Tidbits from Taiwan

First and most importantly, Happy Birthday Mum!

So, after a month of failed attempts (due to sleeping in), I finally got myself up earlier enough to get to the Muzha mountain [suggested by the German girl I met at MRT Station] to drink tea with some friends. It was a 2 hour journey, but somehow, using a business card with sketchy directions in chinese, I got our group of five up on the mountain around 11:30 AM, and we stayed till 3:45 PM. You might ask how we managed to drink tea for around 4 hours and 15 minutes, but we just took our time. We sat there chatting and passing around the yerba mate' gourd (S. American Tea) and filling our glasses with hot chinese tea. Aside from looking out from our roofed patio on the rain and fog settling on the lush mountainous view, we sat and listened to countless chill songs on my iPod with portable speakers, watched a Chris Rock comedy show on Zach's computer...yes, he brought his computer...and played some cards. The entire trip including drink, 2 hour transportation for everyone, and some delicious noddle cups, cost around $15 for five people.

Afterward we headed to Taipei 101 to the bookstore (largest English bookstore in....Taiwan I guess) and then headed to the Warner Brother Movie theater to watch Zorro...kinda good movie, but...neh. Point being is that one movie for all of us cost about the same as the many hour trip to the tea mountain place.

Today, thats when all this happened, was kind of my reward for finishing the chinese exam; that being a short (2~3 minutes) speech, in Chinese, to the class about a topic of your choice. I chose Calligraphy as I have been learning some recently as I have said before. It went reasonably well, though ten minutes before we were to start the instructor told me that my BabelFish-Translation (online translator) of my speech was completely devoid of coherent logic and flow. So I spent that ten minutes redoing the whole thing with her help. The magic of computers...

Speaking of Calligraphy, I had Calligraphy class again this week, and this time we started writing. After slooowly churning the ink stick in the water held in the ink basin 200 times (No joke. After finishing 200 times, he looked at it and said, "3 more times"), Mr Grand Master had me practice an old chinese poem. The rough translation of the poem is..."When you understand a good book, it is midnight". Stunning Genius. Heh, but the calligraphy is sweet.

The BreakDance Battle flopped, and no one knew why, or at least they couldn't muster up enough english to tell us. So, sorry, no cool dancing battle videos.

I just finished Watership Down. Great book, I don't know why I stopped reading it half way through a year or two ago. But, business finished, I am now on to "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, as I have been told countless times of its underrated superiority to Dan Brown's more well-know book, "Da-Vinci Code".

SAT is coming up yet again in...next week I think. Yes, I am taking it yet another time...I like it that much...but seriously, whehf, I am already starting to memorize the Proctors' little "fill in the bubbles completely. Any stray marks will..." speeches.

The school had a basketball tournament this week between all the classes. It got seriously intense. Lots of injuries, falls, and shouts of "Zou! Zou! Zou!" by the crazed supporters. For a low key bunch, they would do wonders as Football Super-Fans.

This thursday instead of school, all the Rotary exchange students will be viewing presentations put on by younger students at another school in Taipei and then heading off to some hot springs to enjoy some heat.

Happy Halloween and coming November!

10:58 in the Morning
Living Room :: Host House [01]
Zhong Shan N Rd :: Taipei :: Taiwan

Subject relaxing on couch; typing.
No mysterious actions reported other than
eating an above average number of yogurts.

Hello again.
I'd just like to say on my defense, those yogurts are fantastic. They are not just any yogurts, but chinese mini-cup yogurts popular throughout Asia (and unknown to the US). They come in a tini plastic cup, and are actually liquid. I really don't think they are even yogurts, but thats what all the chinese people like to call them, so I do too. But they are great. They can but finished in one gulp. But enough of my lactose fascinations. Here's your weekly report.

Right after I wrote last week I went out with my classmates to watch Deuce Bigalow, the male...person. Instead, due to the fact we were late, we ended up watching Flight Plan. Turns out all the movies here (unless they are made in Asia: few and far) are in English with Chinese subtitles. Since my classmates didn't speak much english and I didn't speak much Chinese, the evening was full of mistranslations and pointing wildly at things. I also noticed I am starting to over exaggerate my verbal responses in order to make things more clear. It would look strange back in the US I am sure, so I better no how to stop.

I met some kids in the park near my house the other day while walking home from Liz's birthday "outing". I happened on them because I heard one of them playing guitar (in english) and singing some Red Hot Chilli Peppers song or something. Most of them go to the Taipei American School but a few go to a British school. It was interesting cause there were so many different ethnicities played up. There was a girl part Taiwanese and Scandinavian?. Though she lived in Taiwan all her life and spoke English and the other language from Europe, she didn't speak much Chinese. There was a Mexican boy that spoke perfect english, and kids that were half Taiwanese and half British. They were all pretty friendly and I talked with them awhile before realizing I was 30 minutes or so late, so I headed home.

I also met, a couple nights later, two Americans in the same park. One of them, the guy named Reed, was doing Poi (almost exactly like glowstringing). The girl named Lauren was hoolahooping. But they told me about a group of people that get together every Friday night at 11pm at a Coffee Shop (prolly outside it) and spin balls of fire round their bodies. It looks fantastic. I might just have to put a video of it up. I won't however be able to see the fire-twirlers as the time is after my curfew. Nuts. Coincidentally I came across a street performer doing fire-poi the other night in Ximen as I was going home. He was from New Jersey (but with chinese parents) living here for about a year and learned fire poi and the body ball thing (rolling a ball around your body, really cool) both offline and from friends. I think I shall have to learn the ball thing now. For anyone interested... [ http://www.homeofpoi.com | http://www.glowsticking.com | http://www.contactjuggling.com ]

I had my first lesson with the Grand Master of Calligrahy (Mr. Lin), heh. He drove me to his house 5 minutes away by motorscooter (Yeya) and my homeroom teacher arrived a little later. He owns stories of an apartment, the top one full of tables laid out with calligraphy brushes and and ink stones. The whole place looked awesome, like an ancient chinese palace or something.

This past Friday, instead of going to Ping-Pong club I went with Liz and Elisa to the Pool club which took place at place full of pool tables five minutes away from school. I was whomped, I tell you, whomped. I had no chance. Another activity I have to practice. To satisfy our pool sharks' sweet toothes we headed to the candy store two shops over. We filled up a couple bags of sweets and sat munching for a while, while watching more pool. Afterwards I headed out to dinner with my classmates at a Barbeque type restaurant. You sit at a table with four holes, one in front of each person. They put a metal pot of water in the whole and it starts boiling. You boil the vegetables and meats you picked out from the All-You-Can-Eat type section and eat. The food was fantastic. After eating almost all of my food save for some noodles and lettuce I was full. Everyone else had finished all of their food and were looking at me. They told me that the restaurant had a rule that if you don't finish your food you are charged 100NT for adults and $50NT for children. This rule is to teach people a lesson about finishing their food they said. Wow. Well I finished my food.

Yesterday Liz, Elisa and I headed to Danshui with some students from the 501 class. {{HA! No way. Let me interrupt this to just say this famous singer guy singing a really romantic taiwanese song, that I am now watching on TV, is sporting the mole and hair thing on his chin. Those hairs (no joke) are about 3~4 inches long.}} Anways, we went to dinner at a three story restaurant were they were only about 8 different kinds of bowls you could order. It was fantastic food though. Then we headed across the large lake in a boat and got on some of those (what they call in the US) crouch rockets and rode around the park for an hour.

My next host host is coming up. I move on the 6th of November to an apartment maybe 10~15 minutes away, I forget. The family has a daughter a couple years younger than me and a younger son (don't know his age). I visited their house previously and on that occasion I had loads of fun with the brother playing PlayStation and shooting his BeeBee gun in the kitchen. They are nice people, so, looking forward though I will miss my current host house. Its so relaxing here.

Have a nice day.

Hello again...

The two month marker for my stay in Taiwan is coming up in a couple days here. The longest I have been away from home was I think a month. As my brother pointed out, by the time this year comes to an end, I will have been gone away from my family longer than any other family member has. This is because, I think most of you know, I will not be returning home for any Holiday (including Christmas) until around...July? Mmmmm, the sensation of indepence is gushing through my veins.

I don't know how many people get to go to a KTV (is that the word in the US? It means Karaoke rooms) in the United States, but I finally got to go to one last week I think. Nothing less than a great time and a scratchy throat can come from a couple hours with 12 friends spent in a small dark room with a TV with a knack for getting people to embarass themselves. It got even more roudy as it turned out the employees (that were constantly coming in and out of our cell, due to the excessive Help Button requests) had barely enough English to utter a word of exasperated impatience. All the same, we had a great time yodeling songs to our throat's content, though they only really had corney songs like the Backstreet Boys and oldies (Hey Jude!) which made the potential for the situation all the more dangerous.

Check this out, okay, so I am doing my Calligraphy with my homeroom teacher right, and this guy walks in. My teacher points at him excitedly and brings him over. Turns out he is a specialized calligraphy teacher. The Grand Master Calligrapher guy writes a couple chinese words for me, showing me how its done. My teacher talks with the Master Calligrapher guy for a minute or two, and now, thanks to her, I will be having studio lessons with him an hour a week (maybe two if he can) for free. A side note; ONE chinese character written by this man is worth $2,000 NT (thats about $66.66 US for a couple seconds work). This guy is good.

Studying the SAT has taken up much of my precious time last week, as the test was the coming Saturday morning. It was a last minute decision to take it, but I think I did pretty well. I took it at the (now listen closely) Taipei AMERICAN School, right near my house. You would think this is the school where all the American/European business people's sons and daughters attend. In reality (as I came to ponder while noticing I was the very small minority in the room), the majority of the kids going there turned out to be Chinese, Taiwanese, or of Asian decent (and all with really great American sounding names like, Vincent Chen and John Lee). The difference between them and the other Chinese kids going to normal public schools is that the kids going to the American school have (in one way or another) American passports. Anyways, glad that that SAT is over for now. I am taking another one in November.

I still haven't gotten to go on my planned visit to the top of that mountain near Muzha. Hopefully I will go this Saturday and me, Zach and Gaston will get to relax, drink some tea for several hours while enjoying some cool weather and either listening to music or reading a nice book (Angels and Demons, Dan Brown). But who knows, that has been the plan for the last several weekends and I end up sleeping to late and getting lazy at the last minute. Also coming up next weekend is a Break-Dancing competition which I am looking forward to. I'll put a video up after we go. These guys are good (asian people always seem to be good at those G[K]ong-Fu kinds of things).

This past Sunday we checked out Danshui, (45 minutes from my house). It was better than we expected; a fantastic narrow alley spilling over with shops and people. Food and games were everywhere, and it was located right on the edge of a large lake (I think thats what it was). This was a great place to buy souvenir and chinese things like fat buddhas or a big roasted squid on a stick (really bland but extremely chewy). Also along the alley we happened upon a museum full of strange mutant animals and freaky Ripley's-Believe-It-or-Not type things. They had a yellow ~7 foot snake sitting out on a stand in the open (alive) which people came up and petted (though I think it was drugged as it barely moved). There was all sorts of startling things like ancient contraceptives (this happened to be next to a shop devoted entirely to this - strange place to have one) and many two headed animals on display.

Monday there was no school (10th October, like US's 4th July) and though we did not get to see any festival stuff, we all went to the Zoo. It was strange that the bulk of the exhibits were dead animals stuffed and on display and not so many live animals. Probably a lost in translation thing when they called it a Zoo. That night I went my first Taiwanese wedding. I am not even sure if it was a wedding or an after wedding celebration actually, but at one time the Bride was in the big European Bride dress and the couple kissed up in front after a minute of words. So...maybe, maybe not. The food was brought out in a great manner. The big chef in his classic 'leaning-tower-of-Pisa' Hat stood up front holding a huge platter of food and while traditional chinese music rang through the room. He stood there while his waiter people (with the food in their arms) did a kind of line dance amidst the tables, running in patterns, and finally gave us our food. You had to see it (alas, no camera).

Yesterday had a rather exhausting beginning. My alarm clock went off and I dreamed it was set to an earlier time than needed. SO I hit it and slept 30 more minutes at which time I actually did wake up and realize I was late. Frantically, I got ready and ran out of my house to the bus stop 5 minutes away, only to find I didn't have any money nor my bus card because I had forgotten my wallet (meaning I couldn't go anywhere). As I ran back to the house, I remembered that because I had forgotten my wallet I did not have the keys to the gate outside my house (I keep my keys in my wallet). I also found out that my cell phone was dead (I forgot to charge it the night before and I didn't have the number for the house elsewhere let alone another phone) and the caller system at the gate to the house just happened to be broken...a bit of a predicament if you ask me. As I thought about the state of affairs I was in...it began to rain the acid rain which is supposed to make you loose your hair. Guess who forgot their umbrella. So I couldn't go home, I couldn't go to school or anywhere, I had no money and I had no communication. HA! A strange thing happened 30 minutes later. A motorcyclist drove up and instead of continuing straight on the road he parked in front of the gate and unlocked the door. I hadn't a clue who he was but he let me in. I ran out of the house again 5 minutes later to find him still sitting there on his motorcycle inside the gate. Haven't seen him since, but thanks to him I got to school.
Lo, there do I bathe in the River of Lethe...

For all you poor souls who haven't discovered the magic of Podcasts and E-books...you should take a look, thats all I gotta say. I tell you, it is so much more wonderful in the morning to use my hour and a half of transportation to school to listen to a book or Presidential Weekly Update (just found out that existed) instead of staring at the mole hair of the person sitting directly across me, on the train. (Quick fact: Mole hair seems to be a very trendy style here even with some younger guys. In fact, as I was previously told by my Asian friend back in the US, it brings the person, you guessed it, luck)

'Nuf said 'bout Lucky Mole Hair...
I started getting food at this breakfast place along with other students before school each day. They have this great meal; a tortilla look-alike and milk tea. I used to eat it while walking to school from the store until one day, while eating and walking, I flipped the box accidently. I ignored it as I had to get to school on time and the street dogs could get it. I heard someone uttering sharp words behind me and drew my breath. The head military officer at school had been walking directly behind me, and was now scolding me in chinese, as I had just sloshed my saucy squishy egg and tortilla practically on his feet. It would have been a good breakfast.

Last night we headed out to an MTV (not the show) where we rented a large room with very comfy couches and a huge screen and choose a movie to watch. We saw one of my personal favorites, "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", a British type action (with a spice of comedy). We then headed to a Pizza Hut. Yup.

In other news...I had another Rotary meeting, got a little sick again, bought a new belt, beat Gaston in Basketball, and found out the existence of a great new computer program. Conceeerning the program...there is a new computer program out (created at the University of California, Berkeley) that can actually discern what you type by LISTENING TO THE SOUND OF YOU TYPING ON THE KEYBOARD. No lie. Check out the research paper at http://keyboard-emanations.org/ This is a real thing.

Anyways, till next week. Sorry for the long lapse between the last post and now. I am going to blame it on the SAT to make me feel better.