advice offered to me on going to taiwan

Be safe.

Be careful.

Have fun.

Don't stick anything anywhere I wouldn't.

Don't assume anything.

You will get laughed at for pronounciation. The word for dumpling is almost the same as the word for sleep.

Be careful where you eat. Eat out with someone familiar with the local hot spots. There's a lot of great places to eat in Taiwan, but it seems that everyone who's anyone can open a food shop and they do.

Things will work themselves out.

Don't tell them you're 'just here to tap some Asian ass.'

Things will work out.

It's OK to hate it.

Use your common sense.

Experience as much as you can.

Record everything.

it's a job

"So, you're still doing your residency?"
"Yup."
"How's it going? Still crazy crazy busy?"
"Nah, I'm in psychiatry now. So it's just crazy crazy people."
"Ah. I see."

their PAPERS are BACKWARDS

*Update: The toilet thing MAY be wrong. I have only used one here, and I was informed after writing this that it was not working properly. More on this breaking development as it becomes available.

They really are. The last page of each section is what would be considered front page news in North America.

Anyhoo, the trip was fine. I was a little off, due to preparation burnout (i.e. too many 18-20 hour days before leaving), added to by the fact that my brother managed to out-suave me by getting himself a first-class upgrade for free on his trip to Australia. Lousy brother. Well, at least I'll have the cute Asian kids trump card to play.

A couple of notes:

• I achieved the (fairly obtainable) title of Only White Guy On The Plane for the Taipei-Kaohsiung flight. The stewardesses knew my name and greeted me before I even showed them my boarding pass.
  
• The guy on the EXIT sign anywhere here is always running (though not always as much as this particular one here). Is there something I should know?
  
  
  
• Airport security is much more relaxed here - there was no one with a wand, they didn't care to look at my electronics or cameras at all. It was almost like I was inconveniencing them by going through.
  
• There were tonnes of cardboard cutouts of people around the airport, greeting you and pointing you in the right direction. Not a problem, except on of them freaked me out. See for yourself:
  
  
  
  Freaky, no?
  
• My first...interesting translation? While landing in Kaohsiung, I looked out the window and saw a bus that was FULL of people, labelled TWO-END DRIVE LOW FLOOR-BUS.
  
• Chinese toilets are the pinnacle of quiet flushing. Folks, they are light years ahead of North America in the field of toilet noise suppression.
  
• Jet lag kicked me around, even making me think I had beaten it. I dozed a bit in the Taipei airport, but had generally stayed up until I got here (making it a 26 hour day with some light rest). I had a dutiful, albeit restless, sleep for 5 hours, followed by three hours of pensive, restlessless comtemplation. I then regained the ability to sleep, thinking that I'd just sleep until the late morning here, no problem. When I awoke, however, I discovered that I had actually slept for eight hours, emerging at 4 pm local time. Hrm. Well, by the end of the weekend, I'll have it straight.
  

And finally, entered for your consideration:

Temperatures leaving:
Ottawa: -8ºC
Regina: -11ºC
Edmonton: -a lot, plus windchill
Vancouver: +6ºC
Temperature arriving in Kaohsiung at 11 pm local time: +22ºC

Suckers.

ultimate weekend

*Update: Ultimate kicked my ass, along with everything else below my waist. Everything is sore. I hurt. whimper

All I've done in Taiwan is eat, sleep, see the lights (it's an epileptic's nightmare, I tell you, and a small child's dream), and play Ultimate.

Yes, that's right. I've dabbled in it in the past, some college experimentation...you know, we're all allowed to do that, it didn't hurt anyone, I was just curious. I did my time. Then I moved to Ottawa, home of Ultimate, the largest league in North America, if not the world (unless I'm mistaken, but I don't think I am this time). My roommate played in the top echelon of the leagues, a rather difficult achievement. I had a whole team from Regina stay at my house when they came to Ottawa for nationals. Since I never mastered the art of running, I kind of stayed away from it. I can bike through the Gatineaus, up and down hills for hours on end, but run me up and down a field a few times and I'll give you my brother's soul if you'll let me stop. (Sorry Chad) Anyhoo, if I met someone who needs a roommate today. This particular someone organizes the league, so thought I don't 'have' to play, I think I will have to play. It's not a bad thing, I guess. I did catch for a point today, I do have a tiny bit of experience, and, uh, I look pretty on the field.

So now, as my free time clicks off, and my jet lag becomes a thing of the past, I prepare for my new life here in Taiwan. With a whole lot of Canadians, apparently.

(Incidentally, there's even a place in town that supposedly sells poutine, though I'm told it doesn't pass the Canadian test. I can also get a slurpee at the ubiquitous 7-11 here, a task that is impossible in the streets of Quebec. Take that, frogs!)

made in taiwan

My first purchase in Taiwan:

I don't know what a Pocari is, but it's sweat is pretty tasty. (That's my temporary scooter helmet next to it)

And after a hard day's work, who would want to come home to a delicious bag of squid chips and bottle of mineral water completely covered with Asian characters? I know I do. (The squid chips really did have a fish taste to them)

a day of firsts

Well, that it was.

1. My First Earthquake

Yes, that's right, at around 12:30pm, my manager rushed out of his office and told me to stay still and "watch this." After ten seconds, his smile drooped and he then told me to "get under a doorway." Everything started moving. Everything. It was like being in a cheap carnival funhouse - the rumbling, the moving floor, the cheap thrills - except we were in an apartment, and this was real, and I didn't know where I could find cotton candy. Tiles actually fell off of the wall, smashing on the floor (an occurrance that my manager, in all his time here, had never seen before). After it was done, things continued to shake for a bit as the rumble left the air and the city noises returned.

Rushing to the school to check the news, I found that it had measured 6.6 on the Richter scale, and that there had been a 5.0 that morning that had knocked out the power in the building for a short while. We also felt one of the 400 aftershocks later in the afternoon at the school. Shaky shaky!

2. My First Day of Teaching

Well, OK, first class. The kids were the top level (junior high), and though they were much better to teach than the little shits tend to be in North America, they were still apathetic TO THE EXTREME! But I still got a couple chuckles out of them. And I enjoyed the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. But, then again, I always do.

3. My First Delicious Chinese Dish That I Probably Wouldn't Have Made Back Home

Get this - flash-fried noodles, cooked with some gravy, topped with a fried egg and some flash-fried beef, soaked with two kinds of gravy. We like to call it the....uh....Zao burger (heh heh). Add a little A-1 sauce, and beauty results. The box they put it in weighs about four pounds after they hand it to you, and you think, "I'm putting this in my body?" But really - yum. And cheap! 50NT - roughly $1.90CDN, and more than enough to fill you up.

And now I'm off to make history. As always.

the bell tolls for thee

There's a lot of things I could write about Kaohsiung right now, but there's one that I want to remember forever, and also to share with the world.

The garbage pick-up is very different than North American garbage pick-up. First off, it occurs in the late afternoon-late evening time period (say, 3 pm - 11 pm or so). Second, there are no garbage men, or sanitation engineers, or whatever you want to call them (except the guy who drives the truck). The only action in garbage collection consists of the truck driving into a neighbourhood and playing music. This music signifies to all residents that the garbage is there and that they should bring their garbage out and throw it in the back of the truck. The music, however, is very spriteful and almost jubilant, reminiscent of, oh, I don't know, ice cream truck music. Not something you'd expect for a garbage pick-up.

What makes me laugh every time I hear it is the image I get in my head (semi-a la Homer Simpson) of a child running out of the house on a hot summer day yelling, "ICE CREEEAM MAAAAN!!! ICE CREEEEAM MAAAAAEEEEEEEWWWWWW!"

I'm told the novelty will die off. I certainly hope not.

memories in bits

I almost forgot. There are some pictures of my first scenes of Kaohsiung available. No award winners (yet), but what's common to me may be weird and strange to you. So go and have your sensibilities shocked! Go! Now!

fire and ice, over a lot of water

Even though I may not be a resident of Canada right now, that doesn't mean that I don't consider myself a Canadian. Fire and Ice has been on my reading list for a while now, and I was getting close to getting it before I left. Ah well, one of these days. However, via Emily, who got it via queen of cups, I can still take the survey to see a definition of my sociocultural values. Yee-haw!

Fundamental Motivations and Values

• Personal Control
• Question Authority
• Global Consciousness
• Adaptability to Complexity
• Flexible Families

Key Characteristics

• Self-reliant and in control of their own destiny
• Idealistic and open-minded
• Rejecting out-dated norms and institutions

To a T, I'd say. At least, that's how I see myself. Though sometimes, reality and fantasy don't always match up (and then I said to the President - get this...).

small world

Hi there. I've been busy.

It's funny how you can cross the world to discover something that was so close before. One of my roommates knows the girl who got me the job - she actually got the idea to come here from her mother talking to Trudy's mother. She went to the same university as I did, took classes in the same building, and now we meet and live in the same apartment, half a world away. My brother is traveling with two girls from Europe (er, I think so, anyway), who discovered that they were the same age and from the same city, but had never met until they crossed paths in Australia. I was told to drop a line to a friend of a friend of a friend of my father's, and I ran into him at a school dinner.

Life's like that, I guess.

P.S. There are more pictures up at the gallery. Some are mine - real mottos on bikes that I've seen (some are great - who wouldn't laugh at "Man Boy - enjoy yourself"?) - and some are my brother's, fresh from New Zealand. Pretty amazing, I'm jealous. Check them out, yo. More to come.

jolly old saint nicholas

Tonight I got to be Saint Nick for four long, but fun, hours. It was a blast (picture to follow), but the best part was when I was resting after the first shift, fiddling with my costume. After having a square stomach and empty chest, I tried a few ideas with little success. Then it struck me - SANTA NEEDS BITCH TITS!

Hey, engineers solve problems.

science and society

I visited the Kaohsiung Science & Technology Museum the other day, and, first of all, it's HUGE. The place is five floors of science. I covered a floor and a half in two hours, and that was moving from exhibit to exhibit, just looking (as only the titles were in English - the explanations were all in Chinese) and pushing buttons and pulling levers and turning cranks.

What really amazed me, however, was the detail of the exhibits. I saw the machines and electronics exhibits, and they looked like they went into details that I covered in my engineering classes back at university. PN junctions, rectification, modulation, FETs, diodes, the creation of microchips, shaft mechanics (daaaamn right!), AC and DC motors and servomotors... the list goes on. I didn't get some of that stuff in school*, and they're presenting it to the general public? Just another sign of the high value they place on education here? I can't say for sure. But it was an interesting thing to reflect on.

I can't wait to go back.

barriers

Reviewing tenses has helped improve my English usage (though I find myself speaking in teacher voice sometimes outside of school - not with friends here, but overseas on the phone), but where it has really helped, surprisingly enough, is in my understanding of French.

I learned attended French in elementary and high school. I did fairly well at it, and by the time I graduated, I actually felt that I had a decent understanding of the language. I could read it quite well, and could speak enough of it to get in trouble. The learning process was a little confusing at times - so many tense names, organizing which was used when in my head, trying to choose the right one.

Since I have been learning along with the children here, I have learned about the tenses in English. And suddenly, learning those tenses and when they were used in French clicked. Present progressive. Simple future. Conditional past. Before, they were just names to memorize. Now, they actually relate to my mother tongue. And it wasn't even because I was slow, or didn't like grammar (I mean, I have a link to the Grammar Avengers on my sidebar) - I was just never taught the tense names. I remarked upon this fact to someone out here after I realized it, and they said that English is typically the only language in which children are not taught the grammatical rules before really learning the languages. Well, with more than just a light kiss on the cheek, anyway.

Chinese doesn't have tenses, really (they have ways of indicating the future or past, but no changes to the verb at all), so all this is moot for learning Chinese. Which, incidentally, is fine by me - it'll be confusing enough, although the development of the Chinese language as a series of combined ideograms is really interesting to me.

To jump again, I've always wanted to learn more languages, but keep hopping families - Romantic, Slavic, Germanic, Asian - which doesn't make it easy. Looking back, I realize how crazy all of them are - they make sense in their own way, but each have their rules and tricks. It makes one pine for a language that both disobeys the rules and yet follows them all. Oh wait, there is one. Damn you, hungry brain!

and to all a good night

Hello party people.

Since I will be away on the east coast of Taiwan for the next week or so, there will almost definitely be a dearth of posts in my absence.

However, as my Christmas gift to you, I give you more photos in the wacky scooter sayings gallery, plus a new gallery with more pictures of Kaohsiung. And don't forget to check out my brother's pictures from New Zealand, they're pretty damn cool.

ho ho ho all the way.