, backlit X-rays decorate some walls, and above each table hangs a big "IV drip," which functions like a small keg. And then, of course, there are nurses everywhere you look.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DS MUSIC RESTAURANT
The hospital theme is pervasive, but somehow subtle, or at least natural. I never thought I would say this, but it turns out that a wheelchair does not look out of place next to a wall of Smirnoff Ice bottles. There is something appealing about the audacity of taking a concept as (someone has to say it) flagrantly trashy as this and making something so cool out of it. To top it off, the food is good.
The menu consists of lightly Westernized Chinese, Japanese and Thai, with an inexplicable but not unwelcome Polynesian flare running through the presentation. The sashimi, for example, is served on a mountain of ice covered with leaves and flowers. The "Fire Pheonix Beer (sic)" (火鳳牛柳) is a successful beef-and-pineapple stir-fry served inside a hollowed-out half pineapple.
As is probably apparent in that last sentence, the English on the menu is more color commentary than viable translation. Some items -- like the pretty-good XO sauce stir-fry prawn ball (served on a bed of water convulvus) -- are more or less what they sound like, but the menu really isn't navigable without some knowledge of Chinese. Nor are the waitresses hired for their English.
It should be said that, DS, despite its thematically seamy underbelly, is family safe (the one exception is the Saturday night "showgirl" performance). The nurses outfits are not tailored to be especially kinky, and as far as I can tell the curtained-off "intensive care unit" is nothing more than a place where large groups can sit together.
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
The arithmetic is straightforward and uncomfortable. By the end of 2025, Taiwan had committed itself to a 50-30-20 electricity mix — half natural gas, 30 per cent coal, 20 per cent renewables. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’s (MOEA) own monthly energy reports tell a different story. Natural gas reached 47.8 per cent of generation last year. Coal stood at 35.4 per cent, comfortably above its target ceiling. Renewables came in at 13.1 per cent, well short of the 20 per cent Taipei had pledged a decade earlier. Installed renewable capacity reached roughly half of the 12 gigawatts (GW) the government
Taiwan’s drone exports are taking off, fuelled by the war in Ukraine, as Taiwanese companies seek a stake in the fast-growing global market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Low-cost drones used for reconnaissance and strikes are in high demand as governments around the world boost defense spending in the face of intensifying conflicts. A relative new player in the increasingly competitive industry, Taiwan’s pitch is to be an “Asian hub” for the production of UAVs and components free of Chinese materials, or “non-red.” That means its UAVs can be up to three times more expensive than their Chinese competitors, like the world’s biggest
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
RSS