Making it badass with bacon

To any readers I might possibly have out there who prefer not to eat meat for whatever reasons, I apologize in advance. But I recently had my most successful cooking experience since eggbread (a relative show of finesse compared to the fried rice)--that's right, I, Kevin Dobson, cooked something not using a breadmaker that is kind of good-tasting. Behold:

It was good... Dan asked if I was "broadening my horizons" & I think that I am, at least my trying to cook stuff sometimes horizons. Also, Taiwan things are kind of entering my dreamscape, though I believe I am still dreaming in English. Incidentally, some people had mentioned they wanted to see pictures of stuff, so here is the fantastically small kitchen, check it:

And if that looks tall, it's not. The hood of the stove is lower than my head by a little. Anyway, yesterday after Chinese class I went with Scott to Dingxi. We checked out MP3 players, hilarious Taiwanese computer games, and then to the bookstore to look at children's books. I was tempted to buy some, because they have bopomofo and I was kind of understanding one, but they're expensive.

Also, check out the hardcore links I made for Alleah's blog... what do y'all think? Should I do the same for this blog? feedback requested. K out

Sometimes, I wonder...

I'm debating whether or not to eat the breakfast left for me... Mother, if you're reading this, use your & Grant's science knowledge to tell me what to do.

Note also, our toaster makes designs on the bread. Later today is Chinese, might head out after that to look at stores. Got 11 hours of sleep last night w00t.

I woke up in a dream today, to the cold and the static...

...and did some pushups. I really have to find some good bicep & back muscle exercises, because I'm looking for the 2/3 bicep, 1/3 tricep ratio on my arms. But until I can handle military training's 25 pushups (variable speed, NOT fast) no problem, I simply must keep working on it every single day. And eating toast, because toast is good.

Anyway, earlier I had said I was planning to go MP3 player shopping. But let me tell you what actually happened. Yesterday, shortly after my brother got back from his handball game, I got a phone call from Ivonne around 5:00 PM. She said we were all going to see "The Incredibles," and when could I meet her at Dingxi station. So I went upstairs to discover my cell phone was TOTALLY out of batteries, and thus left a note with other people's numbers on it, and rocked on over to the MRT station.

Arrived at Dingxi, saw Scott outside the gate, he informed me we would be eating dinner at the Zhangs', and that Ivonne would be late as she (the native to the city) had taken the wrong subway. Thus, I beeped out, & we played hackey sack until Ivonne arrived, subsequently all heading over to the Zhangs'. We met Claire there (as that is her current residence) and Kevin, her host little brother, arrived shortly afterwards. It was a grand old time to be had as usual, I am glad that they are my last host family.

At the start, I picked a book at random and started sight-reading a song on their piano. Then Ivonne was like, "Oh I know this song!" and started playing the melody in octaves while I kept going with the accompaniment. Dinner was great, some sort of pasta (or Italy noodles as we say in Chinese) as well as fried rice & other goodness. Mrs. Zhang gave me a second plate of spaghetti and damn was it a lot. By the time I finished I didn't feel I could eat much more & could stick my stomach out a lot, which I proceeded to do.

We all got on the MRT and went to Warner Village. We arrived at around 8 (the apparent start time of our movie) and, of course, the tickets were NOT pre-bought. Ivonne said Tiffany & her husband (though at a nearby mall) had cancelled because they thought time was too tight. We went into the very long line to the ticket booth & started looking at showtimes and movies... by the time we got to the counter, even the 9:40 was sold out (this was at about 8:30). But, we had already called our families saying we would be back late. So we all took a taxi to another theatre, trying to get their 9:20.

But, it too was sold out, in the time it took us to get there. So we gave up on watching the movie, for the third weekend in a row. Not to be discouraged, Ivonne & Claire led us off in search of Pearl Milk Tea (or bubble tea, or QQ as it's apparently called), but the store was out. Of course, I was all up for some regular tea, because I dislike aforementioned bubble tea, but no. We eventually settled on a starbucks, where, though they were out off stuff we wanted, had something for everyone (including decaf, milk & soy-free tea for Scott). Claire & I also got cake. I added vanilla and cinnamon to my tea & found it to be good.

We basically ended up talking for something like 2 hours, then all going home. It was really fun, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly for most of it (except the part in the middle where we kept trying to do stuff and everyone was out of everything). When I got home and made a last scouting of the blogrings, I read a few things which gave me cause to feel quite strange & surprised. Wrote a poem, but though the writing isn't bad, the ideas contained within are inferior quality. Still, that's 11 all told. And three sonnets in 24 hours. w00t

That was my evening, and I have been feeling good this morning. If something's troubling you, putting it out of mind then sleeping on it will make you much better, at least I find. That, and listening to Japanese Hip-hop. I love Dragon Ash. Anyway, later today I've got the practise for choir, but now I'm heading off to shower. rock on, blogfans

blog blog blog

Anyway, not much has happened since Thursday, but I figured I'd give you more post for thought. Friday morning took the Green 2 to school & boy was it crowded. I kind of was in an awkward position, holding onto roof bars, so when the bus jerked around a lot I think I messed up some of my upper torso muscles. I can still do pushups though.

At school, I spent a lot of time studying. In computer class, we got to use the new lab and do no VB, just play on the internet, so that was nice. I spent most of history & geography & lunch tracking down the "not only/but also" construction (or forms thereof) in my dictionary and doing my Domestic Science homework. This homework is to make a paper doll with stylish clothes, and it's surprisingly fun but difficult. Whether the clothes are stylish or not is another story.

Language class was goodish, we had the woman teacher as usual on Fridays... she's just not as good as the guy. We actually finished like 12 minutes early, which is odd indeed. Scott & I took the Green 2 back to Nanshijiao, though we had to ask the driver if it was right or left. I taught him how to ask, but then had a brain freeze forgetting the words right and left on the first bus, and just flailing my arms incoherently. Scott subsequently ascertained it was going the long way, so we got off.

We had a good, long laugh about that, then later found the left-route one. Having arrived at my house after 45 minutes, we proceeded to play many games of the baseball game. At first Scott owned, but the last game was close with me pulling out a victory in the bottom of the 9th inning. w00t. Had dinner, and then proceeded to install Windows Service Pack 2 on my computer. It took a long time, like an hour or more, so I watched "Chucky" on tv with my host mother. Wrote a poem.

Went to bed at like 1:00 AM, managed not to scald myself with the shower (cold instead of incredibly hot yay). Did some pushups, as usual. This morning I've just been eating toast, talking to people online and looking at MP3 players on the net. Later today I might go looking for some at the stores in Taipei.

Anyway, I am going to stick a poem here, but just in case that's not your thing, as an added bonus there is a picture of my room:

#10 On Home
To one who lived a whole life in one place,
Speaking of “home” may bring a vacant look,
For stasis can a prison make of book,
And warm fireside and some familiar face.
I yearn for mountains cold and foggy lace,
Evergreen trees, and mist, and forest brook,
And Winter’s touch, frost bearding ev’ry nook;
My homeland’s my salvation, not God’s grace.
Towards the East these eyes are oft inclined,
And images of old I ponder still;
The youth-fill’d roads all beckon in my mind,
My friend, perhaps, lives over yonder hill.
Of yet, the wanderlust’s not put behind--
Can home defer unto the traveler’s will?

Time + Energy = Blog

Though you can usually cut out one and fake it. I was feeling pretty tired after my 70 minute bus ride home, but after two rousing games of baseball (I got better and won by one point, 11-10 in the 2nd game) I am feeling good.

Let's talk about Wednesday. Our culture class was really weird, there was this lady to teach us how to tie scarves so you can dress yourself like a weird asian middle-aged woman (not the cool kind of which I earlier spoke). Actually, some of them were younger women's styles; however, none of them were very manly. So, after trying to teach Raphael to tie a double-windsor knot well (he was apt at learning the method, but boy is it hard to make look good), I went outside and had a spontaneous hack sesh with Scott. And Raphael a bit, & maybe Michael Torres, but they left to play volleyball, so we hacked some. But back to the scarves:

Scott & I went to the office of Zhong-Lun to get his lunch box... turns out it didn't heat up because we didn't plug the machine in. So we had to wait for that, and while we were waiting (not that there's any other way to kill time) Scott had a sudden addiction spasm & decided we had to play hackey-sack, right there, right then. So we hacked, until we were tired & sweaty and also his lunch was hot.

Lunch at the mall, followed by Chinese class... we had a good test (listen-write) and then more good learning. I think our relationships are improving. Like, now I can talk to Yu-Jing (or Yu-gyeong) in Chinese (she speaks a little Japanese, bettern than me, Korean, and little English) a little. I don't know all the words she/Alex know because they are the best & hang out together all the time. Mayhap I ought team up with Kenta...

Catholic choir was random. Caught up to my first host mother on the way there, we talked again. It's funny that in the 3 months I was there, I never had the ability to understand anything she said, but now I can have a decent conversation with her, somehow. Our teacher & the l33t posse of people spent over an hour on their little group project, so I chatted with the accompanist (she made me sight read this hard gospel song because I was watching her struggle with it) and gave her suggestions on how to rock out the end of said song. So we mostly practised with her (there being 3 sop, 3 alto, 3 bass & a loud but sickly me) going through the three motets--a.k.a. mottetto a quattro voce miste--for the majority of the time.

Then our teacher came back and we did this stupid song. I hate some of the lyrics and the lead guy on the recording is smug sounding. And there's like no harmony. Somewhere in there there's another line with 3rds but that's about it. Where's the Bach Chorales? I may ask. There was this one place where I really disagreed with the lyrics, but this guy insisted the meaning of "conquer" is "overcome" in this case in English & Chinese. But it's totally not, check the context:

Glory, glory to the Lamb
You will take me into the land
We will conquer in Thy name
And proclaim that Jesus reigns.

That's an ode to global domination if you ask me. Also, I've never heard Jesus called "Lion of Judah" before. Anyway, I'll only have to hear that piece a few more times. The music was even written in do-re-mi. I hate reading numbers.

On Thursday, being today, I went to school. I was tired a lot. Ivan didn't show up to Living Technology at all. I can't remember what I did but it involved studying. I also learned Evanescence-girl's Chinese name, and how to recognize another common surname on sight. At lunch, the boys were playing "Taiwanese Dodgeball." It's a pickup game, boys only, it is like keepaway/piggy-in-the-middle, except the two guys on the ends whip a ball as hard as they can through a field of guys. The guys in the middle try and catch it, if they can they replace a thrower. Otherwise they just get hit and we all enjoy a good laugh.

I showed some hackey-sack (and by that I mean hacked demonstratively), and learned a new word or two by just chilling with my classmates who were watching. Also, during Domestic Science (where Alex didn't show up, just went and "worked on his 101" -- he's building a model of Taipei 101 out of wood & glue) I kept looking up words for useful basic things and then checking them against the guy sitting next to me with simple pictures. If no-one else wants to teach me basic vocabulary, I guess I will. A few days ago I learned "Head of State" and "Prime Minister." So today it was "Flag," "Hammer" and "Nail."

In P.E. they were doing volleyball tests again. I ran up beforehand to do chinups on the field (for otherwise-neglected biceps), then down to the volleyball area. We ran, and then did the usual stretches and pushups, though again no abs. There was a test for bumping a ball a lot, but I am last in the list. So I waited until #42 went and was all psyched, but then the girls and people who failed went to try again. So that's another strike against my P.E. teacher, who is nice as a person or at the school store, but a disagreeable woman (viz. bitch) in class.

Got on the Green 2 after school and had an adventure. It eventually got to Nanshijiao, but went the long way round, thereby taking SEVENTY (70) minutes. Only cost $12 NT though :) After dinner I played the baseball game with Joe again. The first game he won good, but I started to strike out most of his batters, and figured out ways to hit the ball differently. The second game was a close 11-10 in favour of me. hooray. Now it's just been blogging, for your enjoyment. I hope.

Also, my Diana Krall CD has become somehow become corrupted. That's right, the LAST TRACK of "The Girl in the Other Room," the one about MY HOME TOWN, fucks up at about the one minute mark. So, if someone would be so kind as to rip/download "Departure Bay" by Diana Krall & send it to my hotmail or to kevinjdobson @ gmail.com, I would be much obliged. In fact I could even post a picture with a thanksome note.

A few quick things

Just in case you didn't know, all these photos are reduced in size for my blog. If you actually view the picture full-size they're 1024x768 or something for the most part (which is in itself a reduction for the 'net).

Yesterday, being Monday, not much happened. In military training we studied, because I guess it was too wet outside or something. In music class we finished watching "The Pianist." Then in Chinese, we kept heckling our teacher until he started trying to teach us a really difficult, apparently non-useful, but commonly occuring word. It was irksome but interesting, though now I hear it all the time & grr...

Today, PE was not too bad, but I couldn't quite do the 15 pushups as fast as everyone else. As usual, I did one more lap than everyone in the warmup jog/run, just to lap all the girls. In Guowen (their Chinese poetry/idiom class) our teacher started making fun of how foreigners spoke Chinese just randomly. I thought that was in bad taste, 'cause I mean I find some things Taiwanese people say in English funny, but I don't mention them within earshot. It's funny how the word "foreigner" (外國人 waiguoren) sticks out to our ears.

In English Conversation, we talked about random things like, how Taiwan weddings are weird and all the cool places in Taiwan that our teacher has visited. I noticed she's developing the beginnings of a hardcore Chinglish accent, beginning to rephrase things and say certain words (such as "pretty") very differently. In math class our teacher showed us a cool thing about expressing repeating numbers as fractions, but after that I lost him. Scout wasn't bad, I spent most of it hacking though.

Missed art to travel to a meeting with the Xmas dinner planning committee. American Claire snuck up to me at Main Station and yelled waiguoren! at me, surprising me intensely. We checked out the venue, which is WAY up on the red line, past Beitou... it's a killer place, a nice, brand new art gallery owned by a Rotarian (which means no rental costs) but of course there's no kitchen, let alone a bigass oven. Now it's crazy logistics time. I might not be able to come to the event as the Catholic choir's performance is at the same time. On the subway home talked to Scott about 1984... gave him the postcards to mail (Brianna, Soobus, Grand'rents, Jessi)--if there's anyone else wants want, just drop me an email or post a comment w/ mailing address (can also do c/o). Also lost badly to my little brother at the Japanese baseball game. I've got his strategy figured out though, now I just need to be able to hit the pitches he throws.

If my mother is reading this, please SEND SOME DRIED MAPLE LEAVES (at your convenience) ... that would be so cool!

kumquat tea

Well, some things have happened this weekend, they weren't all that exciting, I mean the highlights of Saturday were 'o.k.' I'm getting the feeling that due to my prolonged absence readership has dropped significantly, & I suppose the only way to rectify that is by fresh content & pictures. And posting a lot of comments and tags on other people's blogs. That or not caring and making it one big note to self. I'm surprised there were no "blog-nazi" style comments of "post you infidel post, or I'll tear your eyes out." But whatever.

Yesterday

Well, as I said, the highlights were so-so, but the dumb parts weren't too bad either. We all met inside Shandao Temple MRT, then went one station over to Main Station and walked to the Main Train Station (conveniently proximitous). This was the first time I'd been on a train in Taiwan--and I have only ridden a few in North America & Europe--so I took this unprecedented experience & used it to write more postcards. We all got seats on the way there on these benches. The train ride seemed to be about an hour.

Upon arriving in wherever the hell it was, we rode in cars to the pottery place. There was apparently some sort of event there later, but we just roamed around looking at some pottery. There was this really expensive yet crappy thing that was being sold for like $8,000 CDN (rounding up, actual price NT $192,000). I didn't buy anything, because pottery is big and breakable.

A.A., Ivonne, Kyle, some girl & I all decided to go on a mission to Old Ceramics Street randomly because we were bored & had a lot of time to kill. So we all talked and compared notes about experiences / studying, how people's Chinese was improving, and who would speak well or not be able to by the end of the year. That was kind of fun & I had this fruit juice/'tea' made of lemon & kumquat.

There was a ceremony, complete with junior high school band and parade with drummers, and fighting dragon-costume things. And Rtn. Vino was MCing, just randomly. There might have been important people there, like the mayor of Taipei County, & the Minister of Culture, but I only heard those things in Chinese so I could be totally wrong. We were staring right into the sun and the mic was too loud, even though the sound techie was standing RIGHT NEXT TO the mixing board he didn't fix it. There was this unveiling of a large wall painting, which I also have 3 minutes of video about; in the video, which you all can see in like 8 months, some guy throws what appears to be a smouldering/flaming wad of toilet tissue from the roof down at one of the politicians.

Afterwards we went inside and had free food. It was good. Some people were doing pottery but we mostly sat and laughed at a few people who just massacred their clay and could not form anything resembling other than a misshapen, non-pot lump. Got back on the train but with no seats & returned to Taipei. At the train station before we left we saw breakdancers though:

In the evening there was, as Ivonne put it, "A party for unmarried, pathetic women. I'm so excited!" Claire & I hung out, & I had to get Ivonne & Scott from the subway at different times, and take Scott back, which involved some walking. During the event, Scott & I played this baseball game where he owned me severely, while Claire watched in amusement.

Partway through we (me & Scott) had to re-arrange my little brother's room which involved disassembling and moving his bed to a different configuration to create the illusion of more space. I tried to ask "why" but Scott just said, "No, Kevin. There's no reason except they want it that way." Much hilarity ensued from a joke that Scott made which I riffed on which was made all the funnier because Ivonne didn't get it at all for the longest time. [Incidentally: how do you symbolize sex with your fingers?]

Closing Notes

I would talk about today, but I am going to bed now... let me sum it up by saying, we saw Super Size Me, while eating McDonald's food (you can bring stuff into the theatre & your ticket has a reserved seat). Then a lot of karaoke (some bad, some ok) in a smokey smelling room at Holiday KTV. I did Kravitz-version "American Woman" & a weird Asian chick's cover of "Drops of Jupiter." Solved the mic over-reverb problem by just singing really loud with no amplification at all. Dinner was at some Italian-ish place, pasta woohoo.

Also, for those of you who want to send me stuff, here is my mailing address. I translated it myself with my mom checking at the end, but it should be ok. This way, you can surprise me by not asking for it:
No. 12, Alley 20, Lane 383, JingHsin Street, Zhong He City, 235 Taiwan
I can also make it available in Chinese if you are feeling adventurous or if you have a label maker/envelope print function and Asian language support.

Wanfang Gaozhong 92, 90, 89 ...

...and the announcer's voice is drowned out by screaming as we leap to our feet. Today was good, because not only did I get my first hugs in MONTHS (& plenty of them at that) but our choir achieved the best possible outcome for the day, that is winning our Taipei city choir competition. This means we move on to the nationals in the Spring for a shot at the second year as nation's best. It was pretty neat.

Of course, we practised a LOT this week... not only has it been 6 days a week for months, but Saturday mornings was always 3+ hours. This week, we did four+ hours Tuesday & Wednesday, then nine hours on Thursday, and probably 5 today & then the competition. I was crazy busy. I apologize for not posting.

I just bought some CAT5 cable today, so now I'm back online. I've moved to Nanshijiao with my second host family. They are cool (a mother & son) and speak to me in Chinese. Sometimes I can make more than one sentence in a row & a couple of phrases back and forth with people before running into words I don't know. Like a while ago I said to our accompanist (really, really good) "You play the piano really good-sounding." To which she replied "Thanks, you sing well. Do you have an umbrella?" to which I replied "At home." Not so exciting for you, but for me, it was good. Like grammatically good phrases. I can speak more with broken stuff & random English words to my mother or brother.

I'll post more later, it's time for bed & my throat is sore from screaming. but w00ty w00t w00t

Well here's a post for you all...

...and postcards for some. These past days have been pretty good since the Tea Tour, though early in the week there was the fantastically hot "Autumn Tiger" weather instead of the biting cold I've been so far expecting in vain.

Quote of the Day: "Yes I'm starting to appreciate logic more; I used to be somewhat disdainful of it...then I met Drew."--Amay

In the news: Yasser Arafat est mort. I am moving host families on Saturday at 5:00 PM. I mailed two postcards today, to Connie & Barbara, and more are in the works. Also, it's Rememberance Day.

Monday

This Monday, I was surprised by the number of pushups we did in military training because I have been used to PE's 15 instead of 25... then we all stood at attention for a REALLY long time (though it doesn't top Amay's cadet experiences) while our instructor inspected our posture and uniforms.

At 11:00 we had a meeting with Sandy to discuss our speeches for the following morning. Kenta lost his and Ivan didn't really have one (Alex had a Rotary one) so we got random office staff/teachers who knew English to help write them. After lunch we watched more of "The Pianist" in Music class, then had a good Chinese class. Subsequently I hacked for a while, then did my singing test in choir. Unfortunately I was in with the Grade 10s, who are not so good and very quiet, so the one me could be heard much better than, say, 2 Sopranos, 2 Altos & 2 Basses.

Tuesday

In the morning, all the excange students at Wanfang had to give a short speech at the morning assembly. Ivan's was surprisingly well done, drawing applause from the crowd line after line. Alex didn't have too good a time of it, though he sounded more coherent to me. Kenta's class lauded him even before he got up on stage & he was greeted by a roaring (sitting) ovation after performing on his Japanese traditional instrument (it doesn't have a name except in Japanese... it's like 'some city 3 string') -- what we call it in Chinese.

My speech wasn't bad. I kind of wung it for half and looked at my paper a bit. I got some cheers for (as I always do) not using the stairs to get on stage, and also for my crowd control requesting a louder "hao!" to my "dajia hao?" Unfortunately, I failed to notice that that morning they didn't sing the Taiwan National Anthem at the beginning... it's weak when they do, like they're really quiet, but they do sometimes. So I had written the Canadian anthem into mine and I sang it, according to plan, as I had been approved by Sandy.

But afterwards, it was weird, because the next guy to talk said some random things to the kids, I think it was a lecture about patriotism using me as an example, because he said "guo'ai" (國愛 lit. 'nation love') and actually said in English, "You must love your country." But they didn't sing it at all that day. So I was confused and felt I'd made a faux pas, because according to anthem protocol, the national antem should be first or last at an event in that country.

In P.E. boy was it hot. I just covered my neck and tried to protect my ears to avoid a sunburn, and I think I was successful. We did 15 really fast pushups, a good run, and then played basketball a lot. It was really hot, and thirsty work, and I was quite glad for a cool drink at the end of the class. In hindsight I must have got some good exercise.

Did some light studying in various classes... in conversation class, Kenta didn't show up so it was just me, Ivan & Alex with our Canadian teacher. She talked to them about clubbing and clubs & a lot about different movies. I am wondering why Kenta didn't come (Ivan said he was practising his instrument again) because his English is the worst of all of ours, and he therefore warrants the most instruction/practise. Very strange.

In Scout we did the dance again & I did a lot of hacking... somewhere in there I made my classmate teach me the word "strawberry" and then gave him strawberry-flavoured candy. School-cleaning time was fun as usual. In art we continued the silly thing we had been working on before; there wasn't much remarkable about it. 'Twas cute (可愛 ke'ai)though.

In the evening I blogged the Tea Tour over the course of a few hours... I hope you've all read & enjoyed it, though I'll admit none of the pictures were terrific, some of the style was good as I was in a good mood on Monday & Tuesday despite the longish days. Also, got a letter from my grandparents, which means they're probably next on the postcard list, along with upcoming birthday girl Brianna.

Wednesday

Culture class involved Gong Fu again, but this time it was a different style with a different guy. He wasn't so skilled, especially at teaching a series of movements; however, it was--as always--enjoyable in the combat/application section. We practised a variety of lock & throw-based takedowns which were fun and interesting, but, of course, highly impractical.

We all headed to Pizza Hut for lunch... it's an all-you-can eat one on the corner across from an exit of the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall MRT Station. I walked with Anna & Claire (American) though most of the people took the bus. We all arrived simultaneously. The food was good, though randomly American Alex asked for seperate bills for the different tables, and the server apparently understood but didn't do anything (this is analogous to the time they lied about Scott's eggy steak twice in a row even with my mother talking to them). I, and others, found it expensive though: the pizza, food & drinks cost us NT $232 each. That's about $9.00 CDN and a LOT more than I ordinarily spend on lunch.

Language class was again good. This random lady from NTUT (師大 shida) came to watch our class. Our teacher said two teachers would be teaching us and studying us on Friday because we're Western foreigners and they want to see how we learn Chinese. I pointed out to him that Wanfang had no school on Friday. So the woman that was there said we could come to Shida (National Taiwan Normal University, but that's a mouthful) on Friday. So we will. Went home with Kaylee, & showed her NTU (台大 taida) at Gongguan MRT Station.

Walked instead of taking the bus both to and from Guting MRT for choir. On the subway, and at the times where I wasn't singing, I wrote Barbara's postcard. But then I finished it. So I had very little to do for a while. Stayed up late reading a technical commentary on the Death Stars.

Today

It's not over yet, but in the morning, I met Alice at the MRT station to go to a party & then the Rotary meeting (yay no school for me). We took a taxi to the Taipei WTC where a Rotary club was having a party. We did some networking and I loaded up on sugar-smack (and by that I mean sweet food, not heroin or cocaine). We then got a ride to the big hotel where the meetings are held. This time there were two clubs meeting together so I didn't have to speak, just eat and get money.

I enjoyed it on the whole, & Scott will be interested to know I saw a pretty girl of the type we agree is 'pretty.' The main presentation was on Taiwanese language poetry, so everything had bopomofo by it; however, some of it was specifically Taiwanese sound-symbols I haven't learned. It was pretty fun though. I met this really nice Rotary guy and when I asked him where I could get a Rotary tie clip like he & his club-mates had, he gave me his. So w00ty w00t w00t to that, in the most classic "whoa!, loot" sense of the phrase.

I mailed postcards to Barbara & Connie at about 5:55, this time the whole operation took less than 5 minutes & I got out before the door even started coming down. So those are heading over by airmail and ought arrive in the next few days. Tomorrow, of course, I've got Chinese class then I'm going to a performance with my mom, and then PACKING A LOT and by a lot I mean everything.

REMINDER: To those of you who so nicely volunteered to do Tiffany's survey & to whom I sent it, please remember it should be emailed to her on or before the 15th of this month. Thank you all very much.

Tea Tour, Day the First

In the spirit of not infringing on Alleah's territory of frickin' long posts, I guess I'll break this all up, if I can figure it out. In the spirit of randomness, read all about instances of the exploding whale--in North America & Taiwan.

Anyway, this is about the Tea Tour, which we capitalize. It's one of two tours that Rotary offers for Inbound exchange students in Taiwan (for a total of 8 vacation days... in some South American countries you get 5 weeks) & involves busing down to the center of the island and looking at farms. Also, as for the shameful typo in my last post, I apologize profusely to the French language; however, I am pleased that I make so few that they glare & my loyal readership corrects them. Also, before we begin, I found another variant on 'awesemnity,' being "awesomnessity."

Friday

Scott & I went to the Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT station to meet up with everyone at about 6:15 AM. We all got on the bus and it started driving south. For the most part the ride was enjoyable. We stopped after about an hour for a 10-minute rest stop in which to pick up some more exchange students. It's here that the unimaginable, every hacker's nightmare, happened.

Now, let it first be said about Fabio that he's generally a good guy. I didn't think anything of his history of kicking things up in the air very high when I allowed him to join the impromptu hack session, only the all-accepting principle of the circle. But soon, Fabio had the hack, and American Alex declared, "He's going to kick it on the roof." How right he was, and soon the parabolic arc we know and love ended abruptly several stories up on the roof of the rest stop. At this point, there might have been an "oh, shit" from one of the others, but I was silent, my recently unleashed joy twisted into sadness.

We continued on the bus with some of the down-island people such as Catherine (possibly my favourite Canadienne), Ada, & some randomly young girl who has really good Chinese. Somewhere in here, the bad karaoke begun. While I am not, on principal, against karaoke, I personally strongly dislike bad karaoke. And somehow, only a few annoying people who could NOT sing at all kept doing song after song, and saying random things into the mic. It should also be noted that whenever there is a microphone, French Alex can be found broadcasting inanity with it. Scott was of course crushed as he dislikes music in general & really bad music in particular.

In reality quite soon (though a relative eternity) we arrived in Shuili (水里) which is pretty much the middle of Taiwan & next to "Sun Moon Lake." We all met the county mayor and hung out in his office. This is where I decide to post pictures, though I took a lot, because there is one of Yoshiteru I quite enjoy:

I'd like to say a few words about Yoshiteru at this point... he's one of the Japanese exchange students, but unlike Kenta he pwns (owns or dominates completely) at one thing alone: badminton. Thus, I've taken to calling him Yoshiteru-hiko, because as there is a Prince of Tennis, there is likewise one for badminton.

There was free food on the bus, so I took a can of pringles into the instructional video at the hydroelectric dam we visited. It's interesting because there, at night when power usage is low, excess electricity is used to pump water back UP into a reservoir, kind of like a battery of gravitational potential energy. I found it quite interesting.

Subsequently, we found ourselves at a hot spring bath. I have no pictures of this because, of course, water + camera = death. At this hot spring, not only do you wear clothes, but the guys & girls are segregated ... you can't even see the girls in their skimpy western bathing suits (the girls' ones in PE had like skirt parts at the bottom so you don't see the bikini line). So it was very random, and the water was also RIDICULOUSLY hot.

Somewhere in there, guys (starting with Fabio & ending with all of us) began climbing the wall to look at/talk to the girls. Later on, Anna climbed the wall to look at us, and she found herself mooned by the vast majority of the males in her sight (some old Chinese guys were in the steam room & did not participate)! Later on, Wil--being finished bathing of course--threw his bathing suit over the wall. After a few screams & girls looking over the wall, some bikinis followed. A few guys put them on and climed the wall, then ripped them off, to my great amusement. But enough of that.

We had dinner outdoors, mmm... pasta, and then headed to our various host families... I was with the other Wanfangers (if such a word existed before) which I considered slightly unfortunate, as Alex & Ivan are a troublesome duo. We went to this grove and did karaoke for a while, then hung out at the house. I played ball with some little Taiwanese kids and talked to some people, a woman whose English was only slightly better than my Chinese & a guy whose was worse. They had a really cute little 10-month-old who unfortunately didn't like me. Taught Kenta the words to "Country Roads." My slippers were WAY too small at first, but sometime after Ivan & Alex tried to play cards/gamble with us I got bigger ones. Here's Kenta abed in a room similar to mine. Hooray for sleeping on the floor...

Thus concludes day the first.

The Second Day... BIG Temple

Ok here's the second installment of the Tea Tour posts... we got up in the morning, had breakfast with our farmy hosts (though the guy I like to talk to actually works at the Mayor's office... not sure what he does, we agreed he worked there for the government but I couldn't understand him exactly).

The previous night, I was lulled to sleep by the silly pop music of "Busted" (the CD burn a gift from one of my classmates). I was of course awakened by the cock's crow, as we are in a rural area. This was definitely an awesome morning... I have pics of it looking like California for niceness & sameness, very beautiful / clean overall. When we left the house I saw one too... but then it turned into a whole flock bearing down on me. Here they are, and also Kenta taking a picture of the Mountain Pig (I would assume that means boar), and also "Un bon matin a Shuili" (follow up to "une apres-midi a Danshui" for silly pictures of me & Alex):

Headed off to what our schedule touted as "The Largest Zen Buddhist Temple in Asia," and damn, was it ever big. I mean, I am pretty sure it cost over $110 million US and stands like 150 metres high... here's an article about it. This was without a doubt the sweetest monastery ever, and barely beats out Sagrada Familia for the best religious structure I have visited. I took a lot of pictures, but we couldn't take pics inside like the ones through the link. That pagoda/wooden tower thing was on the 16th floor and I think it was at least 25 metres high. We also got to talk to some monks... well, they were all girl monks (or nuns) that we met, but there were some guys elsewhere.

We were driving along in the bus, and while I was listening to Scott talk about his beloved role-playing world, we took a rest stop. Of course, where to stop but the scenic and famous Sun Moon Lake? Fortunately, and randomly, some people were shooting wedding/engagement photos there, so there were a bride & groom in white wedding wear. I randomly got a pic with a friend of the bride. You can also see me, Catherine (my favourite Canadienne, though Célia also rocks) & Greg, he being the only other Canadian guy I know of in Taiwan. Right about now, funk soul brother check it out now:

Later that day we went to a paper factory & made paper. Mine turned out sucky, but I made a Hello Kitty fan so it's all good. We had McDonalds for lunch, randomly enough. The three of us carrying the food to the bus were like, "Represent!" because we were totally perpetuating the local peoples views about Americans and gluttony & Western lifestyle.

In the evening, after dinner there was an impromptu event... PP Water told Claire & Scott (paraphrasing here) "In like 20 minutes you're putting on a show, right?" And they were like, "fuck," but not to her of course. They recruited me to play a Canadian folk song on guitar (the Nova Scotia song, which we totally stole from Scotland), Wil & Tyler to do American-style high school competition wrestling, a fake martial arts show from the other Canadian guy & some people, silly dancing by the Germans, a joke show by some Americans & of course the awful Gong Fu demonstration. Gotta love the Rotary official events for being organized & not involving performances.

Following that, we went to the karaoke grove... there weren't too many people there, and the few guys there kept making me do songs I didn't know. I'd be like, "well, I know these 5 or these here or this one..." and then the guy would be "Well how about this one?" So it was weird. Would have been difficult anyway to sightread words and pick up the ghost melody, but Alex & Ivan sing kind of off-key. After a while the people left, then I left the duo to their tomfoolery. Hung out with Kenta for a while too.

Somewhere in the evening we were pulling our strings to help out this Oregonian who lives mid-island... he's got a weird counselor that yells at him, can't go out & do stuff, & the likes. So we gave him our powerful Rotary contacts' phone numbers and told him if worst came to worst, we could swing train tickets to go down there and do some ass-kicking. Because "You're not allowed to have fun" is not something you say to someone I know and get away with. Even if you're rich and live far away.

Final Chapter (Thus Ends...)

Pointing to roof, "Wode dongxi zai nali, wo ke bu keyi qu?" (我的東西在那理,我可不可以去)

The Tea Tour, that is. Though this post would of course share a title with a BG song. I've decided to give a few people some more face time, because I know some of you like to put names to faces. This is also the part where you learn how I recovered my hack...

In the morning we again broke fast with our host father-ish guy, and watched part of an Agatha Christie movie on HBO. We put our stuff in the bus then walked uphill in the blazing heat to a tea factory. There, we made cookies. I have a hilarious video of Anna snorting a line of flour as if it were cocaine...here is the aftereffect thereof:

At the tea factory they said we could eat the half-dried tea, so we did. Also once we were outside we picked leaves fresh off the tea plants and ate them. I found them pretty good, but Kenta pretty much sums up the experience with his face:

We then went to this random place & made those wooden pencils that you can buy in BC tourist stores--you know, the ones made from a twig--and found it's actually quite easy. You just need some power tools, graphite and glue. There was much aimless milling about, and we saw a few interesting things, like a frickin huge spider, which you can see when I get back. It was spindly but damned big. Also, there were dead birds in the nets around a vinyard, and that was likewise creepy. In the spirit of 'creepiness' and being politically incorrect with respect to Wiccans, here is Anna being a "witch" on the brooms like we have at school.

Again, we had lunch, but then it was time to depart. Apparently, the schedule said we were going to some village, which was actually kind of town-like & very touristy... but only for about 10 minutes. So that wasn't too exciting, though Scott took a picture of himself in a tank. Eventually we had to say goodbye to all the down-island people of coolness. Before we move on, here's rifle-owning Scott in front of one of the "guns are illegal" signs:

Once again, we headed to the infamous rest-stop to bid adieu to Ada, Catherine and the likes. This time, I had a plan which had been stewing in my mind for 48 hours. Scott & I found a cleaning lady & I asked her in Chinese "My thing is up there [pointing to roof], is it ok if I go there?" and she responded in the affirmative. With laughs of glee at our luck and the ridiculousness of it all, we went at a dead sprint towards the upper level. I hopped a fence down about half a storey to the roof level, retrieved & promptly pocketed my hack, took a momen to shout obscenities at Fabio from my high vantage point, and returned to the bus with Scott. It was cool, but I would have preferred not to have lost the thing in the first place, regardless of the delightful retrieval.

We got back to Taipei city around 6:00 ... on the way we were discussing the logistics of the Christmas Party. Or rather, the numerous logistical difficulties of the "traditional Christmas Dinner" we were trying to pull here, because ovens just aren't that common and totally useless in Chinese cooking. Most people don't have them, and we're having trouble finding a venue. On the subway, Scott & I discussed his role-playing world & the completely unrelated definition of hotness, because he was confused by why some people were attracted to a certain girl. And that's it in a nutshell. or a dos shell, if you can get that online.

hack hack pro hack pro pro

There's nothing so satisfying as a well-aimed, well-landed Superjester. Please feel free to offer contentions, but the lack of knee-straining damaging from improper technique & the added bonus of a small-sized posse of Taiwanese schoolgirls complimenting my "fierceness" (li hai) made it especially enjoyable.

And by that I mean, I got that package in the mail from the 'rents. Which included not one, but TWO hackey-sacks. And even though I'm 'out of practise' and it's none too stall-friendly, the little cloth ball of plastic beads known as the hack still brings me much joy. Plus, I'm actually still good because I am in much better shape now than I was before. And some of the boys in my class shall be my disciples, and they shall call me "Kevin." Unfortunately, since I packed up all my stuff in boxes like they said, M & G were seemingly unable to find CTHD or Mononoke-Hime on DVD, but I can live with that. Now down to business...

Lundi

Language class was o.k. I'm learning some words I didn't know how to write and we keep picking up little grammatical gems and useful things that are alluded to but not explained in our text (which might be where Scott (張禾力) is missing out)... also I've been doing much better since I started like actually reviewing a bit for tests/practising the characters deliberately. And by that I mean top mark, even though Alex & Yu Jing pwn a lot, you'll be hard-pressed to out-write me. Except in calligraphy.

In military training, we were shooting paintball guns at these targets. It was cool, except you got to shoot for like 60 seconds, and the rest of the hour we just sat and watched the other guys. The second block it was the girls' turn, so in the 20 minutes the teacher took to explain stuff to them, the guys just got to do the standing-at-attention thing, except facing the other way. So I just got to look at Alex's head for a long time and do nothing. Then we sat & watched the ladies... they're not so good of shots.

I found out partway though Monday that Tenors & Sopranos had an extra practise at 5:00... So after language Scott (張禾力), Kaylee (凱麗) & I went up to the field to exercise. We couldn't jog because people were doing archery at hardcore long range, so we hid and did pushups & things. When they went to retrieve arrows we did pull-ups, but other than that, pushups, and some other tricep thing, and lots of stretching.

Practise was pretty good. I was a little tired & hungry, but we went through the Chinese song word by word, putting the individual sounds of BPM on different notes & fractions of notes to get the perfect sound she wanted. It was a lot of work, but very neat. Unfortunately, near the end, I deliberately shook/over-vibratoed the last held A above middle C. After that I found out we were doing the Handel songs still, so I didn't sound so good there. Finished practise 6:30, so I got home at 7:10 PM & having left at 6:40 AM had a good 12.5 hours of time at school/in transit already. Needless to say I was a little tired by dinner-time.

Mardi

What to say about Tuesday? 'Twas a fairly unremarkable day. In PE we had "basketball," so after the usual hullabaloo of shouting unintelligible things, military drill, stretching in formation, pushups and the likes, there was a little dribbling of basketballs. Not much, but a little. Art wasn't too bad, got to chat and draw with some of the girls. Scout was highly inane though--I don't know what this has to do with ANYTHING at all, but we're doing hip-hop dancing. I should actually call it "remarkably ridiculous hip-hop shenanigans" plus doing nothing for a long time. But my group has this terrible dance, it's just a bunch of silliness. At the end there is a move that's kind of funny, I think Tougie showed it to me one time, it's these guys doing a little dance to combine their powers & from some anime I've never seen.

Oh, and somewhere in there was English class, where we discovered our teacher can sing English R&B love songs. It was like karaoke, because the music was playing & she had lyrics, and sung into the mic over the class speakers. Random, but neat.

Mecredi

Went with Scott to Zhong-Lun for culture. Despite what the Americans all said about not coming to watch the election, they were all there. And we did calligraphy, which was ridiculously hard. I spent a long time doing the same character over and over, and trying to make it look like the one our teacher did. you could see what it was, but it wasn't all that cool-looking. Afterwards we did this painting stuff where it's supposed to look like bamboo. The technique with different shades of black paint isn't too tough. But have you ever tried to paint bamboo? Right near the end I figured out why mine looked weird, when the teacher said "we're painting bamboo, not trees" because all the angles on my little braches going to the leaves were wrong. I have a better idea of it now though.

Language class was again pretty good, always learning more things of silliness. Now I can count up to ridiculously large numbers in Chinese, yay. As for evening choir, it was also good, so to speak. We did a couple of old "Motetta a Quattro Voci" in Latin which are really good; Italians get mad props for rocking at four-part arrangement. After that we worked on "Praise His Holy Name," another gospel number with cool-sounding chords. There were actually more than two tenors/basses there as well.

Afterwards, I figured out I could save $0.24 CDN by walking instead of taking a bus back to the MRT station, so I did. It was neat because it's all along National Taiwan Normal University (師大)... though I saw this random neo-Nazi. He had an arm patch that DEFINITELY was a swastika: black in white circle on a field of red. It was a refreshing 15 minute brisk walk, and all in all good fun. Stayed up late reading Maclean's & the Globe though.

Jeudi

Today was a very satisfying day overall. On the subway/bus to school I studied a song we're doing in music class. It's Taiwanese pop (of the sentimental, nice sounding variety--there are lots of songs like it) and I know the melody, but the words are still escaping me... working on it though. Living technology was kind of random: when I got there, there was like no-one there except this one kid reading a Chinese newspaper. I noticed a big headline in bold, black letters: 布希贏了, and I was like, 'hey I can read this and I know what it means.' But then I was like "damn," because it reads "buxi ing le" whichs is literally "Bush wins." And that's about as political as I get when it comes to the yanks around here.

For most of the class we just kneaded clay, or something. We weren't sure what the purpose was, so it was dull, but one of the guys who is tenor in choir made a gigantic penis out of his clay. And Ivan made a nice sculpture of a hand, so it was kind of interesting. Just don't forget that it was random and pointless.

The next two classes were academics, in English I tried to grab a word or two, but other than that I just studied & looked up some things I wanted to know how to say or write. In the break I went outside and did some hacking. Unfortunately, this is a novelty here -- unlike in Spain where the guy I hacked with even knew it was called hackey-sack, people are like "what is this?" (or sometimes "這是什麼?" but usually they speak English). I am still recognized for my middling skill though. Fortunately, chicks here dig hackey-sack (unlike some people I know).

At lunch I just roamed around randomly, then had some lunch. Subsequently went to choir... it was pretty good but today's accompanist was kind of sucking, getting all slow even when we were playing to metronome. So our teacher just held the click up to her mic to make it extra loud.

Afterwards was domestic science, but this time we were actually cooking. Teachers here never take questions really, but to compensate they spend like 20-30 minutes explaining stuff before you can begin (classes are 50 minutes long). So we sat around for a while. It was made ridiculously easy, as not only was everything explained, but everything came in little baggies or containers, so you couldn't add the wrong amount of something and didn't measure anything. And there were detailed flowcharts/diagrams on the board plus a recipe. All this to make a 3-layer blueberry & mousse cake of the kind that you do not cook at all.

It was fun though, working together with my classmates, including our class leader who is a really nice girl, but I like never get to talk to her ever as I must always sit at the back. We whipped this cream and mixed it with stuff to make the white part, but there was a little bit extra... so people got juvenile like the repressed grade 10s they are and starting putting it on each other's faces/in their hair. The funny part was our class leader girl (though she didn't get the worst of it) ... a lot of people targeted her, also tagging with blueberry goo, so she would wash her face and then someone would just get up and get her sticky/dirty again. Fun times and good food at the end.

PE was running again, another 15 pushups (so fast they seem easy) or of course 12 for the girls, and the ab thing -- which my classmates seem to have a lot of trouble with -- followed by a little bit of basketball, which was fun. I was in a really good mood, so I followed our activities leader's orders promptly (I like her, but when she has to lead the class for our sometime bitchy PE teacher, that's a troublesome situation) relished the exercise, and the teacher didn't seem too bitchy. Went straight to the bus stop afterwards, hacked while waiting. Also hacked in the MRT at Gongguan, and started writing Barbara's postcard at Guting. On the trip to Dingxi I saw one of the girls from the other district; we talked a little, though it turns out her district isn't doing the Tea Tour trip.

Speaking of which, don't expect any posts until about Monday at the earliest, as I will be down-Island living it up for a couple days. Hope this tides you over. As for postcards, if anyone wants one, just post or email me your mailing address incl. postal code & I'll send you one. I've got Barbara's on the go but I have like 14 other postcards with no names on them...

To top the day off, dinner includes prawns, the sausages that I like that I have only found here, and potatoes (you know about me & potatoes). I think I may have an Earl Grey and then hit the sack early. Also in other news, Laura posted again. And we had all taken her off 'the lists.'