hang on sloopy

There's obvious differences that separate foreigners and Taiwanese - foods they like, skin colour, ethnic curses - but there's a subtle one that I notice more and more. Taiwanese have an innate ability to stay seated on a scooter, even when unconscious. Especially when unconscious, really. Foreigners....don't.

I don't have any pictures at this moment, but I cannot count the number of times I've looked over and seen a kid asleep either standing in the footwell with their head on the instrument panel or sitting behind mom or dad with their arms wrapped around the parent, visions of sugar-coated tomatoes dancing through their heads. I've seen wives with arms around husbands, asleep on the way to work in the morning. I've seen passed-out young men on the back of girlfriends' scooters. They just seem to have an innate sense of balance that keeps them on scooters. I guess they're born into it. Sometimes it seems like the only balance here.

This concept, however, appears to be a foreign concept to foreigners, it seems. I've heard numerous stories about nearly falling off from tiredness or, more commonly, drunkenness. Us non-Taiwanese seem to want to lean back all the time, which is immediately regretted by the few I've known to fall of of a scooter doing 50 km/h. And yet, we continue to drive.

There's a lot of things here that remind one that we are foreign to this environment, significant and neat. I guess this is just another one of the small things.

excitable children: the untapped energy source of the future

Ways in which kids are easily excitable in this country (which kids back in North America probably would not be):

1. C's class of kindergartens walked in one day last week to see their names written in BUBBLE LETTERS on the board. OH MY GOD BUBBLE LETTERS. The kids could not even sit down for fifteen minutes - they were dancing around the classroom, excitedly chatting about their NAMES and it was so COOL and that they couldn't READ the OTHER children's names and oh man, I didn't envy her. There will be no more bubble letters.

2. I began wearing my hair in a ponytail to school a couple of weeks ago (yeah, it's that long now. My goal has been achieved.) It took seven minutes for my first class to say something - "Teacher, your hair is like girl!" Yeah, you can tell my teaching has gone far. My youngest class (still fairly advanced) simply screamed the next day when I walked in, then accused me of wanting to be a girl. Of course, when I told them that I wanted it out of my eyes, they asked why I didn't cut it off. New vocabulary: aesthetics.

3. Also two weeks ago, C's kindergartens were introduced to a book called Mr. (somthing and the something something). The title isn't really important, just the title of Mr. They thought it was ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS (this class only expresses things in capital letters, hence the title of this post), and instead of reading the story, they had to go through each student and address them with a title and their family name. "Oh, hee hee, I'm MR. Huang." "Ms. Cheng? HAHAHAHAHAHA!" They, being five-year-olds, still insist on C addressing them in this manner.

(Incidentally, as a complete non-sequitor, she has one student who was born in England whose name is Sherlock. His brother is in the classroom next door. Three guesses on the brother's name, and the first two don't count.)

philippino phun

Well, it's time to actually post something of substance here.

A couple (nope, wait, three. Wow) of months ago, my best friend Michael fulfilled a promise he had made a year before and flew across the world to come and visit me. He spent some time here (a night before, a week after) seeing the sights, drinking the beer, eating the food, meeting the people, singing the KTV songs, and smelling the (oh so many) smells. The majority of our time, however, was spent in the Philippines, mostly on the tropical resort island of Boracay. I had figured someone coming from a minus twenty-five degree, snow-covered clime would enjoy a tropical island for a week. I was also looking for someplace to relax and read, as I seemed to have a growing stack of books and a shrinking collection of time.

Boracay is a beautiful tropical resort island, one of many in the Philippines, though it is one of the smallest and most developed. You can fly in close to it, but because it is small enough to walk across in about forty-five minutes, you must take a boat in. Let me tell you, stepping off a boat into the water and walking up the beach (they just beach the catamaran, there is no dock) is about the best way to come up onto a tropical island as it gets. We found a place quickly and began to enjoy the fruits of the island - figuratively and literally. Throughout the day, women would walk around the island with large baskets of fruit on their head, cutting (on the spot) and selling a wide variety - papayas, pineapples, rambutans, grapes, melons, guavas... And the beauty. Being geared almost solely toward the tourist trade, the island had a lot to offer. Restaurants of almost every type of food you could think of (well, enough to be able to cater to basically anyone). Activities of every type - Chad did numerous scuba dives, and Michael and I dove for the first time ever, in addition to water-skiing, banana-boating, snorkeling, biking around the island, windsurfing... Not to mention the always-available option of lying on the beach and turning red as a patch of PEI soil, which we engaged in a few times. Mmmm, cancery.

To be truthful, combining activity with sun usually takes a lot out of one in the first place, and combining THAT with a 5-9 happy hour where the drinks were about $1CDN each, and we weren't up for the late-night partying that occurred nightly. But it did happen, that's for sure - for most on the island, a daily schedule started at about noon (sometimes later) and would generally end at around a quarter past late. Being a resort, the island catered to this social need too, with a plethora of bars, bands, and booze. However, on the artistic side, there were also gorgeous sand sculptures built every night and accentuated with candles.

And so, we enjoyed a wonderful week relaxing, checking out the island, eating likes gluttons, reading, diving, and making fun of me. Well, WE didn't all enjoy the last one, but as Meatloaf says, two of three ain't bad. I guess. Michael and I saw of bit more of the island by taking bikes around, we fed fish eight meters down in the ocean, and I got to see a friend that I hadn't seen in over a year. The time went too fast, and we were back to Kaohsiung after a night in Manila and Michael enjoyed a good drunken yelling at a McDonald's employee.

Of course, this is an over-simplification of a wonderful vacation, but if it has given you a passing taste of the Philippines and whetted your whistle for a possible excursion of your own, I'm satisfied. For me, it was another notch in my growing belt of world experience. Ha.

Check out the pictures. I enjoyed taking them, that's for sure.

things i can do now that i couldn't do before i started yoga

• bend over and touch my toes. i was so inflexible before, my fingers ended about three or four inches above my toes. Now, with help (and a couple of times without), I can actually bend in half and touch my nose to my knees.
• touch each foot to its corresponding ear (left is better than right). I can't quite get my foot behind my head yet, but I can get it on top.
• touch my forehead to my toes in a squat.
• make a T with my body, arms and a leg being the top, other leg being the bottom. Like this, but I can get my legs in a straight line now. You wouldn't believe how grueling that posture is.
• the bridge (or bow). Here's a picture. I started not even being able to lift myself up, and now I can hold it for long periods of time, lift limbs, do pushups in it...
• headstands. Having started at nothing, and I mean nothing, I can now get into a headstand, do the splits, and follow it with a full hip rotation from side to side. It's a pretty neat feeling.
  Posted by ambiguo at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

so i went to the strip joint last night

I have been to two stag parties in my entire life. At one, the groom rented a school gymnasium for an evening and all the sports equipment and had all his friends come and play sports for a few hours. After, everyone who wanted went to a pub for food and drinks. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and it allowed all his friends to participate.

The other time was last night, and we found ourselves in a much more stereotypical environment - the strip club. I am not a big fan of strip clubs. I have actually been to more male strip clubs than female strip clubs (that is, where males strip, not females) thanks to my good friend Michael. Regardless of the sex, I'm not a fan.

It's not the strippers, as people seem to think. I might argue that they are happy with what they are doing, a view presented to me last night. I was told that the strip club is just fun, and to enjoy it. The women are in control, you're not going home with any of them, and they're using their talents and assets as best they can to make money. OK, maybe. The women aren't going to let you do anything they really don't want you to do (not with big, burly men to back them up), no one in the club is going to go home with them (although that's not always the case, if you have enough money, and sure, maybe they see this as the best opportunity they've got. And the same goes for the guys who do it - there were guys dancing, too, and male strippers can certainly be included in that group.

What I have a problem with, however, is the base objectification that occurs, and the power that is seemingly held by that god of gods, money. Of course, when people go to the strippers, they're not looking for stimulating intellectual conversation, but the strippers are treated like objects - always. You choose the one you want, get her to perform her service, pay her, and don't give a second thought (unless it's the thought of a second lap dance). A buffet of bodies, full of smiles as they are looking at you, a business-like stare looking around for the next client when they are not. This is not as much a stereo-type as it seems - Every stripper I have seen (or known) is doing this, as that is how you earn your money, which is why you got into this.

And it's the money that drives this madness. The customers have it, the strippers want it. The strippers might not let you do anything they don't want, but they will do what it takes to get that cash, and as much of it (as long as they're comfortable with it, for the most part), and then move on to the next one.

I read a story a while ago about kids in high school having fuck buddies. The girls believed they were in control, because they were the ones holding what the boys wanted. One could easily read in their comments, however, that for the most part, the girls would give the boys what they wanted when they wanted it. So yeah, they held the key, but so-called 'power' is useless when yielded so quickly.

I can't speak for how people feel, but there were a lot of men that looked pretty convinced that that girl on their lap was interested in them. And this is my biggest problem - the false beliefs, and the problems that they plant for the future. Strip clubs are a place of fantasy, of perfect bodies, of no attachments and no responsibilities. Most people who visit them are aware of this, and use it for a temporary reprise - everything in moderation, looking at the menu, blah blah blah (though I think there's a distinct difference between looking at the menu and going to Costco and trying samples of everything there. Or of looking at the menu and demanding gourmet meals every night).

However, there's a growing number (due to, in my opinion, not just strip clubs, but the marketing of sex in our society, a much larger concern than I am ready to tackle now) of people who can't separate the fantasy from reality, or haven't ever been able to, because of an immersion in the fantasy we see so much. I'm afraid of young men (because, mostly, that's where this trend is heading) growing up not knowing how to treat a woman with respect. (Does it go the other way? You bet. I hated the trend of a half a dozen years ago of teenage girls finding it cool to denigrate boys, with even a clothing fad emerging. There was more than a little concern of boys being affected self-confidence wise, of a backlash of emotions against women in general, and of girls not learning to treat others with respect. Basically the reverse of what men had been doing to women for so long, but equal attacks don't fix the problem.) These people may not be able to form proper relationships, to the detriment of themselves, each other, and their potential children. Are these new thoughts or new trends? Not at all. We see how it's been creeping up through the past few decades, but yet we keep sliding down this slope.

Maybe I'm overreacting. The groom did turn to me last night and say, "I love my wife-to-be. I'm not going to get all emotional or weepy or anything like that, but I really love her a lot, and I needed to say that right now to someone who knows that it's absolutely true." And I do. And that was before he was half-cut. He will be a fine husband, a wonderful father, and he already is a great friend. Maybe I'm pushing too many of my own beliefs too hard - I have a hard time with sex without emotion. The usage of sex as a power and marketing tool is something that disturbs me deeply, and I tend to push that out. But in the end, it's pretty hard to agree with objectification, regardless of the sex. It removes value from people and segregates us from each other, and can do no good for people in the long run.

There. That soapbox was getting dusty, after all.