Formosan Exile

Sunday, January 30, 94

God Will Be Here At 8:30 P.M., But She Doesn’t Speak English

Jean phoned us the other day, and invited us for dinner and temple. Game for anything, we said “sure”. They don’t have organized church services the way we do, people just bop in and out and do their thing. I asked Jean if we would go the temple after dinner, but she assured us that there was plenty of time because God does not arrive until 8:30 p.m.

Taiwan will never cease to amaze me. Dinner was a variety of courses, but the main dish was a fish head with tofu and rice noodle that was incredibly good. We also had shrimp with rice cakes, some kind of deep fried pork rind with some kind of marrow, fish and a raw egg that cooked itself when placed on some hot rice, and some beef and green onion soup. It will be hard to find such good Chinese food when we get home, and the people seem to prepare it so effortlessly.

The temples are something to see. There are beautifully carved Door Gods on the entrance, to keep out evil spirits and malicious individuals. The Wind Ear God and the Thousand Mile Eye God, on either side of the altar, provide additional security. If we had Door Gods on our legislatures, maybe certain incumbents would not be re-elected. I digress. Inside the temple there was a gaggle of people around a guy about my age, with his hair in those raised twin ponytails that little Chinese girls have. He wore an ornate apron, and spoke in an immature female voice. Jean gave the temple “clerk” (for want of a better word) my name, (Doug Stephen comes out as Se Da Wen—depending on the tone it has something to do with history and virtue—perhaps because my virtue is history), address, and date of birth. She then took me to the front altar, where there were many little statues (or idols, depending on your perspective) of Taoist Gods. I suppose they are not really Gods the way we understand the term, more like saints and in some cases just examples of proper behaviour. One of the Gods is a little girl, seven years old, and the scoop is that She enters the body of the guy in the ponytails, and speaks through him. I can sort of stay aboard with a see-spot-run Mandarin conversation, but the staccato Taiwanese dialect defeated me utterly. Anyway S/he started talking, and after a bit asked if I believed in the Gods. What does a Christian say to that? If I said “no”, it would show incredible disrespect, as if I were treating the temple like a tourist attraction. So I said “yes”. S/he stamped her foot petulantly, sat on the altar, and then informed me that she knew I didn’t really, but only said so for respect for the culture. S/he then proceeded to rattle off the most incredible stuff about me, that S/he could not possibly have known beforehand. It seems that, if I keep it up, I will have liver trouble soon. No coffee, and lay off the booze. I have no shortage of women in my life telling me that already. S/he then took some candy from the altar, waved it through the incense, and gave it to me.

The key to this place is Chinese friends, without whom we would always be on the outside looking in.

I now have half a pound of Chinese candy (very different from ours, by the way), a paper with characters and a chop to put under my pillow, some incense and paper that I am to burn and put the ashes into my bath water, ashes on my shirt, and a whole new appreciation for a wonderful and mysterious culture.

Formosan Exile

Summary and Conclusion

Monday, March 14, 94

It’s hard to believe that we will be in the air--and on our way home--two weeks to the day from now. This is as good a time as any to write my summary and conclusion. Pretty soon we will pack up our stuff (including the computer).

I only like to write about happy things, and believe you me there is nothing happy about having to leave “my another home” (as one my students insists on expressing it). This final chapter will be as positive as I can make it. I am not saying that the way things are done in Taiwan is either better or worse than in Canada—just different--and it seems to work. This society is in a state of constant change—and not always for the better. Like every other country in the world—including Canada should we dare to admit it, Taiwan is greatly influenced by American society and values. The influence of the USA has not been uniformly good around the world. The United States is a country of 230 million or so people—an incredible pool of energy and talent and brains and ability. Americans have excelled in every field of human endeavour, and it’s a mystery to me why others seem to want to emulate only the garbage from American culture.

David Letterman has (or had) the most amusing concept in his “top ten list” presentation. Well, I’m twice the man he is, so I have my “top twenty” things about Taiwan. These points are intended to be amusing and/or educational, so here goes.

Teacher Doug’s Top Twenty Taiwan Pointers and Tidbits
(many not to be found in any guide book)

My first point is practical, if nothing else. When entering a subway station, male westerners would be well advised to turn slightly, to contact the turnstile with the hip. The bar height is suitable for Asians, but not for (generally taller) foreign guys. I found this out the hard way, when my electronic transit pass didn’t bite and I whacked full-frontally into the ill-placed bar. It ruined my day, but made me glad that I already have had my family.

Bowing is not obsequious here, as it would be at home.

Chinese manners dictate that it is more important to be kind than to be right. I like that.

Anyone who thinks that racism is exclusively a western or Caucasian vice is mistaken. There seems to be at least as much racism here as at home, and it was not fun the few times we have been on the receiving end of it. By the way, it is not unheard of for Taiwanese people to have a contemptuous attitude to other Asians—the ones from poorer countries.

People seem to be better drivers here than in Canada. The traffic is heavy enough to be a sort of controlled chaos, and driving (or walking for that matter) requires a higher level of alertness. It is illegal to turn right on a red light, but not to drive a motorcycle on the sidewalk—and the riders have the nerve to honk pedestrians out of their way. It’s as much as your life is worth to step off a bus without looking to the right to make sure there is no scooter roaring up. You cannot expect a driver to stop for you just because you are in a crosswalk with a green pedestrian light. Drivers gauge your progress (like “leading” a duck with a shotgun), so it is very dangerous for a pedestrian to turn around, or to speed up or change direction or to do anything unexpected. You might ask how I learned that—by almost getting run over in the early part of our first year here. Traffic is actually safer here, I think, because people must take responsibility for their own safety.

Standards of public behaviour in Taiwan are generally higher than at home—except for spitting, burping, and nose picking. Some Chinese people, accustomed only to chopsticks, have shocking table manners when they eat with a knife and fork—eating off the knife and spearing the next bite with the fork held in a clenched fist—sort of like a Viking at a banquet.

Taiwan is a great place to be a little kid, or an elderly person.

This is also a terrible place to be disabled, or a teenager. Very few places are wheelchair-friendly. Teens get whisked from one educational activity to another, and there is relentless pressure on them to get good marks. By the way, public schools here charge a modest tuition fee—not free as in Canada. There is no consideration whatsoever given to poor people—they come up with the money somehow for education and user-fee health care. Parents do not have the right to refuse immunizations for their kids—either the kids get their shots or they are not allowed into school. Help for homeless people—a fraction of the numbers at home—is limited to the odd meal and hot shower. I often think we Canadians go overboard about “the most vulnerable members of our society”—or whatever the politically correct term is that the yuppie socialists like to use.

There has recently been a marked improvement in gender equality, but feminism is still in its infancy. Some of the sexist stuff is bad enough to offend even such a chauvinist as myself.
“ICBC” is the International Commercial Bank of China.

Any Canadian boss would go bazooka if he or she caught anyone sleeping in the office—even during a break. Over the noon hour, some places actually dim the lights so people can sleep at their desks for a little nap. Chinese people were astonished when I said it would not be tolerated in Canada.

There are so many mobile phones here that I almost think there is more than one per person. Even little kids have them, and cell phones are a lot cheaper than at home. You buy a card from 7-Eleven for $NT300, and even that small amount of money seems to last a long time. I would never bother with a landline again.

People are still very traditional here, and parents are still in charge. A man can take his mother’s side against his wife in a dispute—and live.

Children, even well into their thirties, still obey their parents. This is changing slowly, but is still very true.

“Disrupting Public Order” is against the law in Taiwan, and so is “Offending Public Morality”.

Nobody makes better soup or vegetables than Chinese people. Nobody makes worse bread or cheese either.

The cost of quick medical attention is a lot less privacy than most Canadians would consider necessary. You get ushered into the doctor’s little broom-closet of an office, you sit behind the person in front of you during the consultation, and the person behind hears all about you. Most doctors speak pretty good English, and the computer records are all in English as well. A doctor at Wang Fang sent me to see a hospital urologist for a test with which 50% of the readers need not concern themselves—and not because of the unfortunate turnstile incident, by the way. I learned that the guy just ahead of me was there because his vasectomy didn’t take. I almost wished I could say in Chinese “Tough beans, but that’s the way the mop flops—daddy. You should try Scottish birth control the next time--The Lock Knees Monster”, and then guffaw at the guy’s woebegone look. What the hell—if you’re waiting to see a urologist it’s not because you have a nosebleed.

Displaying affection is very different. Unrelated or unconnected opposite-sex people don’t hug, or even touch each other. Boys often walk around with their arms around each other and girls hold hands, but there is nothing sexual about it.

It is a good idea to steer clear of many expats. A lot of them are misfits or drunks or just people who were dysfunctional in their home countries. I even think that some guys left home one step ahead of the law—if only for arrears of support payments.

With a lot more to complain about, people in Taiwan do a lot less complaining than Canadians. With long hours and low pay, typhoons, earthquakes, overcrowding, pollution, and a formidable enemy bent on the destruction of their prosperity and democracy, people just go about their lives.

There you have it. My year. It has been a time of wonderful experiences. I have found the real beauty of this island (or country or whatever it is), and discovered the “real” Taipei—warts and all. Many Chinese people have been good and kind to us, and we have many friends that we love and will miss.

We have also grown spiritually, having found a wonderful church (albeit very recently) and learned through our friends about Chinese perspectives on things eternal and the meaning of our lives. I have learned about ghosts, spirit money, Wind Ear Gods, and incense. I have not yet found out, however, if praying to the God of Scholarship before exams is a viable alternative to studying. I suspect not. The Fertility Goddess seems to have been goofing off a bit--the birthrate is declining in Taiwan—but probably the real reason is the increase in the number of career women and two income families.

To be honest, however, I have not told the whole story. We have had our share of hardship and sorrow, discomfort, feeling like fish in a tree, and wishing for a car or a furnace or a cheeseburger worth eating.

Who wants to read about unhappy stuff? Who wants to write it? Other than putting a positive spin on it, everything I have written is Gospel true.

Formosan Exile

Chapter 49

Monday, March 07, 94

Medical System in Taiwan

If you ever go into a hospital in Taipei, you will get the impression that nearly everyone in the city is either sick or injured. The crowds are incredible! Rush-hour numbers of wheelchairs, jammed waiting areas with TVBS blaring out the latest catastrophe or skullduggery, IV poles and catheter bags by the dozen, here and there some poor guy stitched up like a football, or with a leg in a cast. Everyone is accompanied by one or more family members, and there is a loud buzz of people talking. How can all these people get to see a doctor in one day? Somehow, everyone does.

My dentist had noticed a small cyst in my mouth, and suggested I see an oral surgeon to get rid of it. I wrote, “I would like to see an oral surgeon” (我想要看一位口頭外科醫生, 請), in fluent Chinese, and set off for Wang Fang Hospital. Yeah right. The Chinese way of saying “illiterate” is “word blind” and that is precisely what I am without my handy-dandy babelfish translator. I saw an intern within an hour, and an oral surgeon three days later. The doctor’s English was difficult to understand, but he said I must have bitten myself a year or so ago (gnashing my teeth at work, no doubt), and that the cyst was over an artery and thus would bleed like be damned if he cut into it. He wanted to book me for surgery, under a general anesthetic, just to get rid of a tiny benign cyst! I was reading that Canadians are now going for “medical tourism”—coming overseas for surgery that has a months-or-years waiting list at home. Even if you don’t have Taiwan National Health Insurance, and have to pay the whole shot yourself, it’s remarkably inexpensive—and Canadian medicare will likely cover it.

Tuesday, March 08, 94

Some Good Karma Earned Today

I have learned many useful things, besides the value of patience and silence, from living in a very traditional Chinese society. Taipei seems to be very international and cosmopolitan, but that is just on the surface. One thing I learned is that, if you live long enough, many strange things will happen that you never would have expected to experience.

Today, for example, a fair maiden swooned in my arms, just like in a fairy tale. I was going down the escalator at Wang Fang Community MRT station, two steps behind a woman who suddenly sat down on the stairs. She sort of plopped down, as if she had lost her strength. I came down beside her and asked “xiaojie hao bu hao?” (woman good no good?) I was not discussing sexual orientation, that is actually the correct Chinese for “are you OK lady?” She assured me that she was, and I helped her to her feet. I started to walk up to where I was standing before, and all of sudden she fell back. I grabbed her, because she really would have hurt herself if she hit her head on the sharp edge of the escalator steps. I was off balance, and we both fell, with her on top of me. I did not get hurt because my backpack cushioned me, but we arrived at the bottom of the escalator in a tangle of arms and legs. The station staff ran up and looked after her, and thanked me profusely—at least I think that’s what they were saying. I have no idea what her problem was, maybe a petit mal seizure or something.


Wednesday, March 09, 94

“My” Construction Company, Nice Weather for a Change

I enjoyed my construction company class, more than any other. Their English is good enough for complex idioms, and even some fairly complicated jokes. It’s really nice to see their confidence increasing as the months go by.

It has sunshine-and-shirtsleeves for three days or so now. Such a refreshing change from the misery of last week! It is quite green and wooded around our digs, and every day is great-to-be-alive kind of experience. Lunch was good today—even though the hot-and-sour soup had cuttlefish and pork liver in it.

I hope we will be able to go to Keelung at least once more, before we have to go home.

Thursday, March 10, 94

Music to My Ears, Changes in Just Three Years

I prepared a list of discussion topics for my advanced conversation classes. One of them, a bright woman in her late twenties, asked me, “What’s feminism?” As tempted as I was to say “nothing with which you need concern yourself—just irrelevant western propaganda”, I did not do so.

I was astonished the other day, when I realized that we have been coming to Taiwan now for nearly four years—and that Lao-puo has lived here for almost three years of that time. We both have noticed some changes in Taipei—and not changes for the better. For example, it is very sad, with the popularity of western food, to see that more and more Chinese people are overweight. It is particularly sad to see so many fat little children. Despite the fact that people have such beautiful black hair, many women dye their hair to blonde or red or something. Some morons of either gender affect an outdated punk look, with purple hair and nose rings. (by the way, I have seen more than one albino over here—it must be wickedness for the poor souls in the strong sun. We have noticed that more children are ill mannered—usually the fat ones because they are spoiled. They run ahead of the adults and hog the seats on the train—one kid even elbowed me out of the road and took the second-to-last seat. He put his hand on the empty seat beside him, to save it for someone. “To hell with you, buster,” I said to myself as I sat on his hand. Generally speaking, our complaints are minor and it is very comfortable to be here.

Friday, March 11, 94

Canadian Society

Tonight was the monthly social of the Canadian Society, at the Brass Monkey as usual. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but some months ago Lao-puo won bottle draw. As the first winner she had her choice of three offerings, but she spurned the Crown Royal in favour of some poodle-piss white wine. This is the nearest will ever have, or will, come to divorce, I think. We both had to work until 8:30, and the place was jammed when we got there. The transportation was really good—the school is two blocks from Guting MRT Station, and it was just a matter of taking a train (choice of two) to Zhong Shan Station, bailing, and getting a bus across Nanjing Dong Lu to Fuxing Bei Lu, followed by a half-block walk. It is so easy to get around without a car in Taipei.

Saturday, March 12, 94

Getting Rained On, and Working, a Beautiful Gift

Today was a cold and blustery day (again), and I did nothing but work. It makes for a long day, to work 9-12 (no break) with the Kunyang boys, and then 3.5 hours in Neihu with Lao-ban, his daughter, and the neighbour little girl. It was too windy for my umbrella to work, and it was raining heavily. I caught a chill that turned into bronchitis. Probably we get lung infections so easily because of the air pollution.

Jeng Lao-ban gave me a lovely gift, a big bottle of Chinese rice wine. It’s in an earthenware crock, called a “hulu”. Evidently a hulu is an auspicious symbol, and miniatures can be found on many jade ornaments.

Lao-puo and I had a nice dinner, but was still full from lunch. I was too tired from work to do very much of anything. That is precisely the reason why I prefer to teach only adults—kids (and the need to be constantly animated) wear me out.


Sunday, March 13, 94

Seafood Feasting at the Wine Party

Lao-puo’s employer (and mine part time) had a teacher appreciation event in a local restaurant. They must really appreciate us, judging from the spread that was laid on. We had whole fish (done my favourite way), pickled octopus, raw tuna with wasabi, two different crab dishes, roll-ups with lobster and shrimp, and three kinds of seafood soup. I don’t think that Chinese food that good is available in Canada—at any price. For some reason it was called a wine party even though there was no “wining” except from me when I discovered the event was to be as dry as a bone. Chinese people don’t seem to drink very often—usually just at celebrations.

Formosan Exile

Chapter 48

Monday, February 28, 94

Peace Memorial Day passed by uneventfully. Who Wants to Go Out in the Rain Anyway?

Tuesday March 01, 94

All of a Sudden My Year is Almost Over

Today is momentous decision day. We have decided to come home a bit early. Our flight will be March 30. It would not have been any easier to think about leaving at the last minute—at the end of April. Our year (all eleven months of it) has been wonderful. I think, out of all the places I have lived, I would choose Taipei as my favourite. Oh sure, there’s plenty wrong with things here. We spend half the year complaining about the heat, and the other half complaining about the cold. October and April are the best months—or you might say the only good ones. The air quality would gag a moose sometimes, and the crowds and the noise are a bit grim. Chinese people in restaurants (large family groups) have a boisterous good time, and we have sometimes finished our meals with our ears ringing. I have not made as much progress with my Chinese as I would have liked. Mandarin is a beautiful language. It is musical to listen to, and the expressions are quite poetic. I can give the impression that I understand it, and I can get meals and transportation with very few problems. I can at least distinguish individual words when I hear conversations around me, and once in a while actually make an intelligent remark.

We need to come home early because of my dad’s recent illness. The situation could become labour-intensive.

Teaching English in Taiwan is hard “work”. I’ve had a wonderful year, despite the hardships.


Hardship and poverty. That’s the lot of an English teacher—hardship and poverty

Wednesday, March 02, 94

More Complaining about the Weather

The rain and cold is getting worse, not better. Get a load of this.

Taipei ( 03/02 16:30 )
Weather
Temp(oC)
POP
03/02 20~03/03 08
14~15
100%
03/03 08~03/03 20
9~14
100%
03/03 20~03/04 08
7~9
80%

It’s cold and damp and windy and nothing is heated and you can’t get warm to save your life. We should go to a hot pot restaurant, because there is a gas ring in the middle of the table. It is all-you-can-eat meats, fish, seafood, and vegetables. The bonus is that you can get warmed up during dinner. The food is cooked in a great pot in the middle of the table, and the pot is divided into two. On one side there is broth (very tasty) to boil your choice in. The other side (not for the faint of heart) is boiling pig’s blood, with hot peppers that could peel paint. It’s as much a social occasion as a meal to go to a hot pot establishment.

Thursday, March 03, 94

Cancellations

My only gripe with my employer, or at least the main one, is classes getting cancelled. Some of my one-on-one classes are with very senior people, and their workloads often require last-minute cancellations. For some reason, my company puts up with that—and expects the teachers to do so as well. My workload is getting pretty slack, because I cannot be assigned any new courses—they are three months long usually—and my current classes are ending one-one-by-one.

Friday, March 04, 94

Better Times, More Nonsense from the Mainlanders

The rain has finally stopped! To make the day even better, I have a new student for the next month. Her name is Jill, and she is a high school kid preparing for an English interview for university entrance next year.

Now we just have the cold to contend with. I go all day without taking my jacket off.

The big news story today, and for the next little while is the mainlanders’ new anti-secession law. It’s not as grim as it sounds:

On Friday the government announced a 12.6 percent increase in military spending -- its fourth double-digit increase in five years as it tries to back up threats to attack Taiwan.
It said it plans to spend 247.7 billion yuan (US$30 billion) on its military this year, though analysts say China's true spending is as much as several times the reported figure.
Wen said military modernization was key to "safeguarding national security and reunification" -- a reference to Taiwan.
There is no doubting the outcome of an attack. Some people think it would be over in hours. Others think it’s just intimidation. In any case, the issue is always in the background here, but people just go about their lives anyway. What else can they do?

Saturday, March 05, 94

Chinese Bangers

This was my usual busy day. I did three hours with the Kunyang boys this morning, and three and one half hours at Jeng lao-ban’s house. Jeng tai-tai laid on the usual wonderful lunch—vegetable snow peas with mushrooms, grilled pork, and rice sausages. I’ve never had a sausage made from rice before, but there is a first time for everything.

There was an earthquake last night—five in fact, and a final one mid-morning Sunday just for good measure—not so bad (nobody hurt and no damage) but enough for the noise and shaking to wake us up. The worst one was a magnitude 3 in Taipei City. An earthquake sounds a bit like a train coming as it builds, and the fear lies in wondering if it will get any worse. Everything in the house was shaking. Everything outside was groaning or mumbling—rather like my students whenever I say “Let’s do some grammar now”. The memory of the big (9-21) earthquake, in which 2000 people died, is still very fresh in people’s memories.

Sunday, March 06, 94

Dinner Out

We had dinner in Muzha with Chrissy last night—she knows all the good places to go. We walked there- about 2 km down Wang Fang Lu (past the golden Buddha on the hillside, and then along the riverbank. The weather reminded me of home—the cool air and the way Lao-puo was dressed (for bitter cold). The road takes us along the riverside, and we walked home on the other bank. Muzah is one of my favourite areas in Taipei. Tomorrow I must go to the doctor. There is even a dental section in Wang Fang Hospital, because Taiwan National Health insures teeth. I’ve never quite seen the point of having only doctors and hospitals covered by Canadian plans, with many people left to their own resources for teeth, medications, and glasses.

Sunday, February 27, 94

Oyster Chips

Sunday went by before we knew it was gone. We had some friends over for cards in the afternoon. It would sure be nice to be able to read! We bought some chips and other snacks for our company. When we opened one of the bags of chips, a stench fit to wake the dead wafted out. Would you believe—oyster flavoured chips! Even the shoestring chips, although they looked similar, tasted different. One of these days, we will learn to stick to Chinese stuff, instead of the Chinese version of western stuff. Pizza is good, but not corn and squid flavour. Tomorrow is Peace Memorial Day a.k.a. Day Off With No Pay Day. President Chen will doubtless take the opportunity to shoot his mouth off about independence, thereby kicking the hornets’ nest known as the People’s Republic of China.

Saturday, February 26, 94

Rain Dampens Creativity

Today was my usual run-off-my-feet Saturday, and the only excitement was that the number 222 bus was thirty minutes late. I stood freezing, watching the rain bouncing off the pavement on Zhongxiao Xi Lu, for forty-five minutes. Jeng Lao-ban did his presentation a few days ago for the big guy, and it went well. Chrissy and Lao-puo and I had a bowl of soup in Muzha, and came home because it was raining. I have been saying this week that it is raining a lot. That’s because it is raining a lot.

Friday, February 25, 94

Going Home? I am Home! Revisions

The rain is continuing heavily, and becoming quite tiresome. I have a lot of spare time during the day. We are now beginning to think about going home, as we only have eight weeks at the most left over here. The concept is not appealing. I like a lot of things about living in a Chinese society.

If you work, you get. If you don’t work, you don’t get.
Criminals are in jail.
You can walk down any street, any time of the day of night, in safety.
Old people get looked after.
Education is considered to be very important.
Work for foreign teachers is easy and plentiful.
Due to the healthier food and the forced exercise, I’m in a lot better shape here than at home.
Nearly everyone we meet is courteous and hospitable.
You can save a bundle, by not having to drive a car.
Even taking the stinking hot summers and cold damp winters into account, I find that the weather here is actually better than at home.
There are flowers the year round.
It’s quick and inexpensive to get to a many Asian destinations from here.
A lot of effort is put into making the city as nice as possible.
There is very little littering, and next-to-no graffiti. (People call it graffiti. I call it vandalism).
The only panhandlers are profoundly disabled folks. (People call it panhandling. I call it begging).

Betel nuts and air pollution seem so little to contend with, considering the above advantages.

We did have time, however, to have lunch with Jean. I repaired some HR documents for her. I really don’t mind correcting the English of Chinese people, but when the work of native speakers isn’t appreciably better, I wonder if I should stay home and teach English there.

Thursday, February 24, 94

No Particular Reason—I Just Like The Pictures

My days have recently been uneventful, so I will just put in some pictures for today’s entry.

(…continued)

I took this picture of Lao-puo at the Taipei Rail Station. The tracks are underground at this point, and you don’t come up until the very edge of the city in any direction.

Wan Li Jie. I took this picture or our street from the MRT station. It’s quite nice around here.

We often come here for breakfast—to the doorway on the right where the woman is coming out. After another 25 m or so of rabbit-warren alleys, you come to Xing Long Market. This place is a nice ten-minute walk from our place, but we take the bus if it’s raining. We have been taking the bus a lot recently.

This is in the hills behind Danshui. It was lovely riding through the hibiscus bushes.

Wednesday, February 23, 94

Rendering Unto Caesar, Discomfort Station

ROC income tax is a snap. We did one joint return, walked into the income tax office, paid NTD 650 over what we had already forked over, and got our receipts. Done. You can’t get another work permit unless you can prove that you have paid your income tax from the previous year. Sales tax is built into the price of things. Some businesses try to avoid remitting the tax by doing under-the-table sales that are not rung through the cash register. To counter this skullduggery the government holds a monthly draw of receipt numbers, so when people buy something they always demand a receipt. Lao-puo won NTD 1800 the other month, and a few smaller prizes as well.

I am amused by the euphemism “comfort station”, particularly because I doubt if some western folks would feel any too comfortable using some of the Taiwanese facilities. I don’t normally worry too much about biological things, but this was a bit much. With an hour to kill in Danshui before my class started, I went into a place called “Mos Burger”- a Japanese fast food place. Their burgers are smaller than any other, and better if you ask me—and there coffee is fresh and hot and cheap. The coffee having worked its inevitable effect, I looked around for the facilities. The restroom is one door, leading to a little room with a sink and a mirror. There is one door (floor to ceiling) marked “women”, and one of those old west swinging saloon style doors marked “men”. Mercifully, there is a symbol beside the Chinese characters on the doors. Guys stand there, facing the side wall (not even with their backs to the door), with their lower legs and head-and-shoulders in plain sight above and below the little swinging doors. It is disconcerting to try to studiously ignore the women walking by, three feet away. Neither gender pays the slightest attention to the other.

Tuesday, February 22, 94

I Promise—I’m Not Making This Stuff Up

I could expect, with reasonable certainty, to be disbelieved if I asserted that there is a breast-feeding company over on the mainland called “Bang Bang Household Services”. I therefore copy-pasted the article from the “Taipei Times.”

“Public Outrage Leaves Chinese Firm `Breastless'AFP , BEIJING Tuesday, Feb 22, 2005,
Page 1
Public criticism has forced a company in eastern China to shelve a controversial plan to provide wet-nurse services to career women who are too busy to breastfeed their babies, state media said yesterday.
Bang Bang household services company in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, planned to launch its business this month, and had recruited 13 wet nurses aged between 25 and 30 to breastfeed its clients' babies, the government mouthpiece China Daily said.
But the company came under fire from the media and the public, who accused it of trying to revive what they said was an inhumane and degrading practice.
"In this commercialized society, money is involved in everything including the closest blood relations," the Shanxi Commercial Daily said.
The wet nurses were to be paid 50 yuan (US$6) per day.
Rich people in China used to employ impoverished women from the countryside -- who gave birth to still-born babies or who had given up their children because they could not afford to bring them up -- as wet nurses.
But the practice was seen as exploitative and fell out of favor under Communist Party rule.
Chen Shunqiang, the owner of the company, told Xinhua news agency that his company came up with the idea after many career women expressed interest in such a service.
They were mostly women worried that breastfeeding would ruin their careers, or might make them put on weight, he said.
To ensure that the wet nurses were of a good caliber and would produce good quality milk, Chen said his nurses had to pass stringent health checks to ensure they were not carriers of contagious diseases.
The reports did not say how many, if any, clients had subscribed to the service.”

Monday, February 21, 94

No Flex Days but a Slaughter is Just as Good, Stats, Putting My Feet Up

Next Monday is “Peace Memorial Day”, and we will get the day off. Feb 28, 1948 was a black day here. Thousands of protesters against the Nationalist Chinese government were shot down, or executed without trial by the army. The event was supressed until just a few years ago. There is hard feeling to this day. Protesters at home piss me off--they taunt the cops, knowing bloody well that they will not be harmed—and they can sue if they are. Maybe I am getting bad tempered as I approach middle age—or at least less idealistic.

That will be it for statutory holidays until April 5—Tomb Sweeping Day.

I’m at the “awkward age” here. Lotus Lao-ban will not assign any long-term courses to me, because the company likes to guarantee the clients that the same teacher will stay for the entire three-month length of the course. She told me that she is sorry I will be going home, urged me to stay, and said that I will have full time work right away whenever I decide to come back here. In the meantime, I have a lot of free time during the day, which is a welcome contrast from my previous circumstances where I was run off my feet all day and evening. There is always a lot to do in Taipei. Lao-puo, having lived here almost two years now, is “taipeied out” and she finds it a bit difficult to fill her day. If there is not such a word as “taipeied out”, there should be. It remains to be seen if I will ever be able to come back here. My dad’s health problems are increasing in frequency and severity, and I worry about mum.

Sunday, February 20, 94

A Day Off, Shocking News

Sunday morning. More bloody rain, and wind, and cold. We don’t even feel like going out, but it is no warmer indoors. I will do some lesson planning, and a bit of writing, and a few e-mail replies. I will probably drag Lao-puo over to SYS Memorial Hall this afternoon, as there is always some interesting display there. It would be even more interesting if we could read.

I noticed in the Taipei Times this morning that only North Korea has worse air quality than Taiwan. I guess I’m used to it by now, but the smog and exhaust does not seem to bother me anymore. Evidently, most of the air pollution is from cars and motor scooters. Many of the bikes have seen better days, and they are not kept in good repair. Many of them emit the most appalling blue smoke, and people just leave their engines running while talking or buying something. Someone mentioned that Taipei would be a great city for bicycles, because it is flat here (in most places), and the city is not badly spread out. However, it seems that people love their motors.

At certain times (waiting for a bus at a busy intersection), I will wear a little cotton mask, but usually I just put up with the air quality. The following picture is copy-pasted from the on-line version of the paper.

”Taipei, viewed from Songshan Domestic Airport, sits in a blanket of smog in this file photo. The Environmental Sustainability Index, produced by Yale and Columbia Universities, recently ranked Taiwan second from the bottom, ahead only of North Korea.”

Saturday, February 19, 94

My Busiest Day

It has been raining all day today, and the cold is miserable. Nobody heats anything over here, and for some reason the air-conditioning is still roaring on the bus. Public transportation is actually faster than driving your own car in Taipei—parking is expensive and a nightmare just to find. It only takes me about half an hour to get all the way to Kunyang for my 9:00 a.m. class with the boys. Joe is in grade 12 now, and seems to have one exam after the other. There is a lot riding on the result—it will determine which university he will be allowed to attend. I hate to see kids getting stressed. There is plenty of time for that nonsense when they become adults. Higher education seems to be considered very important over here. I work with the boys, an hour and a half each with no break in between, and then I must be at Jeng Lao-ban’s house in Neihu by 1:30—in time for lunch. Jeng Tai-tai does a lot better than fried noodles with liver and seafood, let me tell you. She dished up pork and green onion roll-ups, meat pies, noodles with mushrooms and egg and vegetables, chicken soup, and a bowl of peanuts in case I was still hungry. I did half an hour of phonics with little Sharon, half an hour with Gwen, and another half-hour with Sharon again, then two hours of presentation skills with Lao-ban. I must go back on Monday for another two hours, because the Da Lao-ban is coming all the way from Singapore to hear a report.

Friday, February 18, 94

National Palace Museum

Today was a quiet day, with no responsibilities other than to whistle out to Hongshulin for Jeff and Miriam in the late afternoon. It seems that even when I have the opportunity to sleep in, I never can. Lao-puo and I just hung out—and the National Palace Museum is the perfect place for a cold and rainy afternoon. We never get tired of it, because there are so many artifacts that they cannot all be displayed at once and the exhibits must be rotated every so often.

Thursday, February 17, 94

Brrr! Paula

We’re in for it. Get a load of the forecast--going to 8 degrees, with an 80% POP.

Eight degrees doesn’t sound too bad, but the bone-eating damp cold has to be experienced to be believed. I’m actually writing this on Friday morning, and it is raining like hell already.

I was looking through my albums recently, and I came across a picture of Paula and me. She is the domestic employee in the home of my Kunyang boys. I think domestics have a hard life in Taiwan, but even so their standard of living is better than it would be in the Philippines. Some employers exploit them wickedly. Sometimes they only get one day off a month. Where we were living on An He Lu (when I first got here last April), the domestic was expected to have the toddler twins in her room, so she was never really off duty for weeks at a time. The employer (landlady) is getting a lot of bad karma out of that scenario, and will have some explaining to do one day. I digress. Paula is unfailingly cheerful and kind, and very good to the disabled grandmother who lives with the family. She’s nice to me too, and always brings me either a hot lemon drink or a cappuccino halfway through my class. It never ceases to amaze me that people who have the most to complain about often do the least complaining. I could do worse than to heed Paula’s example, as indeed we all could.

I had my first new class with Jean (the investment counselor) today. She used Lao-Puo’s company for a trial—before the New Year break—to see if she liked the lessons and the teacher. She has signed up for more, on an indefinite basis. Lotus Lao-ban has already offered me full-time work, if we ever return to Taiwan.

Wednesday, February 16, 94

Liver Chow Mien?

“Chow” just means “fried” in Mandarin, and “mien” just means “noodles”. I must say I have never had chow mien with liver and seafood, but there is first time for everything. That’s what we had for supper tonight. Oh well. What do you expect for less than two and a half Canadian—for us both? I had my first class with the construction company after dinner—it’s great to be back with my favourite students.

Tuesday, February 15, 94

Markets

There is no shortage of things to spend your money on, and no shortage of people willing to take it. I don’t know why, but for some reason we seem to have a lot more money over here. Nevertheless, we have cooked a dinner at home maybe three times in the last year, and we buy lunches every day. Chinese bread is not the best. Sometimes the loaves look really good on the outside, but they might be full of bean paste, taro, or nuts when you slice into the loaf. If we could read, we wouldn’t be surprised. Taro bread puts me off, because it is light purple in colour. Eggs are not refrigerated over here. Milk tastes different. It’s no good trying to get “a taste of home” because even something as mundane as a grilled cheese will be different from what we expect.

I took a picture of one of the many markets around Taipei. There are a lot of people in the picture, and a pregnant mother in the foreground. The crowds are incredible at first, and then one’s reaction is reduced to mere questioning where everyone came from. Every apartment in Taipei must be empty, I think. Taiwan supposedly has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, but there sure are a lot of pregnant women around. I should buy a cane—it’s the only way to trump the expectant mothers for the priority seats on the bus or the train.

Monday, February 14, 94

Valentines Day, Schedules, Travel Woes

The Chinese equivalent of Valentines Day happens at another time of year. There is a tragic story about two lovers, whose marriage angered the Gods because she was half human and half god and he wasn’t. They were separated as a punishment, but the Gods relented and allowed them to meet once a year—on the day that two bright stars are close together.

Everything is back in full swing again, and the weather has just been gorgeous. I didn’t wear a jacket or sweater today, even after sundown. I hope it stays like this for a while! I remember freezing while teaching at the Catholic school during our first year over here. The bright sunny weather brings with it a whole new outlook on life.

Hours are bit slack at the moment, but it will pick up soon. I’m getting tired, and I am not fully refreshed after the break, so slack schedule is not unwelcome. In fact, I have been getting a lot of good assignments from Lao-puo’s company. “My” construction company has signed up for another session, and that will carry me until it’s time to go home again.

I regret that we have not been able to get away more often during this year. The trouble with travel is that it is so difficult to have both the necessary money and the necessary time simultaneously. Apart from the weekend in Nantou County, and a few day trips to Keelung, we have not even been out of the city. It’s OK, because even after three years the city still holds my interest.

Sunday, February 13, 94

Work and Taxes

Sunday is a busy day for us—the only day off we usually have all week. Sometimes, work is either a feast or a famine around here, so we must grab teaching hours whenever we can get them. It will take a week or two to pick up steam after the break, but we are coming up to a busy time of the year for teachers.

We need to do our income tax presently. Believe or not, Chinese income tax returns are easier to do than Canadian income tax. Many government documents are bilingual now.

I took a picture of across the street from Taipei Main Station—usually choked with cars and scooters, and hordes of pedestrians choking on the exhaust. It was really quiet during the New Year week.

Saturday, February 12, 94

Back to Work Already, In the Cards

My morning class (Kunyang boys) was cancelled this morning as the family was going to be out of town. I still had my two phonics kids, and Jeng Lao-ban in the afternoon. Jeng Tai-tai prepared a “light lunch” for me—three kinds of Chinese sausage, dumplings, snow peas and shrimp, and a big bowl of soup with a meatball, a fishball, and a beanball. Her meals are wonderful, but enough to feed several people.

I’m not much of a card player, but after class I met Lao-puo and we played cards and drank beer with some of the people from our church.

Friday, February 11, 94

Old Taipei, Hot Springs

We were out for a walk the other day, and found ourselves on a riverfront path. We went there to escape from a market, which was crowded and noisy beyond belief. Markets were better in the old days, I think, before vendors could electronically amplify their voices. Some of them could shatter glass. At least I got some nice pictures out of the expedition.

Today we went to the hot springs at Yangminshan with Kim and Stephanie. There is quite a bit of geothermic and seismic activity throughout Taiwan. It was nice to just flop in the hot water for an afternoon.

Our week off has certainly gone by quickly, but a week off is nothing more than a week with no money coming in. There has been an eerie silence around the city, because everything has been shut down.

I took a picture of Danshui He from a pedestrian overpass. (“He” is like a grunt, not the personal pronoun). Taipei has long stretches of riverside cycling and walking trails. The floodwall is very high, compared to the size of the cars. It’s true enough that the rivers can jump their banks after a typhoon, but I still think the engineer was either a pessimist or an alarmist.

Thursday, February 10, 94

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, When in Doubt Have a Beer

Today dawned clear and beautiful, perfect weather to go up to the top of Taipei 101 with some friends. It was unfortunate that half of Taipei had precisely the same idea. The tickets are not cheap (NTD 380 each), but I am. We took one look at the enormous lineup two hours before it opened, and reconsidered our plan.

Instead, Lao-puo and I decided to take the subway out to Xindian. It was also very crowded, since New Years Day is a family outing time here. We had a nice lunch at a riverside place.

Wednesday, February 09, 94

New Years Day (again), First Gamble then Drink

Dinner last night is a blur of wonderful memories. One gourmet course after another, half a dozen Chinese conversations at once, and wine whiskey and kaoliang until my teeth floated. It seems strange that kaoliang (take-the-chrome-off-a-bumper Chinese vodka) improves not only my wit, but also my Mandarin comprehension and fluency. Or so it seemed.

After dinner we retired to the living room and played a gambling dice game (kids and all) with shouts of triumph and moans of despair at every roll. I’m not much for games usually, but this was a lot of fun (and a free Chinese lesson). We came downstairs and home about 2:00 a.m.

Tuesday, February 08, 94

“Joy”ful Afterthought, Happy New Year, Steering Clear of Christians

One of the benefits of teaching over here is that once in a while foreign teachers are asked to choose an English name for students or students’ children. Some people use the opportunity to amuse themselves by sticking some poor soul with a ludicrous moniker such as “Bluto”, “Superman”, or even “Slitherina”. However, naming kids is something I take very seriously. One of my students the other day asked me to select a name for her baby girl. I asked the student what she liked most about the tacker, and she said “her smile”. So “Joy” it is.

Either the mainlanders are overrunning us with small arms fire, or I’m hearing the firecrackers going off for Chinese New Year. We’re staying in tonight, because it can get dangerous with lit clowns throwing lit firecrackers from their balconies.

Eric and Amy, a very nice couple upstairs, have invited us for dinner tonight. We are looking forward to it. Generally speaking, we tend to shy away from Chinese Christians, as many of them embrace the fundamentalism that neither of us likes at all. Our hosts are not like that, and this promises to be a nice evening.

Monday, February 07, 94

Holidays and Hissing Lung, Woebegone Way-grow-ren

Yesterday was the first day of the New Year break. Transportation around Taiwan is quite impossible, because of everyone going home (i.e. parents’ place) for the break. The city will be quiet (for once) for the rest of the week. Lao-puo and I are ready for a break. It is very hard work to try to do a good job of teaching, and we’re tired.

The romanization system has changed here, and so have many of the street and place names. During our first year here, a nearby busy street was called “Hsing Lung”. I joyfully called it “Hissing Lung” because the hospital is there. Now the spelling is “Xing Long”—not nearly so much fun. Anyway, we decided to have a beer before supper last night, and we went to Xing Long Park to drink it. You can buy alcohol in corner stores over here, and drink in public places—but God help you if you cause trouble while doing so. We sat by the duck pond, and watched all the goings-on. There was a young couple necking across the pond. It seems out of line to be necking in public like that, with the park being fairly crowded and kids tearing by on bikes and everything. However, everyone lives with parents or family, and homes are lacking the degree of personal privacy that we westerners consider necessary. I love the cute discretion. The guy put his hand up, as though he were whispering a secret into his girlfriend’s ear, thereby concealing the nitty-gritty of the interaction from passers-by. So much classier than “sucking face” or whatever the young folks call it at home.

I nearly laughed aloud on the train the other day, even though the misfortune of others is not really appropriate grounds for amusement. A tall, morose-looking western guy got on the train, with an enormous shiner and road rash all over his face. He should have taken the train in the first place. When you ride a scooter in Taipei, other than for very limited local use, an accident is a matter of time. Our Chinese friends have scooters, but even they don’t ride them very much.

Sunday, February 06, 94

Day of Rest?

This was supposed to be my day off—the first one for me in the Lunar New Year Break. Instead, I taught a Microsoft Excel class to one of the women in the church who wanted to learn it. It is a very useful program for teachers keeping track of attendance and marks. Afterwards, Lao-puo Chrissy and I went for dinner at the Teppanyaki place in the village. It’s nice to get warmed by the corn soup and heat from the grill while dinner is doing.

Saturday, February 06, 94

If it’s Supposed to be a Holiday Weekend, why am I so Busy?
Today was my usual hell-bent-for-leather pace, and I finished at 4:00 p.m. The highways, trains, and buses will be jammed for the next day or two, and then the city will be quiet (for once). I always enjoy the Kunyang boys—very serious students without being bookish about it.

Friday, February 04, 94

A Usual Day

I just had one class today, but it was a good one. Jean, the investment counselor, wants to renew with me for another term. The security is really tight in the building—one of those marble-and-glass office towers. You must report to security, and hand over your identification in exchange for a visitor pass. The security fellow punches the elevator, and there are no floor buttons inside the elevator—thus no opportunity to get off at floor other than the one security knows about. I did a few emails in the morning, and hung out with Lao-puo in the afternoon. We went to Longshan for supper.

Friday, February 04, 94

A Usual Day

I just had one class today, but it was a good one. Jean, the investment counselor, wants to renew with me for another term. The security is really tight in the building—one of those marble-and-glass office towers. You must report to security, and hand over your identification in exchange for a visitor pass. The security fellow punches the elevator, and there are no floor buttons inside the elevator. I did a few emails in the morning, and hung out with Lao-puo in the afternoon. We went to Longshan for supper

Thursday, February 03, 94

Hsinchu, Daytime Hours

I wish we had taken the train instead of the bus. It was OK going—the bus was new, and had those “lazy boy” armchair seats one on either side of the aisle. The trip back was dark, and the bus was old and crowded. It was a good day nevertheless. There is never any shortage of employees, so two clerks from the office came with me as guide and interpreter. I would have been OK getting there if someone had written the address in Chinese (and tied a string around my mittens), however the interaction with “our” new students would have been rough. I worked for four hours non-stop (no break at all) testing people one-by-one. It’s tiring. The company knows full well that no teachers from Taipei will take the trip down there twice a week (I used to do it with “my” shipping company, but they sprang for travel time). They hope to hire someone local, for part time work. Good luck. Companies want classes in the evening, so that is the very time that part time people are not available.

Many local schools “contract out” to get English teachers, because the government has strict rules about foreigners working in the public sector. It would have been a good idea to have gone to a school in the first place—I could have exceeded my Canadian income by only working mornings. Most schools throw in lunch, and if the school is any distance from the city you get three hots and a cot.

Wednesday February 02, 94

Blast a Taipei Winter, out of the City

Don’t expect me to be very cheerful today, in the bone-chilling damp cold. I’d love to have a bowl of hot chili, or a steaming curry. In fact, both are available here—for a lot less than at home. It’s odd, all the curry from the street vendors tastes the same. I vow that here is an apartment someplace, with a couple of old girls making curry in a 45 gallon drum, and wholesaling it out.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day. I will get out of the city, because we are going to Hsinchu (about an hour by train or bus), to do language ability assessments on the employees of a new client.

Tuesday, February 01, 94

Another Jiggler, the Scoop on the God

We just had another small earthquake a few minutes ago. It was a 5 at the epicenter (Hualien as usual), but only a 1 in Taipei City. It is cold and rainy, and I have time on my hands for once. I don’t like a Taipei winter—you might as well just go to Vancouver and save the airfare.
Jean sent me an e-mail the today, with information on the God who took over the man’s body at the temple the other day (according to Taoist belief). It is very interesting to me, how the different cultures seek to explain the meaning of life and things eternal.

Monday, January 31, 94

Winding Down, Responsibility

Things are starting to get very quiet, with many classes cancelled as people prepare for the New Year break. I had four classes today, but tomorrow will be slack. I didn’t get home until about 10:00 p.m. The streets are still jammed at that hour, with eateries full and each shop blaring enough sound into the street to wake the dead.

Lao-puo wants us to get flu shots tomorrow at Ren Ai Hospital. Incidentally, that was the hospital from which the head-injured little girl was turned away. She has subsequently died, and there is the devil to pay with resignations and dismissals in disgrace for some of the staff doctors at the hospital. Even though some of the affected administrators were not directly responsible for the tragedy, it is refreshing to see persons in authority actually taking responsibility for the failures and shortcomings of their departments. We should try that at home sometime.

Sunday, January 30, 94

Heaven is like Taiwan (or is it the other way around?), Serendipitous Reacquaintance

I dislike talking about religion in class—I’m a teacher not a missionary—but one my students asked so we talked for a bit. She is considering conversion, because she believes that Christians have more fun than Buddhists. My student is astonished by the notion that Christians can lead a life, threescore years and ten, in skullduggery, debauchery, and whatever, get forgiven in their last breath, and waltz though the Pearly Gates free as birds. She considers Buddhism to be more “fair” because all evil deeds must be punished. Some Chinese Christians have ideas that are as flawed as the theology of the missionaries they listened to a century ago. My student went to one church where they speak in “tongues”. This is not what I understood “tongues” to be—the ability to speak every language in the world for preaching purposes. No sir. Tongues (Tungish? Tungese?) is a specific language spoken in Heaven, the language that God Himself speaks. Only those persons who can speak the language can get saved. I am amused by the notion that Heaven is like Taiwan—a nice enough spot but I don’t speak the language.

Teachers aren’t supposed to have favourite students, but we all do. Completely by accident, I bumped into Sharon, a very nice former student from the Catholic School three years ago. It was a very nice assignment, despite the old penguin who ran the place.

Saturday, January 29, 94

A Medical Conspiracy, Availability, Downtrodden Women, Nobody should be a Smartass--Except Me

When I grow up (an event which has not yet taken place), I want to be a doctor. It seems that whatever is wrong with a man, the cure-all is no coffee and no booze. Chinese doctors are no different.

What I do like about the doctors here is cost and availability. When I saw my Canadian doctor for the same problem, the consultation was free and my share of the prescription was $42. Chrissy booked an appointment with a specialist for me. It took two days to get in, and the cost of the visit and the same medication as in Canada was $16.

I ended up with three classes yesterday, the investment counselor, the graduate student, and the IT husband and wife. Lao-puo came out to Hongshulin with me, and carried on for one more stop until Danshui. While I slaved away, she merrily sauntered along the riverfront, poking in the shops, and enjoying a barbequed squid on a stick.

I dislike public displays of temper, and I consider verbal altercations to be unseemly. However, a bus driver annoyed me the other day, by deliberately insulting me for not being Chinese. I sat in the single front seat of the bus, so I can see ahead and find my stop easier. There is a sign and a little symbol to put the seat belt on. I tried, but the seat belt would only come halfway out. The driver, in really fast language of which I only understood “way grow ren” (foreigner) was obviously attributing my inability to buckle up—not to the broken retractor—but to my fondness for Chinese food. Generally speaking, folks are more polite than that over here, and by now a couple of louts were laughing at me. I tried diplomatic English. “What’s so funny, smartass? I’d be wearing the seatbelt, if it worked worth a shit.” All I got was blank stares. “Forgotten the eight virtues” is an insult here—the equivalent of “misbegotten”. I tried and failed to think of the verb “forget”, so I said “you no have eight virtue”. That’s good grammar, by the way. I think of all the times foreigners were mocked in movies, for trying to swear and getting it buggered up. That's what it was like, but at least the oaf kept his mouth shut the rest of the way.

Friday, January 28, 94

Time flies and the Same-old Same-old

It’s Friday already, and the end of January already. It’s hard to believe that I am nearing the end of my exile. We must soon start thinking about what to pack and what to take, and similar decisions, for our return. Lao-puo is taiwaned out, but I’m just getting into my pace. I understand that, when people live overseas, it is most often the woman who wants to go home and the man who wants to stay. For my part, I am beginning to consider the ramifications of returning to my Canadian employment and my Canadian life. Neither of us is the same person as the one who first came here three years ago. I know that we are resourceful and adaptable people (teachers who can’t read must be both), and we will fit back in to our old lives relatively easy.

Thursday, January 27, 94

Taipei Lung, Harmony Hit My Knee

“Taipei Lung” has caught up to me today. It’s just bronchial congestion, weakness, and general lack of energy. I’ll be OK in a day or two. It seems odd that many younger people, and those in better physical condition than I am, seem to get it easily. The weather has gotten a lot warmer recently, so I have not been bundling up so much either.

There is not much news when I’m sick. What do you want to know about the inside of an apartment in Wang Fang Sheh Chiu? Street noise is at a minimum. I haven’t seen “Harmony, Hit my Knee” yet today. That would be the window repair guy. He has a little three-wheeled jury-rigged pickup truck made of old motorcycle parts and scrap metal, complete with a crackly old loudspeaker. His announcement sounds a bit like “Harmony, Hit my Knee”, so that’s what we call him.

Harmony’s truck is really a tribute to human ingenuity. He has written his cell-phone number on the top of the canopy, so if you need window fixed you can just phone down. There is no need to dash downstairs and run after the truck.

Wednesday, January 26, 94

Portraits of Dr. Sun Yat-sen

I should never read the paper, or listen to the news. At least over here the BS is in Chinese (one of the major stations is actually called TVBS), but I do like to read the English papers sometimes. I found a picture of a TVBS sign on the Internet, and I am including it lest anyone think I’m making this stuff up.

TVBS. I have no idea who’s in the picture, since this is a download. Many young Chinese women, when getting their picture taken, will either make the peace sign, or extend the index finger horizontally under the chin with the thumb pointed upwards.
The idea is a picture frame (I’m as pretty as a picture). It seems, to my grumpy old eyes at least, that there is more childlike and innocent behaviour here than at home.

I digress. I was talking about the news. Teachers, government employees, and military personnel are all getting a raise. (We don’t, by the way—we work for private companies over here). Anyway, the employer’s ability to pay has been given some weight, but nothing like the wage restraints at home.

“Teachers, civil servants and members of the military will receive an average 3 percent pay hike in their monthly salaries this year -- the first such increase in three years…Central Personnel Administration Director-General Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said the pay rise will cost the government an estimated NT$18 billion a year. The legislature has thus far approved NT$16.71 billion (US$525 million) in funding for the pay raise…although the government is in financial difficulties, Lee said that the government's plight should not be the sole factor taken into account regarding pay increases”.

I’m coughing. It sounds like a cold, but smart money is on “Taipei Lung”. This is a condition that some foreigners acquire from the wicked air pollution here. I carry a little “survival kit” whenever I go out. During my first year, my kit had a map and even a compass. It is very easy to get disoriented here. Now, I carry Kleenex at all times, a little face mask against the pollution, and of course an umbrella. We must carry water in the summertime as well. I also bring my business cards (a big deal over here), a pen, my day planner, and my name chop.

Tuesday, January 25, 94

Rover blah blah blah Rover, And I Get Paid for this?

All of a sudden it has warmed up again. I love shirtsleeve weather in January! We had some time to kill yesterday (cancelled classes because of the approaching New Year break), so we took the train the two extra stops to Taipei Zoo and then walked back to Muzha. This is a nice little neighbourhood, with several inexpensive restaurants dishing up good food—very often the case in the proximity of a university. How can a bowl of soup fill a guy up for the rest of the day? When the soup consists of half a gallon of broth, with thick handmade noodles, cabbage, clams, a pork slice, a poached egg, a whole prawn in the shell, mushrooms, and fish cakes—that’s how. It was fun “talking” to the lao-ban niyang too. Did you ever see the “Far Side” cartoon of the guy talking to his dog? Despite the complexity of the man’s comments, the dog only understood, “blah blah blah Rover blah blah blah Rover blah blah Rover blah blah blah blah Rover blah blah blah Rover”. That was what my “conversation” was like, but I understood “Rover” often enough to catch the drift and actually respond appropriately—much to my delight and Lao-puo’s astonishment.

I did end up working in the evening after all, subbing for someone who called in sick. Lotus Lao-ban asked me to go to a zipper company (of all places). I never would have imagined that a multi-million dollar company, with worldwide business, would do nothing but zippers. The class was four “Miss Taiwans”, who had never heard my jokes—even the “knock-knock” ones. You don’t have to die to go to Heaven.

Monday, January 24, 94

A Good Start to the Week, New Year is Coming (Again)

It is six in the morning. Coffee. Pitch black-the coffee and the night. No need for an alarm clock around here. Starting at about 0500 guys make door-to-door deliveries of flyers and things—by scooter. It is an awful way to wake up, as the little bike idles for a sec at one door before the worker guns the little hamster-cage of a two-stroke and then hits the brakes a second later—“tick-tick-tick whrrrrr! squeak tick-tick-tick whrrrrr! squeak tick-tick-tick whrrrrr! squeak” – up one side of Wan Li Jie and down the other.

It’s only two weeks now until the New Year break, and my time is quiet. Today I only work from 0800 to 0900 and 1215 to 1305. It is nearly impossible to travel anywhere on the first and last day of the holiday, because everyone goes home to stay with family. The highways are jammed, as are the trains and buses. Many people only live in Taipei for the work, and home (i.e. where parents live) is somewhere else. It is not uncommon for young (preschool) children to live with grandparents in another city—even newborns sometimes.

Towards the middle of the week, we might take the train to Ilan County—on the East China Sea on the other side of what we call “The Great Divide”—the mountain range that forms a spine down the middle of the country. We’ll rent a motorbike (dirt cheap), soak in the hot springs, and enjoy the seafood. We had talked about going to Thailand, but that was a washout this year. I shouldn’t crack wise, but the tsunami is just too sad to be serious about.

Sunday, January 23, 94

The Beer House, a Good Day, Anticipatory Sadness

I did some extra work last night with Jeng Lao-ban, on presentation skills. This really cut into my drinking time. Coupled with the traffic jam (bumper to bumper through Neihu and Da Zhi, I was an hour late for the company New Year Party. We had the party at a “beer house” (sort of like a pub but not exactly), at the corner of Peace River St. and Love People St. (An He Lu and Ren Ai Lu). Each table got a keg of beer, and a variety of snacks and entrees. We had peanuts and beer, and spiced-up soybeans in the pod (the pods are inedible, by the way) and beer, whole fish (simmered in garlic and ginger), and beer, squid and beer, jellied blood sausage and beer, beautiful vegetables and beer, and beer. It occurs to me that I took the 222 from Neihu back to town, and I may have to take another 222 this morning.

I like Saturdays, because I bring home 175% of my Canadian net daily income for six hours of work. There is a free lunch in the deal for me too. It’s quiet for me now, and I can only match my Canadian income for the other five days that I work. However, things will heat up in the New Year again.

Looking at my calendar, I now see that going “home” is no longer in the far-off distant future. Sometimes I begin to wonder if I even know where “home” is anymore. The late Lee Marvin played the role of a disreputable old drunken reprobate (himself, in other words) in the hokey musical “Paint your Wagon.” One of the songs contained the words “Home is made for coming from, for dreams of going to, which with any luck will never come true.” Sometimes I think that, were it not for family and friends, I would be happy to end my days here. However, Canada will always be my home. It seems to be commonplace that husbands are gloriously happy living overseas, and wives want to go home. Work is certainly higher-paid and more enjoyable over here, and we don’t seem to go through money the same, but there is more to it than that. I eat better here, and exercise more. I lose weight and maintain the lower weight, and I feel better. People, at least the ones I encounter, seem to be more contented over here. So, where should we end up? The answer is what we had already decided—to have one foot on either side of the ocean, and to incorporate the good things about a Chinese way of life into our Canadian lives—and of course to come back over here at every opportunity.

Saturday, January 22, 94

Maybe I Think Too Much, a Busy Saturday

It’s quite high-energy to be an English teacher, and whenever I have a late class I often have trouble getting to sleep. My mind is racing. Last night I was thinking about the fact that “se dofu” (eating tofu) is Taiwanese slang for fondling breasts. That the consistency of tofu resembles that of breasts is thought-provoking. How was the similarity found out? Did some guy think of it after watching a bowl of tofu, carried by a waiter, go jiggling by in a restaurant? Do you suppose that some daydreaming lovesick individual wiggled his own bowl, and entertained conjecture? Did a scientific inquiring mind actually touch the tofu, and shout “eureka!” Anybody who did that would have to know what real breasts felt like (for the accuracy of the comparison). That leaves out a kid fooling around. It would have to have been someone with hands-on experience, but why would anyone with access to real breasts bother will a bowl of tofu? It seems to me that breasts are like any carnivorous cuisine, insofar as once you’ve experienced the real thing a soybean substitute just isn’t good enough. Did the guy then go home, and test out the theory with his domestic partner? If so, was it one hand on the tofu and the other on the partner? Or was he a two-fisted scientist? Was he a romantic (who said “I knead you baby”) during the test, or was he making notes on a clipboard while he was at it? It then occurred to me that it’s such a shame that “tofutits” weren’t available forty-odd years ago. We could have, as neopubescent youths, used tofutits sort of like a flight simulator (stimulator?) to gain valuable experience before our first encounters with the real thing, in the flesh. Maybe then, many of us wouldn’t have made such damned fools of ourselves the first time out of the gate.

It’s 6:30 a.m. on a misty Saturday morning. I have three hours this morning with the Kunyang boys, then an hour each with Jeng lao-ban, Gwen, and a little neighbour of theirs named Sharon whose parents want her to have phonics too. Tonight is our company New Years Party.

Friday, January 21, 94

Here We Go Again!

There was another earthquake down south, (or down-island), but we didn’t feel it here. I hate earthquakes, because it is impossible to tell, once they start, how bad they are going to be.

Today is a busy day for me. I have classes with an investment counselor at Minquan Dong Lu, the lao-ban of the shipping company out in Neihu, husband-and wife IT folks in Hongshulin, then a music student applying for graduate school in the US. I’ll be home about 10:30 tonight, and then tomorrow will be a full-tilt day as well. I need days like these, because things are winding down until after the Lunar New Year.

Thursday, January 20, 94

I always knew that Tofu must be Good for Something, Getting on a Bus

Veganism is a disease that can be cured with intensive therapy, provided of course that persons who suffer from this scourge actually want to regain control of their lives. Until I came to Taiwan for the first time in 2001 (or 90, depending on how you choose to count years), I used to joke that my favourite tofu recipe was “tofu puree", i.e. 1500 rpm’s down the garburator. I am now quite fond of tofu, because it is dished up quite often over here and the taste grows on a person. Anyway, it is a poor English lesson if I fail to learn something along with the students. One of my students told me today that “se dofu” (eating tofu) is Taiwanese slang for lascivious touching of a female—sort of like English groping or copping or honking. There is a subtle difference between a Chinese “d” and a “t”—too subtle for my western ear. Chinese is on one level easy—no verb conjugations and next-to-no tenses—but the impossible pronunciation makes up for the no-brainer grammar.

My student, by the way, recently returned from a trip to San Diego. He was utterly mystified by the western notion of hugging—which he considers inappropriate and offensive. He told me that he would probably get a “panda” (black eye) if he tried to hug a colleague.

Such a simple thing as getting on a bus is a challenge for a foreigner, but it’s easy once you have it cased. Step one is to learn the Chinese characters for up (上), and down (下). There will be a sign above the driver. If you see “up” pay when you get on, and if you see “down” pay when you get off. It’s as simple as that, sort of. If the driver opens the back doors for you to get on the bus, put your money away until you get off. If you are going any distance, be prepared to pay when you get on and when you get off. What the hell, it’s cheaper than a car and safer than a motorcycle-and there is plenty of human interest and drama along the way.

Wednesday, January 19, 94

A Patriotic Start to the Day

It is Wednesday morning now, and cold beyond belief in our concrete castle. The principal at Wang Fang Elementary School (across the park from us) is apparently a sadist—I like that in a children’s educator—because there is an outdoor assembly. It’s nice to sit at the computer, at the back of the apartment, looking out over the bamboo in the forest, and hear the assembly going on a block from the front of the house. They start with the ROC anthem. I like national anthems, and this one is particularly good.

Our aim shall be to found a free land.
World peace shall be our stand.
Lead on, comrades, vanguards you are.
Hold fast your aim, by sun and star.
Be earnest and brave, your country to save—
One heart, one soul, one mind, one goal.

It sounds really beautiful in Chinese, which is surprisingly a lovely language for singing. I never used to like the music over here, but now I do. Most of it, anyway. I wonder if I can call Chinese Rap CRap.

Things are winding down for the New Year in two weeks, and I am off all day. I’ll go with Lao-puo to her appointment this morning, and phone my dad in a few minutes. It’s his birthday today. After that, I’ll decide where to do my shivering for the rest of the day.

Tuesday, January 18, 94

What some Guys will do to Save 30 NT Dollars, Ground-Guiding, Mammary Lane and Memory Lane, See-Spot-Run (2), I’m no Tony Hancock but I did my Best, The Escalating Ugly War

I had a bit of time of my hands after my early class, so instead of taking the subway I walked from Taipei City Hall area (corner of Zhongxiao Dong Lu and Keelung Lu if you have a map) clear down to my next class at Fuxing Bei Lu and Minquan Dong Lu). It was a very nice walk, and for once I could actually step out. Chinese people have a very different idea of the function of a sidewalk, and their idea can be frustrating to anyone who actually has a destination. For western people, a sidewalk is for walking on from one place to another, and it is impolite to block anyone’s way. (Well, that used to be true, until we let panhandling and busking get out control). So I’m grumpy. Sue me. Anyway, Chinese sidewalks are for running a business, parking a motorbike (or even a car sometimes), waiting for a bus, socializing, or anything that can be done in one spot. It is not uncommon for people to saunter along, three abreast, so that nobody else can get by. Being in a hurry is like passing on a two-lane highway—you must wait for a chance to get by the lumbering RV. In a pinch, you can just say “excuse me”--which is very polite in Chinese “ji guo” (I’m borrowing your space).

From overhearing people engaged in the task, I now know how to ground guide a truck backing up as well. In English, you say “keep it coming- keep it coming- keep it coming- keep it coming-that’s good!”. In Chinese, you say “lie- lie- lie- lie- lie- lie-go le!”.

After class, and still in a rare mood for exercise, I walked all the way to Taipei Main Station along Nanjing Dong Lu. It’s quite a nice walk. The Westin Hotel, the corporate headquarters of China Airlines, and a high class whorehouse are all within a block of one another. This joint is so high class it even has a bilingual pimp out on the street netting in the pigeons. I wonder, do any of the business guys staying at the Westin submit expense claims for “miscellaneous hospitality items”? A bit farther along is the area where we lived for our first month in Taipei in September 2001. That was the time that we arrived right after the typhoon. It was still raining buckets, and cold and miserable to boot. We had no electricity in our digs and the ceiling leaked like a government policy paper, Lao-puo was as sick as a dog and I had no work for three weeks. Those were the days.

I walked all the way to Zhongshan MRT station, and cut through the underground shopping mall to Taipei Main. I like Zhongshan because I can read it.
Zhong中 Central
Shan山 Mountain
Zhongshan中山 Central Mountain. Giddyup!

After another working-over from the masseur at the rail station, I went to the blood donor clinic at Taipei Main. Some years ago, the late British comedian Tony Hancock did a skit about a blood clinic. My experience was not as amusing as his, but fun nevertheless. The staff could not speak English worth beans, but a bilingual donor was a good multi-tasker. He bled and translated simultaneously. It seems I can multi-task as well. I bled and revised their English information sheets while I was at it. Next time, I will offer my left arm so that I will be able to write (a bit more) legibly.

I had plenty of time to get to my class at Hongshulin, and I had an interesting encounter on the way. A little girl got on the train with her grandfather, and sat across from me. She stared at me, I winked, she stuck out her tongue, I raised and lowered my eyebrows at her, she went cross-eyed, and the fight was on! We spent the time until she got off making grotesque faces at one another. One of the many things I like about being a foreigner here is the extent to which eccentricity is tolerated.

Monday, January 17, 94

A Headline Tragedy, Some Time Off

Taiwan National Health Insurance seems to be better than Canadian medicare coverage, and medical care in general seems to better in Taiwan than in Canada. This is certainly the case in terms of waiting lists, access to specialists, and so on. However, the system has recently failed a little girl badly. There is a big song and dance in the media over here concerning Taipei Municipal Ren Ai Hospital, which is where I went for my immigration medical when I first arrived. Evidently a violent drunk became angry with his four-year old daughter, and threw her against the wall of their home. Since the walls are concrete here, the poor little soul sustained a serious head injury. Ren Ai, for some reason, claimed not to have a bed for her, and sent her to another hospital. For reasons that are under investigation, there was no treatment available anywhere in Taipei and she ended up in Taichung, 150 km away. Now she remains in a deep coma, near death, and is not expected to survive. Perhaps that would have been the case anyway, had she received prompt medical attention in the first place. In any event, the Ren Ai neurosurgeon and medical director have made a formal public apology.

As a secondary issue, the father is in jail, and he is looking at a very long sentence. The legal system here cares about the crime, not the criminal. The judge will not take into account how sorry the guy is, or whether he gets born again in jail, or that he quit drinking, or any of the other BS that offenders use to suck up to Canadian judges and parole boards. I hate to compare one country with another--just like their Canadian counterparts, ROC politicians and officials do stuff that would shame hell—but from time to time I am saddened by the knowledge of how our Canadian systems (medical, legal, and social programs) have gone off the rails.

Some of my courses are over, and they will not again until after Chinese New Year—the middle of February in other words. There is enough to keep me going, but I will have a lot of free time for the next few weeks. We will go to Tainan for the weekend before we return to Canada, as well as to the hot springs in Ilan.

Sunday, January 16, 94

A Routine Sunday—almost, Funny to Me—at least

We spent our usual hour on the 606 bus to get to the church this morning, followed by our bi-weekly study group at Kim and Stephanie’s. The topic has been separation of church and state. This evening, there was a Canadian Society benefit at Shannon’s (a boozer on Dunhua Bei Lu), for “Medicins Sans Frontieres”. This is a worthwhile cause, but likely to be expensive because Shannon is a yuppy-puppy hangout and priced accordingly. I did not require much persuasion to agree to a change in plan, and dinner in “the village” instead. “The village” is a four block by four area of shops and lanes on either side of Xing Lung Lu by Wang Fang Hospital, an area with which we are now very familiar. It’s not really a village of course, but perspective is a funny thing.

We try to get maximum mileage out of a very limited Mandarin vocabulary, and I often anglicize the pronunciation for amusement purposes and for Lao-puo’s benefit. (I’m still showing off to girls, at my age, in other words). I like to change “may guan chi” (it doesn’t matter) to “my gaunchies”, and “may yo bun fa?” (what am I supposed to do about it?” to “mayo bun fight?”

Saturday, January 15, 94

A Busy Day and a Nice Dinner but it’s so Cold!

I look forward to my Saturdays, even though I have to get up early and work like a dog. It’s my busiest day, with private clients who do not like to take time off from work or school to learn English. I was finished in Neihu at 4:30 (early because Jeng Tai-tai was busy). After class, I caught the first bus to Taipei Main, whipped up to the train station next door to get worked over by a blind masseur, met Lao-puo on the subway platform (God knows how I spotted her—the crowds defy imagination at peak times), and whipped out for dinner with Kim and Stephanie. Kim is the minister at Taipei International Church, where we have been attending regularly.

Lao-puo and Stephanie, after dinner. I get a kick out of how they are dressed, as if we live in Minnesota or Manitoba or someplace. Mind you, it was 14 degrees in the apartment when we got home.

We decided on a “Mongolian” BBQ, although I doubt if there are very many pineapples or mussels in Ulaanbaatar. They cook on an enormous circular gas-fired metal grill, at least two metres in diameter. You simply help yourself from great platters of raw fish, beef, pork, mutton, and chicken, and a selection of vegetables for stir-fry to go along with it. You give your selection to the grill guys, and punish the salad bar while it’s cooking. My diet has gone to the dogs, but we must splurge every now and again.

Kim and Stephanie are affable and interesting dinner companions. We certainly didn’t need the hot pot that was provided in addition to the bbq, but there you have it. I loved Kim’s bon mot about clothing the sick and laying hands on the naked.

Friday, January 14, 94

Homesickness, Street Drama

Having grown up in Vancouver, I have been long accustomed to an endless of dull rainy days. Taipei in winter is no better.

I took a picture of the skyline from the fourteenth floor of an office building, while I was waiting for my student. Taipei fails to make a good first impression—many of the buildings look old and dirty and worn out. However, people put a lot of effort into making things nice as possible around here. The apartment building next door to the office building has a beautiful rooftop garden for the residents to enjoy.

Not content to have a mere buzzer to alert the driver to someone wanting to get off, there are electronic sounds on many of the city buses. Yesterday, on my way home, I was treated to “Be It Ever So Humble, There’s No Place Like Home” at every bus stop along the way.

It’s just the way they talk, I suppose, but a lot of Chinese people sound very angry when they are simply having an animated discussion. At first, I even thought that some guys were about to duke it out, but it’s just a style of communication. I took a picture of a little blue delivery truck the other morning, with the old lao-ban niyang, hands on her hips, going over the invoice with a fine-toothed comb and seeming to berate the driver and swamper in the process.

I don’t know why it takes two guys to unload a little truck. There seem to be a lot of unnecessary employees over here. I don’t expect a lot of people get paid very much, but at least everyone is working. The minimum wage is expressed as a monthly salary, but it works out to about $3.05 per hour. Government employees have to write exams to be appointed, and they have tenure. Most large blue-collar workplaces are union here, and so are a few of the large banks and corporations. Annual leave is lousy though—most people only get two weeks. They get about the same number of stats as we do but five of the stats are in a row at Lunar New Year.

Thursday, January 13, 94

Better Chinese Advertising

Not all the advertising over here is as tasteless as the one of Fuxing the skateboarder. There was a really good one in the MRT Station at Zhongxiao Dunhua. Presumably, the advert is an exhortation to buy a particular kind of cold medicine (I would know that if I could read), and it shows an artist painting a snuffly portrait of a healthy-looking young woman.

I hope that the skill of the remedy manufacturer is as good as the skill of the artist, but I doubt it. You might as well drink cool-aid as take most of the stuff that is sold for colds—in Canada and here. Some of the Chinese herbal stuff looks, smells, and tastes so gross that you’ll be wanting to get better just so you won’t have to take the remedies anymore.

I stayed in today and caught up on my record-keeping and marking, some writing, and a few emails to my friends. There are many good days to stay indoors (even though it is clammy and dank), because we are having a lot of rain. It’s not much of a choice really—clammy and dank indoors or cold and wet out.

Wednesday, January 12, 94

Belgian Refugees, So Similar yet so Different

While I was out and about with my camera yesterday, I noticed a city worker power-washing the sidewalk. This is a very necessary job here. There are still a fair number of people who chew betel nut, then spit. Betel nut chewing is, I think, the most disgusting of all human habits, and people who know me well realize that it takes quite a bit of grossness before I get disgusted. Betel nuts turn people’s teeth red and their gums black, and induce the salivary glands to work overtime in order to cope with the irritant. The resulting red expectorations make the sidewalk look like someone had a lung hemorrhage or a gunshot wound, or at least a bad nosebleed. Spitting is, I think, a cultural thing, frowned upon in western society because of the tuberculosis fears in the old days. However, there is no such prohibition in Chinese etiquette. The most refined looking people (old ladies and all) will expectorate with shocking gusto regardless of passersby. What is a “Belgian refugee” you might ask? The answer is easy—expelled phlegm.

Anyway, I was intrigued by the way the city worker was dressed—in a transparent vinyl raincoat, a mask against the air pollution, and a conical hat covered with reflective material.
In the back of the picture the inevitable “San” (Macdonalds) can be seen.

Tuesday, January 11, 94

Free Chinese Lessons, Being a Moron doesn’t depend on Hemisphere of Residence, My New Friend

My company phoned me this afternoon, to tell me that my two hour class in Hongshulin was changed for tonight only. It was only one hour instead of two (but I get paid for two anyway—bonus), and in the company office in Taipei. Since I was consequently finished for the evening nice and early, I went for supper to my favourite little dumpling stall across the street from Wang Fang hospital. The advantages are that a filling meal is less than $2 in Canadian money, and you can get a beer at the 7-11 next door to go along with it. The other fringe benefits are that the grill is right in front of the customers’ seats so it’s nice and warm, and the other patrons are very patient and kind with my halting Chinese. Not bad for two bucks!

How our parking problems, in our respective Canadian cities, might be solved if everyone had a scooter instead of a car! I took a picture of some parked bikes, in little marked spots, because I noticed that three clowns hadparked their bikes on the lines instead of between them.

Coming home on the train yesterday, I befriended a little girl and her mother and father. The family is from Taipei, but they live in Manila where the dad works at TECO (Taipei Economic and Cultural Office)—the de facto ROC embassy. “Pineapple” is one of those affable, cheery little souls who can bring a smile to anyone’s face. Her dad took our picture. Chinese people (when treated respectfully and decently) are generally very friendly to foreigners.

Monday, January 10, 94

The Triumph of Literacy, Chinese Blasphemy

I don’t really enjoy the Ximen area of Taipei, but one thing I do like is the fact “Ximen” was the first Chinese place name I could read.
Xi. 西. West.
Men門. Gate.
Ximen. 西門. West Gate. See Spot run. I’m smarter than I look!

One of the many clothing stores in Ximen uses the slogan “a brand new year, a brand new you”. I was appalled by the disrespectful use of religion in the sign. Three Chinese Gods (of Longevity, Prosperity, and Fortune), dressed as a snowboarder (good luck finding a place to snowboard in Taiwan), a rock guitarist, and a skateboarder, had been pressed into service flogging teen fashions. I’m getting old enough now to start getting grumpy about that sort of thing.

Sunday, January 09, 94

Bringing in the Sheaves

It takes an hour to get to church by bus, but we have been going every Sunday anyway. Most of the people are quite affable (barring the odd fundamentalist here and there) and we have made some nice friends. In fact, I will be teaching Excel to one of the women. Some of the foreign people have lived here for decades, and some of the Chinese people just come for the English environment. There is also an additional service in Tagalog for the benefit of people from the Philippines. For lunch, a gaggle of us goes back to Kim’s (the preacher’s) place for pizza and a discussion. This week was ethics, and the separation of church and state. I learned quite a bit from Kim’s comments.

Pei recommended a dumpling place across the street from Wang Fang Hospital, so we went there for supper and one of the few light meals of the weekend. It’s funny to see people in winter boots and coats with fur collars, and others in winter coats, shorts, and sandals with no socks. We stayed out until bedtime, because it is no warmer outside the apartment than in.

Saturday, January 08, 94

Bring me Flesh and Bring me Wine

It was good to see the Kunyang boys again this morning, even though it was hard to get out of bed and get ready. The temperature is not too bad (14-17) but the apartment feels like a meat locker. I take too long in the shower too, because the idea of stepping out from under the hot water is appalling. Jeng tai-tai fed me a “light lunch” before my afternoon class—pork ribs, salmon steak, kimchi, stir-fired cabbage, and a gallon of miso soup. After class, Pei and Chrissy took us to a meeting of a friend’s study group. It was a gaggle of very nice German fellows, in a restaurant over by SYS Memorial Hall. We had another big meal with lots of good imported red wine. “When it comes to wine, “good” and “imported” are sort of synonyms, but other kinds of Chinese booze are quite nice. Life is good.

Friday, January 07, 94

Bloody Perishing Cold! A Good Deed, A Clever General

I’m not one to complain (much). I like to suffer in silence, but I want everyone to know that this is what I am doing. For all the good our rinky-dink little heaters do, we might as well hold a candle under a glacier. Their only effect is to jack up the electrical bill. (I can’t say “hydro” because most generating is nuclear here.) The temperature range is 13 to 17, but our concrete apartment has an eat-your-bones dankness to it. I left for my evening class nice and early, and got off the train one stop before Hongshulin at Zhuwei. “Zh” is a “J” sound (sort of)—I can’t sound Chinese to save my life. I bought a nice heavy sweater at “Carrefour”, which is a sort of French Wal-Mart, and walked for twenty minutes to Hongshulin.

I found a little leather pouch on the road, which contained someone’s name chop. It is astonishing that a name stamp is a legal Chinese signature. The loss of a name chop is a huge hassle for people, but I don’t speak enough Chinese to tell the constable where I found it. I gave it to one my students, who said that one of the stamps in the pouch was a name chop, and the other had to do with pension entitlement. She was certain that the owner would report its loss, and even if unclaimed it would at least be safe from misuse. I use a name chop myself—my Chinese name hand carved into a little stone—nearly impossible to forge.

One of my students told me about a Chinese general, some centuries ago, who signed his name by wetting his calligraphy brush and simply stabbing the paper with it. Someone tried to forge the general’s signature by doing the same, but was caught because the clever general put a needle inside the brush, so that there would be a tiny hole in any paper he signed.

Thursday, January 06, 94

Blood Types

I had an early start this morning, with an 8:00 a.m. class at the bank over at Ximen. It was good to see my students again, as they teach me quite a bit about China. I had my last class (for this set) with the lawyer at the insurance company, and she took me out for lunch. In the afternoon, I had another late but quick lunch at Taipei 101 with Lao-puo, then we did a sales presentation to another company for a business idea that we have for when we get home. In the evening, I went out to Hongshulin and got home about 8:30. I seem to be on the go all the time, and the activity agrees with me. I will, however, have some spare next week to do a blood donation. I am not sure what my blood type is, but I think I might be “Taipei, Rh Positive".

Wednesday, January 05, 94

Back to Normal

Yesterday was grueling. I nearly fell asleep coming home from Hongshulin. Not that the sight of someone sleeping is unusual—Chinese people nap all the time. In many offices, there is a two hour lunch hour. They dim the lights in the cubicle ranch, and everyone zizzes down for an hour or two. My friend Jean (the human resources manager) was astonished to hear that Canadian employers would take issue with people sleeping in an office even during their breaks. Today was a lot better—a nice gentle pace and finished at 8:20 p.m. Speaking of normal, we had our first earthquake of the year already. Number 94001 was just a 1 and could be felt only in Hualien. Jigglers are so frequent there that is not necessary to put a quarter in the motel beds.

Wednesday, December 14, 93 to Tuesday, January 4, 94

I’ll be Home for Christmas!

It was good to be back in Canada, if only for two and a half weeks. I had an easier time getting home than Lao-puo did. I used the other half of my JAL return ticket, so my flight was only extended by a three-hour layover at Narita. Lao-puo had to go to Hong Kong for a Cathay Pacific flight, so she practically flew over the house four hours after setting off. For some reason, the west-to-east flight across the Pacific is considerably shorter—only nine hours from Tokyo to Vancouver.

Our quiet family Christmas was made more joyous by the fact that Dad has a new pacemaker, and thus has considerably more energy than before. It was nice to see “the kids”, and to see that my daughter is doing so well in her new job and her new life in Kingston.

We had a side-trip to see our oldest friends and our three godchildren, and to enjoy yet another wonderful church New Years Party. We were all young parents when we first started having those parties; now many of our friends are retired and/or have grandchildren. I would never have imagined that either retirement or grandchildren would represent a stage in my life to which I would have looked forward with eager anticipation. I guess we change, in more ways than hair quantity and colour (and centre of gravity), as we approach middle age.

It felt a bit strange to be back in Canada. I drove a car for the first time in eight months, and I used a knife and fork regularly (too regularly, in fact). We both noticed that people speak English very quickly in Canada, presumably because most foreigners in Taiwan speak slowly for the benefit of Chinese people with limited English.

Sunday, December 05, 93

Mr. Excitement

Today was an uneventful day—just what I need! I’ve been cranking a lot of hours recently. Next week will be even busier. I will have forty teaching hours, so I will work Monday through Friday from 0800 until 2030, and on Saturday I will work from 0900 until 1830. Church this morning, dinner with Chrissy in Mucha, a walk through the university campus, and home.

Saturday, December 04, 93

Weather, Bon Mot from a Chrome Dome

Saturday broke cold, and wet, and windy as hell. It was nip and tuck whether I would go to class, because there was a possibility the city would issue another typhoon warning. No problem, and I finished all my classes.
Joseph, one of “my” Kunyang boys, said that his physics teacher was impatient with the boys the other day--even though Yen Ping is a co-ed school, the classes are divided by gender. Anyway, the teacher said “Boys! Think! Head are for thinking with, not for growing hair on”.

Friday, December 03, 93

Here We Go Again!

This is the first time in fifty years that there has been a typhoon warning in December! Hopefully, this will be the last one for the year. It’s raining like hell, and windy as a politician. Here is the “Taipei Times” article on it.

Winter Typhoon To Bring Heavy Rains
Taiwan is expected to be hit by Typhoon Nanmadol today, an unusual storm in wintertime, and heavy rainfall might occur in the northern, northeastern and eastern parts of the country, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB). Forecasters said yesterday that southern Taiwan would be affected by the storm early today. If so, Nanmadol will be the first typhoon striking Taiwan in December in meteorological history. The bureau had not issued sea and land warnings by 11:30pm, but may issue them early today. Daniel Wu (吳德榮), deputy director of the bureau's weather forecast center, said that Nanmadol might pass Luzon early this morning and turn north to Taiwan. Yesterday, both the US and Japan also forecast similar routes of Nanmadol, saying the storm would be approaching from Taiwan's southern tip. From this afternoon to tomorrow's morning, strong winds will be experienced in the south. “However, the typhoon passing through the south might interact with the northeast monsoon, leading to heavy rains in the northern, northeastern and eastern parts of the country," Wu said. Wu said that today and tomorrow, accumulative rainfall exceeding 200mm might be measured in mountainous regions throughout the north. In central Taiwan, showers are expected. To prevent disasters involving mudflows, landslides and flooding, some local emergency relief centers were established and water gates of main rivers yesterday were checked carefully by water resources officials. A cold air mass could arrive in Taiwan on Monday, which could have an impact on the typhoon. Temperatures are expected to drop significantly on Monday to about 12?C in western coastal areas and 14?C in northern Taiwan. Forecasters said they could not rule out Nanmadol weakening by Sunday.

Thursday, December 02, 93

Pictures, The Zoo to the Zoo

I took a few pictures this morning, of the poinsettias down by our bus stop, “Lao-puo’s” dog—he hangs out in the neighourhood all day, seems to get looked after, but nobody seems to own him, and a monk on the train.

We have often asserted that Taipei Main Station should actually be called Taipei Zoo Station—not the station that is actually in front of the zoo. I changed my mind today—the Brown Line train was a rolling zoo, taking the little monkeys along with it. Each car was packed to the rafters with school kids on a field trip to the zoo—packed in liked cigars in a box. I noticed in Mexico, and again here, that when enough kids make enough noise, it sounds the same regardless of whatever language they are speaking. These ones were excited about their field trip, and the din was something out of this world. By the time we got to Liuzhangli, I wondered if I would ever be able to ride a bicycle or stand on one leg again. I’m taller than most people here, and the teacher could not see that a little boy was climbing on to the shelf at the front of the train—there is no on board driver—to be able to see better. There is a warning sign to keep weight off the shelf because of the electronic equipment under it, and I had to tell him to get off before he stranded us—maybe even in the middle of the tunnel. Being unable to say “Hey you! Fool! Can’t you read?” in Chinese, I raised my voice and said “bu ka yee” (it is not permitted) as forcefully as I could. The din stopped instantly, all the kids were looking at me, and a little girl said wonderingly “That foreigner can speak Chinese!” I wish I could, and a lot of foreigners can, but I guess it was convincing enough. The point is, the kid complied and got down, instead of swearing at me--which may well have been the outcome at home.

Wednesday, December 01, 93

It’s Away Too Late In The Year—Enough Already! New Classes

There is another typhoon hovering. They are very rare at this time of the year. I had my first class with one of the owners of my company this morning. She is a nice person who tries hard to improve her language. I also have another demonstration lesson next week at an insurance company, and more at the shipping company on public speaking and more still on employee performance appraisals.

In fact, I enjoy all of my classes now. I have been able to set up full time hours teaching only motivated high-level adults.

Tuesday, November 30, 93

What Some Guys’ll Do for a Free Beer, No Rest for the Wicked

I was delighted last night to learn that one of my students (the guy who was brushing up on his English in preparation for an interview with China Airlines) has been accepted for flight training! This pleases me to no end, because the measure of satisfying work is the extent to which it makes other people’s lives better. Anyway, I had told my student that the first time he drops a Boeing or an Airbus into Wen Ge Wah (Vancouver), I’d whip over and buy him a beer. Thinking always of others, I am also considering the fact that being seen in public with me will enhance the public image of the flight attendants.

With my new assignment teaching one of the owners of my company, I now have to get up early for work six days a week. I have to grab such work as I can bet, because I will not be assigned any new classes until after Christmas because we are going home for a couple of weeks. Even then, it might be slack until the end of Chinese New Year (an entire week off) in mid-February or so.

Monday, November 29, 93

A Gig and a Rant, It’s Getting Cold! Time Flies

My student at the bank called me on my cell (on, not in) today, to say that the da lao-ban at the bank wants to take private lessons from me. I feel quite honoured to have been asked, especially as the opportunity comes right after one of the owners of my company asked me to be her teacher as well. To be honest, this is one of the huge advantages to working in Taiwan—there is recognition and reward for effort and achievement. In some Canadian work situations, “recognition” and “reward” are filed alphabetically, between “hens’ teeth” and “tooth fairy”, and seem to be distributed on the basis of inches of mercury as much as anything else.

The temperature range today is 15-17, starting to get chilly because nothing is heated here. It is strange to see people in winter coats and scarves—and thongs on their feet. There was a guy on the MRT the other day—lugging home and electric radiator. They are quite a nice job—a German design where the electricity is used to heat up the oil in the radiator. It will get a lot colder still when winter really hits. I remember during the year we lived here, that January and February were wickedness, and Lao-puo said it was still cold in March when she lived here on her own last year.

It’s hard to believe that I have been here seven months already! We will be back in Canada in mid-December, for Christmas, coming back to Taipei January 2. It’s sad to think that my year will be over before I know it.

Sunday, November 28, 93

An Un-Chinese Lunch after Church

Our new friends Jeremy and Bethany suggested lunch after church, so we went to a German place that was nearby. It was the first time for many months that I have used a knife and fork. I really enjoyed weisswurst, mashed potato, and sauerkraut. And a pint of German beer. It’s expensive to eat western food, especially in an expat neighbourhood, but it was sure worth it.

Saturday, November 27, 93

Bowling Night

I finished up with my Kunyang boys this morning, and had the afternoon off. I am now free until Monday morning. Tonight my company had a bowling activity. Perhaps as a consequence of my fondness for Taiwan beer, the only way I could get a strike happening would be to organize a union for the bowling alley employees. It was good fun, nevertheless. The bowling alley blared out rap (or hip-hop) music all evening, but aside from that it is a good facility. I don’t know the difference between rap and hip-hop, other than to say that one is ultra-violent, the other is misogynist, and both are sufficient motivation to put a fire axe through the speakers.

Friday, November 26, 93

A Routine Friday, an Offer I Can’t Refuse

It’s raining like hell today (that happens a lot around here), and I have a slack day with no class until 3:30. I then have an hour to whip out to Hongshulin for two hours in the early evening, and I’m done.

I’m sorry to be finished with my Japanese student. Iwao is going home tomorrow for a week, then he is moving to Beijing for a year and a half. There are no direct flights from Taipei to anywhere in China except Hong Kong, and the mainlanders have no government offices here. Iwao must get his Chinese visa in Japan. My two Friday night students are going to Seoul for five days next week. Evidently the flight from Taipei to Seoul is very inexpensive. Lao-puo’s Friday night class was cancelled, and because there was not enough notice she got paid anyway. So, while I was slaving away in Hongshulin with Jeff and Miriam, she was one stop away in Danshui buying a winter cap and eating beautiful Chinese ham sausage. Life isn’t fair sometimes.

I bumped into the owner of the company on the street yesterday, and she wants me to be her private English teacher. It will be daytime hours too—always nice to have.

Thursday, November 25, 93

Some Sad News,

Before coming over here, we left our two little dogs with some very kind people in Nanaimo. Steve emailed us yesterday, to say that little Mindy had died. She had a good long life, but it is a pensive time for us nevertheless.

Wednesday, November 24, 93

Subbing Kids Again, King Tut

I did another two hours at an elementary school this afternoon. The kids (grade 2’s) were bright and enthusiastic. I had to give a kid named Eric “The Sandpaper Treatment”—rubbing his forearm against my chin with its rougher-than-Chinese shadow--as a punishment. He was smart-alec enough to act as if he had been bitten by rattlesnake, and suddenly the whole class wanted to try it. I had to switch gears and use the sandpaper as a reward not a punishment. “No sandpaper until those workbooks are finished”.

Racism, as evil as it is, seems to be quite fascinating. In our politically-correct world, to call someone a racist is to insult the person mightily. However, racism against Americans seems to be OK. You can call one nationality “stupid” another “arrogant” and get tarred and feathered for being a racist. However, apply those same adjectives to Americans and you will get wise nods of agreement from the very individuals who otherwise would be carrying a tar bucket and a pillow. I digress, as usual. A young foreign (that would be us) teacher at the school was loudly bemoaning the fact that he was expected to make his own photocopies, as opposed to snapping his fingers and having a Chinese teaching assistant jump to it.

Tuesday, November 23, 93

Teaching Pros and Cons, What’s in a Flag? More School Activities Up the Hill

Other than the election getting into high gear, nothing unusual is going on in Taipei. I only had two classes today, because of a cancellation, and Lao-puo had several cancellations today. It is quite annoying because we only get our hourly rate for actual teaching hours, and unless someone cancels without notice we don’t get paid. By way of contrast, the bus driver wouldn’t let me pay last night—he just said “English teacher” and put his hand over the fare box.

The political situation here is very interesting. The KMT (Chinese Nationalist Party) is under fire for using the symbol of the white sun on the blue background (same as the national flag). I remember when the BC Social Credit party was criticized for using the British Columbia provincial flag in the same way. There is talk of a new national anthem here as well—people want a happier one.

Speaking of which, God only knows what’s going at Wang Fang Elementary School, over the road and up the hill from us. We can see the top of the school, but not the yard. In addition to the Zulu dancing, and the can-can (the average age of teachers in Canada—at least as old as I am--is now so high that they teach the can’t-can’t instead), they now have added the national anthem and some kind of military activity. One of these mornings I’ll wander up and have a look.

Monday, November 23, 93

So Much for My Quiet Day, Medical Stuff

The lao-ban at Lao-puo’s school phoned at 12:30, to ask to sub a class at 1:30 at an elementary school on Xingsheng Lu across from Da An Forest Park. I love these Chinese names—“xingsheng” means “newborn baby”, and “da an” means “great peace”. We liked Xingsheng Lu better when it was spelled using the previous romanization method. When the spelling was “hsinghsen” we called it “Hissing Hen”. There’s always, here and at home, somebody with a newfangled idea to spoil our fun. I prefer teaching adults rather than children, but these ones were a dream. The little girls swarmed me and tried to hold my hand all the time (they certainly made no such attempt when I was that age), and the boys contented themselves with showing off. One little fellow tried to gain my attention by burping as loudly as he could, until I gave him a look that could have curdled milk. The assignment was just for two hours, then I go back on Wednesday for another two hours to sub for someone else. Foreigners get sick a lot over here, mostly lungs and guts.

Speaking of health, I do OK health-wise in Taiwan, although over the weekend I developed a redness and swelling in my right eyelid—I looked like a turn signal. I asked one of my Monday morning students if there was a medical clinic nearby, and he pointed to a place on the other side of the plaza. The clinic has all kinds of different specialists, and is equipped to do outpatient procedures. In slightly less than an hour, I was registered, assigned a number (I was the 31st patient that day to see the ophthalmologist) paid up, and on my way with my antibiotics. It only cost me 150 NT dollars for the whole works (a Big Mac combo is 109 NTD over here), and National Health paid the rest of it. To be honest, I am rethinking my long held position about private medical services, and user fees. It seems to me that whatever works, to get people the help they need as quickly and inexpensively as possible, should be looked at. Mind you, I don’t think Canadians would put up with the lack of privacy—we have such a different idea. The young woman ahead of me, with her head back, and pupils full of belladonna, had severe myopia according to the computer screen the nurse was working on. It would have been very shortsighted of her to imagine that anyone would be the least bit interested in her eyeballs, and in fact I’m sure she couldn’t have cared less. It doesn’t matter, I suppose, in the ophthalmology room, if confidential information is displayed—nobody can see worth a damn anyway. All I know is that I got the treatment I needed right away, and inexpensively.

In English we use the word “lame” to describe an unsuccessful attempt a humour. Chinese people say “cold”. The ophthalmology clinic reminds of a teacher, a Cyclops, who was laid off due to declining student numbers—he only had one pupil.

Sunday, November 21, 93

There Were Ninety and Nine that Safely Lay…

This morning was a glorious sleep-in—something I cannot do very often. In any case, I have been getting up at 0600 for so many years that I find it almost impossible to sleep in anyway. We had a nice breakfast in the village of pagan and chow dan (bacon and eggs), then we set off for church. We have been going regularly, and enjoying it. Taipei International Church is interdenominational, and an hour away by bus. There are Chinese churches closer than that, and many have bilingual and English services, but they dish up a style of fundamentalism with which we disagree. Many interdenominational places fall prey to fundamentalists, but the preacher at TIC manages to keep that particular perspective in its proper place—seen and not heard. The sermons are thoughtful and intelligent, and many of the people are very nice. There will be an (American) Thanksgiving/Christmas Dinner on Dec 12, that will be as dry as a bone but quite enjoyable nevertheless.

After church a gaggle of us went over to the preacher’s house for pizza, and it was late afternoon by the time we got home again. We took the little red Hyundai bus to Mucha for an inexpensive supper, and walked back home along Jing Mei Creek.

Saturday, November 20, 93

In Front of My Eyes, Tongue Tung, On Horseback

We have both noticed, in the three years since we first came over here, that Taipei is changing in front of our eyes. It seems to be a lot more western and cosmopolitan now than before. There is fair bit of dramatic construction going on, with the Taipei 101 Building providing the most dramatic example. This morning I took two pictures, from the same spot, of each side of the street.

I had a great lunch today. It sounds very mundane to have beef noodle soup, but I have often said that nobody makes soup better than Chinese people. The “restaurant” was a little hole-in-the-wall place, jam-packed (like everything is over here), and they dished up a good lunch. By the way, I can manage in Chinese now to get meals and so on, but I’m sure that my Mandarin is painful to listen to. The only drawback was the beef was tongue), rather close to the Chinese word for soup. There’s got to be a joke in there somewhere.

As indeed, there must be a joke in the Chinese expression for “right away”, particularly if you say it in response to an overly-assertive request. You say “ma sung” (meaning “on horseback”-presumably a reference to the fact that a horse can gallop faster than a person can walk. I’m sure that, with the right mumbling, any English smart-alec worth his salt could make “ma sung” sound like “master”. “Alexander” by the way, is my middle name.

Thursday, November 18, 93

A Four-Figure Crossword Puzzle, Sometimes It’s Downright Embarrassing to be Christian, Pragmatism

I was out in Hongshulin on Thursday night for a class at the insurance company. My student’s boss, in a big panic, called her out of class to deal with a customer complaint. She was gone for the whole rest of the lesson. I often wonder why senior managers react in such a panic to a client complaint—insecurity and fear of criticism, I suppose. Anyway, I happily did my crossword puzzle in the meantime, and got paid regardless. I don’t suppose that ever in my life, before or since, will I paid four figures (in NT dollars mind you) to do a crossword puzzle.

An article in the “Taipei Times” caught my attention. Ten years ago, a woman made a grilled cheese sandwich, took a bite out of it, and set it down—I suppose the phone rang or something. When she came back, she saw an image of The Virgin Mary in the melted cheese. She didn’t eat the rest of the sandwich, presumably in the belief that it would have been sacrilegious to have done so. She asserts that, by a miracle, no spores grew on her sandwich. She kept it for ten years, and now she is trying to flog it on e-Bay. The bidding is up to 16,000 US dollars! Hopefully, the vendor will at least give the buyer a beer to go along with it! I will keep the article, because I am sure to be accused of making this stuff up. As it is, I have already encountered skepticism when I refer to a chain of lingerie stores called “The Easy Shop”, or to the fact that Taipei has a public health establishment called the “Mei Ho STD Clinic”.

Incidentally, I often wondered what happens to the food that is put out for Ghost Month and other religious events over here. There’s quite a spread--the Westin Hotel even put out a suckling pig—with booze and everything. After the spirits help themselves, the household gets what’s left over.

Wednesday. November 17, 93

My Schedule, Electioneering

This was weekly training at the office for two hours (followed of course by the gourmet Chinese lunch the employer lays on). It’s nice to see an employer laying things on, rather than laying people off. The rest of the day was pretty slack—my Japanese student in the afternoon and my construction company in the evening. Even though I work six days a week, some of days are pretty slack, and work is not really “work” at all. We do not skimp on our expenses in the slightest, and we can live very comfortably over here with money left over every month.

Elections are really something over here. From what I understand, there are two basic camps in this election—the “pan-green” parties who favour Taiwan independence, and the “pan-blues” who are interested in reunification with the mainlanders under suitable terms. Recently, the pan-blue opposition parties scotched a huge arms purchase, and the pan greens are getting mileage out of what they consider to be weakness on the sovereignty issue. During the election campaign, little trucks drive around with flags and posters and loudspeakers, and even motorcycles are pressed into service. The pan greens have a little truck decked out like a tank, with camouflage paint and a fake gun, and anti-blue slogans both blared out and written. Maybe the British Columbia Liberal Party ought to borrow the idea—their leader has been known to drive around tanked up as well.

Tuesday, November 16, 93

The Banshee, More Fractured English, News from Home

When I was on my way back to town from Hongshulin yesterday, I saw the most remarkable scene. A woman, who looked closer to 70 than to 60, got on the train at Mingde Station. That is to say, she dawdled her way towards the train, until the door-closing signal came on. At this point, she stuck her shopping bag in the door, and shrieked at the driver to open up. The drivers get off the train at each stop, to look back and check the doors before they set off. The poor guy sure got a Taiwanese earful for closing the door on her! I could tell she was speaking Taiwanese—if a conversation is Mandarin I can understand one word in ten, but in Taiwanese I don’t follow at all. The old leather-lungs could have been heard in Manila, I think. We then waited while her dad, or elderly husband, shuffled his way on to the train. We set off, but not before she glared at two young pups in the priority seats to get off their duffs and let them sit down.

I was coming back from Hongshulin, where I had been sent for an additional assignment to take the “Chinglish” out of a report the head office of a company. In addition to the usual amendments—they aren’t really corrections, just things like “very like” and “please kindly”—I changed “motivate the passion of staffs” to “improve morale”. Sadly, the quality of business English at home in Canada is sometimes little better than Chinglish I see here. In fact, I note that the communications department (of an organization that will remain unidentified) directed letter-writers to “apologize” for a late reply, but to “apologize sincerely” for a very late reply.

We subscribe to the Internet version of our local (Canadian) paper, and the news is not good. I read about a snowstorm in Nova Scotia, a tragic fire in Ontario, a constable killed in BC. At least here, all the horror and sadness is in Chinese--and I can’t read.

Monday, November 15, 93

Off to a Flying Start, Not Again!

The bad start is that, having forgotten my glasses and my one of my books, I had to come back home after my Ximen class this morning. It is now raining like hell, so instead of sitting snugly underground at Taipei Main having a coffee I’ll be standing in the rain waiting for a bus. Adding insult to injury, I left my umbrella in class this morning. No problem, I have half a dozen more in addition to the collapsible one I always carry—one for each time I ventured forth without one. There is another typhoon brewing up, off the coast of the Philippines, but I expect it will peter out by the time it approaches us.

Sunday, November 14, 93

Another Quiet Sunday, Serenity

This afternoon we went for a walk, only about 200 m from our home. I had been meaning for some time to get a picture of the large statue of Buddha, in a hillside temple, near our place. It is comforting to see Buddha casting his serenity on our valley. I like the idea that Buddha never claimed to be divine, and the ideas are more of a philosophy than a religion. It is hard to get a “purely” scenic shot in Taiwan, as there is often something decidedly unscenic in the way—in this instance the pylon on the hillside in the background.

Saturday, November 13, 93

No Rest for the Wicked, Dashing About, a Wonderful Dinner

Lao-puo’s school phoned me this morning at 9:40, and asked me to substitute a class at 10:30. I dropped everything, and flew out the door, arriving at school at exactly 10:30. The student, Wendy, is a grade seven girl with beautiful English, who went to Dominican School the year after I was teaching there. It was good to catch up on the scoop about my former colleagues. After class I tore over to Neihu, arriving just in time for lunch. I then did an hour and a half of presentation skills with the Da Lao-ban, an hour of advanced English with Lina, and an hour of phonics with Gwen. There was no time for the bus after, so I took a cab to the terminus of the MRT Brown Line at Chungshan Junior High School, rode all the way to Taipei Zoo, and grabbed the 236 bus to dinner with Lao-puo, and Alan and Jean and the kids. Good Chinese restaurants are not to be seen, they are to be appreciated. Minimalist décor, paper plates, noise fit to wake the dead, not an empty seat in the place, enough food for a harvesting crew, and gourmet cuisine dished up. I was already stuffed from lunch, but I did my best. Just imagine, more gourmet food than four adults and two kids could possibly eat—for $27 Canadian dollars! No wonder so few people cook at home.

Friday, November 12, 93

China Airlines, Chilling Reality, Japanese Humour

It’s dull and cloudy this morning, and this will be the start of the cool wet weather we will have until next spring. A Taiwan winter is considerably warmer than a west coast Canadian winter—the temperature rarely drops below 10 degrees, but it seems a lot colder because nothing is heated here. We didn’t get our Christmas letters mailed, or my ticket picked up, so we will try to get that done today. Tonight is the Canadian Society monthly get-together at the Brass Monkey. It’s so nice to see “folk from the Old Country” as my grandmother used to say.

I had my second, and last, class, with the China Airlines candidate. His interview is on Monday, and I think he will do well. Aiden wasn’t even going to mention, on his interview, that he made sergeant in six months during his military service, and that he was invited to stay in the army after his two years was up. Many Chinese people are very shy, and they do not like self-laudatory statements. I told him, nevertheless, to mention it to the selection panel on Monday.

Aiden told me of an interesting experience he had, about a year ago. He was assigned to a Patriot Missile battery during his service, and, around midnight, there was a radar contact. Somebody picked up fifteen blips, over Fujian Province, making for Taipei at Mach 1.6. These were PRC attack aircraft, and in the event of a real attack Taipei would have been dust if even one aircraft had gotten through. Interceptors were scrambled, but the F-16’s and Mirages aren’t nearly as good as what the mainlanders have. The battery commander woke up the general for authority to fire. The mainlanders came streaking over the strait, the battery was ready to launch the Patriots, and the enemy peeled off just before they would have violated ROC airspace. It was either an intimidation tactic (the fact that they were headed for Taipei makes me think so), or an effort to test the defences, but the episode surely points out how vulnerable this place is to a real attack.

My next class, with Iwao, is a lot of fun. He speaks English well, and is beginning to appreciate my humour. He was reading from a book about giving presentations the other day, and he passed my English test. He said “to summarize”, to which I replied “two samurais? Must be a Japanese book”, and he got the joke.

Thursday, November 11, 93

The Old One-Two, Hokey Pokey, the Morality Consultant

There was yet another earthquake this morning. I didn’t even feel it because I was on the Brown Line MRT (Skytrain) at the time, and the elevated track is built with seismic issues taken into account.

I’m off until 5:00 p.m. now. My new class out at Hongshulin starts tonight. We have a few errands to do in the meantime, such mundane things as going to the post office and the video rental place, and picking up my ticket. I will use the other half of my JAL ticket to go to Victoria via Narita and Vancouver on the 14th of December. Lao-puo must wait until the next day, when she will be flying Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong. In other words, she must set off in entirely the wrong direction.

On the other side of the park across the street from us, and at the top of the hill, is Wang Fang Elementary School. There is the most amazing music from the place, all day long. One of the teachers must be teaching Zulu dancing or something, and there is African music was getting blared out. This morning was the “Hokey Pokey”. I guess it’s good for teaching body parts to kids.

This morning, one of my male students asked to have a word with me privately after class. He did not want to ask in front of his female colleague, but he has been watching “Sex in the City”, to try to learn the English in it. He asked if Americans really live, as portrayed in the show, and did I concur that the program is “immoral”? Imagine, my on morality being consulted. I haven’t told him any of my jokes yet.

Wednesday, November 10, 93

Another Jiggler, Fractured English

There was yet another earthquake last night. Number 104 was mild, but enough to be felt. Apart from that, nothing else is shaking around here.

I don’t mind fractured English—after all English is not easy and people try their best, but I do hate to see errors in textbooks. One of the business English books said that external auditors “rat out” financial irregularities—when it should have said “ferret out”. The difference in the nuance is huge.

Tuesday, November 09, 93

Maybe I should just Live on the Train, Sand to an Arab

I have been assigned two new classes on my recently freed-up Thursday night, so I will now be going out to Hongshulin three evenings a week. Monday and Wednesday nights are for my construction company.

There is a very interesting night market close to the construction company, and I often go there on my way to class. It’s more of a meat and vegetable place, but there is also clothing and whatnot for sale. In fact, you can even buy girdles at the night market. God only knows why anyone would try to sell girdles in Taiwan—it is really unusual for adults of either gender to be overweight. I did a double take when I saw the girdle lady—she was wearing black pants and a matching black t-shirt—with the girdle on over her clothing.

Monday, November 08, 93

One Hundred and Two and Six Weeks to Go, My Class, Outsourcing

We had another jiggler last night, a few minutes before midnight. This was the 102nd of the year, and the second to be felt in Taipei since I got here. It seemed to last longer than the other, but was not quite so intense. The nearest comparison I can think of is collapsing drunk on to a waterbed, but I don’t know how accurate that is. We sold the waterbed quite a few years ago.

Yesterday was quiet and routine in every other respect. Chrissy is away for training in her new job, but she will be back tonight (Tuesday). The company sent everyone to a luxury hotel for two days.

I have two new students in my construction company class, and they all did well on my mid-term quiz last night. As an oral exercise, I asked each student to give a five-minute talk persuading me to apply for work in the company. The arguments were not ones that a Canadian person would have given. I was advised, for example, the “the colleagues are friendly and kind” and (oddly enough since all but two of my students are female) “the girls are very beautiful.” Right—and the same age as my daughter too.

Taipei is certainly a very international place. One of my students is in Croatia, of all places, on business. Marco (an Italian name-presumably chosen as an “English” name because the company is Italian-owned) is Chinese, and he speaks English with a distinct German accent. The company contracts a lot of work to Croatia, because the labour cost is so much lower than in Italy.

Sunday, November 07, 93

Swamped, an Oxymoron

After church today, we went to the Mangrove Swamp at Hongshulin. There is an interesting nature house there (with bilingual information for once), and a hiking trail along the edge of the swamp. It is very scenic and interesting there. I was particularly interested in the fact that houseplants (whose days are numbered once they rely on my tender mercies) grow as trees over here. Lao-puo has been feeling a lot better and she enjoyed her day. We walked all the way to Danshui, maybe a kilometer or so.

It is hard to describe the same meal as “delicious” and “vegetarian” in the same sentence, but we had a great dinner at a vegetarian place in Mucha.

Saturday, November 06, 93

A Glorious Walk and a Great Lunch, The Economy

With an hour and a half to kill between classes today, I decided to walk as far as I could from one to the other. What a great walk! I walked beside the little lake in Kunyang, along Zhongxiao Dong Lu, over the tracks, through the lanes and over the flood wall, across the Keelung He footbridge, through some more lanes, to the Industrial Park. I had to take a taxi to my class, but it wasn’t really very far. There was no need to stop for lunch, because Lena feeds me—and she thinks I’m a horse. Today she dished up my favourites—fish balls in broth, spicy dumplings, and Taiwanese noodles with pork, green onions, and bean sprouts.

The taxi driver spoke enough English to sustain a conversation, and he talked about the economy. In his opinion, things are rough here, and getting worse. He works 14 hours a day, and makes (on a good day) 2000 NT dollars for his efforts. I suppose that taxi drivers do poorly in Canada too. Taipei taxis range from acceptable to incredible—from clean to white-gloves-and-fresh-flowers, and from Hyundai to Camry. We even saw a Mercedes the other day.

Friday, November 05, 93

Central Mountain and Long Dongs, China Airlines

I always enjoy my runs out to Hongshulin. My Friday night class is particularly enjoyable—I teach Presentation Skills to a husband and wife with high-level English skills. I enjoy the trip home as well—I bail at Zhong Shan (Central Mountain) MRT Station—and I can read the Chinese without waiting for the English to come on. I was amused by the English translation of the Chinese characters on a bus—“Da Long Dong”. Get your minds out of the gutter! “Da” means “big”, but “long” is “dragon” and “dong” is “east”. “Xi” means “west”, “dongxi” means “thing” and “xidong” means “altogether”. Chinese would be a much more sensible international language than English.

I continue to be astonished by the extent to which Chinese people remind me (from their physical characteristics), of western people. My new assignment is four hours, to get a young fellow ready for his interview for pilot training with China Airlines. You will recall that China Airlines had a wicked crash a year or so ago, in Formosa Strait. You may be assured that I restrained my natural inclination to ask the candidate “Why doesn’t CAL have any restrooms on its flights?” (The passengers can wash up on the beach).

The candidate is the same age, and he bears a remarkable physical resemblance to, my cousins’ son in Edmonton. It’s strange that several Chinese people seem to remind of people from home who are not Chinese. If he does not get accepted for pilot training, it will not be because I failed to exert my utmost endeavor to get him ready. I have a personal stake in the outcome.

Thursday, November 04, 93

There are no Bastards in Taiwan, Madame Chiang

There are no bastards in Taiwan, but you might come across the odd “turtle egg” here and there. One of my students explained this to me. Chinese people have “Eight Virtues” instead of “Ten Commandments”. Depending on the tones “wan ba dan” means either “forgotten the Eight Virtues” or “turtle egg”. Evidently it’s quite a nasty thing to call someone a “turtle egg”, from which I infer that Chinese people don’t swear as much as us.

Lao-puo and I went to Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall yesterday. There was an interesting display of the belongings of Madame Chiang. There was a bank of beautiful dresses and shoes, as well as her books and pictures of her with her family, school children, and that sort of thing. I was reminded of Eva Peron. I understand that Madame Chiang came from a wealth Shanghai family, and two of her sisters married Dr. Sun and Chairman Mao.

My Thursday night class is over now, so I stayed home while Lao-puo worked. It is unusual for me to have an evening off, and I expect that it will fill up again soon.

Wednesday, November 03, 93

Formosan Air Force, Taipei Station

One of the downsides of living in Taiwan is mosquitoes. For most of the year, they are around but not too bad, and not even in as great numbers as at home. I’ll swear (and indeed I do) that there is a different type in the fall. The perishers seem to be nocturnal, they buzz about most annoyingly in the night, and sting like hell when they bite. For some reason of which I am unaware, any sign of the bites is gone by morning. We have one of those ultra-violet lights that seems to help—if we remember to turn it on. They don’t give you as many plugs in Taiwan was we get at home.

I have two hours to kill between my Japanese fellow and my construction company, and I must travel between the two points via the infamous rush hour Taipei Main Station. I’m sure, that when the station was designed, the weight of the hordes of people was taken into account when calculating how money tonnes of concrete would be necessary for the foundations. Many people live outside Taipei and commute to work by train, so the rail station is right by the MRT station. I have been avoiding Taipei Main by taking the bus to Ximen, but I have decided to just bit it and fight the crowds. As a reward, I go to the blind masseurs in the rail station for a work-over. It gets my elbows nice and limber for the subway crowd. Implying that I must use my elbows to get on to the train is not really fair comment though—I have often thought that standards of public behaviour seem generally higher here than at home.

Tuesday, November 02, 93

A Double Cost Haircut, Fall is Here

My regular barber has been away for a few weeks now. There is a sign on her door that provides what is no doubt a full explanation—for all the good a written Chinese explanation does me. Anyway, we went to another place a block away, and I had a haircut while Lao-puo waited. The barber quoted an outrageous price –350 NT dollars—as opposed to my regular clip of only 200. I grumbled a bit to myself, but then grudgingly concluded that 350 is less than I pay at home anyway. It was worth it! She gave me tea, a shampoo, a head neck and shoulder massage, and even offered me a smoke when she was finished. Nice job too.

The autumn is a beautiful time of year in Taiwan. The days are still warm, but nice—not hot like the summer. The evenings are cool enough that you almost need a jacket or a sweater. It will stay like this for another few weeks. We remember January and February especially as being cold as charity over here—never taking off our jackets all day except for bed. We will have a hot pot dinner one night when it gets really cold, and warm our hands on the gas ring.

Monday, November 01, 93

Typical Monday and Untypical Naps, Buffet Lunch

Tomorrow is a busy day, so I will get my journal entry done tonight (Monday). You will get it Monday morning. Now that many parts of Canada have gone back to standard time, there is yet another hour difference in the time. I went to the bank this morning, Lao-puo’s school this afternoon, and my construction company this afternoon. It’s a good steady day, with the work spread out well. Teaching is a very high-energy way to make a living. I wish I’d had my camera with me this afternoon. We saw two guys actually having naps on their motorcycles, sprawling out over the seats with their feet overhanging the handlebars. I don’t know why people nap so much here—it’s not even hot anymore in the afternoon.

We had lunch in the buffet place in the “village” by Wang Fang Hospital—chicken, fish balls, cabbage, tofu, and rice. We went western for supper, with a Subway.

I’m done, and I’m tired. Chrissy is working overtime tonight. Bosses simply announce here that overtime is to be worked that night, and nobody argues. Lao-puo is watching “Sex in the City” or whatever it’s called. It’ll be over in a sec. I make remarks during her programs—remarks that are considered funny by 50% of the people in the room—and thus I end up being banished to the computer room.

Sunday, October 31, 93

Church, Thumbing Through a Magazine

For the first time since I got here, I went to church on Sunday. Lao-puo had been last Sunday, while I worked. We went to Taipei International Church, a non-denominational outfit that holds services in the auditorium at Taipei American School, and it was great. They are having a Christmas dinner on Dec 12, so we will go to that as well. After church we had lunch with the preacher, and nice fellow about my age from Georgia—along with a few other people. There are many Christian churches in Taipei, but finding one that is both non-fundamentalist and in English is a bit of a job. There is religious freedom here, and mosques and synagogues and whatnot, and no sign of any religious strife or people getting picked on. The government doesn't put up with it, and deports troublemakers.

Believe me, when magazines are in Chinese, thumbing is all I can do. The pictures prevent me from holding the paper upside down. Seriously, I can catch the odd character here and there, but that is about it. A picture in a free magazine today really caught my attention. It showed an enormous inflatable plastic pig, with viewing points instead of teats, and a bunch of people looking inside. Chrissy told us it was an art display--part of the Taipei Arts Festival. It's too bad I don't know how to post pictures on to my web log, but at least I could copy-paste into my weekly reports.

Saturday, October 30, 93

Busy Saturday

Saturday will be my busiest day for the next little while, with classes from 9-12 then
2-530. (non-stop no break in each case). There is enough time for a leisurely ride from Kunyang to Neihu, and my 2-530 class feeds me lunch at 130. I was pretty tired by the end of the day, but I met Lao-puo and Chrissy at Longshan Temple Station. This is the infamous “Snake Alley” Tourist Night Market, but the next block or so over is the place to go for dinner. We had lamb, and beef, with cabbage and some kind of green vegetable I did not recognize, with rice, for less than three Canadian dollars each.

Friday, October 29, 93

The Grand Old Duke of York

Neither of us had to work until late afternoon, so we set off an expedition this morning. We started at Lane 124 Xin Hai Lu (where we used to live) and walked the 3 km or so to Jing Mei. Three km does not sound like a big deal, but it was over the Fairy Footprints Trail—a very steep climb. It’s quite a good workout. I once did it in the summer, and what a punisher that was! The view from the top is quite magnificent, panoramic Taipei through the hibiscus and wild poinsettias. There are several little temples here and there, and quite a big one near the Jing Mei side of the top. It was the first time that Lao-puo had ever been up there—she had some back problems during our first year here, and I have been wanting to share it with her for a long time now. The weather is cool enough now that the exercise is quite pleasant.

We had a nice lunch in Jing Mei, did our classes, then met in Hongshulin for our Friday night riverside beer in Danshui.

Thursday, October 28, 93

Opera, Eight Virtues, a Multicultural Dinner, Immigration Issues

There is a new stage being built in the square by “my” bank at Ximen, and my student tells me that there will be free outdoor performances of Chinese opera tonight and tomorrow night. However, I will be at Lao-puo’s school tonight, and Hongshulin tomorrow night, so my curiosity will have to wait. For a multicultural flair, they could maybe take Luciano Pavarotti (for some reason I can’t stand the guy), give him a shave and a diet, paint up his face, and put him on stage in an opera over here. I shouldn’t be talking that way—anyone who talks like I do probably watches “Smackdown” and “Trailer Park Boys”.

A few months ago, Jean took me to a pasta place for lunch, on Ba De Lu (Eight Virtues Road), near her office. In the meantime, I found out what the Eight Virtues are:

1. Loyalty
2. Filial Responsibility
3. Kindness
4. Love
5. Trustworthiness
6. Justice and Fairness
7. Peacefulness
8. Equality

My first impression is that is sounds a lot like the Christian Ten Commandments, but evidently the Gods take no position on adultery or graven images. I guess, however, that adultery is covered off in items 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6. There are, however, so many graven images that some of the temple altars look like Taipei Main Station at rush hour.

I had two interesting thoughts about Ba De. When I asked one of my students, a fellow about my age, what the Eight Virtues were, he rattled them off in order from memory. He must have been required to memorize them in school. I am also amused by the notion that streets in Taipei are named after the Eight Virtues. Imagine if we did that at home! Meet me for coffee at the corner of Don’t Covet Your Neighbour’s Ass Ave. and No Bearing False Witness Rd., and we’ll discuss the idea.

Anyway, I always make a short story long, instead of the other way around. The point is that I took Lao-puo to the same pasta place for supper last night. I have often mentioned that Taipei seemed at first to be so overwhelmingly Chinese. We now see how incredibly cosmopolitan Taipei really is—a truly international city. We ordered our Italian dinner (pasta) in Chinese (or facsimile thereof), with Scottish (Skye Boat Song) music in the background. I love this place.

After dinner I had my last class of the day. The subject of immigration came up. Many people aspire to live in the US and Canada, and more often than not return home to Taiwan. Sometimes it is homesickness and family ties, but often it is the fact that there are better incomes and more jobs here than either the US or Canada. There has recently been a renewed interest in getting out, because of what is euphemistically referred to as “cross-strait tensions”. If the government in Taipei could keep its mouth shut about “independence” long enough the old fossils in Beijing to die off, there is a good chance for a peaceful resolution.

Wednesday, October 27, 93

Training Day, Political Correctness Rears its Ugly Head, My Favourite Class

This morning, like all Wednesday mornings, is voluntary (read unpaid) training day at my company. It was actually useful today, because it dealt with teaching low-level students—and we all have quite a few of those classes. Lao-ban sprang for lunch afterwards, and it was the best take-out we’ve had for ages—sesame beef rolls, dumplings, Shanghai noodles, two kinds of soup, and cabbage and spinach.

My mid-afternoon Japanese student bought a text on business English for self-study. It’s about two young Japanese fellows who have been hired by a very conservative corporation. They have an American mentor and trainer, who of course must be female. It seems to me that conservative Japanese corporations have hens’ teeth, and female mentors, in approximately equal numbers, but there again I’m just an old chauvinist. In fact, my student expressed astonishment when I told him that “Patricia” is a female name in English.

My construction company is the best gig. We did “Me and Bobby Magee”, and there were giggles and gasps when I explained the difference between “busted flat” and “flat busted”. We had a test, and they all did wonderfully, so their bu hao lao ban should stay out of my face or the time being at least.

Tuesday, October 26, 93

Typhoon Nock-Ten, Another Slack Day and Financial Stuff, Public Transportation

Blast me if I know the translation of “Nock-Ten”. It might be Chinese or Japanese or Korean. In any case that is the name of the typhoon we just had. The typhoon was wind like you wouldn’t believe—blowing the trees first in one direction then the opposite—and the most incredible rainfall. I went up to the store for vegetables and chicken and “miscellaneous other necessities”. There was no point in brushing my hair before I set off. The “Wellcome” supermarket is only a block away—no way I was going to venture down to Hissing Lung Market-- but I still looked as if I’d fallen into a river by the time I got back. There was flooding in Shijr (as usual), a journalist is missing, there was flooding and landslides all over Creation, Sanchong got the “old one-two” again, and all three of my classes were cancelled for the day. The typhoon is now safely out to sea again, well clear of Japan, and that should be the last one of the season. Typhoons are good. Blessed calm has descended over Taipei. All the exhaust has been blown to God knows where. My first floor neighbour had a pump running, to get rid of the water on his little patio, and life is good. The premium apartments in Taipei are the second floor ones—safe from flooding but not too onerous for carrying groceries up.

My first class of the day was cancelled as well, because the student went home to Chiayi for the weekend and could not get back because of the weather. Slack days are all well and fine, but we don’t get paid unless we work. Furthermore, the Taiwan Dollar has not been doing well against the US dollar, (but Canadian money is surging ahead). This means, on the one hand, that we have less money to send home, but on the other hand it means a low cost of living here. We still manage to send home quite a bit of money, whereas we just seem to be treading water working in Canada. Not driving a car is an incredible saving. We use public transportation all the time here, and you pay for each ride (instead of monthly like at home). I moan because I have to spend two thousand NT dollars a month for transportation, but that is barely $80 in our money.

Transportation is cashless here. You put your transit pass into a machine, then your bank card, then you choose how much money (in multiples of 100 NTD) to add to the card, and you’re golden. The turnstile at the MRT, and the machine on the bus, both read your card and automatically deduct the fare. Actually, my transportation is free because I get NT 800 per week added on to my pay just for going out to Hongshulin twice a week. I wonder, in Canadian cities, how much less traffic there would be if employers were required to provide transit passes as an employee benefit? It might come to that, the way the price of gasoline keeps going up. Looking at the total compensation package, it would not cost the employer much, if anything, because major employers could negotiate a volume discount for the transit passes.

Monday, October 25, 93

Typhoon Day--Woohoo!

My three classes are cancelled today because of Typhoon Nock-Ten. For once, the forecast seems to have been quite accurate. It is already blowing and raining like hell, the streets are nearly deserted, and the eye of the storm is still twelve hours away. It is not out of the question that we will get tomorrow off too.

Sunday, October 24, 93

Neihu, Church, a Cantonese Feast, the Importance of Punctuation

I felt well enough this morning to take my Sunday morning class, and in the meantime Lao-puo and Chrissy went to church. I knew of an English service at the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Shilin, but they went instead to a service at Taipei American School in Tien Mu. It is about an hour away by bus and MRT, but evidently well worth the journey. Lao-puo’s former colleague Edric, a nice young South African fellow, goes there and he had recommended it. I will switch my Sunday morning class to Saturday afternoon, so I can go too.

Our friends and former neighbours Kevin and Maggie Yu came for a visit this aft, and we went for a wonderful Cantonese feast. It was an-all-you-eat buffet (at the Asia World Holiday Inn of all places), with wonderful dim sum and gourmet platters delivered to the table.

I had drunken chicken (husbands coming home late and drunk, and keeping quiet to avoid listening to their spouses’ comments, will be familiar with this concept), pork and shark fin dumplings, and other fabulous dim sum We also had duck, clams, fish, scallops, vegetables by the ton, and chicken and pineapple soup.

I now have my new tooth, and what a beauty it is! A pinned gold crown that fits like a glove, and which is covered with porcelain to look natural. It occurs to me (being an English teacher) that I can say either “I will carry a piece of China with me for the rest of my days” or “I will carry a piece of china with me for the rest of my days” and have a totally different meaning in each case.

Saturday, October 23, 93

Sick Parade, Another Jiggler

I’m feeling a bit better today, but I still cancelled the Kunyang boys. I just relaxed and had a “Doug” day, all for myself. We had another earthquake last night. It was just a 4.1 magnitude, but the epicenter was only 6.6 km from Taipei and only 8.8 km deep. There is also another typhoon warning. Maybe we will get another day off by Tuesday or so.

Friday, October 22, 93

Not a Very exciting Day

Unless that is, you consider a dental appointment and being sick an exciting day. The dentist is still fiddling with my crown, and I called in sick today. Taipei lung has caught up to me—coughing and sneezing and doing a sinus thing. No wonder. Sometimes, the car exhaust has to be seen to be believed—and that doesn’t even take the bikes into account. This particular Friday is only three hours, so it is no big deal to miss a bit of work.

Thursday, October 21, 93

A Red Letter Day, A Scolding, I’ve got it Cased

This is a red-letter day for me—exactly halfway through my exile. I would rather get a red envelope than a red letter day—especially a day that has anything to do with the necessity to return home. In Chinese, a “red envelope” (hongbao) is a gift of money or a payment. I hesitate to reveal that detail, because it implies I have a greater command of Chinese than the learning-disabled, see-spot-run, reality of my actual ability.

Mind you, I did reprimand a schoolboy on the subway the other day. He had parked himself in the “priority seats”, and affected not to notice a very elderly, heavily-laden woman standing right in front of him. I would like to be able to say that I said to the kid --in fluent Mandarin-- “Hey you. Fool! Get off your duff and let that old lady sit down, for God’s sake.” The reality was of my reprimand was “Friend. One mommy.” However, he caught my drift and did, in fact, get off his duff for the old girl.

Any Chinese woman older than me is “mummy”, anyone my age or younger (down to thirty) is “miss”, and anyone under thirty is the Chinese word for “younger sister” or “little girl”, depending on the context. “Mama”, “shaojay”, and “may-may”. Chinese people either admire my fluent Mandarin, or they are too polite to say anything. I have a sneaking feeling that the latter is in fact the case.

Wednesday, October 20, 93

Here and There in the News, a Welcome Extension, Weather

Five people from Hong Kong were killed in a bus crash the other day. The driver was drunk (.3 something), speeding, and talking on his cell phone when the bus crashed over an embankment. According to the paper, he faces up to seven years in prison and a lifetime ban from bus driving.

The unions held a big anti-privatization protest the other day. It’s enough to make a guy homesick.

My Japanese student has extended until the end of November, which pleases me. I’m learning quite a bit about Japan from him. Iwao’s English is pretty good already, so it is just a matter of putting a bit of polish on it.

When it’s sunny (most of the time at this time of year), the weather is quite balmy and pleasant. The last few days have been cold and wet, to the point that I bought a light jacket. It’s funny to see Chinese people, in winter boots and heavy coats, already.

Tuesday, October 19, 93

A Busy Tuesday, My Rant

Today was the heaviest day I have had for quite a while, with six hours of class plus travel time and so on. I started the morning off with a two-hour session of revising a report for grammar and style. The report wasn’t too bad, but it contained such Chinese expressions as “as following”. The only serious mistake was referring to senior managers at a conference as “attendance”. She meant to say “attendants” which is worse. Many senior managers, at home and here, are as proud as Lucifer and would fail to see any humour in being called “attendants”. I then had two hours of western wisdom and idioms with a lawyer, then the rest of the afternoon free until my 530 class out in Hongshulin. I had a nice long walk before class, and next week I will visit the mangrove swamp on the shore of Danshui He beside the Hongshulin MRT stop.

From what I hear, things are going from bad to worse at home. Interest rates are going up. Gas is 93.5 (about the same as here). There is a new change to the residential tenancy legislation. We plan give our tenants notice and move back into our pad when our year is over. If the tenants want to move out before that, they just have to give us thirty days notice and they can bail. Effective January 1, 2005, the landlords (i.e. us) have to give sixty days, PLUS a free month of rent. I guess this is because all landlords are rich and greedy (that would be me, for sure), and all tenants are “the most vulnerable members of our society”. Right. Yes sir. Who comes up with this BS anyway? I guess it must be the attendants.

Monday, October 17, 93

A Routine Day, Highway Robbery

I had my 0800 class at the bank over at Ximen, my second-to-last dental appointment, lunch with Lao-puo, afternoon class with my Japanese student, and my evening class with the construction company. Now that I have a second gold crown, half my net worth is in my teeth. We are expecting heavy rain for the next three days, from the rag-end of the typhoon. Hopefully, this will be the last one of the season. I had a quesadilla for lunch, and a new student in my class this evening—a chartered accountant who speaks fluent German. Taipei is a very international city.

Could someone tell me how much gas costs at home now? I understand that crude oil may go as high as USD 75 per barrel. This is not good news. Gas is about a Canadian dollar a litre here. Nevertheless, it is astonishing to see how many Jaguars, BMW’s, Mercedes, and 4WD SUV’s there are around here.

Sunday, October 16, 93

Christian Education, On the Water

After my morning class, I walked around the little lake at Neihu on my way to the bus stop. I like to have a beer after class, and the park rule is “no drunken behaviour” as opposed to “no drinking”. I chatted with a young teenager and his girlfriend while I was having my beer. It turns out that she goes to Da Ren Girls School, a nearby Catholic high school to which I had been assigned for a while. I don’t know why a heretic keeps getting Catholic places, but there you have it. We talked about the old place, and one or two of the sisters who had been kind to me. The nuns tend to be from the Philippines, and they seemed to get homesick quite a bit. Chinese teens have a bit of a sheltered life compared to our kids, and I believe the girl was astonished to learn that nuns get homesick and teachers like beer sometimes.

I met Lao-puo at Xindien Station. We had lunch at a little riverside terrace, and went out on the river in a little paddleboat. There is a gentle current in the river, pleasant rocky cliffs on the far bank, and the usual lovely tropical vegetation. It was a pleasant afternoon, and the rain held off.

Saturday, October 15, 93

Thai One On at Gongguan, Subbing

I was looking forward to a quiet Saturday, with only one morning class, but I subbed a class at Lao-puo’s school in the afternoon. I finished at 530, and we had a great Thai dinner at an inexpensive place near Gongguan MRT stop. The area is very busy—swarming is a better word—because it is right beside National Taiwan University. Quite a high percentage of Taiwanese kids go to university—education is highly valued in this society—and graduate degrees are a dime a dozen. NTU is prestigious, and very difficult to get into. Anywhere that you can find university students, you will also find inexpensive good meals.

My class was quite enjoyable. There were only two students, and young electrical engineer and his girlfriend who is an English major hoping to be a flight attendant. I was amused by their plans for Saturday night. He said “window shopping”, she said “shopping”.

Friday, October 15, 93

The Jiggler, How Does Anyone Get Any Work Done? I hope this will be the last One, Down by the Riverside

Other than an earthquake, there was very little excitement today. It started with a minor shaking, around noon, and then got worse over the next few seconds until our whole building was shaking, and my coffee went over my lesson plans. We stayed indoors, and stood under a doorway until it stopped. For some reason, the instinct is to run outside, but that is the worst thing you can do in case electrical lines come down and glass falls. The scary part is the utter lack of warning, and not knowing if the intensity will build. The noise from a jiggler is quite spooky. This was a bad earthquake, magnitude 7, but the epicenter was far enough away that it was just a magnitude 4 here. The devastating 921 earthquake, that killed 2000 people, was no stronger, but it was centered right under Nantou County.

I had the first lesson of one of two new courses out in Hongshulin tonight. The meeting room is on the 26th floor, looking west. There was a beautiful sunset over the mangroves, the mouth of the Danshui He, and Formosa Strait. I’m glad we started late, and I could enjoy the magnificent view until the students arrrived.

It’s getting late in the typhoon season, but there is yet another brewing up. They invariably swing north before they hit us.

Chrissy and Lao-puo met me at Hongshulin Station at 730, and we went one stop to the end of the line at Danshui. We snacked our way along the riverfront, with barbecued seafood treats, and had a beer at the Cowboy Club. For some reason, we still call it that, even though the place has gone yuppie-puppy now. We sat outdoors on the second floor terrace, in a perfect mid-twenties evening, looking over the treetops at the flowers and the lights and the river and the towering hillside on the other bank. Danshui is a lot cheaper for us than Waikiki or Kaanapali would be, but the trouble with these romantic places is that you’re supposed to take your wife to them.

Thursday, October 14, 93

Furry Floor Hockey, You’re asking Who What?

One of the many things that surprise me about living in Taiwan is the fact that things that would really bother me at home do not seem to upset me here. I met Lao-puo for dinner tonight, at a nice looking place that had a salad bar and a selection of fruit. While I was up reducing the inventory, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Blast me if it wasn’t a cocky, saucy, well-fed, sleek-looking rat! I lashed out with my boot, but not even Bruce Lee could connect with a rat on the move. Seeing the murder in my eye, the little perisher scurried off, and I sat down to enjoy my salad. The place wasn’t busy yet, so the waiters armed themselves with brooms and mops and formed a hit squad. Several face-offs and few Chinese oaths later, the “puck”, unharmed, made good his escape.

Some readers falsely imagine that I am some kind of a chauvinist, or a dinosaur from the pre-feminist era. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I recently made a generous donation to “Tempura House”, a Taipei shelter for battered women. Those readers who still believe my undeserved reputation may either be amused (or aghast) to learn of my most recent assignment. Today, I assisted the shipping company to draft a new policy about sexual harassment!

My day was uneventful in every other respect.

Wednesday, October 13, 93

Losing It

Today was a nice quiet day, but there was an uncomfortable moment in the evening. My Lao-ban assigned me to a class, which I am really enjoying. She did say, however, that the boss at the place is one of these hands-on fellows, who wants to observe my mid-term final exams to make sure that he’s getting his money’s worth from the classes. I will deal with that issue when the time comes, with whatever tact and diplomacy I have at my command. Many Chinese people are shy about speaking English, and they fear making mistakes. Job one with a new class is always building confidence. To make matters worse, exams are a big deal in this society. Shy students with new-found confidence, an exam situation, and a boss with a clipboard is a recipe for a setback in their learning. During class, the lao-ban of the company was berating one of his project managers, right outside the door, in a personal attack, with a raised voice, with “f this” and “f that” three times in each sentence. The students were clearly embarrassed. The lao-ban is a European fellow, who does not share the Chinese etiquette that displays of emotion are unseemly. I am not going looking for trouble, but I do hope he does not take an unpleasant tone with me. I cannot abide people who think the only way to control people is by trying to intimidate them, and I have no patience with people who use raised voices and scatological oaths to conceal an inadequate vocabulary.

Tuesday, October 12, 93

Back in the Saddle, Dining Al Fresco

It was hard to get back to work after the wonderful weekend—especially since Tuesday is now my busiest day. I start at 0930 with a section manager at the insurance company, followed by a lawyer at 1130, the Japanese fellow at 1530, and the new class out at Hongshulin at 1730. At least I get home at a decent hour now. It is real treat to have intelligent and motivated students. The conventional wisdom is that for English teachers in Taiwan to have full-time hours they must teach children, but I have able to more or less avoid that. There is too much riot control in the cram school kids’ classes, and somehow the academic directors seem to imagine that the kids will learn English during the pandemonium that is euphemistically referred to as the “total physical response” method. The parents will not sign the kids back for more classes unless they have “fun”, and actually learning anything seems to be the secondary objective. Learning a language is discipline and hard work, with no short cuts.

I like to take the 606 bus for two extra stops after work, and get off at the Wang Fang Community pool. It is a beautiful walk for three or so blocks to the ‘town center”. I hit the barbeque guy for fish cakes and mushrooms (and a Chinese lesson), and whip into the 7-11 for a beer while dinner is cooking. I then have a little picnic in the park, and walk home. There is no law against drinking in a public place here, but God help anyone who causes any trouble.

Monday, October 11, 93

Nantou County Day 3

We started off with a buffet breakfast, followed by the Burma Death March. We went on a long hike, through the forest and up over a small mountain. The scenery is quite magnificent in Chi Tou Forest, and the clean air and no crowds were a bonus as well. In the afternoon there was a cake for me, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” in Chinese. It took about three hours to drive back to Taipei, with the worn-out tackers snoring contentedly in the back seat. It was back to the grind the next day, so we went to bed early. This was certainly a memorable weekend!

Sunday, October 10, 93

Nantou County Day 2

I must be becoming Chinese. We started the day off with breakfast on the patio of the B&B, and I actually chose tofu and congee instead of a fried egg. We went to Puli Township in the morning, and saw the marker at the exact geographical center of Taiwan. We then went to a wonderful spot in the forest, for the children to catch dragonflies. There were two large bamboo dragonflies on a cable over a pond, and you can sit under a dragonfly and slide through the air to the other side. The kids had a great time, and they kept running back to Lao-puo and I with a description of the latest discovery in rapid-fire, high-pitched Chinese. We certainly both wish we could understand more of the language than we do.

Before we knew it, the clock had rolled around to noon and it was lunch time again. The spread was incredible, and we even had some pigeon soup. The appearance was a bit off-putting, mind you; I put the ladle in the tureen and came up with a whole bird—head and all. It looked a formaldehyde specimen, all flopped over, but it tasted quite good. I’m fairly adventurous when it comes to food, but I think that lovebirds should do their cooing on a romantic beach or someplace like that—not in a cage behind a Chinese restaurant.

In the afternoon we went for a lovely drive through the mountains—sort of the long way around to Chi Tou Forest Recreation Area. It is a beautiful spot, high enough up that bamboo starts to give way to pines and cedars. We almost could have been in British Columbia. It was such a treat to need a sweater, and to sleep under a heavy comforter! Our summer was wickedness here.

Saturday, October 9, 93

Nantou County, Day One

Alan and Jean picked us up at 0700, and we set off for Nantou County bright and early. It took us about three hours to get there. Nantou County got the worst of the devastating earthquake in 1999, and many people were killed. As a matter of fact, there was another jiggler in the area, 3 on the scale, about twenty minutes after we set off for home today (Monday). We had a wonderful day. We met our friends Winston and Angel and little Peter—the family with whom I stayed in Tainan last year. Some other friends of Alan and Jean were there also—Mark and Melody from Taichung. They have two little girls, one of whose English name is Colleen—Mark and Melody asked us to choose an English namefor her two years ago, so we named her after a good friend of ours. She was just a babe in arms two years ago—the little Chinese kid not our friend Colleen--and she is now cute as a button and talking well. Just not in English. We had a wonderful boat cruise around Sun Moon Lake in the afternoon. The lake is very beautiful, surrounded by green hills with a monastery on one hill and a pagoda on the other. We went to the B&B where we were to stay the night, and relaxed for a bit. It is lovely and cool up in the hills, and there is also a lovely view from the place. We set off for an al fresco steak dinner at a nearby campsite called The Yen Family Pasture, and then we went frog catching with nets and flashlights. There was a naturalist there, who knew all about frogs but couldn’t speak English. The appearance of a venomous snake did little to dampen everyone’s enthusiastic enjoyment—the fellow just moved us over to another area and we continued. I wish I had the ability to copy accents. I could have taken off my belt, held it in front of me by the buckle, and copied that Australian crocodile moron. “Crikey! A Taiwan Krait! Isn’t he a beauty!” Trouble is, I’ve lost so much weight that my pants might have fallen down and Lao-puo, Alan, and Jean, are the only ones in the group with enough English to have understood me. When we got home, I checked on the Internet, and found that our skunk-at-the-garden-party was indeed a Taiwan Krait. They are about 1 m long, nocturnal, and extremely venomous.

Friday, October 8, 93

The Mincing Machine, Some Things Never Change

Like the butcher who accidentally backed into his mincing machine, I’ll be getting a little behind in my work. We will be out of town for until Monday night. Alan and Jean will pick us up at 0700 tomorrow morning, for our trip to Nantou County. I will have four classes on Tuesday, two of which will be new, so it will be good to be relaxed before my week starts again. It is dull and cool this morning, and will likely be downright cold at the higher elevation we will experience at Nantou. For such a small island, with so many people, there is an astonishing amount of wilderness in Taiwan. Today was just a normal quiet Friday, with three classes.

I met the Lao-ban of the shipping company at the Westin Hotel at 1030, and shot the breeze with one of my former hotel staff students. She seems to have resolved, after a fashion, her dispute with her new manager. I was pleased about that. It sounded to me like the typical situation—a young whippersnapper trying to throw his weight around with the experienced staff, whom he imagines exist solely for the benefit of himself and his career.

Thursday, October 7, 93

Never Give a Green Hat to a Chinese Fellow, A Rarity, What a Rip!

It is a warm autumn day, and I will not need a sweater until tonight. My last class will be over nice and early—at 8:30. This morning I learned that it is very insulting to give a green hat to a Chinese guy. A green hat means the guy is a cuckold. In class, I mentioned that the only time you could give a green hat as a gift is on your girlfriend’s husband’s birthday. Hell, it’s a much more entertaining way of testing comprehension than a test or a dictation. For me, at least.

I know that young Chinese adults continue to live with their parents well into their twenties and even thirties, but I was talking to fellow this morning who is 27 years old and still lives in the house he was born in! That would be some kind of record at home.

National Day is October 10 here, and it falls on a Sunday this year. Already the entire city is bedecked with flags. People do not get the Monday off to make up for it the stat falling on the weekend. Maybe they need a union over here after all!

Wednesday, October 6, 93

Back to the Sawbones, Ching Mei, Weight Loss Math

I didn’t have to be at work until 3:30 this afternoon, and that is as close to a day off as I usually get. Lao-puo had to go back to Wang Fang Hospital for an appointment this morning, so I hung out with her. It’s incredible how many people they can pump through that place. Specialists see over a hundred patients per day—and they are salaried.

We grabbed the bus for the short hop over to Ching Mei, and had a great lunch of barbecued pork, cabbage, spinach, bamboo, and rice. We then went shopping for some new jeans for me. I’m swimming in the old ones. They were only NTD 295—around $11 in our money—including alterations and tax. I used to think that it was funny to crack wise about weight being controlled if my waste size did not exceed my age, but that stopped being funny on my 44th birthday. I’m down to a 38 already.

Tuesday, October 5, 93

A Changing Season, Speaking of Cursing, Weddings

It’s cool enough now to need a sweater in the morning and evening. While it was still hot, Lao-puo remarked that the floor tiles feel lovely and cool against our feet. (We go barefoot in the house, in the Chinese fashion, with a mountain of shoes outside the door). In a few short weeks, she will be cursing the iciness of the same tiles.

The things I get paid to do! One of my students (I have several one-on-one classes) made an interesting remark recently. Swearing doesn’t sound as bad in a language other than your own, so she said “My boss is asshole. He pisses off me”. My reputation as an English teacher is on the line if she cusses the guy out with bad grammar, so I corrected the missing indefinite article and the misplaced preposition. That’s the beauty of teaching adults—with a child I would have had a duty to take issue with the content as well.

Don’t be put off by my title, there is not necessarily any connection between cursing and being married. Lao-puo went to a lecture last night, about customs in China and Taiwan, and the speaker was talking about wedding and marriages. A Chinese wedding must be a very sad time for the bride’s parents—their daughter must leave her own family because she now belongs to her husband’s. The groom calls on the day of the wedding, to get the bride. The parents pour a cup of water on to the ground, to symbolize that the daughter is gone. Once you pour water on to the ground, you cannot put it back. The daughter then bids farewells to the ancestors on the shrine, and off she goes. Who knows? Maybe I’m just being sentimental, and the old man is glad enough to get her off the payroll. By the way, many people still consult fortune-tellers (to check on someone’s suitability or to choose an auspicious time for the wedding). I also learned recently that, even though polygamy has been against the law for many years, it still goes on. Some guys have an “official” wife and family, and another family somewhere else. Beats me how the fellows can afford it—just one family is enough to keep a guy broke.

Monday, October 04, 93

An Early Start, Japanese Geography, Globalization

This morning I got a good early start, with my 0800 class over at Ximen. I actually enjoy getting up early, but the down side is that the trains are even more crowded than usual at that hour of the morning.

The afternoon student is a Japanese fellow, in Taipei to learn Chinese and English simultaneously. I try to relate my lessons to familiar topics, so we talk about Japan a lot during class. I hope he is learning as much in class as I am! I learned that southern Japan is more heavily populated than the north, and the climate is very different north of Tokyo compared to south of there. It seems there are few beggars in Japan, but some homeless people in the cities. Begging gets stepped on.

My evening class was really good, and I learned something there as well. The company is actually Italian, and their Taipei operation is a branch office. I sometimes think that Canadians are allowing themselves to be left behind. Songde Lu is in very new and upscale part of town—easy to find now that I know the way—so it appears that the company is doing OK.

Sunday, October 03, 93

Seasons-And More Complaining About The Weather, Good Soup, the Seven Plagues of Egypt

The temperature has dropped to a high of 24 and a low of 20. It is now very comfortable to sleep at night, without even fans being required. It seems so cold during day. Even with a sweater, I cannot seem to get warm. After class yesterday morning, I walked around the lake on my way to the bus stop, and thought I was going to freeze. I think our blood is getting thin (despite the anti-freeze I add from time-to-time), and the dampness makes for a real west-coast kind of cold. I spent the afternoon doing lesson preparation, while Lao-puo went to the doctor. She really hasn’t been well the last couple of weeks, but hopefully she is on the mend now.

I have often said that Chinese people make the best soup in the world. For lunch today I had beef noodle soup with hot peppers, just the ticket for the damp cold.

There is concern that South American fire ants have found their way here—little beggars that sting like the blazes when they bite. From the sound of things, God should have sent them to Egypt before the locusts and the frogs—Pharaoh might have given in a lot sooner. Here is the Taipei Times article about the ants.

`War' Against Ants Must Be Won, Academics Say
RED MENACE: Taiwan must learn from the experiences of other countries in order to contain the spread of South American fire ants throughout the nation, scientists say By Chiu Yu-TzuSTAFF REPORTER Sunday, Oct 03, 2004,Page 2

Since the discovery of South American fire ants in Taipei City last week, academic circles and civic groups have demanded up-to-date information about prevention and control of the foreign species.

Since the discovery of the ants in Taipei City last week, local residents have been checking their gardens and lawns for signs of the ants. A fear of the ants has been aroused by the nation's sensationalist media. On Friday, Premier Yu Shyi-kun urged people not to overreact to the ants.
Agriculture Minister Lee Ching-lung (李金龍), has vowed to eradicate the fire ants within three years.

"By the end of this year, we will stop the ants from spreading," Lee said.

Meanwhile, methods adopted in Australia and the US to combat the ants will be introduced here in a bid to eradicate them, Lee said.

However, some academics said the nation should be much more concerned about the situation.
"If we don't fight and win this war, our future generations will pay the price," Lin Yao-sung (林曜松), a zoologist and dean of College of Life Science at National Taiwan University (NTU), told the Taipei Times.

According to Lin, Taiwan is the fourth country to be invaded by the aggressive species of ant. The fire ant, which is native to South America, is a serious pest which had invaded the US, New Zealand, and Australia.

Agricultural officials said that the species was first discovered in Taiwan last year in croplands in Taoyuan County. It is thought they came to Taiwan via imported goods. Academics, however, estimate that the species entered the country and remained undetected for about four years.
Nationwide, the pest has invaded about 6,000 hectares of land in four areas, including Taipei City, Taipei County, Taoyuan County and Chiayi County. In Taoyuan alone, 3,980 hectares of land have been overrun by the ants. The areas occupied by the ants seems to be expanding rapidly. On Friday, ant hills of the invasive ant were discovered in a lawn at Hsihu Rest Area in Miaoli County.

"Their discrete expansion suggests that the ants are spreading as a result of human activities," Lin said.

Lin suggests that a higher-level task force, which is able to use national resources freely, should be formed immediately to eliminate the ants.

According to the COA's Animals and Plants Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, the ants found in Taipei City could be brought by soil still attached to imported plants.

Bureau officials said that an international conference on the issue will be held here in early November for officials to learn control and elimination methods from Australian and US experts.
The US has fought against the fire ant for decades and the amount of money spent on controlling the species is estimated to be US$1 billion annually. In Australia, the fire ant arrived in 2001. In 2002, the Australian Bureau of Agriculture estimated that the species will cause economic losses of US$6.7 billion over the next 30 years.

Activists here have demanded more information about the fire ants be provided to the public. They said it is important to empower residents to identify the ants and report any infestations immediately.

Lai Wei-chieh (賴偉傑), director-general of the Green Citizens' Action Alliance, said that the issue reflects existing problems involving Taiwan's neglect of the threats posed by imported plants and animals.

"Now it's the fire ant ... what will be next?" Lai told the Taipei Times.

Lin said that globalization over the last decade significantly increased the risk of many plant and animal species being introduced to foreign environments. In Taiwan, the fire ants are just one threatening foreign species, Lin claimed.

"To prevent foreign species from being introduced to the nation's environment -- an irreversible process -- Taiwan needs to work closely with others internationally by exchanging information," Lin said.

"If we remain relatively ignorant of what happened in the rest of the world and are reluctant to take preventive actions, the nation's agricultural, forestry and natural ecosystems could be decimated," Lin said.

Saturday, October 02, 93

The Masked Angels, a Late Light Dinner, More New Students

Saturday is a good steady day, with five hours of reliable private students. The weather is cold and rainy, in the low twenties, and I could do with a sweater. After the class at the shipping company, I had a dentist appointment again. It’s been quite a job to get my tooth fixed up, because there is so little of it left. The dentist speaks pretty good English, but he gets mixed up between “appointment” and “reservation” and that sort of thing. There was a class of dental hygienists doing a practicum, so I had a circle of masked angels checking out my clippers. Dr. Huang was giving them pointers on what to do. I made some smart comment to the dentist, to the effect that the only way I can get girls to pay attention to me, at my age, is to go to the dentist. He guffawed, and translated. The trainees giggled, and put their hands over their mouths even though they were wearing masks. For some reason, old-fashioned Chinese manners dictate that it is impolite to show your teeth.

It was late by the time I finished at the dentist. Nobody gets paid time off work for dental appointments here, so Saturday is a pretty busy day and he was running late. By the time we got back to Wang Fang, it was pushing 8:00 p.m. Dinner was rice, “sky blue” (green) vegetables, and little slivers of pork. Chinese people like to enjoy themselves out for dinner, and the din in the joint was incredible. Great platters of food were coming past—the “kitchen” is out on the sidewalk (for the takeout trade)—and the beer was flowing. The ‘bartending” is something. You just go to the fridge and help yourself, and the lao-ban nyiang counts the empties at the end of the meal when she tallies up the bill. A nourishing meal for two, and a “da bay pijo” (big bottle of beer) was the equivalent of $6.73.

Yesterday (Friday), I had to go out to Hongshulin to meet my new students—a husband and wife who both work for the same company. It will be a dream assignment. Jeff is an IT guy, and he wants help with presentation skills. I need only pretend to know nothing about his subject matter, which (being information technology) is not too difficult a deception for me to pull off. I will soon be once again in the position of having more work than I want.

Friday, October 01, 93

Friday Already October Already—Yikes, Holding China by the Balls, Double Ten

I can’t believe how quickly the time is going—here we are with another week shot, and it’s October already. Within weeks, I will have been here for six months—nearly half my time is gone. We will be coming home for Christmas this year, so I doubt if we will be able to go anywhere else in Asia this year. In the spring, however, I hope to go to the mainland to visit my cousin who is working there. Talk about fabulous opportunities—he landed a number teaching English in a university. Bob’s in a place called Shantou, of which I must confess I had never heard until he went there. It should be easy to get to—flights to Hong Kong are frequent and inexpensive from Taipei, and Shantou is only two hours by bus from there.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to politics over here, and not just because it’s in Chinese and I can’t read. There is a great song and dance going on as I speak, and a thundering row with Singapore. Taiwan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs was making a speech in southern Taiwan, where the pro-independence vote tends to be quite strong. The minister was talking about Singapore being even smaller than Taiwan, and having an obsequious attitude towards mainland China, an attitude with which the minister (being pro-independence himself) disagrees. Using Taiwanese slang, and the most undiplomatic language, he called Singapore “a piece of snot” and accused them of “holding China by the balls”. In English we use the latter expression to mean “being able to demand compliance”, but evidently in Chinese it refers to suckholing. To make matters worse, he is refusing to retract his comments. Needless to say, officials in Singapore take issue with the minister’s observations. I’ll say this for them, Taiwanese politicians stick to their guns when their comments are criticized. Some months ago, the vice-president of Taiwan said that the aboriginal people should all be relocated to Central America to save the government money, and she did not retract those remarks either.

All is well, because there is another national holiday coming up. October 10 (double ten) is the anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China, and it is a huge big deal over here. On the mainland, with the communist system undergoing a fundamental transformation, the government is making a lot less fuss about Chairman Mao, and starting to focus on Dr. Sun Yat-sen as the major national hero.

Thursday, September 30, 93

Well Done Good and Faithful Servant, Man’s Laughter, Deadeye Dick

I whipped into the office today, for a language assessment of a potential student. I’ll be damned if the company didn’t have a Mid-Autumn Festival “hongbao” for me, with 500 NT dollars in it. It wasn’t much—about 20 bucks, but enough for a good meal—booze and all—if you stay away from the western and yuppie-puppy outfits—which we manage to do anyway. I’ll take Lao-puo out for seafood, to a place near Guting MRT that I spotted from the bus.

In one of my recent classes, the subject in the textbook was “crime and punishment”. During the reading, a student said “man’s laughter” rather than “manslaughter” to my great (but silent) amusement.. The worst thing you can do is laugh at a guy, but sometimes the English errors are outrageous.

For any male approaching middle age, the concept of “deadeye dick” has a certain scary urological tone to it, so I relied upon marksmanship to stave off any thought about thinking about the unthinkable. Danshui has amusing little shooting galleries—amusing in that if you can “hit a bull in a the ass with a banjo” (as my Dad would say), you can certainly pop enough balloons with a BB gun to win a prize that is worth less than the cost of shooting for it. With a cargo of beer about, I could still do five for five in jig time. Belatedly, the “lao-ban nyiang” gave me a pair of goggles, after I had popped all my balloons. When I foolishly imagined that the goggles were my prize for outstanding marksmanship, I thought the old girl was going was going to wet her pants from laughing so hard. Fragile egos have no place in a foreign environment.

Wednesday, September 29, 93

Training Day, A Taste of Home, Song What?

My company has started to lay on training every Wednesday morning, and I have been finding the sessions to be very useful. This week was about teaching vocabulary. I thought I was OK at it, but I was never so prideful as to imagine that I could not learn something new. I missed the pizza afterwards, but neither squid and peas, nor corn and octopus, is my favourite pizza topping.

Instead, having a cell phone paid off, yet again, because Jean phoned me just before the training started. Lao-ban, having returned in triumph from his speech in Singapore, wanted to take Lao-puo and I out for lunch. He chose a fabulous “Indu che” (East Indian cuisine) place, and we had a feast of mutton, chicken, vegetable, and nan. I must live in a cosmopolitan, multicultural environment at home, because the Indian dishes made me homesick. I can’t say I minded the two-hour lunch break, either.

My new class went well, I thought, but finding the place drove me nuts. The office was on Song De Lu, near Taipei City Hall. “That’ll be snap to find,” thought I in my foolishness. Not a chance. Every street, for blocks around, was named “Song” some-thing-or-other. The street signs were in simplified characters, not the traditional Chinese in my course instructions booklet, and the English phonics are sometimes only approximate. I wandered about for half an hour, alternately squinting at the street signs and swearing to myself. I called the wrath of the Heavens on the drunks who named everything in sight “Song Ren”, “Song Ho”, “Song This”, “Song That”, and “Song The Next Thing”. In the meantime, I gradually managed to bracket my target by buttonholing passersby with “Duo bu chi, Song Ren Lu na li?” The only trouble with being able to ask--like a three year old but asking nevertheless)--is that people answer and I don’t always follow. Eventually, I found the place and had a good first class with intelligent and motivated students.

Tuesday, September 28, 93

A Day Off (at last!), Danshui Bikers, Suds in the Cowboy Club, a Night Marketr Supper

Every so often, Moon Festival and Confucius’ Birthday fall on the same day. The Moon Festival, also called Mid-Autumn Festival, is a harvest celebration, a sort of Chinese Thanksgiving. Confucius’ Birthday is also called Teachers’ Day. One way or the other, by whatever name, yesterday was a glorious day off.

We went out to Danshui, and rented a little motorcycle for a ride in the hills. After winding uphill through some little back lanes, we went past the university and out into the countryside. We found a glorious little one lane paved road through the bamboo groves, up a steep slope to a stretch where the road was lined with hibiscus. I wasn’t going any faster than 20 km/h the whole way up the country lane, and the ride was fabulous. We took the main road back (our time was almost up). The speed limit was 60 km/h, and I was doing 70 but other bikes were passing us. Maybe it’s the “pack instinct”, but I also enjoyed the last 2 km of the return trip—on a very busy street with lots of cars and bikes. It’s like being part of a swarm of bees when the light changes. In Taiwan you can go around the cars stopped for a light (taking care than nobody opens a car door and puts you into the gutter), and the bikes all congregate in a box at the head of the line. When we arrived back at the rental place, there was a red light. I waited for the light to change, and drove in the crosswalk while watching for oncoming pedestrians and cars turning to the right in front of me. Having successfully navigated the crosswalk, I drove down the sidewalk for the last half block to the rental place, which is not accessible from the street due to a concrete barrier. If I had done any one of those things in Canada (passing stopped cars on the right {minor}, riding a motorcycle in a crosswalk {not minor}, or riding a motorcycle down a crowded sidewalk {worse still}), someone would surely have called the police. Not only did nobody phone 911 to report a maniac (actually its 119 in Taiwan), but a constable was standing right there watching me the whole time.

We then grabbed a city bus for a little spin through Danshui, because it was hot and the buses are air-conditioned. We bailed at the waterfront, and had a pint at the place that used to be the “Cowboy Club” until a typhoon swept it away. We topped off the day with a smashing chicken and pasta supper in the Shilin Night Market. Shilin is a considerable distance from our home, but the number 606 bus took us from in front of the night market almost to our door.

Monday, September 27, 93

A Breakdown and a Coincidence, Waterlogged, More English Assessments

There is nothing unusual going on today, other than the fact that the Brown Line MRT broke down. We were inching along, smelling of burning rubber, and it was obvious that something was wrong. An employee came on to the train at Liuchangli and asked everyone to get off and wait for the next one. Some good came of it—I was chatting to a nice American woman over here to study Chinese. She wants some part-time work, and my lao-ban is on her knees for part time teachers. I found out later that Lisa had contacted the office almost immediately after she got off at Wang Fang Hospital. It’s funny how things work out.

It’s raining like hell again, but that stopped being noteworthy months ago. I’m looking out our back window as I type this, and I notice that the bamboo has shot up considerably.

I had my bank class this morning, and my Japanese fellow this afternoon, and I’m off until Wednesday morning now. That is, if you can call doing reports being off.

It seems I spoke too soon. My lao-ban called me, to ask if I’d go to an investment company over by Taipei 101 to do some English assessments. One of the candidates was a retired ROC colonel. Ray is a most interesting fellow, who had been posted overseas, to Malawi. It was too bad that I only had ten minutes with him. Being ex-military, and coincidentally very old-fashioned and traditional, Ray kept calling me “sir” despite my request to be called by my first name. I never was a prideful person, but it would certainly be easy to become so over here, with colonels calling a guy “sir” and regional directors getting my coffee for me. Home’s cold reality, when my year is over, will be a difficult adjustment.

Sunday, September 26, 93

A Day Off! A Fun Day in Keelung

My Sunday morning student phoned last night, to cancel her class for today. A day off! Two days off in the same week! I’ll be getting slack at this rate.

Lao-puo, Chrissy and I took the train out to Keelung. The ride from Taipei to Keelung takes about 40 minutes, and “scenic” is not the first adjective that leaps to mind. We had a fabulous pork-hock and fruit lunch, a nice walk, and we were home in time for dinner. Oddly, it was raining in Taipei when we left, but it was dry in Keelung when we got there. Usually, it is the other way around. Even after coming here for three years off an on, it is still very exciting to realize that the water outside Keelung Harbour is the East China Sea, and “home” is a hemisphere away.

Saturday, September 25, 93

A Pocket Full of Tin, Provisions, and a Song in My Heart; Pan Blues Out in Force, Culture Fix

The last Saturday of each month is a cash pay day for my Kunyang job. It’s funny how a heavy wallet can lighten your step. I like to walk down to Ba De Lu, then take the 306 bus a few stops to my favourite market. The place doesn’t really get cracking until nightfall, but the stores are open and there is always something going on in the temple beside the market (not the smaller temple down by the fish market and the whorehouse, the larger one at the other end of the market). I had quite a load to carry—in addition to my pay the family gave me a big box of moon cakes. “You could feed the Russian Army” as my dad would say. Moon cakes, it seems to me, are the Chinese equivalent of fruit cakes in the west, in that everyone gives them to each other. I have Sunday off for once, a light Monday, then Tuesday is a day off for Moon Festival.

The only down side is that my temporary crown fell out (again), and I had to go back for a recementing job. It’s going to come out once too often while I’m eating, and I’m going to swallow the bloody thing. The dentist tells me that there is so little of the actual tooth left that he cannot really anchor the crown properly, and the sooner he gets the post in the better.

When I came out of the dentist, I saw an enormous demonstration going along Zhongxiao Dong Lu. I’m not skilled at estimating numbers--I try to count the legs and divide by two, but the people won’t stand still long enough—but I would say at least a thousand people young and old. I gather it was a “Pan-Blue” effort; they are the reunification supporters. There were banners and bullhorns, ROC flags and plum-blossom headbands, and an orderly but noisy crowd. Many people are still reluctant to talk about politics over here-- martial law only ended in 1978—but these folks weren’t shy at all. There were a series of little trucks with people in the back with bullhorns, spaced so that everyone in the march could hear at least one speaker. The first one past me was a fine orator (even though I of course could not understand him), and the speaker in the second truck had a voice that could shatter glass and no real need for the bullhorn into which she was speaking. There were old folks in wheelchairs with their grandchildren pushing them, and old geezers in the rear who couldn’t keep up anymore. I felt sorry for the old people; all they want to do is go home to live out their days where they came from. The whole scenario has a romantic side as far as I’m concerned. It’s a bit like “The South Shall Rise Again” or putting a Stuart back on the Throne.

After a night market supper of beef, spinach, cabbage, noodles (and beer) at Longshan Temple, Lao-puo and I went to Ximen to check out the opera. Apart from the oddity of listening to Chinese people singing in Italian, my only other observation is that if I were the prima donna I’d have that tooth out.

Friday, September 24, 93

The Dentist (again), a Demo Lesson and a Cultural Lesson, A Quiet Dinner and a Humbling Experience

I’m very fortunate to have found a good dentist. My crown is a tricky job, and it will take a few more appointments to finish it up. National Health only covers basic dentistry, but at least takes care of a chunk of the bill. I kept my employee benefits going from home (and it cost the moon to do so), but I should be able to claim at least of my end of the cost. There is great alarm here that National Health Insurance is “going broke”. People consider that “going broke” means that the government is required to top it up. Any plan that provides 90% coverage for medical, dental, and pharmaceutical benefits (not to mention physio etc, and traditional Chinese Medicine) for a premium 70% of which is paid by the employer, has got my vote. People still abuse National Health, even with the 10% user fees. There is a Chinese joke about a group of elderly people waiting in the hospital to see a doctor, when an old chap notices that one of their number is missing. “He must actually be sick today”. Unemployed people must pay the employer’s end, so there is none of the nonsense over here that it is not worth getting a job. I’ve lived here long enough for quite a bit of the polish to come off Taiwan, but government by common sense seems to be more common in Taiwan than in Canada.

My lao-ban asked me to go out to Hongshulin again, because the HR department is considering using another company for some of the classes. The idea was for a teacher from “my” company to do a demo lesson for the HR manager, to convince the outfit to stay with us. It was the tail end of lunch time when we arrived, and the office was in darkness with many of the employees asleep. People nap at their desks here during breaks, and Cindy was astonished when I told her that a Canadian employer would take issue with anyone sleeping in an office, lunch hour or not. “How are people supposed to take a rest?” she asked me indignantly.

It’s great having dinner with Chrissy, because she knows all the inexpensive places and how to order exactly what we want. We met her in front of National Cheng-Chi University in Muzha for supper last night. Chrissy introduced us to a very nice young man named Ralph, a friend of hers. Ralph had other plans, and could not join us for dinner. Being a smart-alec, I told Ralph that I had great Friday night plans—dinner with not one but two beautiful girls. Lao-puo groaned and Chrissy giggled, and we set off for dinner. Some ‘double-date”! Same-sex public affection between friends seems to be more common than opposite sex affection in Taiwan. Scratch the surface here, and this is a very traditional and conservative society, where certain things are “not done”. It is not unusual to see teenaged boys with their arms innocently around their friends, or girls holding hands. Lao-puo and Chrissy set off, arm-in-arm, with me following along behind like a little brother.

Thursday, September 23, 93

An Unexpected Laugh, and Another Smashing Lunch

My Thursday morning bank class was an unexpected treat this morning. The entrance to the bank building is actually around the back, facing a lovely outdoor plaza ring with Japanese-era historical buildings. In the late 1800’s western architecture was much admired in Japan, so the buildings are of a “familiar” style. I did a double-take as I walked up to the building, because I could have sworn that two or three of the buildings weren’t there before. And so it was. The plaza is rigged up to look like an old Italian village—wine casks and everything—for an outdoor performance of “I Pagliacci”. I don’t know a sausage about opera, but you can ask me anything you want about “Trailer Park Boys”. However, I at least know that “I Pagliacci” is about drunken clowns, betrayal, and backstabbing. You will imagine my delight, therefore, at the fact that the building facades bear a startling resemblance to the corporate (political) headquarters of my Canadian employer.

Chrissy and I went for lunch to a local place. We had huge portions of dumplings and hot and sour soup, and the bill was less than four Canadian dollars.

Wednesday, September 22, 93

The Old One-Two, Grinding to a Halt

For many years, there has been an annual air-raid drill in Taiwan. In the past, everyone was involved in it. One of my students, who used to be a teacher, tells me that school kids were trained to get under their desks when the sirens went off, and to stay there without talking. Teachers were directed to shut the windows and turn off the fans, so the children cooked until the all-clear sounded.

This year’s drill was a two-pronged attack. Not only was there a simulated air raid in the morning, but was also an afternoon biological terrorist attack at the City Hall and a hostage taking. It never rains but it pours in Taiwan, literally and figuratively. Traffic stopped for half an hour at 2 o’clock or so. The “attack” had devastating consequences for our training class: the pizza delivery fellow couldn’t get through and we did without.

Tuesday, September 21, 93

No Hot Water! A New Assignment, a Stat is Just a Day Off for Us

It is starting to be lovely and cool in the evenings now. There is yet another typhoon out in the Pacific, but they almost always veer away and miss us. Our hot water tank is on the blink, and has been taken away for repair. We will get it back “as soon as possible” but we have no hot water at all in the meantime. It’s actually a heater instead of an actual tank--a wall unit on the back balcony, with a gas ring that provides on-demand hot water. I guess it is a more efficient design than the tanks we have at home, but of course they would freeze up in a Canadian winter.

I have been assigned a new class at the insurance company, to start as soon as my hospital class is over. The location is all the way out at Hongshulin, one stop before Danshui. The train runs above ground after four stops north of Taipei Main Station, so the trip will be quite scenic and pleasant. It will take about forty-five minutes from home to class, and I will not even have to get off at Taipei Main if I come from home. I’ve gotten used to crowds over here, but Taipei Main at rush hour is still too much for me.

Next Tuesday the 28th is Moon Festival, and a statutory holiday over here. In other words, teachers get the day off without pay. The same thing will happen again on October 10 (National Day). Giving Moon Cakes is a ritual gift-giving over here, and you take your chances. Sometimes (in fact usually) they are quite delicious, but sometimes you bite into what you expect to be a dessert treat, only to be greeted with another culture’s idea of what is good. We will be taking the weekend before National Day as a well-deserved break, for our trip to Nantou County.

Monday, September 20, 93

Long in the Tooth, What’s Wrong with Canadian Public Health Care?

I’ll spare you the sordid details of my morning at Wang Fang Hospital, other than to say that there is nothing wrong with me that winding back the chronometer by about thirty years wouldn’t fix. A few days ago, I had a consultation with a urologist, a blood test, and a prescription. This morning I had an ultrasound and another appointment with the sawbones. My share of the cost was less than ten Canadian dollars. My heart sank when I was number 77, but the sawbones was only 45 minutes over the suggested reporting time before I got in to see him.

Sunday, September 19, 93

A Glorious Day Off and a Wonderful Dinner

It was a rare treat today, to be able to sleep in and have the whole day off. We had breakfast in Beautiful Downtown Wang Fang Community (a 7-11, a Family Mart, and half a dozen stalls and vendors). In fact, we had a lovely filling breakfast for about a dollar and half each. Dinner was shelled crab on fennel leaves, bamboo shoots and shredded chicken with garlic and hot peppers. Tomorrow will be slack too, because my new class will not start until after Moon Festival on the 28th.

Saturday, September 18, 93

A Slack Day, Travel Plans, Woe is Me

I only had to work for an hour and a half today, and I will be off tomorrow. That is as close to a weekend as I will get for a little while. We will have a bit of time off in early October, as we are going to Nantou County, a scenic area in central Taiwan, with Alan and Jean. I did some checking on the Internet, and the area we will be visiting will be very attractive.

Tomorrow Lao-puo and Chrissy and I will go to some pottery place. Monday is better yet. I have appointments for a root canal and a prostate ultrasound in the same morning. At least I will get it over with.

Friday, September 17, 93

Back to the Sawbones, the English-Teacher Two-Step

The resident that I saw at Wang Fang Hospital referred me to a specialist, and I got in a week later. Never mind what kind of specialist, but he was looking at a situation with which 50% of the readers need not personally concern themselves. It was just a routine check that men after a certain age should have. There is absolutely no privacy when you see a Chinese doctor, because the nurse brings in the next patient while the doctor is still talking to the preceding patient. The poor old soul ahead of me presumably wasn’t cranking a lot of psi’s, and the sawbones had a diagram of the courting tackle (drawn to scale presumably), and the guy’s ultrasound on the computer. They are very thorough here, and I would gladly sacrifice a bit of privacy for a speedy appointment. I was number 26 to see the doctor that morning, and the nurse told me to report at 10:00 a.m. I did, and I only had to wait fifteen minutes. It was not a health mill either, the doctor spent quite a bit of time with me. He spoke the good but heavily accented English of a doctor who has had Chinese medical training.

I then had to bolt for it, to get to the Westin Hotel in time for my class with the shipping company boss. No sooner was I finished there, lunch and all, when I had to scurry up to Lao-puo’s school for an hour-long class with the Japanese fellow. Then, it was bus-and-jog (in the heat no less), to be on time for my nurses’ class. After that, the only way to be on time for my last class of the day was to take a taxi all the way back to Lao-puo’s school. No wonder I’m tired all the time.

Thursday, September 16, 93

My Favourite Student, I See Nothing.

Today was a nice quiet day, with only three classes. My favourite student is probably Steve, from the bank. He is a man about my age, who knows a lot about Chinese culture and society. He has taught me expressions like “playing a piano for oxen” or in other words “casting pearls before swine”. Today he mentioned that the Chinese word “illiterate’ translates literally as “word blind”. I can only hope that my students learn as much as I do.

I teach two women on Thursday nights from 6:30 until 8:20. One of them will be in the class I will start at the construction company right after Moon Festival. She asked me not to tell her boss that she only has one class a week, because she told him (with a view to being able to duck out of work early another day) that it’s actually twice.

Wednesday, September 15, 93

Fractured English, Sort of Pizza

Today was a training morning. We had a speaker give us pointers on how to get students to talk more in class. The simple answer is “keep your own mouth shut’, but as you may know I have never really mastered that task. It did not take long for my attention to wander, so I looked out the window. The office is on the 8th floor of a building at a busy corner—most corners in Taipei are busy anyway. I noticed a beauty salon across the way with a Chinese name and “Dainty Mannerly Youth Beauty Salon” writen below. By the way, some weeks ago I referred to a place called “The Shaw Institute of Translatology”. I noticed this morning that the place is closed, which does not astonish me.

We had pizza for lunch after the training. Chinese “pizza” if you can call it that, is a sight to behold. There was shrimp and corn on one, octopus and peas on another, and God-knows-what on yet another. It is a good rule to just stick to Chinese stuff over here—it is very rare to be disappointed in a meal.

Tuesday, September 14, 93

Good news and Bad News, Workload Issues

I am always pleased when my favourite students want to renew. My term with my lawyer at the insurance company is coming to an end, and she wants to go for another three months with me. This is good news.

The bad news is that Lao-puo went to the hospital yesterday. The climate is harder on her than we thought. She got some medication and she is OK now. Medical care is terrific here.

Some of my students are finishing up, but I am being assigned new ones as well. One of my new students is a very nice young Japanese fellow. I also have a new class, four hours a week, at a construction company. The students are beginner-intermediate, and the boss is a real hands-on kind of guy, so we’ll see how it goes. It seems that in general there is no as much adult work around this year as there used to be, but I seem to have more than I want between two employers and some private contracts.

Monday, September 13, 93

Civil Liberties and Mr Tall Man, See Spot Run

I say very often that this place never ceases to amaze me. My first class this morning was in a bank headquarters near Ximen Station. I noticed that, as people arrive at work, they punch in a number (presumably an employee ID), and then hold a finger over a sensor to have their fingerprints read! Part of me said, “This is an outrage! Fingerprinting employees violates their civil liberties.” However, the other part of me said “Who said nobody in HR has a sense of humour? How sweet it is, to start the workday flipping Mr. Tall Man in the general direction of the workplace!” I will mention the concept to my boss when I get home, and maybe I can win an Employee Suggestion Award.

For my part, I just check in with the security guy—an armed constable. The regular guy knows me by now, but whenever there is a replacement I have to say “Se da wen. In gwen lao sheh, se lo.” That is my surname pronounced in the Chinese fashion, followed by “English teacher”, and “fourth floor”. I feel like a grade two kid struggling with a reader, but at least I get a bow, a smile, and a wave in the direction of the elevators—and (more importantly), the sidearm stays where it belongs.

Sunday, September 12, 93

Another Near Miss, Traditional Healing, a Miracle Dinner

I nearly cancelled my Sunday morning class because of the typhoon warning, but there has been no flooding and it was safe to go out. As it turns out, the typhoon missed us and is now hitting the mainland. Serves them right for pointing their missiles at us—I’m kidding of course—nobody deserves a typhoon. I was pleased when, at the end of an hour, Gwen reminded her mum that it was her turn for class. It is actually easier to teach a boy—you just put him a headlock at the beginning of the class and give him “the claw”--fingers formed in the shape of talons for his stomach. The beauty of the claw is the anticipatory giggling at the thought of getting it. Works like be damned to settle a kid down. Girls require a bit more imagination. I have to let Gwen wear my reading glasses when it is her turn to read.

In the afternoon, Alan and Jean took Lao-puo and I to the traditional healer (who can’t speak English at all). After her treatment, we had a “miracle” dinner—a meal that was vegetarian, gourmet, tasty, good, and inexpensive.

Saturday, September 11, 93

You and Me and Rain on the Roof, a Good Day

The good news about the weather is that the temperature has cooled considerably, and it is now down in the high twenties. It is quite pleasant outside now. Strangely, people are beginning to wear jackets and sweaters. The bad news is that here is another typhoon warning, and flooding already in Keelung and Shijr. Places in Taipei are getting sandbagged up. When I was walking up Ba De Lu after class this afternoon, I noticed a family outside their repair shop burning spirit money in the rain. It’s been raining like hell, non-stop, for twenty-four hours, and the money wouldn’t stay lit. In a refreshing mixture of tradition and modernism, the father took a blowtorch to the pile of soggy bills to get them going.

I sometimes use an old song in my classes, from thirty years ago. “Rain on the Roof” is clear and easy English, and a nice image:

You and me and rain on the roof
Caught up in a summer shower
Drying while it soaks the flowers
Maybe we’ll be caught for hours
Waiting out the sun.

It’s hokey as hell, but there again so am I.

There were just two classes today. I taught from nine until twelve (the Kunyang boys), and from one until three (speech editing and public speaking). It’s good to finish early. We had a Vietnamese supper and an early dinner.

Friday, September 11, 93

Keep an Eye on the Old Guy, Mongolia, Starting from Scratch (Again)

I met the managing director of the shipping company for his class this morning. We ended up going for three hours to get the text of his speech ready. He asked me to meet him at the Westin Hotel—one of those places where you only can afford it if you are on expenses. When I taught at the Westin, I used to have to use the “associate entrance” and check in with the security office—presumably for fear that I might nick the silverware. I must admit that it is nice to “live posh” every now and again, and work in a nice lounge.

My Friday night student is a very interesting man. He likes to have “free conversation" for part of the class, and he has an absolute wealth of knowledge about Chinese history. He talked about Mongolia for almost an hour, with me just taking notes and correcting a grammar point or word use every now and again. My nurses’ class cancelled, because they all had to go to a meeting.

It worked out well that they cancelled, because I had to see a doctor anyway. The only thing I don’t like about living here is that heat and humidity and my skin don’t get along very well. I went to Wang Fang Municipal Hospital for some ointment. Health care is really good here—user fees and all. The clerk at the information desk summoned a volunteer (who couldn’t speak English) to take me to emergency. Wanting to scratch halfway through an English class is not an emergency, but there you have it. There was the usual assortment of people waiting, a little boy who was having a honking good time, a very elderly lady on a stretcher who looked like she needed a priest more than a doctor, a young western guy in a wheelchair with an ice pack on his leg (from wrecking his motorbike, I’ll bet), a pale woman with an IV drip started, a bored-looking constable waiting for his charge to get treated, and me. For spice, someone stepped in front of a car and there was a great squeal of brakes and a thundering Chinese argument. I suppose, if you’re going to get run over, the door of the Emergency Department of a hospital is as good a place as any. I had written down all my symptoms and medical history in English, and used the computer to translate it. The program has its limitations (Republic of China comes out as “Republic of Dinner Plate” if you forget to capitalize the “C”), and the fractured Chinese gave great merriment to the medical folks. Within an hour, I had seen a resident and a dermatologist and was on my way with a prescription. There are user fees here, but the whole thing (medication and all) cost 500 NT dollars, which is about 20 Canadian dollars. Were it not for everything being in Chinese, you easily could have thought that you were in Canadian hospital.

Thursday, September 9, 93

Ya Gotta Love It, Those Who Can’t Teach, Success!

I learned a new Chinese expression this morning. “The beautiful wife is in the textbook”. It means that good students are rewarded with good jobs and beautiful wives. I guess that explains why, having slacked off during my school years; I now have the latter but not the former.

It has come to my attention that two of my students are teachers themselves. One is a lecturer in banking and finance at one of the local universities, and another teaches Math and Korean in the expatriate neighbourhood of Taipei. I am reminded of an expression I heard years ago. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach the teachers.” Why are there so many cynics in the world?

I got a nice e-mail from Jimmy today, to let us know that Immigration Canada has approved their applications as entrepreneurial immigrants. They must invest a certain amount, create at least one job, and have a certain level of earnings before they will be allowed to stay in Canada. They can become citizens after three years. ROC citizenship is not permitted for any foreign people, and it is very difficult to qualify for permanent residency status. Even if a person qualifies as a permanent resident, the status is forfeit if they leave Taiwan for more than six months at a time. I guess the government figures that, with 23 million people in a place the size of Vancouver Island, they have enough people here already.

Wednesday, September 8, 93

Skipping the Whorehouse, Give Me a Break, Static Precautions

Today I had three classes—public speaking with the lao-ban at the shipping company, my last class at the hotel, and then another class at the IT company. Unusually for me, I was running late this morning. Usually when I go to the shipping company, I take the subway to Hoshanpi and walk to the office from there. Sometimes I take the Brown Line to Nanjing Dong Lu Station instead of transferring to the Blue Line at Zhongxiao Fuxing, and then I hop on the 306 bus. I get off the 306 in front of a whorehouse, because it is an interesting walk through the market on the way and (if I have time) I can do the temple and the riverbank while I'm at it. Because I was late, I stayed on the 306 to the door of the office. Bus transportation is really good here, and a car would be nothing but a nuisance.

There was great upset in my second class at the hotel. One of students had been given a raw deal (according to her) by her new boss, and she was all upset because she was being transferred. I have been consulted, in my Canadian job, many times under similar circumstances, and I’m tired. Besides, I don’t know enough about Chinese labour relations to offer good advice. It seems to me, though, that Chinese bosses are generally a lot more dictatorial than even the worst of ours, and the employees (even senior ones) are a lot more compliant.

Getting to my last class entailed yet another “garbage ditty Hell”, but Marian mercifully showed me a short cut, through the back alleys, for use the next time. I can get off one stop early at Da Ping Li. “Da” means “big” either “large” or “great”-and I even recognize the character, but blast me if I know what “Ping” or “Li” represent. It was raining like a fire hose during my walk from the subway—there’s no rain like a Taiwan rain—so Marian took pity on my bedraggled appearance. She gave me a newspaper for my shoes, a plastic bag for my socks, a hot cup of tea, and some slippers. The slippers were “anti-static”—important for a computer company. There was great merriment at my request to borrow the anti-static slippers for the next time I come home drunk and have to listen to Lao-puo.

Tuesday, September 7, 93

Garbage Blues, Today is the Big Day! Who’s that Old Guy?

Hell, I think, is a place where the devil makes you spend eternity walking from “Cheech and Chong” (Qizhang MRT Station) to Lane 235 Bao Chiao Lu at garbage pickup time. Instead of just leaving your garbage out, you must take it out and put it on the truck yourself—it is not permitted to simply leave your garbage out for pickup the way we do at home. The garbage truck plays a cute little ditty, like an ice-cream truck, to alert people to its arrival. I used to enjoy the music when we lived on Xin Hai Lu, because garbage pickup was my time to harmlessly chat to the Indonesian domestic workers my daughter’s age. The ditty was not quite so enjoyable when the truck kept pace with me for the entire twenty minutes of so of my walk. After twenty minutes of incessant repetition, I cannot, to save my life, get the blasted tune out of my head. Just when I begin to forget it, I hear the bloody thing again some other place.

Jimmy and Carol, our shared short-term students, have their interview today with Immigration Canada. Lao-puo and I worked hard to get them ready for it, and they have been doing a lot of study on their own as well. We really hope that they will be successful.

It only took four months, but I finally got my National Health Insurance Card. When it arrived it mail, I was aghast. I think someone had accidentally put a picture of an old foreign man on it! To make matters worse, the card has my date of birth in Chinese years so it is written as 39/10/12. As if I don't look old enough already.

Monday, September 6, 93

Diet Blues, No wonder Air Canada is Going Broke

It is finally beginning to cool off! The temperature range yesterday was 26-30, and we feel downright cool to the point of almost needing a light jacket or sweater. Weight loss has a lot to do with it, but that is another sore point. It is very frustrating, because weight comes off everywhere, except where you want it to. Bellies come off last. Sure, I have lost a lot of weight. I only have one chin now, but I look like I need ironing. Even though I have lost four inches off my waist size, I still look like I’m trying to shoplift a basketball because everywhere else is so skinny now.

We are coming home for Christmas. Lao puo has a one way ticket from Taipei to Vancouver via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, so she must fly for two hours or so in the wrong direction and then double back. I still have my return flight to Vancouver via Narita on JAL. We cannot book Vancouver-Taipei from here, which is too bad because it means paying a lot more money. I’m sure that there is a perfectly good reason why the direction of a flight means a difference of a few hundred dollars in the cost of a ticket, but I don’t see it.

Sunday, September 5, 93

Dinner Out, Humour in the Understanding

Gary, our friend and former room-mate, gave me a call on this afternoon and asked us to join them (Gary and Linda), for dinner. So we did. Gary advised that they were returning to Canada the following day, as he had been accepted to law school in Saskatchewan. The gang was all there (about 15 people), and we had a wonderful dinner at the duck place. It will be a big transformation for Gary to go home. He has been here for three years, and we found it was hard enough to us to readjust after just a year away. Linda is from here, and we wonder how she will like her first prairie winter.

The cab driver had the radio playing on the way home (it’s cheaper to share a cab even all the way to Wang Fang than to each pay for the bus), tuned to ICRT (the bilingual station). We simultaneously started laughing at Chinese on the radio, because we could all understand it. It was clearly “dumbed down” for foreigners, to the point of “see spot run”.

Saturday, September 4, 93

Getting the Point

After a busy day of teaching, we had our dinner in Muzha with Alan and Jean and family. We were late sitting down, because Jean took Lao-puo to an acupuncturist first. We would be like fish in boat without Chinese friends, because the doctor did not speak English at all and it would have been quite impossible to communicate with him. Taiwan National Health covers both acupuncture and traditional medicine treatments. I don’t know why Canadians make such a fuss about user fees. The only out-of-pocket cost for the six treatments is 100 NT dollars for the initial consultation and 50 NT thereafter. 100 NT dollars is less than four dollars Canadian.

Friday, September 3, 93

The Two Colonels, Thank God for High Pressure Areas

Here it is, Saturday night, before I have a chance to do my Friday web log entry. I had a nice quiet day today, with only two classes. The first was a make-up class—to cover the one we missed during the typhoon—with two entrepreneurial would-be immigrants to Canada. Lao-puo and I team-taught the husband and wife applicants, and we are both confident that they will do well on their interviews. The husband is a retired (but younger than either of us) ROC Army colonel who speaks fluent German. His wife is an intelligent soft-spoken person who wants the best for her family. Both Lao-puo and I really enjoyed our discussions with the couple. To me, it was very interesting that they made a careful study of New Zealand, Australia, USA, and Canada, before deciding that Canada offered the best quality of life to them. I did not tell either of the students, by the way, that some of my other students call me “colonel’ because of a perceived resemblance to Col. Sanders, the chicken guy.

The next typhoon, having been affected by a ridge of high pressure, has turned north towards Korea and Japan. We re coming to the end of the typhoon season. Hopefully that will be the last one. It is starting to cool off famously now, and the mornings and evenings are now balmy and pleasant as opposed to merely bearable.

Thursday, September 2, 93

Chinese Back-Seat Driving, Laughing at a Dead Dog, a Bilingual Moron and Chinese Manners, The Old One-Two

I find that it is the little things over here that are amusing and delightful. I was waiting to cross a street this afternoon, and I noticed a young fellow on a motorbike with his girlfriend on the back. He took advantage of the few seconds to try to find first gear with the girlfriend’s kneecap, but she was having none of it. As soon as the light turned green, she leaned forward and twisted the throttle. It seemed to me to be pretty good non-verbal communication.

While I was waiting for my class to start, I was chatting in the student lounge with a fellow about my age. I guess we are established here when we start to bump into people we know, or have friends and acquaintances in common with people we meet. It turns out that the guy takes private Chinese classes with Chrissy, who will be our new room-mate in a couple of weeks. The man’s name is Lee, and he works for an American company and has lived here for years. Lee said that he and his wife brought their two dogs over when they moved from Texas, but one of the dogs was bitten by a poisonous snake while out for a walk--the dog that is, not the snake—I suppose that if you wanted to exercise a pet snake you would take it out for a slither. Anyway, the dog died from the snakebite. Maybe it is because of the preconceived ideas that a very few people have had about living here, but I thought it was very funny. Maybe I’ve been out in the sun too long.

I wish people, when talking to Chinese folks, would realize that just because people speak accented English doesn’t mean they’re deaf and it doesn’t mean they’re stupid. I overheard, and God knows I couldn’t help overhearing, a conversation between an ABC and his Chinese teacher. (An “ABC” is an “American-born Chinese" and a “CBC” is the Canadian equivalent). I did not know those terms until we came over here. She (the teacher) was too polite to say anything, but it pained me to listen to the guy. In a voice that could save money on long-distance phone bills, he was saying things like. “I go home soon. Home Reno. Nevada in America. I like drive car. You like drive car”? Oh well. I try to have realistic expectations of a guy with a ball cap on backwards and a trouser-crotch between his kneecaps, but this goof was the giddy limit. Maybe the heat is making me grumpy.

It's still hotter than blazes, and humid enough to wilt an ox, and there is a possibility of another typhoon next week. The latest one is a humdinger, but it's still at least 72 hours away and a lot can happen during that time.

Wednesday, September 1, 93

A Medical Scare, A Busy Day

Yesterday Lao-puo complained of severe dizziness, so Dianne (who stayed with us last night because she has let her apartment go and she’s off to Taichung now) took her Wang Fang Hospital. She had excellent attention, and the emergency doctor whipped her in to see a neurologist within an hour. It turned out to be some inner ear problem. I would have put my money on heat exhaustion, and lost it, but Lao-puo was afraid that there could have been a more serious cause to it. It was a big relief, and I did not enjoy my teaching until my cell phone rang. All is well.

My first class this morning was with the managing director of the shipping company, and then I had my hotel employees and my IT company. It was a long day, and I was exhausted by the time I got home. I would have been even more beat had my two hour class with the lawyer not cancelled in the morning. Hopefully, my schedule will slacken off a bit in the near future, enough for me to be able to sign up for Chinese. I’ve been saying that for three years. I will probably end up taking a course at our local community college when I get home.

Tuesday, August 31, 93

A Jiggler, A House Guest, My New Wheels

There are many earthquakes in Taiwan—84 so far this year—but we rarely feel them. Yesterday morning was number 93084. It was just 2 on the scale, and felt more like a little tremor than anything to get excited about. Last night, however, I did notice that there were a few little hairline cracks in the hallway stairs.

Dianne is staying with us overnight, then she is going to a meditation retreat in a Buddhist place down by Taichung. She will be gone for two weeks, then she will set off for the mainland as soon as she gets back. Her new job sounds very exciting. The actual pay over on the mainland is much less than in Taiwan, but employers cover air fare and housing, and sometimes meals and Chinese lessons. It is now possible for mainland work to be financially as well as culturally rewarding.

I bought Dianne’s bicycle from her. It will be nice for getting around the neighbourhood. I would have preferred a little motorcycle, but Jean says that many Chinese people consider them to be too dangerous for regular transportation. I thought it prudent to listen to her warning—even though she and Alan pile the entire family—four of them baby and all, on to their little 90 cc machine. She whips little Hawker over to his kindergarten on the scooter, then drives it to the MRT station and takes the train into town. It’s too bad—it was such a blast riding from Damshui to Keelung along the coast that day. I know that you’re supposed to do as the Romans do, but riding a motorcycle on a sidewalk full of people was very strange for me.

The Chinese Wisecracker, Full Tilt, Christmas

I forgot to mention a funny thing that happened in my phonics class yesterday. Little Gwen is only nine years old, and she had stayed up late the night before. She was to tired to have much of a class, but I did my best. Asking her to close her eyes, I held my business card holder over each eye in turn, and told her that (by magic) she would not be tired for at least an hour. I then held my name chop against her nose, and told her that she would not be able to speak Chinese for an hour. Stupid stuff, but it works for little kids. At the end of the class, her first Chinese words were (after a mighty sigh) were “sha ke le”. I subsequently learned from her mum that the translation is “class dismissed”. Teachers cannot have fragile egos. When I learned the real meaning, I said (for her mother to translate) “Shao co la?” (small coke) Well, if you were getting thirsty in class you should have just said so. I could have stopped long enough for you to get a drink.”. Gwen was too tired to see the humour, but her mum liked it.

Today (Monday) was a busy one. I started at 0800, and finished at 2200. I had some gaps of time in between, but it is a tiring day nonetheless. Being out in the heat is tiring as well. Tomorrow will be not better. I don’t start until 0930, and I finish at 2130. I have the lawyer for two hours first, followed immediately by some language assessments, then I must go to the office to tip in my pay sheets, then I have the lady emigrating to Canada. Immediately after that, I must go hell-bent for leather to the hospital in only half an hour for the nurses, and then hell-bent for leather back to the school for a final two hours with the electronics engineer. I taper off famously by the end of the week, so I am not as hard done by as I like to imply.

Lao-puo and I will be coming home for Christmas, but not on the same flight. Her best price will be Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong—meaning that she will set off for a two hour flight in the wrong direction and then have to double back. I will change my flight date, but still come back by JAL via Narita. We will spend most of our time with my mother and dad, especially since our daughter will be able to join us for Christmas too. Time flies, and it will be Christmas before I know it. I’ve been here for over four months already.

Sunday, August 29, 93

Poor Canadian Math, A New Addition, Kansas in August, Movies, Ghost Month

It seems that the Canadian formula, for housing, is something like 3 floors + 3 bedrooms + 2.5 bathrooms = housing cost greater than budget. The Chinese formula is similar. It is ridiculous to have 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms for 2 people.

We will be getting a room-mate in the middle of September. Chrissy is an affable grad student, who has just finished her masters at the local university. She will be a very useful addition to the household, given that she can read and otherwise help us to figure things out. In addition, she wants to learn French (it is astonishing how many Chinese people either speak a western language besides English, or want to). I will do a language exchange with her

We only had time for a quick supper last night, because we were going to the movies. We chose pizza, which is sort of like pizza at home (if you have a good imagination). I had never heard of putting kimchi (Korean pickled cabbage) on pizza, but they do that here. The three of us (Dianne, Lao-puo and I) had three individual pizzas, and all three of us got kernel corn on ours. It seems to be a staple ingredient in a lot of things over here, including pre-made sandwiches. We saw “Troy” at a second run university place, for $100 NT dollars each. Good movie.

This is Ghost Month in Taiwan. People make offerings of ghost money, food and drink, and incense in front of their homes. During my previous stay, I thought that the idea was to honour one’s ancestors, but Tomb Sweeping Day is for that. The Chinese notion of hell is quite a bit different from ours. To get out of a western hell, one need only accept a severance package or go on salary deferral leave, but the concept is a bit more complicated here. As I understand it, some people have had such wicked lives that they are not eligible for reincarnation and they are consigned to hell instead. Once a year, during Ghost Month, the condemned souls are allowed out, to grab a bite as there is no food in hell. The idea of the reprieve, presumably, is to make the return are the more tormenting. The condemned also have the opportunity to get someone to substitute for them. The idea of putting out food and drink—to the point of actual place settings—is so that the condemned will not seek a substitute in the household of generous people. You wouldn’t believe the spread, whole chickens, fish, even booze here and there. Some of our stuff is pretty goofy too, after all. We are not to eat meat on Fridays for example, but we can have a double helping of fish and chips to make up for the privation.

Saturday, August 28, 93

A History and Architecture Lesson, Chinese Magic

There was very little excitement on this very routine Saturday. It’s Lao-puo’s busiest day, and I’m out the door by 0800 latest on Saturdays anyway. She’s finished at 1620, and I’m through at 1720. After class we whistled up Roosevelt Rd to Gonguan MRT station (only two MRT stops or a twenty minute walk from the school) to meet up with Dianne and Chrissy. We had a lovely walking tour of Taiwan National University, arranged by a friend of Chrissy’s—a graduate student named Daniel. The university is very prestigious and Daniel was very familiar with the architecture and history of the place. He speaks the halting English of a person with more language knowledge than confidence, and he asked me to be a language exchange partner with him. It will be better if we just hang out, rather than having official language lessons with one another. TNU was built during the latter part of the Japanese era (or occupation, depending who you are talking to about it, from 1895-1945).

We went for dinner at a little vegetarian place. Through the magic of Chinese cuisine, it was not only good but exquisite. We had taro root and lily bulb, mushrooms and sprouts, and tofu that looked and tasted like chicken or fish depending on the particular item. There was no beer in the place (blast these healthfood nuts!), but apart from that it was one of the best meals I have ever had in Taiwan

Friday, August 27, 93

Chinese Name, My Friday Night Walk

I asked Joseph, my Saturday morning student, to read my name chop for me. The calligrapher had evidently used a very old Chinese font that many people find hard to read, and characters that approximate my English name. Thus, my chop says “Se Da Wen”, and includes the characters for “history” and “virtue”. I guess he means that I used to be virtuous.

Out of the blue, Lao-puo suggested we go to the pub last night. We usually go to the “Brass Monkey” (whenever we go to pubs which isn’t more than once a month or so), because it is so handy to the Nanjing Dong Lu MRT Station and thus home. I like to think that the name “Brass Monkey” arises from the air conditioner being set far too low, but this is not actually the case. We also like Carnegies, because you can sit outside, so that is where we went last night. It is on An He Lu, not far from the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel and Liuchangli MRT. I walked from class. The hospital classroom is on the fifth floor of an annex across the street (Wu Xing Jie) from the hospital. I walked down five flights of stairs and turned right. In the space of half a block, there are a dumpling vendor, the fruit juice lady, a barbecued duck and pork place (a full meal plus soup and tea for less than three dollars), two barbecue stalls, and the chicken sandwich lady. Chungde Lu is interesting to walk along as well, because of the little park and the Buddhist “Sunday School”-every night there is a classroom full of little kids reciting memorized verses to a grim-looking teacher. I sometimes stop, to look through the window and listen. He does not speak unkindly the kids, who actually appear to be enjoying themselves. On An He Lu, there is a boozer called “Saints and Sinners” that has a “Purgatory Hour”. I suppose I should take issue, with the mockery of a concept from what is after all a minority religion over here, but Taiwan is not Canada and An He Lu is not Bloor St or W 41st Ave. We sat outside (Lao-puo, Dianne, Chrissy, and I) on a balmy evening to enjoy the sidewalk café atmosphere. An He Lu is very upscale. Many people drive Mercedes and BMW’s, and here and there some moron even has a Land Rover SUV

Thursday, August 26, 93

The Aftermath, My New Student, Adventures on the Leo Ling Leo

All is quiet now, and we have blue sky and a light breeze. Better yet, the temperature has dropped to the low thirties, and our comfort level is good. There were a few ornamental trees blown down over by “my” bank this morning, and one of my students had a flood in his second-floor apartment (but that was only because his plants had dropped leaves and clogged the balcony drains, allowing the lashing-sideways rain to collect on his balcony and overflow the sill into the living room). There are leaves and branches all over the place, but the only damage seems to be the odd blown-down sign. I saw an accident seconds after it happened yesterday—someone on a motorbike hit some wet leaves and went down. The countryside was the boxer’s chin this time, with a bridge out, several road blockages, dangerously swollen rivers, and a mountain hamlet buried in a mudflow.

Lao-puo and I are prepping a student, getting her ready for an immigration interview to move to Vancouver. Her husband is a retired ROC army officer, and they have bought a business in Vancouver. Carol is a very interesting nice lady.

Even though my evening class is away on the other side of town, it is only twenty minutes by bus. There are four buses to choose from that go from right in front of the school to half a block from our house. I grabbed the first one, the 606, and sat back to enjoy the air-conditioned ride. It was so pleasant, to observe the vibrant street life in Taipei on the way home. I decided to stay on the bus all the way to the terminal, about three extra stops along the road, and walk back. It was a balmy evening for stroll, under the palm trees and the bamboo, past the swimming pool to the 7-11. I bought a beer in the store, and some tofu from a street vendor. I must be getting settled, if I chose tofu over the lovely pork satay they guy was also flogging. I sat in the park for a little while—you can drink beer or whatever else you want in parks over here, provided you don’t make a fuss or bother anyone. It was a wonderful interlude--listening to the beautiful melodious Mandarin of the passersby, and reflecting contentedly on the similarity to Hawaii in every respect except price

Wednesday, August 25, 93

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Trustworthy Weathermen, the Eyes Have It

While mad dogs and Englishmen may well go out in the midday sun, neither is fool enough to brave a typhoon. Whatever we do not have in the house today we will do without. The rain is lashing against the house, the trees are flailing about, and the streets are deserted. It’s actually quite a spectacle, to be enjoyed from the safety and comfort of my balcony. Weathermen can be trusted here, none has ever made money promoting Social Credit or getting drunk with Liberals, as at home. Here is the scoop from the Central Weather Bureau:

Potential Track Forecast 07f07f07f
TYPHOON 0417 (AERE 0417) POSITION: 241800Z AT 25.5N ,122.0E.
MOVEMENT NEXT 24HRS : WEST BECOMING WSW 15KM/HR
MIN SURFACE PRESSURE:960HPA.
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR CENTER: 38M/S,GUSTS: 48M/S.
RADIUS OF OVER 15M/S WINDS: 200KM,OVER 25M/S WINDS: 50KM.
FORECAST POSITION: 12HRS VALID AT: 250600Z AT 25.6N , 120.3E.
24HRS VALID AT: 251800Z AT 25.3N , 118.6E.
48HRS VALID AT: 261800Z AT 24.3N , 115.2E.
72HRS VALID AT: 271800Z BECOMING EXTRATROPICAL LOW

Any way you look at the data, the typhoon is blowing like hell and we’ve got another day off.
It is nearly noon on Wednesday now, Tuesday night at home. We are in the eye of the typhoon as I write, and things are calm. We joke that the centre of the typhoon is at the corner of Zhongxiao Dong Lu and Fuxing Bei Lu. There is no wind to speak of, and only a light drizzle. There has been flooding in Taipei, and roads out here and there in the countryside. All Hell will break loose again presently-especially if Lao-puo sees how much wine is gone.

Tuesday, August 24, 93

Typhoon Survival, Chateau Costco, Another Day Off, Past Lives

Classes are cancelled, we are confined to barracks (more or less) but we are smart enough not to venture to far from home in any event. I went on a provisions-run this morning, and it was glorious! It was far too windy for an umbrella, but I walked down to Wang Fang “village” in the wind and rain. Lao-bans are sandbagging up their stores, people are grabbing provisions, and essential supplies are flying off the shelves.

Lao-puo doesn’t like Chinese “mei jo” –plum wine is pretty sweet, but I found some French wine on sale. “Chevalier de la Coste’, if you please—about as French as Preston Manning. No wonder it was only NTD 199 per bottle-absolute bilge water. When will we learn “when you live in a Chinese society, use Chinese stuff’? I picked up a bottle of white wine for Lao-puo, and the white is only a little better. It has been raining like hell all day, but I do not understand enough Chinese to get the drift of the news reports. TVBS has good pictures, and ICRT (the bilingual radio station), has good reports. Evidently this typhoon will bring heavy rain but the wind will not be too bad. The bad weather will last until Friday—just in time for the weekend when I have to work.

It appears that tomorrow will be another “Chinese Snow Day”. There is another typhoon stacked behind the one hitting us, the effect of which is that that “our” typhoon will be slowed down. It will be tapped out by the time it hits the mainland. I bet it is some kind of communist plot.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Lao-puo must have been a warrant officer in a past life. Whenever there is enforced idleness, such as during a typhoon, she suggests that it is a capital time to do postponed chores. Her idea of ‘strong winds” is to fire up the vacuum cleaner. I beat her to it this time. I picked up a broom and dustpan (and some other stuff) in the village this morning. I swept and mopped the little deck off the master bedroom. I can now sit in comfort, and watch nature’s majesty with a glass of wine. The only question will be “which is better?” Bilge Water Red, or Poodle Piss White”? I should have just picked up some Kaoling, and be damned. It seems I will be able to sleep in tomorrow anyway.

Monday, August 23, 93

The Usual Monday, A Chinese “Snow Day”

I was on the go from 0800 until 2200, making lots of money but I’m tired. Four classes, plus assessments, plus travel time, conspire to make an exhausting day. It is now Tuesday morning here. There was no time for dinner, so I was starving by the time I got home. The weather was worsening all afternoon and evening. The pre-cursor to a typhoon is often very heavy rain, stopping and starting for no apparent reason.

Lao-ban left a message on my cell phone. There is no class today (Tuesday) because of the approaching typhoon. The Central Weather Bureau says that we will get the old one-two by tonight. Schools and offices are closed, and most stores. It’s raining like hell, but there is no wind yet to speak of. Even though houses (apartments) are expensive here (our joint would go for a cool 8 million NT dollars)—they only give you cheap ripple fiberglass to cover the back porches. It makes the rain sound a lot worse than it really is—bad enough in the ifrst place. There isn’t a soul on the street. Lao-puo prudently went grocery shopping, yesterday, in case we can't get out for while. We have food but no booze. Either she is disorganized, or there is a message in her apparent neglect of essential provisions.

Sunday, August 22, 93

The Weather-Induced Compromise, the Breakfast Floor Show, Not Again!

“Make a plan and you will find, she has something else in mind, and so rather than do either you do something else than neither likes at all”. So goes the old song anyway. It is not applicable to our dinner choice, but I threw the in the lyrics just because I like them. We ended up going to a Thai place last night. The place was near Lao-puo’s old digs at An He Le—and thus expensive. An He Lu is the well-heeled part of Taipei, with prices to match. She wanted me to get right home after class, because there was another huge thunderstorm while she spoke. It was quite local, and there was no rain at all in the city. Nevertheless, we chose a place close to the MRT in case we had to bolt for it in a sudden rainstorm. All of a sudden it feels a lot cooler—even though the temperature is still in the high twenties I feel as though I could do with a light jacket.

I left early for class, and had breakfast over in Neihu is a little hole-in-the-wall place by the lake. The prices are good, there is no view of the lake, and mind your head on the air conditioner on the way through the door.

Bacon and eggs and coffee are possible for breakfast now. “Egg” is “dan” (like the name), “one” is “yi” and “two” is “er”. However, just to bugger up the foreigners, you must add a “quantifier”. There are many different quantifiers to learn, but the default one is “ge”. You must say “liang” instead of “er”. The first part of breakfast is therefore “liange dan”. “Hao” means “I understand” not “how do you want your eggs done?”.

“Bacon”, amusingly, is “pagan”. It’s Sunday, I’m Christian, but I ate it anyway. “b” and “p” are very similar in Chinese, as are “k” and “j”. This is how “Peking” disappeared” to become “Beijing”—taking my favourite joke about Peking Tom (the Chinese voyeur) along with it. I don’t know the quantifier for “slice” so I just say “yige pagan”.

“Coffee” is a snap—it’s just the English word pronounced in a Chinese way. Café. Options are ‘bing” or “re” (ice or hot), and “shao, chung, or da” (small medium or large). Blast me if I can remember the quantifier for “cup”. Breakfast is therefore “liange dan, yige pagan, yige shao re café”.

The old lady who ran the place (about my age in other words) is (unusually) quite overweight. Mostly, it’s just the kids over here who are fat—thanks to the Golden Arches and computer games. Anyway, the lao-ban nyiang (a deuce if she was an ounce) was barking orders at her daughter-in-law on the grill, when the little granddaughter walked in. The little soul had a handful of coloured feathers, with lao-ban nyiang stuck into her own hair and that of the little girl. With an refreshing disregard for political correctness, the two of them did an impromptu war dance.

Breakfast, the Chinese practice, and the entertainment was less than two Canadian dollars. After class Lao-puo and I went to Hsinchu—about an hour away on the train.

There is another typhoon warning, but they are routine at this time of year. Japan and Korea seem to get typhoons a lot more than we do.

Saturday, August 21, 93

An Early Start, My Turf, Different Strokes, Noisy Muslims

It’s 0500 now, and I have been up for an hour already. I have had some difficulty sleeping recently—probably because I come home late still wired from work. Teaching is a high-energy way to make a living. The forecast is 29-34 today, clear with afternoon thunderstorms.

Last night Lao-puo met me after class at the hospital, and we went for dinner. We seem often to work in different parts of the city, and it is nice to show each other the little nooks and crannies of our areas.

This morning I have the Kunyang boys, but just Joseph this morning. Justin is in Los Angeles with his parents for two weeks, and Joe is home alone. Not that he will cause any trouble (as a teenager home alone), he’s a good kid. Besides, he must know that Paula (the domestic worker) will tell his dad if there is any nonsense. Things are changing quickly around the world, and not necessarily for the better. It seems that, for now at least, Chinese parents are in charge and the kids (well into their twenties) do as they are told. I recently had a discussion with a student regarding family dynamics. The western notion that a husband, (in the event of a dispute between his wife and his mother) should side with his wife, is not the way of things over here. I am advised that there is a Chinese expression that you can get a new wife but you only have one mother.

This afternoon I have my public speaking course with the lao-ban of the shipping company. My morning and afternoon classes are only one and one half hours each. I will meet Lao-puo at Hoshanpi and we will get some dinner. I know a really nice little pasta place in the neighbourhood (Jean shows me all the cool places), and that will no doubt be Lao-puo’s choice for dinner. I would prefer the “Allah Din” Indian restaurant, just because the name intrigues me. They have moved from Keelung Lu down to new premises in my favourite night market. My choice will prevail, because after all I have been advised that a guy can just get a new wife. Tomorrow, I will tell you how I enjoyed the lasagna. For face, I may claim to have had curried pasta of some sort.

Friday, August 20, 93

A Slack Day For Once, An Incredible Storm, Prepping For Carol

I only have two classes on Fridays for the time being. Rena and Linda (my morning teenagers) are in Germany for their annual vacation. I’m tired by the end of the week, so I did not mind that my IT company cancelled tonight. I only have one and one half hours of work all day.

With any luck, the rain will stop by the time I have to go out (about an hour from now). We have just had the most incredible, honking thunderstorm I have ever seen. The sky was getting uglier all afternoon, and it was finally as black as sin about an hour ago. It started to rain, like I have never seen rain before—even in Taiwan. Then, the thunder started. At first, there was little gap between the flash and the clap, and then there was none at all. For what seems the longest time, the storm was right overhead. For class tonight, I will be smart. That is to say, will wear thongs to walk in the rain, and then change into dry shoes and socks when I get to class. So much more comfortable than the other way around.

Lao-puo and I put a course together for Carol this morning—the lady who wants to emigrate to Canada. It will be more of a Social Studies course than an English class, and she will know more than a lot of Canadians by the time Lao-puo gets through with her. There are eleven two hour classes, and I am only teaching two of the sessions.

Thursday, August 19, 93

Cultural Deprivation, When You’re Hot You’re Hot When You’re Not You’re Not, a New Addition

I had an early start this morning, with my bank class at Ximen from 0800 until 0900. I then had a half an hour to get to Taipei City Hall area—plenty of time of the MRT. I worked from 0930 until 1130, then I did some editing work for half an hour. That was my day, until 1930. I went over to Lao-puo’s school for my one-on-one Fong-yee, an affable engineer about my own age. I don’t know how he has lived this long without even hearing of Stompin’ Tom Connors, but I put that right during our two hours. “Bud the Spud” is full of the most incredible colloquial English, suitable for an advanced level. “The cops have been looking for the son of a gun, who’s been ripping the tar off the 401”, takes a bit of explanation, but we got through it.

We have had no hot water for three days, the landlord is in Hong Kong, and Lao-puo is getting cranky. It takes a lot of patience to live here, because the slightest little thing is a hassle.

Dianne (Lao-puo’s friend who is moving to the mainland in a few weeks), came over with her friend Chrissy in the afternoon. Chrissy is interested in renting one of the bedrooms in our pad. I hope that she decides to do so. Chrissy just finished her MA at the local university, she wants to put a bit of polish on her already-impressive English, and she wants to learn French. I will set up a language exchange with her for this purpose. English/Chinese language exchanges do not work, because normally the English ability of the Chinese person is better than the Mandarin ability of the English person. This should work out famously.

Wednesday, August 18, 93

How many Beans Make Five, a New Student

Today was a quiet day. Even so, my net income in Taiwan is 50% higher than my net income in Canada, and our expenses are lower. It is easy to go broke here; one need only try to duplicate a western lifestyle to make money disappear. In many ways, we live better than at home. I can count on one hand the number of meals we have cooked at home, because restaurant meals are so good and so inexpensive. Government medical insurance is cheaper and more extensive here. Rent is about the same, but if you are willing to commute the prices drop like crazy. Taipei, like any big city, is very expensive for real estate to buy or rent, and many people commute from Keelung and Taoyuan. It’s rough for English teachers to do that, because our schedules are all over the map. We are, however, allowed to buy real estate if we are so inclined.

I have been assigned to a new student for a short course. In fact, I do not have all the details yet, except that he (or she) already speaks pretty good English and wants to emigrate to Canada. Lao-puo and I will be sharing the teaching

Tuesday, August 17, 93

Fractured English, the Speechless Barefoot Teacher, the Fire Hose, Another Busy Day

It’s nice that there are so many English signs in Taipei, but sometimes the English is murderous. A sign directing people to the parking lot of the weekly potted plant auction announced “pot plant auction car park”. I hope the Chinese put it right for people.

During my class with the nurses last night, I was teaching the idea of thinking of a synonym and antonym for every new word that they learn. This is a good way to increase vocabulary. I also asked them to think of as many different meanings and usages as possible. For an example, I asked for five different uses of the word “ring”. It started with the obvious “wedding ring” and “circle” and then someone (a very serious well-mannered woman my age said (poker-faced) “cock ring”. Taken aback, I stood there aghast. In the silence, she said “Sorry. I mean ‘clock ring’”. She was trying to say “alarm clock”!

Why was I barefoot, you might ask? It is a fifteen-minute walk from the Liuchangli MRT Station to the hospital. The sidewalks are generally covered against the sun and the rain, and God knows there’s plenty of both over here. Just from crossing streets, and the last block or two, I was wet to the skin. Not wanting to walk around in warm weather with wet feet for the rest of the evening—heat+dampness+skin=trouble--I went into a house wares shop to buy a pair of thongs. I literally wrung out my socks, and dumped the water out of my new walking shoes.

I started work again at 0700, getting ready for my day. I taught from 0930 until 1130, and then I went home “for a rest”. Yeah right. Lao-ban called me, and asked me to do some English assessments over the phone. After that, I whipped over to my nurses’ class (1730-1900), and finished the day at Lao-puo’s school with my new student from 1930 until 2130.

It is a very nice setup over here; because you can be as busy or as idle (within reason) as you want to be. The pay is so tempting, and the work is so enjoyable, that I usually end up working more than I had originally planned. I don’t know how I endured working in Canada all those years.

Monday, August 16, 93

Flat Out, Sing Along with Doug, Phones

Today is the busiest day I have ever had over here. I had a new class starting at 0800 for one hour on Mondays and Thursdays. I was up at 0530, writing up my assessments from Friday before I could even leave for work. It takes 45 minutes by MRT to get from our home in Wang Fang Sheh Chiu to the class at Ximen.

I like Ximen and Zhongshan because I know the English (West Gate and Central Mountain respectively) and the Chinese characters for each. I digress, as usual.

After that, I had to hustle out to Hongshulin--only one stop before Danshui—quite a distance—for some English assessments at an insurance company. Lao-ban then asked me to whistle back into town, for some more assessments near Taipei City Hall. I then had to dash—by taxi—to make it on time for my hotel class. There was no time for lunch, and it was 1500 by this time. After a two hour class, I had to boogie up to the hospital to be on time for the nurses. I was finally finished at 1900, and able to eat. Dinner, $NT55 (about $2), was pork dumplings, mushrooms, and fish and vegetables wrapped in cabbage.

This place is amazing! While I was waiting for my long-overdue dinner to arrive, I was listening to the radio in the little restaurant. All of a sudden, “My Grandfather’s Clock” came on. We have been feeling a bit homesick lately, so I started to sing along with the lyrics. Chinese people are very patient and kind, as a rule, or at least they don’t like public confrontations. For this reason, it is possible to get away with a lot more eccentricity than at home. Perhaps this is why I am so happy living over here.

Just as I was falling asleep, about 2100, the phone rang with a wrong number. It is hard to remember that Chinese people are not being rude when they just hang up after a wrong number—it’s just that they are startled by the sudden necessity to speak English. Many people, in a language not their own, have a real discomfort using a phone.

Sunday, August 15, 93

“My” Neihu Lake, Danshui, Thumping Heat, Another Gourmet Feast, Bested at Humor

I had my class with Schnell Lao-ban’s family this morning. In the meantime, Lao-puo’s student had cancelled. While I "slaved away" (shooting the breeze for an hour with an intelligent and articulate woman who already speaks good English and then hanging out with a neat little kid for an hour) Lao-puo went for a walk around the lake. The heat of the day was not wickedness yet, and it’s shaded in the bamboo groves.

We took the train out to Danshui—still magic despite the heat and the crowds, then came home for a rest.

We then met up with Gary and Linda for Peking Duck (or Beijing Duck or whatever the current phonics is—whoever heard of a Beijing Tom? anyway). It starts off with an appetizer of little guppy-sized dried salted fish and hot peppers. It tastes a lot better than it looks or sounds. This is a feast fit for a king! They present the whole duck, then serve the skin with green onions and some kind of Chinese tortillas and sauce. Next came the meat, the most incredible melt-in-your-mouth poultry I have ever had. To finish off, we had a wonderful soup made from the bones.

We really enjoy Gary’s company. He is on his way to Cambodia next week, but Linda did not want to go because of the heat and the dust. Naturally, Gary and I start cracking wise about land mines. I trotted out my usual—it costs an arm and a leg to go to Cambodia—but Gary bested me with “Many Cambodians have blue eyes. One blew this way, the other blew that way”. It is an English thing, to laugh at upsetting things for a sense of control over the horror of it. Chinese people don’t do that. Linda understood our English, but had no idea why we thought the jokes were funny. Lao-puo just tried to ignore us.

Saturday, August 14, 93

A Tropical Rainstorm, the Chop Shop, the Bo Bo Cha Cha, a Pleasant Encounter

I had another busy day, and I’m tired now. First thing this morning was three hours with the Kunyang boys. I went out in the afternoon for an errand, foolishly forgetting an umbrella yet again. I was caught in one of the heavy tropical rains that I enjoy so much, complete with thunder for the sound effects. The rain here is warm in summer, and the water in the puddles is warm too. I guess I may have stayed slightly immature my whole life, as I love to walk in the puddles, and stamp and splash like a little kid.

Lao-puo, who relies of quality of jokes rather than quantity to be funny, reminded me this morning to go to the “chop shop”. My errand was to collect the name chop from last week. The carver is an artist, who designed a beautiful Chinese name for me. The chop is polished stone, and I’m pleased with the job the fellow did.

We met Dianne for supper in Muzha, at a place with the remarkable name of the Bo Bo Cha Cha restaurant. We had had a smashing dinner of boneless curried chicken, cabbage and rice, and seaweed strips. It came with bottomless cups of Chinese tea, and soup made from bamboo shoots and the chicken bones. I am a hearty eater, but I could not finish all of mine. It only cost $NT 70--$2.70 in Canadian money. We bumped into Alan and Jean and family, and had a lovely walk through the university.

Friday, August 13, 93

Assessments, Nurses, and Barley Sandwiches

It’s Saturday morning already, and I’m getting behind with my daily posts again. I spent early yesterday afternoon doing language ability assessments at the insurance company, the late afternoon doing a nurses’ class, and the evening in the Brass Monkey at the Canadian Society gathering. It’s fun to do the assessments, but there is quite a bit of paper to do afterwards.

The nurses are a strange group to teach, because they know a lot of medical terminology in English but their English level is quite low in every other respect. Yesterday, they learned that “biopsy” is live tissue sample, “autopsy” is a post-mortem examination, and “notopsy” is when your bikini falls off. It is very gratifying for a self-styled comedian to teach English: the students laugh at the most ridiculous jokes because of the triumph of getting it, as opposed to laughing because of the humour (if any) in the wisecrack.

The Brass Monkey was fun as usual, but I must have been out in the sun too long as I have a headache this morning.

Thursday, August 12, 93

The Unfairness of Life, Extremes, a New Gig

There was heavy wind and rain in Keelung because of the typhoon, and people living there were allowed to stay home from work. One of my students was complaining because she lives in Shijr, right beside Keelung, and she had to come to work.

I must be getting used to the heat. The temperature dropped to the high twenties yesterday, and I felt cold and bought a t-shirt to wear under my shirt. It is very easy to catch cold in the summer. People sweat in the heat, or get damp in a summer rain, and get chilled on the train or in a store that has the air conditioner going. I wondered why Chinese people often wear a sweater, or even a jacket, in the summer. The forecast for tomorrow is cloudy with showers, and a temperature range of 28-33.

I finished the financial writing course at the shipping company last night, and I have a new gig over at Ximen to replace the hours. The class is just an hour, twice a week, but it is very early in the morning. I work from 8 until 9, and that means rush hour crowds that I have so far this year been able to miss. Lotus Lao-ban also asked me to do a class of 20, but it conflicts with one of my present assignments.

Wednesday, August 11, 93

The Big Blow, The Best Feast Either Side of the Ocean, Celluloid Wrinkles, News Here and There

The typhoon, only medium strength in the first place, missed us again. It did cause damage nonetheless—I’m out $120 NT for an umbrella. When I got off the #306 bus, a sudden gust of wind blew it inside out—springing the ribs like a Bruce Lee drop kick. It rained like hell (off and on) all day, by late morning there was no wind to speak of.

After class Jang Lao-ban took Jean and me for lunch, and the old diet took a drubbing. We had vegetable dip, bread, boneless code fillet, lobster, steak with mushrooms and bacon, bean sprouts, espresso, and black forest cake. I was not hungry for the rest of the day.

My movie shoot has been postponed. It was too rough to work it around my schedule, and they were shooting anyway. Jay assures me that there will be other parts for me as well. It’s just a bit part but hell, you gotta start someplace.

The big news today is that four apartment buildings in Kaohsiung collapsed due to soil instability brought on by the construction of the new subway. Several Canadian stories made the news yesterday. The resignation of Dar Hetherington (the Lethbridge councilor convicted of mischief for inventing a stalker) made the news, as did the construction of the giant Buddha in Richmond. For some reason, the paper described Richmond as “a nondescript Vancouver suburb”.

Tuesday, August 10, 93

The Edge of the Storm, They’re Gonna Put Me in the Movies, My Heaviest Day, Chinese Justice

Another typhoon is headed for the East China Sea, and should just miss us on its the way to pound the mainlanders. It has been raining steadily all night, but it has not been a pounding pre-typhoon downpour.

My landlord phoned last night, to say that he is trying to put together my “shoot” for this morning. Of all the rotten timing—Wednesday is my worst day. I must report for “makeup” if you please, at 8:30—assuming he can tie the crew around my schedule for today. I sure hope the war-paint washes off easily—I sure as hell don’t want to walk around all day looking like a gigolo. This is no James Bond part--I will not be using high-tech gadgets to slaughter Her Majesty’s enemies. This is not a Sylvester Stalone part either--I will not be staring down a sadistic giant and then making hamburger out of the guy to the cheers of my nation’s enemies. (Have you ever wondered why Rocky Balboa sustains multiple lacerations and contusions, yet never has a tooth knocked out or suffers a similar cosmetically-damaging injury?). It seems that I will be a maitre-d in the sort of restaurant to which I cannot afford to take Lao-puo, and my lines are likely to be restricted to “right this way, sir”. It’s a start. We will all be saying “would you like fries with that, sir?” soon enough—if they claw back our OAS and take away the indexing on our pensions.

After that I have my speech-delivery class from 10:30 until 12, my hotel class from 3:00 until 5:00, my hospital class from 5:30 until 7:00, and my IT company from 8:00 until 10:00.

There was an interesting article in the paper this morning about capital punishment. ROC is talking about abolishing it. They shoot condemned fellows here—there are no Newgate Hornpipes. The warden puts money in the chains of the condemned man, and it is good luck for the others on death row to get the money. Just what they will spend it on is beyond me. The warden also gives the executioner a small amount of money (100 NT dollars) and the executioner will have bad luck unless he spends the money before he goes home. The ghost of the condemned man will haunt the executioner if he looks him in the eye before the execution. The last meal generally includes strong liquor, so the condemned guy is as drunk as a skunk for the event, and has the option to be doped up on top of the booze. At least they don’t fool around with years on Death Row (as in America) which I have always considered to be more cruel than the actual execution.

Monday, August 09,93

More Stuff to Ship Home Eventually, Don’t Give the Managers any Ideas

Dianne is moving to the mainland next month. She has a great job teaching at a university, with housing, meals, and a driver provided. We bought her little aquarium from her, as well as a heater for the winter. It gets downright chilly when the outside temperature is ten Celsius, and there is no central heat in homes with tile floors. At least we have a bathtub this year—even if it is just a little Japanese job that you can’t even lie in—to get warm. Maybe because of the climate at home, I spend half the year complaining about the heat and the other half complaining about the cold. We will probably ship a bunch of this stuff home again this time. I cannot bring myself to do what most foreigners do—they either leave their stuff behind or they sell it for giveaway prices.

To my great amusement, one of my Monday night students referred to the “Employee Farewell Fund”, instead of the “Employee Welfare Fund”. We seem to have an Employee Farewell Fund at my Canadian employment, from which handsome bonuses are paid to senior managers who can lay people off and reduce costs. Using the fund for its real purpose sounds like a great idea. Every employee has a certain annual entitlement, that can be used for any kind of recreational, cultural, or educational activity of the employee’s choice. My student will see if there is sufficient interest in English classes—in which case I will have even more teaching hours per week in addition to the too-many I already have.

Sunday, August 08, 93

My New Pal, Memory Lane, Sound At Last, A Chinese Feast

TodToday was a good day. I had my first phonics class with “Gwin” (Schnell Lao-ban’s daughter). She is a bright and entertaining nine year-old, who delights in whipping me at cards. We played a quick game of “War” and “Fish”--to determine if she knows colours and numbers. She does, damn it. Good thing there was no money on it!

Lao-puo met me at Taipei Main Station. There is just one bus (#247) from my lesson to downtown, and the trip is quite scenic. We go past Dominican International School in Dazhi, the (ROC) Martyrs Shrine, and the Grand Hotel. I have happy memories of teaching at DIS, and I was treated to an interesting sight at the Martyrs Shrine. The ceremonial guards are required to stand motionless, in the God-awful heat, for two hours before being relieved. It seemed to me to make a lot of sense to permit the poor guys to lose their tunics during the summer. Instead, an off-duty colleague comes out and mists them down with a spray bottle.

We bought speakers for the computer. As I write this, I am listening to CFAX 1070 in Victoria. It is 9:00 p.m. Sunday here, and 6:00 a.m. Sunday across the pond.

We had dinner tonight at Ching Mei. What a feast! We had a taxi to and from, beer with supper, shrimp cakes, vegetables, beef noodles, and pork intestines in bamboo. The total cost was around 35 Canadian dollars.

Tomorrow is a busy day, but even so I do can sleep in and not start work until 3:00 p.m. Despite the slack hours, we manage to live on one income and send the other home.

Saturday, August 07, 93

Time for the Pledge, Father Doug

I had my usual routine Saturday. My Kunyang class was as enjoyable as usual, and the afternoon was uneventful. In fact, “uneventful” in this heat suits me just fine. We had a feast in Muzha when Lao-puo got off work, then we all went over to the traditional healer in Neihu.

He found things wrong with me that matched my medical history from western medicine—without even touching me—and some other things besides. He made reference to dead brain cells and a sluggish liver, so maybe some more hauling back on the booze wouldn’t do any harm. He knew I was from Canada, and nothing else about me—yet he knew that my Canadian job was a mess (Jean’s translation) and that it was affecting my health to have been so unhappy. I feel a lot better after my chi adjustment.

Were we still in our hippie days, we would have said that there were “good vibes” in the room. The healer did some past life stuff as well. He asserts that twice now I have been a Christian priest—once a bishop in seventeenth century Italy, and again during the Qing Dynasty. I looked it up:

The Qing Dynasty was the second time when the whole of China was ruled by foreigners, the Manchu. The first time was during the Yuan Dynasty when China was controlled by the Mongols. The Qing Dynasty lasted from 1644-1911 A.D. The reigns of the first three emperors of this dynasty were a time of peace and prosperity for China. These three rulers provided strong leadership for 133 years; they were the Kangxi Emperor who reigned from 1662-1722 A.D., the Yongzheng Emperor who reigned from 1722-1736 A.D. and the Qianglong Emperor who reigned from 1736-1796 A.D. In terms of government, the Qing Dynasty adopted the form of government used by the Ming, with only minor adjustments. For example the positions were all dual positions, one Manchu and one Chinese were in the same position, with the Manchu having more power.

Friday, August 06, 93

Stamp on the Dotted Line, Heal! Say What? A Rash Decision, the Geneva Convention, the Naked Haberdashers

It’s Friday night now, and I’m doing my web log now because tomorrow is such a busy day. I have the Kunyang boys from 9 until 12, then I will get a haircut, meet Lao-puo, and hustle back to Muzha to meet up with Alan and Jean and Dianne. Jean will help me select a new name chop, made from hand-carved stone. A name chop is a legal signature here, and the hand-carved ones are nearly impossible to copy.

After dinner Jean will take me to a traditional Chinese healer, for a chi adjustment. The treatment, including diagnosis, will take about two hours. I have decided not to wear a watch until the summer heat is over. I got another heat rash this afternoon, under the wristband of my watch! I did quite a bit of walking in the heat this afternoon, fortified with salted up Chinese fruit juice. It is sensible to eat what Chinese people eat, and drink what they drink. From now on, I will follow Chinese hospitality and put out a bottle of Johnny Walker with every dinner with friends.

I can discover many interesting things on foot that would have escaped my attention had I not been walking. The list of sights to be seen only by walking are “Foreplay Lounge Bar” (I’m not kidding), and a laundromat called “Uncle Sam Paradise Laundry”. Waiting for a dryer to finish, in 35-degree heat, is not my idea of paradise.

When the heat got really bad, I took refuge in an Internet café. The sign said “no smoking” but everyone in the place including lao-ban nyiang (the old baggage running the place) was putting out more air pollution than Weyerhauser. The air was blue, and I had to put on my Nanjing Dong Lu exhaust mask. The sound of all the violent video games was like a war zone. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went to the hospital and had a coffee in the air conditioning.

Lao-puo met me at Hoshanpi Station after class, and we grabbed a quick bite and set off to find a nearby clothing market. Restaurants get crowded over here, and two teenaged girls joined us. I had to be very careful asking them directions. “My yifu de” is “clothing seller” but “may yifu de” means “no clothes on”. Lao-puo saved the day by knowing the word for "market” and we found our way. It was a frost—nothing but a bunch of crap for teenagers, with blaring (c) rap music from half the stores.

Thursday, August 05, 93

Lottery Mania, Practical Spirituality, Truth or Consequences, the Field Trip

The national lottery is along the lines of our 6-49 at home—to win you must choose 6 correct numbers out of 49 and the prize keeps going up if nobody wins. The fact that nobody wins because of the long odds does not occur to the crowds lining up to buy tickets. The pot is now up to a billion NT dollars (around 38 million in Canadian money). This is astonishing for a country this size. My class at the shipping company persuaded me that I should buy a ticket. We talked about what we would do if we won, and one student said she would fly to France for lunch. It is a good platform for teaching conditionals (if I…, I would…).

I told the students that, among other things, I would share 10% of my prize with anyone in the company who had ever taken a course from me. I would also give 10% to the church, and another 10% to make up for the fact that I not been tithing all along. Whenever Chinese people are Christian they tend to be somewhat fundamentalist. Someone mentioned that she thought it was forbidden for Christians to gamble and wondered how I could buy a ticket. I advised her that there were many Christian churches, and I chose the one that lets me get away with the most misbehavior. Everyone laughed, little dreaming that it was actually true.

Many people have difficulty with numbers, so I asked the class to help me choose. I wanted to avoid numbers with an “eight” in them, because those are bound to be the most commonly chosen. To get them using numbers in English, I asked them to calculate the average age of the class. There was a big discussion, and they came up with “30”. Affecting a stern demeanor, I told the class that they had better all be telling the truth, because they would be the laughingstock of the company if we lost because of someone’s fib. Sure enough, there was another discussion and 30 became 32.

At the break, we went out to the little kiosk, stood in line, and the deed was done. To think that I get paid for this!

Wednesday, August 04, 93

It’s all In a Name, Happy Father’s Day (Again), Blue Sky and Freedom

Last year, one of my Chinese friends asked me to select an English name for her new daughter. People regularly ask this of me. I take the responsibility very seriously, and I put a lot of effort into picking a good name. I named one woman after my daughter because her Chinese name (Li-rong) means “beautiful face”, another student got “Connie” because she said that her friends would describe her as honest and kind so I chose Connie for the Spanish name Consuela, and still another got Colleen after a dear friend of ours. Colleen was not a good choice (as a name, not a friend, I mean) because it is very hard to Chinese people to say. Some English teachers, presumably in an effort to amuse themselves, stick the poor folks with appalling monikers like Bluto, Slitherina, and Superman. I digress, as usual. My friend has a loving, happy home, but I thought the name Amy (Aimee—a girl who is loved—is too pretentious). The Gods are kind, and my friend preferred Lao-puo’s suggestion and called the daughter Alyssa. We were talking about names in class yesterday, and one fellow said they used to make fun of an Amy in school, because her name sounds like what I thought he said was “Eggcup”. I had visions of a poor overweight girl being mocked by cruel boys, but that’s not what he meant. Amy sounds like the Chinese word for “A-cup”—just the ticket for a young girl sensitive about news additions to her sternum having to deal with leering louts. I should know—I used to be one.

Sunday is Father’s Day here. August 8 is chosen because it is the eighth day of the eighth month. The Chinese word for eight is “ba”, and the word for father is “baba”. As an eccentric foreigner (hell, I’m eccentric at home too) I call anyone older than me “mother” or “father”, and anyone younger “little sister” or “little brother”. Yesterday I spoke English only to Lao-puo and in class. It is a strange feeling to be the strong silent type.

It’s Thursday morning, I have no classes until 6:30 tonight, and I Lao-puo is off too. It is clear today, with no more than the usual chance of rain. Every time we forget our umbrellas, it is sure to rain. When we go home, I will rent a shipping container to handle all our unnecessarily purchased umbrellas, and make a fortune. I understand that there is a good market for Chinese umbrellas, used once. We will go somewhere today, and have a nice outing and meal. Life is good.

Tuesday, August 03, 93

Yen Ping, China Clippers, Something for Nothing, the Art Lover

I really enjoy my Kunyang boys on Saturday mornings. I forgot to mention that Joe was telling me about his school. It is named Yen Ping (a.k.a. Koxinga) after the Chinese admiral who forced the Dutch to leave Taiwan. Evidently Yen Ping was magnanimous in victory, allowing the Dutch to leave with their lives and belongings. The school song is stuff about duty, loyalty, and guidance from the example of the great admiral who got rid of the Dutch. I like to think that his descendants (now Canadian citizens) worked on the election to sling out Van der Zalm, thereby carrying on a fine old family tradition of compelling Dutch pests to clear off.

Life is good. I now have an acrylic molar instead of temporary plug, and my dentist will do a post and gold crown. Whatever Taiwan National Health doesn’t pay for will get picked up in part by my Blue Cross. Why can’t Canada have universal pharmaceutical and dental coverage like Taiwan? By law, medical insurance is mostly funded by employers here. Canadian employers start to blubber if the minimum wage goes up 25 cents an hour, and they would have temper tantrums if forced to pay for medicare, drugs, and teeth. People are rewarded by being employed here. If you work, you get. If you don’t work, you don’t get.

I had a nice bonus this morning. My first student, a lawyer, was not in the office for class this morning and did not phone in to cancel. I get paid anyway. My reports are all done, and I am ready for tomorrow. Wednesdays are my worst days, four classes from 1030 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. I will be tired, but many portraits of Dr. Sun Yat-sen will make their way into a Canadian bank at the end of the month. Thursday is nice and slack, and so are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Monday, August 02,93

Getting Behind in Work, The Land of Opportunity

My mother loves to tell a story about a butcher who backed into the mincing machine, and got a little behind in his work. I have not been able to do blog entries for a few days now, so I am doing three days at once. I usually keep a notebook with me, and I must put my notes into the computer right away. If I wait too long, I will not be able to read my own writing. I’ll be caught up today, my editing is done, and the only outstanding job left to do is to prepare for my movie career.

That's right. My landlord is a Chinese American fellow, who was involved in the film industry in Los Angeles. He has a thriving business doing commercials and movie production here in Taiwan. A while back, he said that I was a “character actor”, and that he would like to cast me. (I said “cast me” not “cast me out”). Anyway, he got in touch with me, to offer me a bit part in a movie. I’ll do it for a lark, and for income tax reasons. When I pay off the sharks at Revenue Canada next year, I will list my occupation as “media celebrity”. Jay (the landlord) also said that he will introduce to an agent who specializes in “western talent”.

Sunday, August 01, 93

A Day of Rest, More of My Old Turf

Like a fool, I am now working seven days a week, but my Sunday gig is not like a real job. To start with, I got up early to get a start on the editing of legal stuff I do for a client. It’s not as bad as it sounds to be on deck seven days a week, because some of my days are really slack.

I then get the train to Chungshan, at the far (Taipei) end of the Brown Line MRT, for my assignment at the home of the lao-ban of the shipping company. I teach his wife and daughter for an hour each. Chungshan is unique, because I can read the Chinese for it. It’s a short taxi jaunt over the river to Neihu. The cab dropped me beside a little lake, close to one of the schools where I taught during my year over here. I enjoyed a very nice five-minute walk (pleasant even in 35 degree heat). I teach one hour of phonics to a nice little girl, and another hour of polish to already-bilingual Lao-ban Nyang. I really like that area Taipei, with the wooded hills. It is quite similar to Wang Fung Shieh Chiu, where we live, but more upscale.

After class I met Lao-puo and Dianne for spring rolls and beer at the Vietnamese place in “the village”. Beer is very important in the heat, for keeping one’s electrolytes in balance.

Saturday, July 31, 93

My Saturday Student, A Most Unusual Dinner

I finish with the boys at noon on Saturdays, and then I go home for an hour or so. There are several convenient buses from our home over to Lao-puo’s school. Try getting a bus on a Saturday from Colwood to Oak Bay, from Kensington to Mount Pleasant, or from Etobicoke to North York, and good luck to you. Public transportation is really well set up here. My student is a bank officer, very bright and serious, and very religious. She does a lot of religious study in her spare time. To really get into Buddhism, it seems to be necessary to know quite a bit about it.

Lao-puo was finished an hour before me, but we still had to dash to be on time for our company dinner. Of all places, Sammi Lao-ban took us to The Woodstone”, a ninth floor pasta and pizza place. It is in a building, across from Sogo (an upscale Japanese department store with six floors of women’s fashions—a nightmare to keep a guy broke. Society is back-to-the-fifties in many ways here, and many families still take the view that husbands are the breadwinners). I digress, as usual. The entire building is restaurants, one on each floor. There are washrooms on every other floor only. Nobody would put up with the situation here. There is a huge lineup at the women’s, because someone is always “stalling”, so they spill out into the hall. They women stand waiting their turns, right in front of the men’s—where there is no door and the row of guys having a serious discussion with the porcelain is right in plain view. There are shared sinks and mirrors. Dinner was beautiful Italian sandwiches, a pasta dish, all the pizza you want, and all the dessert and free drinks thereafter. We semi-reclined on couches, in a most decadent manner. Oddly, there was no booze. A dry company dinner is a novelty for me. To make matters worse, I forgot to take my mickey—a little flask cleverly disguised as a cell phone

Friday, July 30, 93

My Old Turf, The Walking Tourist Attraction, Chinese People are Amazing, The Sergeant-Major

Sue’s boss called me yesterday afternoon, and asked me to sub a high school class this morning for four hours.  I grumbled to myself, but agreed to do it.  What a blast!  The first two hours was with a fairly high level class, at Jing Wen High School.  JWHS is on Pao Yi Lu in Muzha, next door but one to the Christian kindergarten where I taught for my last month here two years ago. 

Foreign teachers are provided with Chinese teaching assistants, and I sure lucked out with mine.  Evelyn has just finished her masters degree in linguistics.  She speaks Spanish with the beautiful accent of an educated person. Chrissy, another assistant, speaks French. 

Kids in Muzha are not accustomed to foreigners as much as elsewhere in Taipei.  One girl, maybe 16, approached me, stared at me for a moment, and then said, “You have blue eyes”.  I spoiled her awe by replying,  “Yes.  In fact, both of them are blue.”

The second class was quite another matter.  These were the vocational kids, and as rowdy a rabble as any Canadian teacher has ever had to tame.   I came to class five minutes early, to be greeted by a moan of despair, a Nazi salute, guffaws, and a few armpit farts for good measure.  In other words, it was nothing different from what we would like to do at work when our managers make speeches, but it can be a bit rough on the old self-esteem nonetheless.  There is nothing worse than trying to get a grip with stragglers coming in, so I left the room until the bell rang.  In general, behaviour is better than in Canadian schools, so it was just a matter of marking boundaries.  I made them all stand up, told them my last name and that my first name was mister but they could call me sir, told them to sit down, wrote a bunch of rules on the board, and referred vaguely but apparently convincingly to various punishments for offences—punishments to which death would be a preferred alternative.  Class was fine after that, and we ended up enjoying ourselves.  I even could squeeze in two lame jokes at the end of the class:
1.      Two students are in a final examination and the time is almost up.  One hands in his paper, but the other is still writing.  What nationality are they?  (Finnish, and Russian)
2.      The man who lost a finger in an industrial accident goes to the pub, holds up his hand, and says “Four beers, please”.

It ended up being fun.  Tonight, I have Lao-puo’s two girls for an hour and a half, then I’m done until tomorrow.

Thursday, July 29,93

A Hell of a Way to Spend Eternity, Keelung He, Some Things Never Change
 
I had a good day teaching yesterday (it’s Friday afternoon now, and there was no time to write up my web log until now).  I had my usual dumpling and beer picnic at Keelung He after work last night.  The picnic was shorter than usual though, because I took the time to watch a passion play.  I am not referring to the teenagers necking in the park, but to the performance in front of the nearby temple.  A little stage was rigged up, and the folding chairs were all taken up by the crowd.  It seems to me that it cannot be much fun to be a Chinese God—They seem to spend a lot of time stamping, strutting, and shouting.  Alternatively, maybe They just have a very direct way of answering prayers.

The river is always pleasant. There are wide grassy banks all the way up to the flood walls.  The bridges are all lit up, and loaded with cement trucks and buses.  The domestic flights coming and going from Songshan Airport can be seen against the black hills over in Neihu.

Speaking of Neihu, COSTCO is over there.  I must go there again, to make a free lunch from the samples.  The brands are all the same as COSTCO here, and the notable difference is that they can sell booze as well.  You can have a little nip with your free samples.

Wednesday, July 28, 93

Everything Makes Sense Eventually, Preferences, Summer Cooking
 
It’s Thursday morning now, still Wednesday night at home.  The cicada beetles are clicking, the air conditioner is humming, and life is good.  I have three good classes today—my one-on-one with a lawyer this morning, my last business English class at the bank this afternoon, and financial English at the shipping company tonight.  There is only half an hour between the bank and the shipping company, and it is tight to get there on time.  I walk two blocks from the bank to Taipei City Hall MRT Station, ride two blocks to Hoshanpi Station, and walk ten minutes down Yu Cheng Jie (over the train tracks), to Ba Der Lu.  There are four tracks to get over, and I often wondered why the rail employee rings the alarm and drops the barrier so long before the train actually arrives.  It is because there is such a horde of people that they must allow for stragglers.  I was recently caught halfway across when the alarm rang, and the fellow avoided dropping the barrier completely until I could get through.  The alarm is piercing but not loud like the bells we use at home for level crossings.  This is important because people live right by the tracks, and the trains run 24/7.

Yesterday (today)—Wednesday, was a busy, tiring, and uneventful day.  I find low-level students to be quite tiring, and I much prefer lawyers and bankers who already speak pretty good English and just want a bit of polish on their language. 

It was still 30 degrees at 10:45 when I got home.

Tuesday, July 27, 93

“Weather” We Like it or Not, I Do Enjoy Semi-Retirement, Don’t Try this at Home

There is some good news on the weather scene.  The most recent typhoon missed us by a wide margin, and is hitting Japan as we speak.  It is getting a little, but not much, cooler.  The heat is not abating much, and we have not had rain for a while.  The pollution is getting wicked in the city, but it is OK out our way.

Today was a quiet day, with just one class.  It was very relaxing to sleep in, get a coffee, read the on-line paper from home, do a few little tasks, and then have the day off until 5:30 p.m.  I have three (out of six) workdays every week that are similar in pace to today.  This is good preparation for my real retirement, which is not so many years in the future.

Lao-puo has been a bit homesick for a little while.  It happens, every now and again, because after all we are foreigners living in an unfamiliar environment.  We manage to make ourselves happy and comfortable—most of the time.  It seems that a short trip is a good way to chase away the blues, so I suggested a jaunt.  We will ask around tomorrow.  At home, people might go to upstate New York, or New England, or the Oregon coast, depending of course on where they live.  I proposed a short trip also, maybe a week, in a month or so.  The choices are good here.  We could go to one of the islands in the Formosa Strait—no need to even leave the country.  It is only about an hour and half to Manila from here, and I understand that there are beautiful resort places in the Philippines.  We could go back to Thailand, but we figured Phuket.  Okinawa, Guam, Hong Kong, and Japan are all fairly close by, and air fare does not seem to be as expensive in Asia as in North America.  Presumably, this is because of the much higher population.  It is difficult and expensive to even find a flight from Vancouver to Asian points at this time of year.  Passengers are jammed into 747’s like cigars in a box.  Air Canada, while moaning about going broke, cut its Vancouver/Taipei service from daily to alternate days.  I’m sure that EVA and China Airlines were suitably grateful, and the federal government will end up throwing another bailout at them.  Oh well, the taxpayers have lots of money.

Monday, July 26, 93

Time to Spare, Mario Andretti’s Chinese Grandfather

I discovered that it is possible to get from my hotel assignment to the hospital by MRT and bus, in half an hour, and still be on time.  I finish at 5:00 at the hotel, and the rush hour traffic is horrendous.  The Brown Line MRT sails majestically above the chaos from Nanjing Dong Lu Station to Da An Station—only two stops.  I can then get the number 226 or the number 22 bus almost to the door of the hospital.  Xinyi Lu is one way, but there is a dedicated bus lane in each direction all the way to Taipei 101.  Xinyi is one of the prettiest streets in Taipei (and there are several), because of the tall palm trees in the boulevards.  There was, unfortunately, no time to get my chicken sandwich and fruit juice from the street vendors, with whom I am now friendly.

It is a considerable distance from Taipei Medical University Hospital to Cheech and Chong (Qitang MRT Station near my IT company), so I take a taxi.  It is usually 220 NT dollars, but not this time!  The taxi driver was 70 years old if he was a day, and could not speak a word of English.  He immediately set off in the wrong direction.  In my fluent Mandarin, I could say “You are going the wrong way.  Turn around.  We need Keelung St, then Xin Hai.”  Yeah right.  My “fluent Mandarin” was “Bu bu bu.  Jilong Lu, Xin Hai Lu, dui bu dui?”.  He assured me that his route selection was the best, and he punctuated his comments with arm waving and the occasional word that I could understand.  The potential for cultural misunderstanding is huge, because many Chinese people sound angry even if they are not.  First we drove through a sparsely-populated wooded area (good luck finding anywhere sparsely populated in Taipei), then we drove almost past my door.  He drove at a good pace, asserting his right-of-way with frequent use of an air horn. Having exhausted my Chinese vocabulary, and being acutely aware of the utter futility of trying to explain anything in English to the guy, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.  My thoughts went from “oh well what’s a couple of hundred?” to “Kaohsiung is lovely in the evening”.  All of a sudden, we were there, and for less than the usual fare!  I saved 20 NT dollars—almost a Canadian dollar.  I even had enough time to spare that I could buy dinner- pork dumplings from the only street vendor who works after the offices are closed.  It is always a challenge to buy pork dumplings, because the Chinese word “pork dumpling” is very close to the word for “newspaper”.  It is a bit embarrassing to buy pork dumplings, because I cannot get my tongue around the difference in the pronunciation.  I can however, get my tongue around the pork dumplings themselves, of which I am particularly fond.

Sunday, July 25, 93

Company Day, Old Friends and New Food
 
Lao-puo has a student on Sunday mornings, who comes to our home.  Good private students are golden, because they often end up being friends.  Sandy is in our age bracket, and she is a nice lady.  After class, Lao-puo’s friend Teresa came to see our digs, and we went for lunch at the Korean place in the village.  On the spur of the moment, we then called our friend and former room-mate Gary, who lives nearby with his girlfriend/fiancée Linda.  They will be going back to Canada in September.  Gary has been here for three years, and he is now a teacher trainer at Lao-puo’s old school on Fuxing Nan Lu. After sitting around and catching up for a while, we bought dinner and took it back to their place. We had delicious noodles with peanut sauce,  spicy soup with pork tongue, vegetables and chicken legs.  Gary and Linda have the luxury of a ground level place.  Space is used very well in their small apartment—they have a tatami-style bedroom off the kitchen. The Japanese-style sliding doors save a lot of space.  We think that Wang Fang Community is the best-dept secret in Taipei.  Both our place, and theirs, would cost the moon in the city. 

Saturday, July 24, 93

Comfort in the Heat, An Almost-Cheap Meal, Day Parole
 
We finally have air conditioning now, just as I was getting used to life without it.  Even when it is 36 degrees out, it seems to be OK to open all the windows and run fans.  I find that the contrast, between sitting indoors in the cool and then venturing out, is hard to take.

I was finished at noon, and Lao-puo at 4:30.  We went with Dianne to the nice seafood place down by the English bookstore.  It’s the greatest place.  You pick what you want from a display at the sidewalk, and some of it is still flopping and wiggling.  Crab, bamboo shoots, and greens would have been an economical meal (even with the beer), had Lao-puo and Dianne not spotted a store flogging silk pajamas.  It is a mystery to me.  At home, we never seem to have a dime, yet here (with a similar income), we have money coming out of our stockings.

There is a hospital nearby, named after George MacKay the Danshui Dentist—the missionary who used to pull out rotten teeth and then preach the Gospel to people who could now listen without being diverted by a toothache.  For some reason everyone liked the old duffer, but Bible-thumping old blowhards never were my type.  Perhaps it is because I have a tendency to be one myself.  We saw the cutest little boy, a patient in the hospital, getting out for a walk with his mum.  He was standing on the IV pole to which he was attached, and his mother was pushing him along.

Friday, July 23, 93

Jesus is my Quarterback, Achy-Breaky Heart, Parking Enforcement

After lunch, Lao-puo asked me to accompany her to “Cave’s”, an English –language bookstore.  In other words, she needed a pack-mule for all the grammar textbooks she had to buy for one of her private classes.  While she was looking around in the bookstore, I ambled next door to the Christian bookstore for a butchers.  There was all the usual stuff, wall plaques with Bible quotes in Chinese, little rewards for Sunday School kids, and so on.  One item that caught my eye was an elaborate photograph frame, behind little figures of Jesus playing football with a kid.  Short of actual preachers, I probably know as much about the Bible as most people, but blast me if I remember any reference to our Saviour playing football.  Perhaps it is a Pentacostal notion, or something that the Adventists cooked up.  I wonder, would you go to Hell if you tackled Him? Good luck, from the look of the flapping robe and the full-gait sandaled feet, He’d be tough to catch.

Following my nurses’ class, and after a Vietnamese dinner (spring rolls and beer), we ambled on down to Xing Long Park.  I liked it better when it was spelled Hsing Lung because I could call it “Hissing Lung”Park, but I digress as usual.  The best thing about a warm climate is the vibrant outdoor life.  People were rollerblading and playing badminton, kids were tearing around on bikes and trikes, old gaffers were smoking and gossiping and sneaking kaoling during their mah jong games, and a kid and his little sister were bathing their dog in the koi pond.  There was what appeared to a church youth group, with one leader strumming a guitar and the other pointing to the words of a song as the kids all sang.  Last but not least, we were astonished to come upon the strains of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles Cannot Mend this Heart of Mine”, and a group of 20 or 30 folks our age having line dancing lessons.

It’s a twenty minute walk or so back to our digs from Hissing Lung, so we took the bus.  They are very frequent, and air-conditioned.  The a/c is a major consideration because today was a high of 36 again, and Taipei is the hottest place on the whole island.  There was a big line-painting job going on at the corner of Xing Long Lu and Wang Fang Lu.  A whole line of parked cars had to be moved.  Presumably, signs had been put up to alert the drivers.  It’s not that people are scofflaws, it’s just that there is nowhere to park.  I guess there was no time to get wreckers to tow everyone away.  Instead, without a word of a lie, they just used a big forklift to cruise the cars out of the way!  It was a sight to behold, a fork lift going down the line of cars, plunking each one in turn on the sidewalk so the curb could be painted.  I can just imagine how everyone would scream bloody murder in Canada, if the city moved cars with a forklift.

 

Thursday, July 22, 93

Thursday Night Picnic, an Almost-Day-Off

It is now part of my routine to have a picnic after my last class on Thursday night.  I finish at the shipping company at 830, and then I buy an inexpensive meal and some beer in the night market.  Keelung River, with its lovely riverbank park, is right beside the market.  It is very pleasant to sit on the grass, watch the river go by, and to look at the city lights.  I do my best thinking at that time of the week.  Keelung He flows into the Danshui, and then into Formosa Strait.  It occurred to me last night that my cousin, working over on the mainland, is less than 200 km from here.

I will be starting with Lao-puo’s two girls on Friday mornings, but Rena has a piano lesson so we postponed for a week.  It is a dream assignment.  My instructions are to hang out with two neat kids and speak English for an hour and a half.  Done deal.  There is a lovely big park near their home, complete with a big pond or little lake.  I think I might teach them my favourite poem “Sam”.  I expect that they will enjoy a poem about a mermaid, and their English is up to the task.

When Sam goes back in memory,
It is to where the sea
Breaks on the shingle, emerald-green,
In white foam, endlessly;
He says--with small brown eyes on mine-
"I used to keep awake,
And lean from my window in the moon,
Watching those billows break.
And half a million tiny hands,
And eyes, like sparks of frost,
Would dance and come tumbling into the moon,
On every breaker tossed.
And all across from star to star,
I've seen the watery sea,
With not a single ship in sight,
Just ocean there, and me;
And heard my father snore.
And once,
As sure as I'm alive,
Out of those wallowing, moon-flecked waves
I saw a mermaid dive;
Head and shoulders above the wave,
Plain as I now see you,
Combing her hair, now back, now front,
Her two eyes peeping through;
Calling me, (Sam!--quietlike--(Sam! . .
But me . . . I never went,
Making believe I kind of thought
'Twas some one else she meant ...
Wonderful lovely there she sat,
Singing the night away,
All in the solitudinous sea
Of that there lonely bay. "
“P'raps," and he'd smooth his hairless mouth,
"P'raps, if 'twere now, my son,
P'raps, if I heard a voice say, 'Sam!'...
Morning would find me gone." 
Walter De la Mare

I doubt if there are any mermaids in Keelung He—they seldom venture so far upstream, but I kept my eyes peeled nevertheless.

Because there will be no class with the girls tomorrow (this morning), I have the day off until 5:30.  Then I will teach the nurses for an hour and a half, and call it a day.  After class it is a very pleasant fifteen minute walk to Liuzhangli MRT Station, then it is only four stops home from there.

Wednesday, July 23,93
 
I was Glad When Today was Over, Party Animal, Street Meals
 
Wednesday has been, up until now, a rough day for me.  I have classes from 11-1 (bank), 3-5 (hotel), 530-7 (hospital), and 8-10 (IT).  The dashing from the hotel to the hospital, and from the hospital to the IT place, is very tiring.  From now on, I will only have three classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.  It will be nice to relax a bit.  I only have two classes tomorrow (Thursday).
 
I start every class with the nurses by having a party.  We mingle, and we practice “small talk”.  They are becoming less shy with me and more self-confident every class, and I feel good about that.  The humour does not escape me: I get paid to party with nurses!
 As a creature of habit, I fall into routine all the time.  There are many street vendors of food outside the hospital, and I can get a good (and quick) dinner very cheaply.  One vendor is selling boneless skinless barbecued chicken in a toasted bun with lettuce and cucumber, for 40 NT dollars ($1.50), and right beside her a lady is flogging a salted fruit drink for 30 NT.  It is wise to have what Chinese people have.  Any foreigner who sticks to western food here ends up with more chins than a Chinese phone book, and pushing his stomach in a wheelbarrow.

Tuesday, July 20, 93

A New Nickname, Dinner Out, Summer Heat Blues
 
I am advised that my two classes of nurses have a nickname for me now.  They call me “Colonel”.   I flattered myself that the name arose from my firm-but-fair classroom discipline, or my air of quiet authority.  No such luck.  It is because my appearance reminds them of Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Chicken guy.
 
July 31 is a company dinner at a local restaurant.  It promises to be a good time, because I have not even met all my colleagues.  Most of us teach away from the office, and I rarely go in except to the odd bit of photocopying or to tip in my attendance records.

The heat is beginning to grind Lao-puo a lot.  This is, after all, her fourth summer here.  She avoids salt and sugar as much as she can, and I believe that following what is otherwise a good health rule has contributed to her reaction to the heat.

Monday, July 19, 93
 
Beau Brummel I Ain’t, Chinese Flex Time
 
Today was a very busy day, and I was pleased when my work was finally over.  Having four classes in one day (plus preparation and travel time) makes for a very exhausting time—not to mention being out in the heat and humidity all day.  Wednesday will be my last day of four classes.   However, something interesting happens every day.  While I was walking the two blocks from the Nanjing Dong Lu MRT Station to the hotel, I passed a vendor flogging neckties.  While I was examining the wares, the guy came over and said they were 3 for 500 NT Dollars.  He then flicked the tie I was wearing, sniffed with contempt, and said “yi bai” (100). I wish I knew how to say in Mandarin “What am I, a one-man fashion show?”
 
The hotel employees get eight days off per month, that can be scheduled more or less as they wish.  It is possible, for example, to work seven days a week all month, then take the last four days of the month off along with the first four days of the next month for eight days off in a row.  Nevertheless, the schedule seems a bit harsh because it is not even two days off per week.
 We will have at least six more weeks of this heat, but at least the landlord is sending a guy over to fix the air-conditioner tonight.

Sunday, July 18, 93
 
Sunday Walk, Xin Beitou, Political Incorrectness Run Amok
 
This morning we got up early, and decided to go for a walk before the sun got too hot.  We walked ten minutes along Wang Fang Lu, then another ten minutes along the riverbank at Ching Mei He, then breakfast in a little place in Muzha village. 
 
Dianne came over with her friend Chrissy, and we all went to the hot springs at Xin Beitou.  It is a beautiful spot that you can reach by MRT.  The water bubbles up boiling and sulphurous in a most luciferian manner, but it cools to a lovely warm as it mixes with ordinary creek water joining the stream.  It was very pleasant to sit under a canopy of tropical trees, with out feet in warm water in an outdoor creek. 
 
There is a very interesting aboriginal museum at Xin Beitou, which reminds me of a most appalling comment made by the vice-president of Taiwan last week.  She (Annette Lu), was commenting on the typhoon damage in central Taiwan, and the cost of rebuilding roads and other infrastructure for the isolated aboriginal communities in the hills.  She actually said that the government could save a lot of money if they simply relocated the aboriginal folk—perhaps to Central America!  There are a few small Central American countries that recognize Taiwan as a nation, and figures that their allies will take the people.  Sorry, wrong century.

Saturday, July 17, 93
 
Saturday is Getting Heavy Now, Have I reached the Party to Whom I am Speaking?
 
I have a three-hour class on Saturday morning, and a two-hour class in the afternoon.  Taipei is fairly compact and there is great public transportation, but it still takes a long time to get from one place to the other.  There is something psychological about the end of the week, and I am more tired after two classes on Saturday than I am after four classes on Monday and Wednesday.  The other factor, of course, is that my Monday and Wednesday evening clients pay in cash after each lesson, and there is nothing like a fat little hongbao to chase away drowsiness.  It’s nearly 11:00 p.m. by the time I get home n those nights.

 My new phone is great!  Cell phones are very inexpensive here—mine was only 3000 NT dollars (about $116 in “our” money).  The more expensive ones have a colour display, hands-free capability, and a built-in digital camera.  I doubt if my new phone will work in Canada, and it will be hard to do without a mobile phone after having become accustomed to having one over here.

Friday, July 16, 93
 
New Pics, Would You Like Ink on your Pasta Ma’am?  Wanna Buy a Cell Phone Cheap?
 
I put some new pictures in the Wan Li Jie Album, so you can just click on the link again to see them.
 
Lao-puo met me after class at the hospital tonight, because I had noticed that there seemed to be a many nice eateries in the vicinity.  We settled on a pasta place that serves her favourite (clams in cream sauce over pasta blackened with octopus ink).  Our two lots of pasta came to 200 NT dollars.
 My phone is toast.  It has been starting and restarting itself with the most annoying little beeps, forcing me to turn it off and check for messages every now and again.  We bought a new one in the village this evening, and I will pick it up tomorrow.

Thursday, July 15, 93
 
Dry Your Eyes, Dinner, Lawn Sprinklers?
 
My cell phone is working barely well enough to postpone its replacement, I’m so hot my toenails are melting, the sky is clouding up as black as sin, and I hear thunder in the distance.  I’m so tired of belting torrential rain that I should move somewhere drier.  Peterborough would do nicely.
 
I had a great dinner last night.  My class was over at 830, and it is only three blocks or so from Bao He Night Market.  I bought a nice dinner of pork dumplings with soy and hot peppers, and a beer.  I then walked one block to Keelung He, climbed the stairs over the flood wall, and had a nice evening picnic on the grass at the side of the river.  Sometimes we go for days at a time without stepping off pavement or concrete, and the riverbank is a nice place to go.  During the day there are turtles and egrets around, and the lights of the city are beautiful at night.

 At this time of year, wherever there are trees in Taiwan, there is a loud sound like a big lawn sprinkler.  It is from cicada beetles.  We never actually see them, but they are sure loud!

Wednesday, July 14, 93

No Rest for the Wicked, Location Location Location, Rolling in Style

Wednesday is my heaviest day. I have an e-mail writing course at the bank, followed by hospitality English at the hotel, then I have to get clear across town in half an hour to the hospital for the nurses’ class, then I must get to the IT company. I start at 11 a.m., and finish at 10 p.m.

I have taught English in many different places, but never in the back of a Chinese restaurant. The hotel usually puts us in a conference room for the class, but today all the rooms were in use so they gave us the private room in their snazzy Chinese restaurant. I was hoping that they would dish up, but no such luck. It turned out to be a great place for a class. Instead of asking people to answer questions, I drew an arrow on a piece of paper and spun the lazy susan. With judicious use of my thumb, I could make the arrow point to anyone I chose and thereby ensure that everyone talked.

For people living right in the city, the reasonable use of taxis is cheaper than running a car. This is even more true in Taipei, because the meter starts at 70 NT dollars, and 200 will take you anywhere in the city. Very few of the drivers speak English, and Chinese seems to be quite an unforgiving language. Unless you say the word almost perfectly, people can often not understand—or pretend they don’t. Drivers are generally quite skilled and aware over here—we have often said that if people drove here the way they drove at home, traffic wouldn’t move. Even when pedestrians have the green “walk” signal, cars and scooters will still cross (or drive in) the crosswalk. People are more aware, and more responsible for their own safety here. I remember (having gone home last time after a year away) being infuriated by the sight of four lanes of cars stopped for a gaggle of sauntering teens. There are sometimes two left-turn lanes, but everyone pulls into the intersection and there will six cars beside one another, two or three deep, waiting for light to change and for the amber-punters to race through.

Tuesday, July 13, 93

The Flip Side of Painless Parker, Dagnabbed Newfangled Contraptions

Today started out as an easy day, but then all Hell broke loose in the afternoon. First my phone quit working, and then my tooth fell apart. “Painless Parker” (the dentist on Hsinyi Lu that I went to after a filling fell out) had warned me that I would need a crown as the tooth was fractured. Well, I won’t have Taiwan National Health coverage for another two weeks or so, but I had to go to a dentist anyway. I hit paydirt! The dentist is on Zhongxiao, only two blocks from the MRT station. There is modern up-to-date equipment and three young dentists going flat out. I gulped when the dentist said that he wanted a 1000 NT dollar deposit, be he assured me that TNH would cover it and I could be reimbursed. He has flat screen computer monitors at each chair, and I thought the idea was just to entertain the patients. Better yet! He stuck a computer probe in my mouth, and invited me to look at my teeth on the screen. Since TNH covers 90% of dental work—instead of ours that is 100% of basic and 50% or something of whatever else is required—I might get a lot of dental work done before I go home in a year. Maybe he will use stainless steel for the crowns, and I can dress up for Halloween as the metal-mouth giant on James Bond.

Cell phones and computers have in common that they provide a lot of convenience—just enough to make you depend on them before they start giving grief. My phone mysteriously shuts itself off in mid-conversation, suddenly demands my PIN number in mid-dial, and then tells me it is the wrong PIN. I cannot put up with this, and that probably means a new phone. They are relatively inexpensive (starting at around 4000 NT dollars) and the calls are cheap. My private students and friends call me fairly frequently. You can just take a chip out of the old phone, insert it into the new, and keep the same phone number. The pay-as-you-go system is the best. You buy a card at 7-11 for 300 or 500 or 1000 NT dollars, scratch it like a lottery ticket, then call a toll free number and input the exposed number when prompted. I have over a thousand left on my old phone, and I can just transfer the balance on to the new call. Needless to say, lao-puo bought the blasted thing 12 months and two weeks ago—with a one year guarantee.

Monday, July 12, 93

Extraordinary Sculptures, Employee Fitness, Triumph, Very Funny You East End of a Westbound Horse

Tonight I was scheduled to have my lesson with the big guy at the IT company, and his wife Marian. I took the subway out to Qizhang Station (“qi” means “seven” and is pronounced “chee” ‘[sort of] but I have no idea what zhang (pronounced “chong”) means. I just call the place “Cheech and Chong”. Marian phoned and met me at Cheech and Chong. We walked along the street to an elementary school that had the most wonderful sculptures in front—two life-size bronze water buffalo that appeared to be grazing in the flower bed.

Marian was most apologetic because her husband (I forget his Chinese name and he doesn’t have an English name) was called away to a meeting at the last minute and we had to postpone the class. (This is the downside of lucrative private clients). The company was having an employee fitness test at the track in the school ground. Everyone had to run 1.6 km in eight minutes. Each “heat” (aptly named—to my way of thinking it is foolishness to run in 30 degree heat) wore a different coloured vest, and there was much cheering the gazelles and encouraging the clydesdales half a lap behind.

With a cancelled class, I could get rid of the recycling when I got home. One of the few neighbours who speaks English had told me what nights certain things get taken away, and tonight is paper and cardboard night. What a satisfaction to stand in line, having figured out the system, and boost my rubbish into the truck along with all the others! I did not take the same pleasure from heaving my garbage onto the other truck—in this heat it smells fit to wake the dead.

I guess the standards in our building went down when we moved in, because many people seem to have maids (and cars and air-conditioning that works blast that landlord). I have befriended a domestic worker named Beatrice, who is Filipina and speaks English. To his own (but not to my) amusement, her boss calls her “Busy”. Considering their long hours, and low pay, it sounds like he is making fun of her. I am offended by the way that some Chinese people treat folks from other Asian countries. I hope that Beatrice will soon call me Doug instead of “sir”. The amazing thing about work is that those who have the most to complain about seem to do the least squawking.

Sunday, July 11, 93

The Photography Safari, Nobody Lynched the Preacher, A Feast Against my Will

This morning Dianne came over, and the three of us went to the village for breakfast at our favourite little place. We did our usual shopping in the market (we can actually do it in Chinese now), and then had a beautiful lunch at home with the fruit and avocado that we bought. Believe me, in this heat a light lunch is all anyone would want. I then braved the heat again, and went out for about an hour, snapping various points of interest in the surrounding neighbourhood. It’s quite photogenic around here, but I need a bit of polish on my composition skills. There is a splendid shot of my finger in one picture, and my snap of the kitchen would have been enhanced if I had remembered to take my boxers off the clothesline (visible through the window in the kitchen door) before taking the picture. They look like a luffing spinnaker in the background of an otherwise decent picture.

I forgot something from a few Sundays ago. There was some kind of Bible Revival thing on the school grounds (Wang Fang Elementary is across the park and up the hill from us). A minority of Chinese people are Christians, but those who are seem to be very enthusiastic about their faith. Anyway, some young foreigner got on the microphone, and praised God for letting him be in “Chinese Taipei”. This is the name to which the mainlanders insist Taiwan be referred in international events. There is no name invented that could have done a better job of offending everyone—the Taiwan sovereignty people as well as the “One China” folks who cannot abide any suggestion of communist control over Taiwan. It was lucky for the preacher that the crowd “rendered unto Caesar” and was too polite, or too forgiving, to state a frank opinion of the blunder. The parson should get his arson the plane.

Suzanne dragged me out for supper tonight, to a place to Hell and gone the other side of Taipei Main Station. I’m glad she did! We had an appetizer of tofu with dried sardines and hot peppers, then shelled crab with ginger and asparagus with fennel. All this, and a nice big bottle of Taiwan beer, only set us back 450 NT dollars. Life is good.

Saturday. July 10, 93

Mr. Tall Man and his Buddy Pressed into Service, Literacy Issue, More Saturday Work, The Rolling Meat Locker

When Lao-puo and I were walking down to the train yesterday, we noticed an elderly fellow. I guess he was what we used to call a “ragpicker”. He was riding a jury-rigged “pickup truck” made from an old bicycle and metal bits he must have picked up on his rounds. The poor old soul was the wrong side of seventy, pedaling an enormous load of old cardboard in the perishing heat. Perhaps as a comment on his circumstances, or perhaps as a statement about the ROC government’s niggardly old age pension scheme, or perhaps by coincidence, he had placed his work gloves on the rear stakes of his rig, with the middle finger inserted over the tip of each. They swayed back and forth as he pedaled, much to my delight and amusement. Lao-puo could only say “Trust you to notice that”, because she was laughing too.

Everything seems to go wrong at once. During the stinking heat last week, the air conditioner in the living room packed it in. Or so we thought. The landlord sent a fellow over to look at, and it seems that we had just pushed the wrong buttons and set it to “fan only” instead of “cool”. It’s a humbling experience, not being able to read. Now it’s on the blink again. The temperature is down to a frigid low thirties range, so we just open the windows and run fans. It saves a lot on the electrical bill. It’s 29 degrees in the living room, yet reasonably comfortable.

I stopped in the “village” for lunch, on my way home from the Kunyang boys. I used to teach them Tuesday night and Saturday morning, but I have been assigned another class on Tuesdays that conflicts with the time. I will now have them for three hours instead of two on Saturdays, and then every other Saturday afternoon I have a one-on-class at Lao-puo’s place.

After a lovely lunch of beef and scallions, with soup made from chicken stock, bamboo, and green onions, I took the bus home. I thought the driver had the temperature set far too low, as I actually felt chilled, until I noticed the air conditioning was set at 23 degrees. October and November are the nicest months of the year here.

Friday, July 09, 93

Taipei Lung, A Thousand Dollars Worth of Booze

I got over my terrible cold in about three days, but I have had a chronic cough ever since. Many foreigners, during their first few months here, develop a mild chronic bronchitis (from the heat, humidity, and pollution) called Taipei Lung. It actually did in one of Lao-puo’s friends, whose doctor suggested she leave the country because of it.

There was another Canadian Society get-together at the Brass Monkey Friday night. The name of the pub is quite ironic because last week the temperature hit 36.4 degrees—less than two degrees away from the all-time high. I digress. Some of the people were actually Canadian. Many of the events are just a chance for English-speaking foreigners to hang out, and I understand that people from other countries attend the British, Australian, and South African events. We don’t like to go to the South African gatherings, because there is too much boerish behaviour. When I was a little boy I had a certain grudging admiration for Boers, because I thought they were guys who were really good at burping. Many Chinese people attend the gatherings also, as a chance to speak English. Suzanne was chatting with one the owners of the company where I work—she had done some casual work for “us” before going to her present company. We took a thousand (NT) dollars with us—we both thought it would be plenty for an evening at the pub and a few drinks. However, beer was 200 a pint and Lao-puo’s’s wine (poured with an eye-dropper just about) was even more. I can therefore say that we drank a thousand dollars worth of booze in one night, and that Lao-puo only had two glasses of wine.

Thursday, July 08, 93

Divine Intervention, A Busy Wonderful Day, Systems Blues

Our resident ants are on borrowed time! I was delighted to see a little gecko admiring the buffet from our living room wall. Things are certainly different in a warm climate. Anyone in North America, ourselves included, would be aghast to find a lizard in the house. In Chinese spirituality, a little lizard is the Daughter of the Earth God.

Yesterday I had my one-on-one class with one of my most enjoyable students. She is the legal counsel for a large insurance company here, and her English is pretty good. One of the fringe benefits of teaching adults is hearing some good Chinese jokes. Yesterday it was the pregnant lady on the subway:

“A very pregnant woman gets on the crowded subway, and all the seats are occupied. She notices a gaggle of young louts, lounging about in the “priority seating (for elderly, disabled, and pregnant passengers). After enduring discomfort for a short time, she approaches one young fellow and says, ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see that I’m pregnant?’ The young fellow looks at her and replies, ‘Well, it’s not mine!’”

After that, I had my Business English conversation class at the bank, and the first session of a new e-mail writing class at “my” shipping company. This is a specialty course on writing financial stuff, mostly collection letters and that sort of thing. I taught the same group last year during my “holiday” here in April, and it was nice to see everyone again. There is a new tracking system, and nobody likes it. I expected the usual complaints about speed and user-friendliness (or lack of either). However, the big complaint is that the server is in Singapore and the program is in English. Some of the students are still quite limited.

Wednesday, July 07, 93

Fractured English Award, Handicapped Parking

Chinese people try their best to use English properly, and I’m quite tolerant of people’s mistakes. However, when English Schools make mistakes I take a different attitude. English teaching is a for-profit big business over here, and fees are expensive. I therefore think that a school, advertising its ability to improve one’s results of university admission tests, should have a better slogan than “Make Me High!” Furthermore, a company promising accurate translations should call itself something other than the “Shaw Institute of Translatology”.

Just when I thought I’d seen everything, this morning I noticed that there is parking for disabled people at the Wang Fang Community MRT Station. No big deal, except it’s for motorcycles. Some disabled people have sidewheels on their scooters, others cut the whole bike in half and install a floor and a ramp to accommodate a wheechair.

Tuesday, July 06, 93

Our First Jiggler for a While, Last Class in Taoyuan, Cooking (Mad Dogs and Englishmen), Chemical Warfare

With time to kill yesterday afternoon, I had a massage at the Taipei Rail Station, and a coffee afterwards. There was an earthquake, 5.8 on the Richter Scale, maybe 100 km from Taipei (9.8 km deep, under the ocean offshore from Ilan—East China Sea). It was only a 2 in Taipei City, just enough to rattle my coffee for a moment.

I am sorry that my e-mail writing class in Taoyuan is over, but I have another one starting in Taipei on Thursday nights. I will be working five evenings per week for the next three months, and quite a full day schedule as well. My kindergarten assignment in August will wear me out.

The forecast for today is 28-34 degrees, with enough of a probability of precipitation to make the humidity pretty rough. I almost wish that there were not so much air-conditioning indoors, because the contrast is too much. Having said that, the aircon in our living room has quit working. I prefer just to use fans anyway. We will go to the village for lunch and buy one or two fans for the place. The heat does not bother me. Yesterday, I walked from Taipei City Hall to Taipei Main Station—a distance of a few kilometers.

We could do with some spiders around here, because our ants are quite prolific. They are tiny little black ones, not stingers or anything like that. I put some traps around (quite possibly filled with poison that cannot be used at home), and if we pay attention to crumbs and spilled food we should be OK.

Monday, July 05, 93

Walking a Dog—Taiwanese style, Better Homes and Gardens We Ain’t, Key Phrases and the Welcome Wagon

Today is a quiet, at-home kind of day—for me anyway. Lao-puo is working tonight, and I have all my prepping done except for my class tomorrow night in Taoyuan. When Lao-puo and I were walking home from grocery-shopping at Wellcome, we noticed a family on a motor scooter coming down Wan Li Jie with a dog in furious pursuit. When they got to Wan Fang Lu (a busier street with more traffic) the rider stopped, the dog hopped on to the floor of the scooter, and they all set off together.
I will get some pictures of our new home posted soon, as soon as I get the rubbish out of the place. We have a tonne of cardboard to get rid of, but the recycling guy only takes cardboard on Saturdays, and we were away. It was a real bear of job to figure out recycling, because it’s all in Chinese and few of our neighbours speak English. I was lucky to find one and get the scoop. Furthermore, the truck comes at 8:30 p.m., and I’m usually not home at that time of night.
The lady downstairs welcomed me most warmly to the building a few days back. I manage to give the impression that I understand more Chinese than is actually the case. The conversation was something like:
“****************** san lo mah? (she must mean are we the new people on the third floor).
“Dui ah. Dao-ge wode tai-tai Suzanne. Women ingwen lao-shi.” After a look of bewilderment, I think she understood that yes we are the new people Doug and Suzanne, and we are English teachers.
“*****” (she must be saying “welcome” because she’s smiling)
“xie xie” (thanks) with a smile. If I were not so busy, I would love to take some proper lessons because I hate to sound like a moron.

Sunday, July 04, 93

Back to Reality, and the Aftermath of the Storm

There was no typhoon damage in Taipei, and not really any bad weather except honking rain. It was a different story in central and southern Taiwan. We have had to cancel our trip to Nantou County next weekend, because of the storm damage. Here is what “The Taipei Times” had to say about it:
Devastation Mounts: Eighteen deaths are blamed on the storm, which has caused the worst flooding in southern Taiwan in 25 years -- and more rain is to come… Continuous torrential rains brought by tropical storm Mindulle yesterday caused more devastating damage to the center and south of the country, raising the death toll to 18 with 10 others missing, officials said… The 0702 Flood Disaster Relief Center led by Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥) yesterday added seven Nantou County townships to the list of mudflow-prone areas… The Central Weather Bureau said rainfall amounted to 1,500mm over the past three days, including 694mm in Kaohsiung County and 433mm rain on Alishan yesterday.

Saturday, July 03, 93

Political Correctness Run Amok, A Screaming Deal, Every Step of the Way, Worth the Tolls and the Hike

Lao-puo was finished at around 4 p.m. on Saturday, but I had to work until 5:20. No worries—we still got to our hotel at Wulai in time for a relaxing dinner. Our room was very nice—sort of a Japanese style with wooden tubs for the hot springs water, a beautiful wooden floor in the sleeping area and polished marble in the bath area. I was amused by the toothpaste provided by the hotel. There used to be a brand called “Darkie” (as I have doubtless mentioned before), showing a black fellow smiling to show his shiny teeth. When it belatedly occurred to someone in marketing that the name is racist, they make the guy’s face half white and half black, and called it “Darlie”. Now, the toothpaste comes in a tube identical in every respect to the previous versions, but the symbol is a tooth instead of a face and the brand name is now “Whiteman”. Sometimes people should just quit when they are ahead. Not that I am an expert in the field, but even I know that toothpaste with supposed tooth-whitening ability ought not to be sold in a green and yellow tube.

There was more to the weekend than toothpaste, however. The hotel, new and beautifully appointed in a rustic aboriginal style, was good value. For about 7000 NT dollars, ($275) we got two nights in a luxurious room, two scrumptious dinners, and two bacon and egg breakfasts.

In the morning, we set off for the mountaintop park. We paid 50 NTD each to walk across the bridge (like paying a toll to a troll), another 50 NTD each to take the little train, then 240 NTD to take the cable car up the mountain.

The view was staggering, and the car took us right over a waterfall plunging into the valley. It looked like something out of Bali Hai, or “The Beach”. Despite the thumping humidity, we were greeted with still more stairs up to an amusement park nestled into the woods.

There were many quaint names for the attractions, such as “colliding cars”. These are bumper cars, with the amusing Chinese name of “bong bong che”. There is a lagoon with koi and rental boats above the waterfalls. There is also an “archiery” range, a paintball target range, a haunted house, swimming pools a “fresh beer garden”and nature walks for fern and wild iris. The place also has a nice hotel and conference center. All of this is nestled in the tropical forest, and one attraction cannot be seen from the other. We thought the post-typhoon rain was over, but the heavens opened in the afternoon and we had an incredible thunderstorm during the night.

Friday, July 02, 93

Insect Wars, Away for the Weekend

We don’t have a resident gecko, so we have a few ants in our apartment. They are tiny little things , and they swarm out of nowhere if any food is left out or spilled. I’ll go down to the general store and pick up a bunch of ant traps—they seem to do the trick. The other problem is mosquitoes, but we have that one whipped as well. We have a lamp that emits ultra-violet light to attract the little persishers, and then zaps them with a satisfying sparking sound.

We are going to Wulai after work today (Saturday), and we will not be back until Monday night. It could be a day or two before I do another blog entry.

Thursday, July 01, 93

The Devil Breeze, Green Card and National Health, Class Tonight.

This is Friday morning in Taiwan, still Thursday night at home. The newspaper had alarming reports yesterday, about the severity and the path of the typhoon. We got some pre-typhoon wind and rain yesterday. Beyond umbrellas getting blown inside out (I paid 120 NT dollars for the kind that will flip back into place), people getting splashed by cars hitting puddles, and skirts getting blown up, (it’s an ill wind…) there was no real harm done. Last night, the storm was still coming right at us, up the island but this morning it had weakened and slowed. We will still get wind and rain, but not until this afternoon or evening.

This morning I must go to the Taipei Police Headquarters to pick up my Alien Resident Certificate (green card), and take it to the office so that Kelly can apply for Taiwan National Health for me. Jean will take me to a traditional Chinese doctor as soon as I’m carded up.

I enjoy my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night class. It is two hours of shooting the breeze with interesting people, and a nice hongbao at the end of my time.

Wednesday, June 30, 93

The Devil Wind, Killer Schedule, Dismal Weather

There is another typhoon warning. So far this year none of the warnings have amounted to anything—unless you're a mariner. My company will phone me in the morning if any of my classes will be cancelled.

Today will be a mere four hours of work—two at the hotel and two at the IT place. Next week will start getting bad—I will have four classes on Mondays from now on.

June has been unseasonably hot. The forecast is for a high of 36, with thunderstorms—so you imagine what the humidity is like. It’s a real temptation to “go underground”. Taipei Main and Zhongxiao Fuxing both have blocks-long underground malls—famously air-conditioned. It is a real temptation to stay under there all day. Having lost a bit of weight and having gotten more exercise recently, I find that the heat does not really bother me much.

Tuesday, June 29, 93

Green-Carded, at Last! No Rest for the Wicked, Full Moon Arising, A Year Between Headlocks

Today was a red-letter day. I went over to the Taipei Police Administration Building, and applied for my Alien Resident Certificate. My “green card” will be ready for pickup on Friday. After that, I can do everything any ROC National can do, except vote here. I now have my Multiple Entry Permit in my passport, so I don’t have to go through all this nonsense again—for a year anyway.

It seems strange. I have “permission” to live in a community that feels like my second home in the first place. I feel as “at home” in Taipei as I do in Toronto or Edmonton.

My business cards are ready. I am now an official “consultant”. My employer does not provide an office, but I have one anyway. It is air-conditioned, tastefully furnished, and it overlooks a tropical forest. It’s in my home. My “workstation” is not “integrated” but somehow I will manage nevertheless.

I am off tonight, and Lao-puo is working. That is, if you can call a gourmet Chinese dinner with her students’ parents, and spending an hour and a half with two girls that she loves, work.

Jean called me this evening. Her Lao-ban wants me to provide 12 one and one-half hour lessons on public speaking. Can do.

This weekend Lao-puo and I will go to the “Full Mon Spa” a Wulai, and enjoy a wonderful time. We will have freshwater crayfish, tempura style, for dinner. I would never have imagined that shellfish (head, guts, and all) would be so good. We will have hot springs water piped right into our room. Lao-puo deserves a bit of pampering—having endured both me and my jokes for thirty years.

Next weekend we will go to central Taiwan with Alan and Jean, there to meet up with Winston and Angel (the people with whom I stayed in Tainan last year). I am looking forward to seeing their son Peter again. He loves English lessons while in a headlock (sometimes the only way he will sit still, by way), and he also enjoys “the sandpaper treatment” i.e. getting his arm rubbed against my five-o’clock-shadowed chin.

Monday, June 28, 93

Pure as the Driven Snow

I had my first hospitality English class at the hotel today. My contact person was an HR Manager named “Pure”. Many Chinese people have unusual English names. Pure looks like Miss Taiwan, and introduced herself by saying “Hi, I’m Pure”. The part of me that is not “pure” wanted to respond with a comment like “It doesn’t matter—I’ve got class in five minutes anyway”, but some who know me well enough may assert that I never will have any class anyway.

In any event, it seems that “Pure” would be a good name for an HR manager at my Canadian employment. The smart alecs could affect to misunderstand, and say that “Pure” must be short for “Pureunaldulteratedbullshit”, which is usually what HR gives us.

The class was a lot of fun. Pure was going to just stay for just a few minutes, but she came back in to see what everyone was laughing at. The English level of the students very low, so we had to do a lot of role play activities and that sort of thing. I pretended to spill stuff on the only supervisor in the place, and I used many similar techniques usually seen on the Three Stooges. I made them sing:

Hello hello.
I like your smile.
Hello hello.
Shall we talk awhile?
Would you like some of my tangerine?
You know I’d never treat you mean.

I think I work best in an environment where eccentricity is tolerated.

Sunday, June 27, 93

A Japanese Feast

Today a bunch of us had a farewell lunch for Jill, who is returning to Canada (at least for a little while). We went to a Japanese buffet place in an area of Taipei with the very Chinese name of “Warner Village”—a huge shopping area around a cinema complex. The shops all flog high-end foreign crap, and only Chinese people with money (and there are plenty of them) shop there. The buffet place was a tad pricey but with free wine they lost money on me. The food was fabulous. There was all manner of seafood including lobster, on-duty chefs to cook your choice right in front of you. It was a festive yet bittersweet occasion, because we are all sorry to see Jill go.

Saturday, June 26, 93

I had My Chance and I Blew It, Who am I to Say? The Homebound Clipper

This was a real red-letter day for Lao-puo—her long-awaited Sarah Brightman concert. She went with four female friends (our friends Jill from Belleville, Dianne from Wisconsin, Jean from the shipping company, and a student named Vera who has become a friend. They very kindly invited me, but I stayed home to get to lesson planning and housework—and whatever other excuse I could think of. Even though the concert, for some reason, was held all the way out in Linkou (35 minutes away by highway and not far from Taoyuan) it was reportedly quite good. I don’t know why it was held so far away, as Taipei has wonderful facilities for many kinds of things right in town. Unlike Montreal, Taipei could actually build a stadium with money in the budget for the roof, and (unlike Victoria) without an overpriced pile of junk that some toffee-nose in a tweed jacket and a goatee says is a “sculpture”.

I shouldn’t be so critical. Maybe the sculpture at the Victoria Arena is “art” not “crap”. Maybe the emperor has clothes. Maybe the guy who stays home from a Sarah Brightman concert and cooks up a bachelor dinner of chicken and chips simply is not qualified to say what is art or not. However, after years with the same Canadian employer, I know BS when I see it—and to me a junkpile is not art.

The apartment is now running like a homebound clipper. We got rid of a lot of junk that the former tenants left here, the landlord sent some guys over to take away the flamethrower bait, and he finally provided nice furniture. We have a very warm and welcoming-looking home now. We even have a new mattress, upper and lower, still in the plastic wrap, in the bedroom with the view of the tropical forest. Some of the trees are beginning to flower, and there are wild orchids here and there.

Friday, June 25, 93

Weight Loss, Why Don’t I Sweep the Floor While I’m at it? Am I an English Teacher or a Magician?

My late Uncle Bob (I am sure he has the Angels guffawing this minute) had many expressions that seemed to amuse everyone except my aunt. One of his bons mots was:

“When the 50’s they have come,
The men all turn to belly,
And the women all turn to bum”.

It will not astonish anyone who knows me that, from the time I was a little boy, there were two guys I wanted to be like—my dad and my Uncle Bob.

The difficulty with weight loss is the fact that mass goes on to the rears of women and the bellies of men first, but comes off there last. The hot climate and the healthy food have done their work. I have a thin face. I have thin arms. I have thin legs. I’ve lost 20 kg since I got here two months ago.

However, I still have my Molson Muscle. I look like Mohandas Ghandi trying to shoplift a basketball by hiding it under his shirt. Life is cruel.

Blast! I don’t like low level classes. I did the language assessments with the food service staff at the hotel a week or so ago. Now, the HR people say the staff want “Daogeh Lao-sheh” and no other. The Gods have a sense of humour! I will be obliged to do role-playing with minimal English-ability people, and I can’t even say “Whenever a customer with Parkinsons orders a vanilla milkshake, for God’s sake don’t ask him if he wants fries with his shake.” If the teacher’s English is too sophisticated, the only result is a classroom full of disempowered students.

The hotel has a smashing buffet called “The Golden Formosa”. It is too bad that the Grand Formosa Regent has a gourmet Italian Buffet, and that there is a wonderful Mongolian BBQ at Nanjing Dong Lu MRT Station. The food here is incredible in quality and price. Maybe one day soon I will look as if I am trying to shoplift a golf ball.

Thursday, June 24, 93

Another Little Emperor, The General Store in the Village

Many customs here can be very different from North America. A simple thing like offering a seat to someone on public transportation is a good example. When I was a kid, healthy males offered their seats to any adult female, and the punishment for failure to do so was enduring comments from one’s mother about what people would think of our family if we went around behaving like ill-mannered louts. Now the rule is that only disabled, laden, elderly, or pregnant women get stood up for (not stood up, which is a different concept). The punishment for offering a seat to a woman not in the above categories is to be considered a patronizing chauvinist.

In Taiwan, on the other hand, parents will stand and allow children to sit. A few days back, a young mum with a little boy and little girl got on the Brown Line MRT. There were only two seats left. The little girl took the seat beside me, but her brother (maybe 8 or 10) had to stand because the mother was laden with packages. I understand enough Mandarin now, and his whiny tone did the rest, for me to know that he was complaining to his mother that the ill-mannered foreigner should let him sit beside his sister. I would surely have done so—right after the Tooth Fairy got up and let me sit beside Santa Claus.

I do not have to work until 4:00 p.m. on Thursdays, so we had time to go shopping for supplies on Xing Long Lu near the hospital—one train stop or a 15 minute walk away. Not reading Chinese, we tend to use English style names for things. Xing Long used to be spelled Hsing Lung, so we just called the street “Hissing Lung” because of the hospital being there. The five block section of Xing Long, with the traditional food market and temple on one side and lanes on the other-is “The Village”. There is a fine establishment we call “The General Store”, on the corner. It has three floors—a food store on the ground level, upstairs to housewares, and upstairs again to hardware. You would not believe some of the stuff you can buy—plastic oil cans for cooking oil, enormous old fashioned whistling kettles (you must boil drinking water here) and all manner of other kitchen stuff--some of which is actually useful. Lao-puo bought, among other things:
· Two big plastic bins (on wheels for the weight) for winter clothing. They can be tightly sealed--mildew is public enemy number one over here.
· A wooden spatula
· Adhesive hooks (we have concrete walls here)
· A plastic “bamboo” pole for lifting hangers on to the laundry poles on our deck (we have 10 ft (or so) ceilings for the heat and not even a tall person can reach without a pole.)

Even though Taipei, by anyone’s criteria, is a big crowded city, there is a real sense of community here. I guess this is because families live in the cities not in the distant suburbs, and people do not move every so often as at home. We expressed astonishment, a few years back, that the lao-ban niang (female owner, proprietor, or boss) in the corner store on Hsin Hai Lu remembered us. Today, the lao-ban at the general store did too. He had given me a little token New Year gift in February 91 when we lived here before.

The fastest way to go broke in Canada is to take taxis unnecessarily, but they are very inexpensive here. It was belting rain when we finished shopping. We went from the covered sidewalk to the curbside and had a cab within seconds, and it only cost 70 NT dollars to our door.

Wednesday, June 23, 93

My Stint at the Hospital, Youthful Bravado, Yes Mother, All the Tea in China, Canuck Eh?

I had a lot of fun doing the nurses’ language assessments. One of the candidates had a big clamp in her pocket. She said that she worked in the dialysis unit and had just moments ago been given a shift change that would prevent her from attending my class. I said to her, “No problem. Just clamp the guy off and come to class”. She giggled, thereby passing my first English test. Cracking wise is a much better assessment method than multiple choice. At least I didn’t say “if the dialysis patient complains about you leaving, just tell him to piss off”.

I worked in the office of the head nurse of the entire hospital, and TMU (Taiwan Medical University Hospital) is the size of many Canadian hospitals in many medium and large cities. Nevertheless, the head nurse only rates a little broom-closet of an office, but at least the administrators aren’t damn fool enough to have gone to “integrated work stations” yet. Our managers at home somehow rate spacious offices instead of broom closets—and on top of that parking is provided elsewhere.

Some passersby must have thought that I was a sawbones—I wear a necktie to class—having some serious medical discussions with the professional staff. In fact, we were having a great time just chatting.

I arrived at the Taipei Train Station with 20 minutes or so to spare before my train to Taoyuan. The station is quite a place—a great multi-level cavern with a soaring ceiling and great crowds of people. There are laden-down women going home from shopping in Taipei, young uniformed conscripts going off to some posting God-knows where (with their hands in their pockets and caps pushed back the moment the warrant’s back is turned—they’re just kids after all), commuters, school kids, and here and there an English teacher looking like a fish in a tree. I clutch a note in one hand, with Chinese instructions for the ticket I want. I can say, in fluent Mandarin “ho che Taoyuan”, but I cannot explain the time clearly and I get met at the station. One of these days I will be arrested because an onlooker will think I’m passing a holdup note to the ticket clerk. There must be a pile of money in the place—even though the tickets are very inexpensive the cash-only sales to that horde of people must add up like crazy.

With time to spare, I had a neck, head, and shoulder massage in a little portable establishment inside the station. It was only 100 NT Dollars for a workout (more like a working-over). In other words, it was a real massage not a “massage” that you get from a “masseuse” in a “bad haircut store” the name by which Angel so quaintly referred to whorehouses last year. The masseurs, in accordance with Chinese tradition, were blind. That is, blind but not stupid-they had an attractive sighted lady barking in the customers and taking the money. At least, I guess they took someone’s word for the assertion that she was attractive--they would have no way of telling without consulting a sighted person. Hell, they could even have put a manager on the cash box without any masseur being the wiser—at least until receipts tapered off dramatically and inexplicably. Anyway, the masseur was enormously strong—I bet he could rip a phone book in half. So could I, in my prime, but every Canadian male my age has a tale of drunken bravado ripping a phone book in half in Bella Coola or Burgeo or Biggar or someplace that size.

One of my students, Megan, picked me up at the train station. She is expecting, and thus full of maternal concern about the fact that I was still snuffling from my cold. I should really have stayed home—it was still 32 degrees at 6:30 p.m. yet I felt chilled. Anyway, she prevailed upon me to have tea instead of coffee, asserting that it is better for the tail end of a cold. I concurred, but asked her not to tell my wife or my mother that I had listened to her counsel. I do not want to listen to either of them wonder aloud why I take the health advice of a new acquaintance, (who isn’t even a mum yet), but ignore theirs.

In any case, Megan made me a nice pot of cold tea (green tea) instead of the usual iced coffee. What we call “green tea” is just called “ tea” in Taiwan, what we call “tea” is “red tea”, and “herbal tea” (aka poodle piss) is for medicinal purposes instead of refreshment. Naturally, plum wine, and rum (which is cheaper than grape wine here) are strictly for medicinal purposes also. They are very good for pains in the neck and buttocks. I seem to have fewer episodes of those two pains since I left my Canadian job, which I’m sure is due in no small measure to the efforts of knuckle-draggers and blind masseurs.

While we were on the subject of tea, Megan asked me if I liked “Canadian tea”. Truthful old stick that I am, I was so utterly lacking in guile that I told her I had never heard of “Canadian tea”. Astonished, she gave me four teabags to try. “Canadian tea” is tea, orange peel, and artificial maple flavour—produce of Richmond BC. When I told her that we cannot grow tea in Canada—our climate does not permit it, her reaction was amusing. She was too polite to say it, but her thought was obviously “What! No tea? What kind of country do you call that?”

Tuesday, June 22, 93

Flamethrower Bait, Back to Work (Breeze-Shooting)

Beyond staying in bed all day and praying for death, there is really nothing to report. I have never had such a bad cold in all my life, and I’m sure I slept for twenty of the twenty-four hours in the day.

Slowly but surely, we are getting the place whipped into shape. The landlord supplied “furniture” to use the term loosely, but we have never seen such crap in our lives. He tried to give us a rusty old metal dining room table with torn canvas chairs, terrible beds, and worse. He has promised to replace it. Since the rent is for a furnished place, we will tell him to get his junk out of here and drop the rent, and we will buy our own stuff. Chinese furniture is very good quality, unique in design, and inexpensive—and there is no added-on tax either. When we go home, it will be cheaper to ship stuff as “settler’s effects” than to pay the sales tax and GST on anything we will buy at home. After thirty years of marriage, we still have some stuff that bought for temporary use until we could afford something better.

Today I feel well enough to work, so I will do two hours of language assessments at the hospital. In other words, I get paid to shoot the breeze with nurses. I will resist the temptation, when I test them with jokes, to trot out “Doctor, why do you have a rectal thermometer behind your ear?” (“Some asshole’s got my pen”). Furthermore, I will be sure to resist the temptation to quote the nursing supervisor berating the student nurse she sees taking a pan of hot water into a male patient’s room “No! I said ‘prick his boil’!” Something tamer will surely be more appropriate.

It just doesn’t seem right. My workday will consist of two hours of having fun in a hospital with a bunch of nurses, an hour of paid sightseeing on the train to Taoyuan and back, and two hours of teaching email writing skills. For this, I will get nearly double my take home pay from my Canadian job. Conventional wisdom is that, to get full time hours or full time income as an English teacher, it is necessary to teach children. I feel truly blessed that I can do it with adult classes. The Gods are kind.

Monday, June 21, 93

Do I Need a Doctor or a Priest?

I’ve had better days. Last night I was snuffling a bit, and I felt worse this morning. I think it’s from sweating outside in the heat, and coming in to the air-conditioning and getting chilled. I foolishly did my morning class at the bank, but cancelled the late afternoon language assessments at the hospital and my private clients tonight. Canceling the hospital was a no-brainer, because I was running a thumping fever by afternoon and would not have been permitted inside the hospital in any event. I’m somewhat better this morning, but not 100%--and I’m supposed to go out to Taoyuan tomorrow. Doctors just pill a guy up, for symptom management—and a cold is just a cold after all, so I didn’t go to a sawbones. I’m glad I didn’t ask for a priest either—it’s shocking bad form to revert to the previous behaviour for which one has just finished being sorry.

Sunday, June 20, 93

Stephen the Mover in His Turbo Canter, More Work Than I Want, Heal!

Moving day went off without a hitch. “Stephen the Mover” arrived on time in his Mitsubishi Turbo Canter, and loaded up the truck himself. The new apartment is quite lovely. We actually have windows you can see out-no opaque glass. The view out the back is a forest for bamboo and giant ferns, with trees that do not grow at home. We see palms out the front. It is nice to hear the cicada beetles at night. In the front we have a little balcony off the master bedroom, with a nice view of the park. There is even a tub in the ensuite bathroom, but it is one of those half-length jobs that you sit in. The apartment is freshly painted, air-conditoned in all three bedrooms and the living room—but you’d have to rob a bank to pay the electricity bill if you kept all four running all the time. What the heck, it’s only low 30’s now. Too bad we won’t be home very much to enjoy it.

Lotus Lao-ban from Lao-puo’s school phoned me yesterday, with a new assignment if I want it. It is for teaching 15 hours a week in a high school. I will decline it, because I do not want to work all day and then do my lucrative corporate stuff in the evening.

Jill and Dianne came over to help us get settled, but my duties became that of wine steward for them. Jill did up a feng-shui chart for us, so that we can get set up properly.

I used to think that feng-shui was nonsense, but I have changed my mind. I asked Jean to take me to a traditional Chinese healer. She spoke to the guy about me, and he asked what my name was. Even though I don’t have Chinese name, he was able to identify many of my health problems that not even Jean knew about.

Saturday, June 19, 93

On the Go


Today was really busy. I went out to Kunyang for the boys in the morning, and then I had the end of my Employee Performance Evaluation Course in the early afternoon. There was only half an hour between the two assignments—and only 45 minutes until my next class away at the other end of town. My new course is every other Saturday with a very nice bank officer named Dianne. She went to Scandanavia last year, and her English is so good that she even answered my joke question:
· Two men are writing a final examination. One is still writing furiously, and the other has already handed in his paper. What nationality are they? One is Russian and the other is Finnish. How I love a captive audience!

Friday, June 18, 93

A Different Way to Make a Living, Pack Up Your Troubles, Fractured English.

Friday is a day off—for now. I will soon have new classes, and a six day work week. It’s a strange feeling—work is incorporated into my schedule as other than a block of time. I can sleep in every day, but some nights I do not get home from work until 11:00 p.m. Wednesday is the latest, but I only have two more sessions out at Taoyuan. I often have some hours between classes, for hanging out and exploring.

Today is a packing day. Moving from one room to an apartment is an easy thing for me—I could be packed and out of here in an hour, but you’d think Lao-puo is planning the Normandy invasion. I’m just not a detail guy. She has cardboard boxes for all the bedding and winter clothing, and she was aghast at my suggestion that we simply pile everything onto one bed sheet, then tie the corners together. She even wanted to do a laundry before we set off. In preparation for this, I took the sheets off the bed. There is a delightful label on the mattress, obviously written by someone with book-learned English. It says:

Relyon Mattress
Healthy, Valuable, Comfortable
Relyon mattress gives you comfortable sleep and sweet dream every night with superior manufacturing technics and goodwill. It is recommanded by many doctors and noble people as a supplier of perfect life. Made by British Relyon Mattress Manufactory.

It’s all job security.

Thursday, June 17, 93

The Medicine Machine, The Red Tape Factory, New Gigs, and a Night Market Supper

Today was one of my last slack Thursdays. This morning I went to Chung Gang Hospital with Lao-puo. She had an appointment “behind door number 1”. It is quite an efficient system once we got used to it. You go to a big waiting room (with only a hundred other patients if you’re lucky), find the door with the number on it that corresponds to the number on your appointment slip, and put your slip through the letter slot on the door. The system processes patients like a weaving loom, and the nurse will usher you into the sawbones just as he or she is finishing up with the patient before you. Lao-puo saw a specialist, got a long-term supply of pills, forked over 410 NT dollars at the cashier, and we were done. That’s less than $20 Canadian, and Taiwan National Health Insurance (70% employer paid and 20% ROC paid) covers the rest of it. TNHI covers 90% of doctor and hospital costs, prescriptions, traditional Chinese treatments, and glasses and dental.

I then took my passport and documents (which could have been cake recipes for all I knew—no English at all—to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) office. I will get my resident visa 3000 NT dollars and a week later.

I have been assigned to teach some of the classes at the hotel—not my favourite assignment as the students are very low-level—and I also have a new assignment as the one-one English teacher for the head of the legal department at a big insurance company in Taipei.

Each of the assignments will be an additional 4 hours per week. I have also been assigned to teach some classes of nurses—another 8 hours per week—starting right after Dragon Boat Festival. There will be a big nurses’ convention in Taiwan next year (I mean a big convention for nurses not a convention for big nurses), and dozens of nurses have been detailed for various hospitality duties. It is a dream assignment. The nurses all have high level English already and they are all very attractive—except for poor Wun Fang who has a bad dental appearance.

Added to my four hours of bank classes, and my shipping company and my IT outfit, I already have more hours than I want without even counting the Saturday afternoon class to which Lao-puo’s lao-ban (boss) has assigned me. Lotus Lao-ban wanted me to do another Saturday afternoon class as well, but enough is enough.

We went to the Dunhua night market for supper tonight. We had barbequed chicken legs from one vendor, stir-fried shrimp and hot peppers from another, and then fruit and shaved ice from yet another.

Wednesday, June 16, 93

No Wonder I Got My Head Kicked In, A Different Sense of Humour, Getting Legaled Up, Chin Yi Dian!

A Chinese friend of mine, having read yesterday’s blog entry about my pummeling of a foot treatment yesterday, pointed out:

By the way, the reason why the masseur didn't heed your cry for mercy was because you were saying, "It doesn't hurt." You should say, "Bu yao tai da li" which means, "Not so hard." You can also say, "Chin yi dian" which means, "Lighter."

The masseur must have thought that I was some kind of masochist or something. Can I help it if Chinese has no English cognates? This episode goes to show, once again, the importance of humility. For all that I have lived in Taipei before, and feel very comfortable living here now, the fact remains that I would be as helpless as a fish in a boat without my Chinese friends.

This afternoon I went to one of the “better” exclusive hotels in Taipei, for language assessments of some of the employees who are being considered for English courses. A “better” hotel can be defined as a place where the room rate is away over my budget (which is YMCA + 10%), and an “exclusive” hotel is a place where I would not want to stay anyway. I hate rubbing shoulders with proud-as-Lucifer yuppies and snot-noses who are only staying in an expensive place because they are on expense accounts and it is actually the taxpayers or the customers paying for the tab. I digress, as usual. Another English teacher (a nice young fellow from Las Vegas named Chris) and a Chinese admin assistant named Irene went to the hotel with me. The English assessments were held in the staff lunchroom—a nice enough place for a lunch break, but a bit Spartan. The room had tables and benches, a cafeteria dishing-up station at one end, and a pop machine. I remarked to the other teacher “Strange. For such a classy joint, they sure skimped on the banquet hall”. Chris laughed, but Irene just looked at me strangely. Chinese humour is very different, and does not seem to rely on deliberate misunderstanding as much as English humour does.

My papers finally arrived—an official and officious-looking envelope full of documents in Chinese and (mercifully) instructions in English on how to go about getting “green-carded” using the papers.

Chin yi dian! Saturday is usually fairly slack for me, but not this week. I will have my Kunyang boys in the morning, lunch and two more hours of employee relations terminology at the shipping company, then I will be subbing a two-hour class at Lao-puo’s school. I love teaching at the shipping company—my original 12-hour gig is up to 20 hours already, and we have not finished yet.

Tuesday, June 15, 93

Ducks in a Row, A Modest Proposal, A Lunch Different From Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal”, a Human Drum

Today was a slack day, after the hardship of putting is six hours yesterday. I only had the Kunyang boys in the evening, and apart from that the day was my own.

We decided this morning to whip over to get my visitor visa extended, and for Lao Puo to change her address on her Alien Resident Certificate. It was a piece of cake for me, and I was done in minutes. I just wrote the new address on the extension application, but Lao-Puo has to show a tenancy agreement to show that she is really living where she says. I’ll never understand bureaucracy, but in any event I’m now legal for another month. That should be lots of time for my resident visa application to get started.

I had a great idea for some of my former colleagues to win a suggestion award. There is a blood-pressure testing machine in the waiting room at the police station (visa place), with a sign that says “We care about your health. Please use the machine while you are waiting to be served”. With all the cutbacks, in both the public and private sectors at home, someone should suggest installing a machine for irate clients to check their blood pressure while they sit fuming. I wonder how long it would be, before a client (with blasphemous and scatological oaths), sunk a fire axe into the machine? By the way, my own blood pressure has gone from very-high-almost-Guiness-Book-of-World-Records, to low normal. This is in mere two months away from my Canadian job. Managers ought to take some responsibility for the appalling rate of sick leave usage, instead of blaming the victims, taking courses on building workplace trust, and giving each other awards. Some of my colleagues, albeit inaccurately and unkindly, have advised in so many words that management does not know the difference between servicing a client and servicing a cow. I guess I can’t really blame my friends for being so disgruntled.

After we finished at the police headquarters, we had a “light” lunch (pork fillet with pepper sauce, a tea egg, seaweed, cabbage, spinach, and rice for 50 NT dollars. In the afternoon, I went over to Bao He Night Market for supper. The wonderful pork bun kiosk (from last year) was still going great guns, so I had one for dinner. The filling is spicy pork and green onion, with a cover of sesame dough. It is cooked in a charcoal oven, so the bun comes out lovely and crispy.

The knuckle-dragger foot massage place I love so much is gone, having been replaced by some yuppie “health treatment” place that charges double the old price. You can even get an “intestine function massage”—whatever that is.

Anyway, I would not be astonished if the knuckle-draggers were shut down for having stove in someone’s rib cage during a “treatment”—such is the vigor and enthusiasm with which they go about their duties. Another new place across the street is no better, despite the fact that I have now learned how to say “not too hard”. No matter how often I said "bu hen tong” it was still painful. At the end of the treatment, the guy was slapping my calf muscles (I now have some from all the walking I’ve been doing), when his little son came in. The little tacker is maybe three or so. His father could do a rhythm by either cupping his palm or slapping flat-handed, and he did the most amusing little tune on each leg. He was so good that the little fellow started to dance! It made my day.

Monday, June 14, 93

Outdoor Sauna, a New Gig, Patience is a Virtue

The weather forecast today is for a low of 26 and a high of 32. I do not feel uncomfortably hot (most of the time) or even uncomfortably warm—but that’s because nearly everywhere indoors is air-conditioned. Yesterday evening I was in a very luxurious car—a Lexus SUV. According to the dashboard information, it was 32 degrees outside and 24 in—and I felt downright chilly

I started a new private assignment last night, for a husband and wife who own a computer company. They have 240 employees in Taiwan, PR China, and America, yet every employee is getting a gift for Dragon Boat Festival (coming up next week). The clients are only six hours per week, yet I will earn 40% of my net Canadian income just from this one assignment. The clients pay me in a very traditional way—a “hongbao” (red envelope) of cash at the end of each class.

I will somehow find the time if they want to teach the employees as well. Private English teachers, who will just show up when they are supposed to and care if the clients learn, are golden over here.

I am assured that my Work Permit, all approved and stamped and chopped, is in the mail. My visitor visa expires next week (have I really been here for two months already?) so this morning I will go to the Foreign Affairs Police and get the constable to extend my visa for a month. The sooner I get my resident visa the better. I cannot get my Alien Resident Certificate (green card) or my Multiple Entry Permit, or my National Health coverage, until the resident visa happens. The law is strange here. In theory, it is illegal to work until the AR Certificate has been issued, but in practice it is OK as long as the work permit has at least been applied for.

Sunday, June 13, 93

Easy Rider on the Coast

We got up early this morning, and took the MRT out to Danshui. We rented a nice little Yamaha 125 from a shop across from the station, and rode to Keelung—about 65 km away along the coast. We had a hard time to find the road to Keelung, but we got directions from a very nice young Venezuelan couple who couldn’t speak English but had a Chinese map. Somehow, we found our way. There are lovely beaches and rock outcroppings in the Formosa Strait and the East China Sea. It was a beautiful ride, even though the traffic in Damshui and Keelung was a bit intimidating. I can thread the needle and play dodgeball with:
· buses (a necessity—the exhaust will gag a moose and it’s hard for bus drivers to see motorbikes in the mirror)
· cars (the drivers are generally quite skilled and considerate),
· push carts (elderly vendors rely on seniority and expect everyone to make way for them)
· people (pedestrians actually take responsibility for their own safety here—a novel concept that we ought to try in Canada. In any event, it’s tough to sound intimidating on a 125 cc bike with a horn like a roadrunner).

I can make left turns, pass on the right, and drive on the sidewalk with the best of them. Sometimes you make a left turn as in a car, and sometimes you have to drive along the crosswalk and then wait for the light to change the other way. You can make ever so much better time on a bike than in a car in the towns along the way, because it is permitted to ride up the right hand side past stopped or slow-moving cars. It all sounds very dangerous, but if you do as the Romans do it’s quite safe.

We even “did a ton” going through a long tunnel. It was a metric ton, but it’s just a little 125 cc after all. The drive is every bit as lovely as anything that Hawaii, Mexico, or California has to offer. The hills are very green, the ocean is very blue, and the temperature was perfect. There were many ships coming and going as we approached Keelung, as it is the second busiest harbour in Taiwan.

The entire day was NTD700 for the bike, NTD 100 for fuel for the bike, and NTD 80 for fuel for us. We each had a soft crepe filled with cabbage, bean sprouts, pork, and cilantro. We were pretty sore by the time we got back to Damshui, but not so out of shape that we could not go to Fishermen’s Wharf for an ice cream. No beer. I don’t like to drive a car if I’ve been drinking at all, and on a motorbike it’s folly to set off with any liquid cargo aboard.

Saturday, June 12, 93

Another Gourmet Feast, and another Slack Day

Today I went out to Kunyang in the morning, and took the afternoon off. I stayed for lunch with the family, and had a great time. We had two kinds of soup (one was scallops and sea cucumbers, and the other was broth and some kind of stuffed rice flour dumplings). We also had some regular pork dumplings, steamed marrow with dried shrimp. Dianne came over around dinner time, and she and Lao-puo went for dinner at the Thai place. I was still too full from lunch, so I went out and bought a motorcycle helmet.

Friday, June 11, 93

A Nice Day Off, Folk From the Old Country

It is glorious to be able to sleep in, which I can do every day, and better yet to have the whole day off. I remember a motto on the wall of the home of my retired parents:

How sweet it is, to do nothing all day, and (having done so) to rest.

It would be nice to be able to claim that I had an interesting and productive day, but that is not the case. I just goofed off, from dawn until dusk.

Dusk, however, is another story. The Canadian Society had yet another do, at yet another pub. We had an assortment of western “horse doovers”, such as chicken fingers and potato skins. Drinks were only NTD99. This is cheap enough, but wine is measured out by an eye dropper for that price. However, you can get a decent pint, of decent beer (or two, or three)—on the outside patio on a balmy Taiwan evening. Life is good.

Thursday, June 10, 93

The hard Life of an English Teacher, Another Look at Labour Relations

This is how to make a living—considering myself to be hard done by if it is necessary to work four hours in one day. I don't know how I will cope with next Monday, when I am expected to work for six.

Today in one of my classes, a student used the word “honky” which to him simply meant “Hong Kong Chinese” as opposed to the expression of racial disdain (of black people for white people) with which we North Americans have regrettably become familiar.

I very much enjoyed the lesson this morning on employee performance assessment, and the cultural differences therein. It seems, for example, that there is no opportunity for a Chinese employee to dispute an adverse performance evaluation. Mind you, were it not for the union in our jobs at home, neither would we.

My friend, who is the HR manager for all of Taiwan in a company with many hundreds of employees, was aghast when I told her about the adversarial nature of employee relations at home. She picked up (without prompting) on the fact that at least some responsibility for toxic labour relations at home must be borne by management.

Good luck. Evidently there is no such thing as an incompetent protégée in Canada, or an empress with no clothes.

I then had two hours of business conversation in the bank, and the evening off. I’m off tomorrow too.

Wednesday, June 09, 93

Kids are the Same the World Over, and so are Officious Old Farts

I rather expected that the typhoon would be the big item today, but it is safely out to sea on its way to Japan. We were lucky—again. Frequently, typhoons are headed right for us and then change direction at the last minute.

I had an amusing ride home on the train last night. I have started taking the express train, so there are no stops in every little place. The tracks are underground until the outskirts of Taipei, and the first two whistle stops are still in the city. My train is the Taipei-Kaohsiung express, which only makes about 5 stops the whole way. The distance is about the length of Vancouver Island.

On the way back, there was a whiny little boy traveling with his mother. I guess the little tacker was getting sick of being on the train for such a long time. All the way from Taoyuan to Taipei, he was saying “Dao le ma”? to his mum. “Are we there yet”?

There are two Taoyuan-Taipei trains about ten minutes apart, and my ticket was for the later one. When the first one pulled up, I thought what the heck, it’s not crowded so I’ll jump on.

Many Chinese people sound angry when they are just talking, and I keep forgetting that fact. When I got my ticket stamped in Taipei, the employee must have had a lot of seniority—he was sixty-five if he was a day. He looked at my ticket, and started berating me. I had no idea what he was talking about, and said so. He jabbed his finger at my ticket, and gave me both barrels. I’m sure he was saying “what’s the matter, can’t you read?” Nope, unless you want to know, push, pull, numbers, up, down, mountain, hot spring, Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, and half a dozen others. My ability to defend myself in a Chinese dispute is limited to “I don’t understand”, “I don’t know”, and “what?” I will be glad after I take some lessons, because then I would have been able to say, “Listen up, gramps. Blast me if I’ll sit on my duff for 10 extra minutes, just so I don’t have to listen to some old fart. I want to get home, which is where you should be--with your feet up and your teeth out”. Maybe I should get a job like that when I retire—being paid to be grumpy without having to be an excluded manager, and giving impertinent youngsters what-for.

Tuesday, June 08, 93

Count to Ten Slowly, A Gourmet Invitation

Today was not a good day. I spent most of the afternoon dealing with my work permit, which had gone sideways in the Department of Labor Affairs. It’s all straightened out now, and with any luck I will be able to apply for my resident visa tomorrow. It takes a lot of flexibility and patience to deal with some of the stuff going on around here.

In the evening, I went with Lao-puo to the home of her student Rina. Her mum laid on a feast:
· Pork stomach
· Sesame and soy fish
· Green beans with sardines
· Pork (like cross cut bacon)
· Broccoli

Rina’s dad-an amiable jovial fellow about my age, had wine as well. The girls (Linda was over for dinner and her class) were served up even though they are both just 12. After dinner, they played piano for us. Rina played (Sweet Bye and Bye—I think the publisher meant Sweet By and By) which I remember from church. Linda did a nice march. They are very talented, and live music really makes a home warm. After dinner, I had my lesson with the Kunyang boys.