Formosan Exile

2005-07-19T06:38:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-07-19T06:35:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-07-19T06:33:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-07-19T06:26:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-03-01T22:17:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-03-01T22:16:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-03-01T22:14:00.001+08:00

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.

2005-03-01T22:14:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-03-01T22:11:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-23T09:02:00.000+08:00

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.”

2005-02-23T09:00:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-22T11:11:00.000+08:00

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.”

2005-02-22T11:10:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-22T11:09:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:39:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:38:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:35:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:34:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:32:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-17T21:29:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-09T18:34:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-09T18:33:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-09T18:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-08T09:11:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-07T11:48:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-07T11:47:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-07T11:46:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-05T06:43:00.000+08:00

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

2005-02-05T06:41:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-05T06:40:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-05T06:39:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-01T05:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-02-01T05:28:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-29T06:03:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-29T05:51:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-27T08:56:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-26T11:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-25T07:02:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-24T10:29:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-23T08:34:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-22T06:44:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-21T09:00:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-20T21:09:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-19T09:29:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-19T08:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-17T06:39:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-17T06:38:00.000+08:00

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?”

2005-01-16T07:44:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-14T06:58:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-14T06:19:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-12T07:08:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-12T06:42:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-12T06:40:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-11T05:11:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-11T04:57:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-08T07:40:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-06T21:23:00.000+08:00

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".

2005-01-05T21:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-01-05T08:18:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-12-05T19:48:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-12-05T19:47:00.000+08:00

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”.

2004-12-04T06:07:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-12-02T22:21:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-12-02T22:01:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-30T09:18:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-29T16:49:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-28T20:47:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-28T14:50:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-28T14:47:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-26T10:47:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-25T15:23:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-24T09:30:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-23T07:34:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-21T21:15:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-21T07:40:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-19T08:09:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-19T08:06:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-16T07:30:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-15T10:15:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-14T22:24:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-14T07:36:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-13T09:42:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-11T11:41:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-11T06:08:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-10T22:36:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-09T06:31:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-07T21:29:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-07T07:35:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-06T20:50:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-05T07:46:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-04T06:41:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-03T08:03:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-11-01T21:33:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-10-31T21:56:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-10-31T21:55:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-10-30T07:09:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-10-29T08:55:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-10-27T22:05:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-10-26T09:38:00.000+08:00

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.