I hate office hours (3 days in a row)

You know that saying about how 95% of bank robberies are people trying to get their own money because they work while the bank is open? Well, the post office reminds me of that. It's so proximitously tempting, but on weekdays it's open from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Maybe tomorrow I'll get home before it closes but I won't be catching the open anytime soon. The postcards are done though.

Saturday
"What's your favourite opera?"-Andy

This Saturday I was rather busy. As usual, went to choir in the morning, & we actually sang until around 12:45; our teacher's kids were there randomly as well. I had agreed to wait outside Wanfang High School's gate at 2:00 PM to go shopping with Ivonne (the woman effectively in charge of all exchange students) & Tiffany (a Taiwanese English schoolteacher working on a university degree). At this point, I had over an hour to kill, so I decided to hang out with a guy from my choir:

Meet Andy. He is from Taiwan, and sings bass in the school choir. He also likes classical music a lot. Consequently, he can play piano pretty well (though he has been studying percussion for 11 years) & knows a lot of songs (the sound thereof / how to play). This also means he wants to know what kind of classical music I like... which sonata? Which symphony? Which opera? (Incidentally, the answer to that is "Don Giovanni," which I insist on calling "Don Giovanni & Leporello") We talked about stuff & had lunch:

Lunch was beef noodle (fairly cheap, about $3.00 CDN, but it's cheaper to eat at school on weekdays). At 2:00 I met Ivonne & Tiffany as planned, and Tiffany's husband drove us to Costco. It was remarkably like the one in Nanaimo... the only really different thing was there was a whole section for wine. The prices at the eating-part (for lack of a better word) were even the same. Ivonne was hilarious, because she really loves to shop, and was delighted by oh-so-many things. I bought a 1.5 Kg jar of chocolate raisins for a good price (less than $1.00/100g).

In the evening I met up with Alice (my handler from the Rotary club) and she took me to a "housewarming party" or the equivalent thereof for her friend, Stacey (who also came to the National Palace Museum). The concept is more like when a building is new, you can make it have good energy by jamming a lot of your friends into it (related to ying-yang creating an imbalance in favour of good living) & thus avoid future misfortune. For some reason, we were meeting at a restaurant, but I went to the restaurant & Alice went somewhere else. So Stacey, about 15 of her family members & I all had dinner together. It was actually not too bad (the event I mean, though we never got to the house)... but some of the food I really disliked (i.e. most of the intestine-based meats, nyugh) though there was a good spicy noodle from mainland China and shrimp balls.

Sunday
"Do you have a girlfriend?"-choir girls

On Saturday evening I was feeling kind of badly, but then I got a good sleep so I was feeling really optimistic Sunday morning. I finally had all the postcards done & was about to head off to the post office around 4 when my father told me it wasn't open on Sundays. After a brief bout of invective, I hopped on the MRT to 那個... the school gate again. This time, Wanfang's exchange students were to meet our music teacher (who is extraordinarily awesome BTW) to go to see a pop/a capella concert. But the first order of business was dinner, and the order before that was getting from Wanfang (East Taipei) to Banqiao (West Taipei) during rush hour traffic... it took a while, but Kenta & I listened to music -- turns out two of his favourite songs are "Scarborough Fair" & "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel. w00t

We had dinner on the 12th floor of a 13 floor shopping mall, at McDonald's (less greasy here & they have recycling as well as garbage). Alex also had a photo with the girl from the table next to us. Then we headed over to the concert hall... we were sitting REALLY far back, but some other people from the choir there. In the intermission we took pictures:

I have some more pictures of various females with the sexy uber-bass from this group (talented but only mildly entertaining) but I'll MSN them to people. Also, they sang "Kiss from a Rose" which I must admit to enjoying thoroughly.

Monday
"Do you like 'SM'?"-Music Teacher

Monday morning was dullish as usual, I can't remember what happened. Noon choir practise, then Music class. Kenta played his kickass Japanese guitar-thing again, then we watched part of "The Pianist." Somewhere in there my music teacher asked me if I liked [BD]SM, as I had taken off my belt for the purpose of singing. Chinese class was ok--Anna gave me a really, really cool picture--but now it's been shuffled so some of the slower people left & american Alex and the Korean girl come. But they pwn us all.

In the evening I had a choir concert with my mother's choir--thus I didn't get to return home to mail postcards. At first we were backup choir during a catholic mass... but then we walked to the Vatican Embassy. It was quite the ritzy event. We sang Taiwan's nat'l anthem, then the Vatican National Anthem. Afterwards, it was just socializing with Catholic elite and eating really good food. The desserts were labeled "assorted fine French pastries" and the food was really good... penne & pesto plus a couple good meats. A lot of people were drinking though, and I had to try to defend my not-drinking to this Catholic priest guy (in English) but he pwned me. So my debating skills suck, but I stand by in which I believe.

Tuesday
"Today we go look at the pretty girls."-Ivan

PE was random, but I got a bit of a workout. At lunch I wanted to practise for the choir test--we can't go to the competition unless we demonstrate our ability on each piece in quartet form. Unfortunately, the altos were all sucking, so they were doing a group practise & I got only a trio going on. Ivan also declared it was the day to look at pretty girls. On a completely unrelated note, according to Alleah & Mel it is possible for ejaculate to taste like eternal devotion. Not being a man of science, nor one who loves men, I can neither confirm or deny that contention.

Anyway, if any of you are native English speakers (& didn't speak other languages in your home for the first 5 years of life i.e. French or Mandarin), Tiffany would like your help in filling out a thing for her uni project. I can send it to you if you want, just drop me an email or comment. Also, if you want I can email you my mailing address if you're curious or want to send me your cat's latest hairball.