about face

Sometimes, in teaching, the whole concept of face here can be useful. Actually, all cultures have face or reputation, we all just manage it, present it, and treat it differently. It is very important here to have good face, but others will try and protect your face, while in Western cultures, where it's not as important as it is here, you're left to your own devices.

Anyway, here, students are brought up learning that retaining face in a situation is usually paramount to anything else. If a child fights all efforts, one can usually fall back on this and do some form of public semi-humiliation. Depending on the punishment and the age of the offender, this can work double-time - the normal embarrassment of a 12-year-old in front of their peers can do wonders. A child's actions reflect on their parents, and again, this can sometimes be advantageous. I hate education through fear, but for some children, it's the way they choose, which is unfortunate.

Last night, I had one student who is a very smart girl, but who refuses to study (which she does need to do). She rocked her spelling test, but just missed the 'passing grade' (85%) on another test she had taken earlier in the week. And was her mother pissed. I found the student outside with her mother and a member of the Chinese staff talking, and man, was it hard. I was at a crossroads, and man, did it suck. I wanted her to do better, but I could see she was really suffering. While the mother was talking, I pulled the student aside and simply told her that I knew she could do it, that I was proud of her for the work she did, and that she just needed to do some work at home* - I couldn't do anything more for her.

And that's when the tears started. Man oh man. I just left it at that, once tears start, kids are impossible to talk to anymore, nothing gets through except comforting words, of which I offered some, as that was what she needed.

It's times like this that make culture mixing both interesting and tough.

* I realize I could be hypocritical with my decree that kids study too much, but I'm quite sure all she does otherwise is watch TV or surf the net, and studying's much better than that.

the downfalls of canadian content

So it's legal to make files available for sharing in Canada. Whoo! Makes me proud to be Canadian, for sure.

The funniest comment that I've heard about it, however, was the following (found on Slashdot, which I haven't visited in a long time, but felt obligated to visit on this momentous decision):

I hear they're going to make 35 percent of piracy be Canadian content as well! Several of my friends have recently had CRTC officials show up with MP3's of Anne Murray - mind you I think he went the easier route and just went to prison....

There's nothing more Canadian than taking a swipe at Canadian content laws, IMHO.

papa's got a brand new, um, camera

This weekend has been a spendy weekend, indeed, but it's all been worth it. Strangely, however, I don't feel like talking about it. It's just been good. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

A testament to the awesome power of a 10x zoom. The power of zoom compels you!

Um, yeah. Welcome to Taiwan. Here's your bizarre merchandise.

This may be cool and weird and neat to you, but it's become commonplace to me. Beautiful, yes. Exotic, hardly. ("I don't understand your strange ways. I'm just a caveman.")

The price for being a democratic phoenix rising out of corrupted ashes (I think this is the court house). Luckily, the riots should be coming to an end.

Amidst the turmoil of a turbulent world, a hopeful soul find solace in prayer.

I'll get a gallery up with more as they come available.

to me, homeland security is about walls

Some tongue-in-cheek humour from our friends at zefrank.com: an interview with the graphic designer of the Homeland Security Department. I don't know if this has made the rounds of the blogosphere or not, but frankly, I haven't seen it yet, so it's new to me. (Brought to you by an old friend of mine, Chris.)

It's just common sense. Ha!

(Quicktime required)

a tropical complaint

Don't you hate when you drop your mango milk on the sidewalk?

I know I do.

that's me in the spotlight, evaluating my religion

In this day and age of both increasing and decreasing religion (depending on who you listen to), especially on this holiest of holy days, during declarations of holy wars, I find myself wondering where my personal religion centre lies.

I remember laughing in my first year at a random comment made at a banquet I was attending at an engineering conference. The planners had chosen to forgo the grace. Someone at my table chuckled that it was a wise choice, "As around 85% of us don't want it anyway." I kept my mouth shut.

I was baptised a Ukrainian Catholic after my mom's side of the family. Dad conceded that the choice of religion belonged to the mother. He even came every Sunday with us and sat in the front row, and served as a gleaming example to our priest of an ex. I remember days as a young child, sitting in church, playing with my mother's pocket calculator as the priest sermoned on and on. He was a great man, one of the 100 smartest men in the world, as the story goes. I was too young and not quite gung-ho enough to be entranced, I guess.

I served as an altar boy with my brother under a wonderful, intelligent, and hard-working priest who always seemed to be fighting with the congregation reps on one front or another. I religiously attended services every Sunday, eventually becoming head altar boy before retiring back to the pews near the end of high school. My attendence began slacking after that eventually bringing me to the 'holiday-goer' level, remaining there until my last semester, when it enjoyed a brief revival before falling again after I left home.

I still believe. However, I've found that there are things that I can't agree with. The first is that whole gay thing. I don't see how that can be condemned. Either way, there's an argument. If they're born with it, well, religion already says that we shouldn't discriminate based on race, which we're also born with it. If they choose it, well, people choose religions, and we should be tolerant of religion, right?

I'm tempted to fall into that growing category of 'simply spiritual'. Part of me thinks that a loving God would accept anyone, but part of me wonders if it is wrong to practice a religion in which you don't accept all the 'rules'. I've had friends with greater conviction tell me just that.

The straw that broke all this was my attendence of a Good Friday service tonight, the first one since sometime in high school with one of the aforementioned friends. It was very different*. Not different in the sense of a different kind of service, but it felt different being there. First of all, the group was made up almost exclusively of twenty- or thirty-somethings who all wanted to be there. I don't think I've seen such a gathering of young religious youth since, again, high school. I found it inspirational and foreign. It had been a long time since I'd been in such a place of faith, and, to be honest, I found it a little foreign. I'd gotten so used to finding my own way and accepting things as they come, I'd forgotten where/if faith in anything except the goodness of the human spirit belonged in my life.

I'm not sure where this leaves me, exactly. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up what I was brought up with, but I don't know where my faith lies now. I think a little weekend meditation on the beach wouldn't hurt.

*A funny thing did happen, however. I was carrying two batteries in my pocket along with my change and my keys, and had forgotten about them. I was sitting in church, when I noticed that my pocket was feeling quite warm. I reached in and almost burned my fingers. At first, you know, being in a church, my instinct was, "Oh my God. Acid leak." Then I realized, when I discovered that my fingers weren't melting, that somehow, my keys and/or my coins had caused a short circuit, discharging the batteries and causing them to heat up. At least, that's my working theory. I never thought I'd find myself in hot pants in a church, much less at a Good Friday service.

an easter greeting

I just returned from Kenting, a perfect mix of relaxation, CLEAN AIR (a must if you live in Kaohsiung), and good company, interspersed with beer. What a great way to spend Easter. I hope yours was just as wonderful, respectively.

Also, check out some pictures of Kaohsiung and Kenting with my new camera.

things i miss that you can't ship over in a box, not even if you tried, no way

1. A clothesdrier. Man, do I miss this. Like some kind of laundry superhero, clothesdriers always saved me from ironing, cold days (who doesn't love popping something into the drier on a cold day), and worrying about hanging space to dry clothes. I have none of that security over here. And my boxer briefs don't have the same sexy tightness anymore. I miss that.
2. A little quiet. I mean, I can't complain much, I do live in the downtown, but the Taiwanese/eastern Asians are a loud people. This morning, I was woken up by construction, then women shouting who sounded an incredible amount like very loud chickens, then construction again. This is also one reason why getting out of the city biweekly is my new plan.
3. Clean air. The air is very polluted here. It constantly gives you phlegm. Well, it gives me phlegm. As soon as I arrived in Kenting last weekend, I noticed that I wasn't coughing anything up, and I revelled in the enjoyment of it. My other reason for getting out of the city biweekly.
4. Rye that doesn't cost $6CDN a hit.
5. A Gin-Boh.
6. Unbiased media. Wait, you can't get that at home, either, anymore. Although the election here has really outed the media as to how much bias they have. They're still just as sensationalistic, though. When my roommate finishes with her SARS journal, I'll be sure to post some interesting things.
7. Used book stores. I love walking in to an old shop stacked floor to ceiling with books and seeing what treasures I could find. They may have them here, but only for Chinese books.
8. Cheap wine. And cheese. Non-sequitorially, eggs are cheap here.
9. (Not yet, but it's coming, I know it.) Temperatures that don't threaten to boil my eyeballs and turn my clothes into sweat-absorption pads. Mmm, can't wait for that! Ah well, every up comes with a down.
10. Cooking supplies that I'm used to. There's a bunch of neat stuff, but things that I've grown up with as basic just sometimes aren't here. For instance, having no oven, I went to make a no-bake dessert of some sort that required coconut bits/shavings. Despite the amount of Thai out here and the proliferation of coconut milk, there was none to be had. Costco might have had it, but I wasn't going all the way to Costco for coconut. Things like that, you know?

I'll be back soon with things I lo-o-o-ove out here.

state of the body

I'm down to two more weeks with this brace, and they can't end too quickly. It's really starting to warm up, and like I've said, it's like wearing an absorbant bra. It's cost me extra money, been a hassle, kept me from socializing (because I'm lazy and not THAT much of a social animal), stopped my Chinese learning, and robbed me of my rhythm.

That being said, I'm glad that the extra two weeks were suggested/ordered by the doctor. He said it was necessary to 'strengthen the union'. I pondered this statement the other day as I was chatting with a friend about it.

It sounds like I'm building a nation, not healing a bone, when you think about it. I expect revolutionary and secessionist forces to begin amassing support for dissolution of the body as a whole, or at least treating it like a number of independent republics. They will demand fair treatment, a chance to air their views, and equal status.

They will all be put down, however. Even if it calls for the invocation of the War Measures Act. How far will I go? Just watch me.

My body is not a democracy.

having kids

In Taiwan, like in most countries in this world, you are allowed to have as many children as you want. This is despite the fact that they are still technically part of a country that (still) dictates its one-child policy, sometimes adding their own brand of, um, persuasion.

China's one-child policy, to quote The Chinese (a superb book, which I finally finished) was

...hurriedly conceived in 1979 by a handful of men without research or consultation and in the absense of current population statistics. The last census had taken place in 1964 [in the wake of the Great Leap Forward famine]... The previous census had taken place twenty-six years before that, in 1938.

Sounds like a good basis for policy, doesn't it? Unfortunately, off the cuff-ed-ness seems to be how a lot of decisions were made in China. Even better, want to know how the idea came to be?

...Song Jian, a Soviet-trained nuclear scientist, had scribbled down some calculations on the back of an envelope while attending a population symposium. Using formulas employed to predict missile trajectories he projected China's population grwoth based on varying circumstances.

Wow. I mean, wow. It was originally instated as a temporary measure that has lasted for a quarter of a century now. (This is why we have to ensure that we have sunset clauses, people.) And enforcement? Brutal. Forced abortions, as late as eight months, or even as the baby was delivered. Quotas were set, non-participants' houses were burned to the ground, women were imprisoned.

And the people rebelled. Oh man, did they rebel. So much as to force the government to relax the policy in the mid-80s to allow, under certain circumstances, a second child if the first was girl or handicapped. And there, not now, as the news media is currently reporting, was where the first cracks appeared (well, ignoring the fact that we now know the history of its development). Yes, allowing 'normal' people to have a second child is a major thing in China, for sure. It won't help their ever-expanding (and increasingly burgeoning) population.

And in the end? Failure. People lie to officials*, officials lie to each other... It's suggested that China's actual population is around 1.3 billion, far different from their original goal of an even billion. And they're not even sure of that number. Like I've said before, there's so many lies here (well, OK, there), it sometimes seems like that's all there is.

*

...the extent to which this happens was illustrated in 1998 when PLA [People's Liberation Army] fighting the summer floods along the Yangtze rescued a young girl hanging from the branch of a tree...6-year-old Jiang Shang tearfully [asked] about the fate of her four brothers and sisters...on national television. ...Many viewers were so indignant they wrote letters saying that she should never have been rescued because she should not have existed in the first place

a funny story my roommate told me, pt. II

Teaching English is like teaching any language - it takes a lot of work, and usually involves mixed up words at the most inopportune times. (For reference, see the closeness of 'dumplings' and 'sleep', or 'ask' and 'kiss' in the Chinese language.)

Being a teacher makes me laugh.

My roommate was teaching basic phrases to very small children (i.e. four years old or so), one of which is the dating-basic necessity, "What's your phone number?" She then gets the kids to practice in pairs, simulating a conversation, and demonstrates this to the class with a volunteer before everyone else plunges into the activity.

Her little four-year-old volunteer came up, and was having a little trouble remembering his line, when he suddenly belted out, "What's your phone....cucumber?"

Laughing at the students' mistakes is about one of the worst things you can do, but sometimes, you just can't help it.

just to check

If you know of a copy of the transcript of Bush's speech from April 13th, please drop me a line or leave it in the comments. I missed it (big loss), but there's something I want to check that's been bothering me.

speaking of kids

Scott was recently talking about fatherhood, which is one of the three feelings people tend to leave here with (the other two being wanting to be a teacher and realizing that they hate kids). I've always loved kids, so I can't say that being here has changed my attitude in any direction at all (still love 'em, still want 'em (eventually), still don't want to be a teacher (not in a school sense, anyway)), but god damn, they can be cute sometimes. We just had our Easter outing today, and once I pulled out the camera, the kids just....changed. It's part of the Asian culture - they consider a picture 'boring' if it doesn't have people in it. They pose all the time in front of everything. There are bus tours that will take tourists to places just long enough for them to take their pictures before they get back on the bus.

Bleh. All that said, here's the picture.

l to r, front to back: Roger, Joseph, Joy, Tina. 2nd row: Jerry (hidden), Clare, Michael, Vivian, Emily, Angel.

sound bite off

Thanks to Jason for providing me with a transcript of Bush's speech.

The thing I wanted to check was right at the beginning of his speech, three sentences in.

"This has been tough weeks."

I first saw it on the CBC report of the press conference. "Did he really say that?" I questioned. I went to try and find another news source that could confirm it, as I have seen spelling and grammar mistakes on the CBC before, yes, even in quotes. Mysteriously (or maybe not), I couldn't find that quote anywhere. I found many places that quoted "tough" and one that had "tough weeks", but no one included the whole sentence. I checked a half-dozen major sources, including the NY Times, CNN, the BBC, and even Fox News (didn't really expect much there). Even the CBC later that day had amended it's story* to not include the quote. What was going on?

*Sorry, I didn't take a screenshot of the original.

I'm not one to talk about Bushisms. I think it's somwhat petty. Yes, he makes a large number of mistakes. I'd rather criticize his policy decisions and be taken more sreiously than criticize his speaking and seem like I'm nitpicking, personally. And if you want speech mistakes, every leader's got some (though Bush does seem to be the one with the most websites devoted to his.) But when you can't use the right 'thing' pronoun (which any of my students can do with ease), that's something I just can't ignore.

It makes me somewhat angry, though I can also understand why. The news media is supposed to report content and not worry about the little things - they're representing the bigger picture, which, for once, they actually did.

Still, the man could use some English help. Just read a little, George!

(Incidentally, I found it funny that only the CBC reported the mistake. They've done that before, too. Heh heh.)

drunken entry

I had a thought while at the bar, looking at my roommate's tank top which read, "I gotta give all love I have to you."

What would be the measurement for love?

Comments muchly appreciated.

I might pop in tomorrow with my own ideas, but I have no idea now.

good to know australian feds work as hard as canadian ones

My brother is working in a court house in Australia right now. I just got an email from him, advising me of various things to avoid during my trip to Australia (OK, it's to anyone living or going to Australia). I provide it here as a public service announcement, without his explicit permission. And I quote

1. If your caught selling drugs out of your house once, and told that your house is under servailance after you get released, DO NOT start selling again, especially moving larger quantities than your previous convictions. Do not do it 4 times in a row, none the less. This has been done.
2. When your caught with 2 kilos of cocaine in the airport and the cops are searching your bags, do not attempt to get "one last snort" while their backs are turned. Also, do not try and bribe the cops after you are caught trying to get "one last snort". "one more before I go to jail" is not means to start negotiations.
3. When caught sexually assualting children (I hope no one really needs this particular tidbit, but it was interesting to read), the excuse "My wife brought the kid in bed with us after she had a nightmare, I was really drunk and didn't know who I was doing things with. I thought it was my wife." Unless your wife is a 3 foot midget, that excuse has no truth to it.
4. "I'm pregnant so I don't have to answer those questions" is not a good response to police questioning you about the big bags of heroin they found under the backseat of your car.
5. When your walking to your secluded pot farm in an old dried-up riverbed, and you get caught by police, "I was out walking my dog" doesn't work well when you have a sawed off shotgun under your arm and a magnum strapped to your side.
6. (his personal favourite) If you in court for assault with a weapon, USE THIS EXCUSE. "I didn't hit him on purpose officer. He Intruded himself into the arc into which the waving wood travelled". (insert whatever weapon you used) In other words, I was just swinging my 2X4, enjoying the sunny afternoon, when this idiot walked right into the path of the wood and it struck him in the head! It's not my fault he's dead! Ever see that Simpsons where Lisa is kicking the air and Bart is swinging his arms and they say "If you walk into this, it's not my fault"? I bet this criminal did!.

I can't wait 'til I visit him in two months.

a new motto

Taiwan's current motto is Touch Your Heart. It's all over. I don't like it.

While pondering the actual flavour of some ice cream* tonight, I single-handedly developed what I believe to be a much more accurate, funny, and poignant motto that captures the, um, mysterious and intriguing character of Taiwan.

Taiwan. You never know.

*We were trying to decide whether it was mint chocolate chip or dirt and green tea. Hey, you never know. There was also a debate about the grape or taro purple. Unfortunately, we were unable to confirm either, because, as far as we could tell from the server, you could not buy one, you had to buy two. One or two what, we could not tell. Well to Taiwan. You just never know.

again

I wish I could tell you that my collarbone was 100%. I wish I could tell you that I would be losing this brace in nine short days. I wish I could tell you that I had wonderful pictures from Tainan to show. I wish I could tell you that a bird didn't shit all over my scooter this morning.

I cannot tell you any of these things, as I had another small accident today. Suffice to say, rain+corner is another thing I will be watching in the future. Also, bird shit on the scooter will now be taken as an omen.

Nothing's broken, luckily. I thought it was, and voiced my opinions repeatedly in the hospital, but the X-ray proved me wrong. So it'll just be more time in the sweaty bra. *sigh* Well, it was that, or incapacitation due to surgery. Chalk up another life experience to stupidity, I guess. I did pay for my sins - the specialist, God bless him, reset the bone a little. It doesn't stick out as much, but it fucking HURT. (Yes, I needed curses and capitals.)

Two good things came of this, however. The first is that knowing that it wasn't a break again. I've heard some horror stories about re-breaking (i.e. getting out of bed and snap), but I figure if I can survive a scooter fall, it should be pretty safe in the future.

The other thing allowed me to throw a good light on all of this. The nurse had her list of English phrases for stupid injured foreigners, which included such practical tidbits things as "What hurt?" and "Please stand here". The best one was at the top of the list, which, in my mind, is because it is probably the most used. "Please take off your pants." That's right folks. I was in a porno hospital. When you think about it, it's an ideal vehicle for health care fundraising - there's already so many pornos in medical areas involving hot medical staff and plenty of probing, why not add a sense of realism in off hours? Lucy, I know you're reading this. This is how I suggest we fix health care in Canada. Paul Martin's looking for a solution, and I've got a hum(mer)dinger.

Mark this date.

where's the beef?

I like popping over to Uncommon Thought and Rabble.ca every now and again to see what's fucked up back on my mother continent. There's always plenty of material.

The latest piece of unbelievable news is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's refusal to let Creekstone Farms test their own beef. Citing that it, "implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted," the government cited a 90-year-old law that allows it to say when are where testing can happen (probably instituted so that the government could force testing instead of inhibit it). You can read the company's response here.

This is just so typical of the Bush goverment's actions. Let industry do what it wants, unless that disrupts the norm, then bring down the government hand to quell ideas that don't conform. I'm sorry, but when a company wants to test for a disease that could threaten my life, I say it should. Well, I mean, they want to test for private, profit-driven purposes, but hey, if that's what it takes, that's what it takes.

Actions like this are why I'm completely unsurprised that the Republican National Congress is endorsing a shoot-em-up online game as an ad for the president. It's sickening.

You know, there's fist fights, riots, and general confusion here quite a bit, as these new democracies come to life. Corruption still has its hand in many pies, but I'm starting to like this more than hearing about and living in that. We'll see how that goes, I guess.

meme meme go away

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

For example, the sentence, "I study Chinese" follows exactly the same order in Mandarin.

I'm slowly getting back to my Chinese. Really.

Courtesy of bluishorange. For fun.

sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Posted for your enjoyment:

To borrow from the Animaniacs cartoons:

Good idea:

Dentistry + science

Bad idea:

Dentistry + art

And that's all I have to say about that.

And my personal favourite sign here in Taiwan:

That is all.

who doesn't love chinese food?

Or they call it here:

Food.*

(I've made it a pop-up for the faint-hearted.)

Yes, this is what I eat here. These rice boxes are the best deals. You can get a full meal (for me, this was curry chicken, some type of chicken balls, I think, stir fried bacon and cabbage, morning glory (as in the plant, it's a wonderful vegetable), and yes, a squid. Cooked? I dunno. OK, the squid is not a regular, but yesterday, I figured, why not. My favourite is gung bao chicken, known back home as kung pao chicken. mmmm.

How much you say? Usually, the rice boxes cost $2-3CDN, depending how much you load up. This one had many items, so it was on the $3 side of things. Toss in a fresh mango milk or an iced pink grapefruit green tea, and my meal still costs only about $4CDN. I love the food here.

*Not my joke, unfortunately, though I find it hilarious.

why i want kids

Homer: Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the internet and all.

My kids are awesome.

I know it's two months early, but hey, you gotta get ready for the season sometime. And anyway, I just finished three hours of marking for the little buggers. I should get to brainwash play with them now and then.

(6.3 MB, Quicktime required)

we pause for station identification

Watching the Senators win the other night (only to lose the series AGAIN the next night), I saw my first English commercials since leaving Canada. Viagra, Molson, Labatt's....they all came flooding back in a tsunami of English. Though I know the commercials here are bad, if not worse, they are in Chinese, so I don't really pay attention. A commercial break really is a time to go and pee or get some food or do both, or take care of some other important business (though what's more important than those two, I can't imagine.)

It's almost like I had stopped watching network television back home. The return to the selling and sexing up of a product, the underlying psycology and innuendo was my first real culture clash out here. Imagine that - a culture clash with my own native culture! It certainly shocked me.

My roommate, on a walk we were taking one night, commented that she couldn't deal with everything when she went home once. She had a stopover in Minneapolis, and went to go on the bus. She actually had problems with the money and signs, just because she wasn't used to understanding everything. I completely understand - while watching a movie one time here, and I made the comment to no one in particular, "I think the hardest part of going home will be that I can understand everything."

Weird, eh? It's true, though. You get used to ignoring things because you don't understand them. Chatter, signs... you learn to appreciate pictures, arrows, gestures. "Deng yi shia" meant nothing (well, before I understood it) without the "Wait up, dude" motion that makes inter-lingual non-comprehension a less than impassible obstacle.

But yeah, commercials. Crazy! Whereas someone new here might find the Chinese commercials loud (they are) and intrusive (ditto), I found the English ones to be that. And it's only been four and a half months! What other surprises does cross-cultural living have in store?

no, really, i insist

I mentioned before about visiting good sites that often try to expose the news. Uncommon Thought has a great article that really moved me, that you must go read now. It doesn't take long, it has pictures that moved me deeply.

And they aren't even my countrymen.

"If we hide reality then the truth is lost."

Something's wrong here.

surprisingly, it's a wet heat

My life over the past few years has been an enjoyable descent through the inner sanctum of hell.

Saskatchewan was never that hot, in retrospect. I remember one summer, when I was eight years old*, the school said that we didn't have to come in, as it was so hot. My mother, in the interests of my conitnuing education (God bless her, she never stopped caring), said I had to go. I seem to remember seven or eight kids being in class that day. No recess. I recall plenty of sitting.

That was about the hottest Saskatchewan summer that I remember. It was never that bad, though. You could always deal with the heat, and I actually wished many days that it was hotter - that damned north wind could give you a shiver on a beach day, I tells ya.

Then I worked a summer in Ottawa. My first exposure to wet heat**. It was, um, different and difficult. No AC, third floor room in a condo. I spent a lot of time in an undershirt that summer. If my roommates minded, they never balked, I didn't care. My girlfriend of the time visited me for a while during one particularly intense wave. All I can say is, there's love, and there's sleeping-next-to-someone-on-a-twin-bed-in-a-heat-wave-
and-you're-both-feeling-like-yuck love.

And so, I thought I had faced the worst of it. I moved to Ottawa, lived through, and got used to, another summer and a half of the weather. It became something that you just dealt with - the AC at work was nice, I had a fan at home, as as long as I was moving on my bike, the wind cooled me.

Then I came here. And it's been....an adjustment. December started off warm, then January was dropping down to single digit temps (and for those who said poor baby - when the temperature drops to that at home, keep in mind that your society has heating), which slowly rose until now. 'Now' is currently 28 degree temperatures at 1 a.m. I'm teaching during the day, so I don't want to even imagine what it's reaching outside while I enjoy the cool, moisture-free inside environment. And I've been told that this is an abnormally cool year, one of the coolest in at least a decade.

So that makes three circles. I have yet to weather the full brunt of a summer here. I'll send you a postcard. I hear that the sandy desert raining flakes of fire, 'garlanded' by the river and wood of the third ring of the sixth level is supposed to be nice around late summer. I figure that I'll be right at home with the blasphemers.

* It was good year. I got 100% on a report on my life history (how do you get things wrong on that?) and had my first sex-ed classes. Well, the one where you found out the names for things and saw some pictures.

** Er, I mean humidity.

things i learned/enjoyed tonight

Mostly at KTV (Asian karaoke. If you've seen Lost in Translation, you may understand a bit more. From what I understand, anyway. I haven't seen it myself. Anyway, it's mostly the same, but you're in a room with drunken friends, not in front of a whole bar of drunken strangers.)

• Hungry Eyes...for the UN and I. (Hey, that's what you get when you use one-letter word abbreviations.)
• A potential (country?) song title: I Love You, But the Court Says No
• The K is for Kiddie Porn (seriously, we saw naked child. Taiwan is so fucked sometimes - commercials and background videos with kids naked, but movies get the boob blur.)
• Friendly shores. Friendly shores lead to dirty beaches. You're a dirty beach, aren't you? Dirty dirty dirty! Please use proper protection with said beaches. (Come on, we were drinking. Well, I was.)
• Waterloo, knowing my life is for giving you (Ah, broken English. And anyway, if I used to Rochambeau for peoples' souls, I can give people away.)
• I wish that I had Jessie's Squirrel. Why can't I find a rodent like that?
• As soon as I get it, I will post the best KTV picture ever taken in the history of Taiwanese, and possibly Asian, KTV. Of me, of course. Seriously. I did it...myyyyyy waaaaay.
• Best way to clear yourself some room on the dance floor, as a male? Grind your ass up against another male. Guaranteed results*. Can even work with females - they can either get creeped out and leave, or return the favour. Either way, everything comes up roses.
• They do road construction work here at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday. Bi-zarre

* Results not guaranteed. Especially if you're in a gay bar. Duh.

"it feels terrific"

I'm sure it does.

A HUGE shout-out and congrats to our girls in Sweden for winning the gold in the world curling championships. Colleen Jones has had quite a few disappointments, including losing to the U.S. last year (in curling?! WTF?). They dominated this year's final, somewhat of a surprise, considering they barely squeaked into the playoffs. Rock on, girls. Rock on.

Posted by ambiguo at 01:21 PM | Comments (2)

guaranteed results

How to make someone feel really, really special.

Tell them that you're sorry if it sounds cruel (to them) or selfish (of you), but you're glad that everything that has happened to them, the good and the bad, did in fact happen, because if it hadn't, they wouldn't be there with you right now, and you'd be a worse person for it.

And mean it.

filing the paperwork for preparation for a test for a license to kill

Er, drive.

I went today for the required eye test in order to be able to write my driver's test sometime in the near future. In keeping with Chinese bureaucracy, it took me longer to fill out the paperwork so that I could take the test. And the stamps! Your personal 'stamp' here is known as your 'chop'* - I have mine, though I never use it.

Anyhoo, I got my measurements (they have this cool little scale that you stand on that takes your weight and height at the same time. Cool!), then got the quick little eye test to make sure I wasn't blind and driving, then I was directed to a 'medical nurse' (I'm sorry, what are you then, Nursey McNurse?). I have no idea what the function of this nurse was - she took my sheet, stamped it a couple of times, then gave it back to me. I think it was the 'patient is not dead' endorsement, so that no dead people ride around on scooters. Other than that, I'm running on empty.

Then, of course, back to the front desk, the start of my journey, where they issued the final BIG ASS chop. Take a look at it! Huge!

Now I get to study for the test, which includes such entertaining and relevant questions as: When encountering police cars, you can (1) break into a motorcade. (2) speed up. (3) not break into a motorcade.

Should be fun.

* I always think of that Flintstones episode "A judo, a chop chop chop" whenever I hear the word chop.

when the line gets crossed

IM has way too many opportunities to go bad.

technopedophile: Someone very interested in young technologies.

Ew ew ew ew ew.

Remove those shudders with a tasty McSweeney's List! Or, you can read about how not to get hit by a brick.

Where would we be without the Internet?

there's nothing worse

...than getting woken up by construction in the apartment right under you. At least once a week.

Unless that's getting woken up by a duet of said construction and tile cutting way too early in the morning, then dozing to a dream of a pretty girl who works in apples and mice in your apartment. And dreaming about taking pictures of someone blogging so that you can blog about taking pictures of someone blogging...

Yeah, I know, this is really only making sense to me. I'm in a weird mood this morning.