Finally a real post (at the behest of Connie) #92

Alternate title, "damn you all, comment!" But as I always say, when desiring comments, make fresh content with exciting pictures. Anyway, I haven't talked about goings-on since the New Year. I'm just going to go with highlights if you don't mind...

Sunday was the performance at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall... it was some sort of "interfaith prayer for peace" or something. Anyway the performance didn't start until 7:30, and we weren't on until 8:50, yet somehow had to be there at 1:00 PM. Some smart people made up BS excuses and came a lot later. There was security, like you had to go through a metal detector to get on stage and stuff. Went out to dinner with Mrs. Chen & talked with her, but other than that it wasn't all that good. That's another kickass venue checked off my list though... it would be nice to stay for National Concert Hall, but that's August 8th & I suspect some of you would like to hang out with me this summer.

Monday was pretty regular. I can't remember what I did on the weekend, but on Monday we had calligraphy again. In Military training I studied as usual, and at lunch found we had no choir for a while because the exams are coming up. Apparently, people need every free moment to study & cram for like two weeks on end. In Music, we watched more "Into the Woods," and the class was going to finish it in a block Kenta & I had Chinese so we missed the end. Chinese was o.k., Alex & I made jokes for most of it, and there was a random moment when Kenta & I sung a song from into the woods, which Claire has apparently seen.

After school, I went with Alex & Claire to hang out at Alex's house in Jingmei. It is indeed nice as his host parents are indeed wealthy. Went to a night market and tried some stuff (I think chicken ass but not gizzard of anything). Looked at his pictures from the U.S., talked with both of them. I think we pissed his host mother off though, inadvertently. Watching t.v. was random though.

Tuesday morning, I accidentally slept in. You might recall this also happened one time with Physics second semester last year. So I missed the assembly (there wasn't choir practise) & ended up right on time for badminton P.E. English conversation was interesting--we were talking about vacation plans and how Rotary can somehow shut you down (i.e. if you ask Vino). Kenta said he'd found a train/bus trip along the east coast of Taiwan, all the way to the south end. It also apparently visited the most beautiful mountain in Taiwan. In case you didn't know, the east side is the pretty side, the west is full of crappy cities.

Fast-forward to Art Class... we were watching a movie which just happened to be "Les Triplettes de Belleville," a production partly made in Quebec. It's a largely wordless, brilliantly animated piece with lots of music. Unfortunately at the spoken parts (in French) my classmates decided to start talking loudly in Chinese... one thing people here don't seem to realize is while they can read subtitles, we can't hear dialogue unless it's quiet. This was compounded by the fact that my French isn't too good.

My Art teacher also had a photocopy of an article (title trans: "In only 4 months studying, Kevin knows Chinese"), probably from an interview at a Rotary event a few weeks ago. I lent it to French Alex though, and he hasn't yet given it back. A guy from Catholic Choir also sent it to me in scanned format, but the quality isn't good.

On Wednesday, I messed up the bus to Zhong-lun. Somehow. I even got on the right bus, but I think I studied past my stop, and I ended up in the boonies out past Songshan. I got worried when I was the only person on the bus and we drove on a bridge, so I got off after that, crossed the street & took the Blue 27 back to civilization. Which turned out to be Taipei City Hall station. So after consulting a map I walked to SYS Memorial Hall station, & thence to Zhong-lun.

This made me an hour late & when I got there, they were doing line-dancing. Or rather, 4 people were, and the rest were talking, or clustered around one of 3 computers that people smartly brought. I learned the dances really fast, they were simple & fun a bit but after a while I got tired of it. Lunch was o.k. at the mall, there weren't so many people this time though.

Language class wasn't too bad, though it was the woman again. She is now doing 2 classes a week, but she was supposed to be taking January off to go on vacation. Go figure. It's just not as positive a learning environment, because she wants us to be like Taiwanese students. psht psht psht. Afterwards, Scott, Claire, Alex & myself went to Alex's house. We hung out, watched part of a show which I think is called "Bullshit" and played some worms. Again fun.

Thursday morning, Sophie returned to Australia. I could have gone to the airport & saw her off, but I didn't know her at all (she was one of the two people who came last January)... Raphael is leaving soon too, we'll see him off with a bang. Whatever classes I had were unremarkable, I actually had to leave at 11:00 to go to Rotary. I accidentally took the MRT up the Brown line to "Nanjing E. Rd. station" when my instructions were to go to Zhongshan North Road & Nanjing West Road intersection. I got to Zhongshan station, and then walked to the hotel (very close).

The meeting was o.k., once again most of the business was conducted in Taiwanese, but I got the people sitting beside me to talk to me. Found a new (the ancient method) way to write "zhen" which messed me up when trying to read a newspaper article. Also, met PP Jean's daughter, who is a really nice girl studying Art History & Politics in New York. She has heard of Diana Krall, & her English is perfect, but I made her talk at me in Chinese. She appreciates my jokes, I think. Thursday evening I went to the music store & played piano for an hour.

This past Friday also had some goings-on associated with it. In "Three Principles" I got my teacher to agree to write me up some sort of vocabulary list (of unspecified length) that I can study over winter break. This will rock severely as the specialized vocabulary should allow me to talk more about politics and understand more of the textbook. w00t. At lunch I hung out at the music room & played piano. I think in there somewhere I got this girl to try sight-reading Chopin's "Fantaisie Impromptu"... it was random.

Chinese class was o.k. I guess. Afterwards went to choir where Ms. Liu talked about the trip for like half an hour (I got a lot of it, but not knowing the word for taxi I missed the part in the middle) and then we had choir tests. I talked to her afterwards & she agreed to lend me the "Into the Woods" DVD. The choir trip will be the 26th to 28th of this month and will cost several thousand NT (it might end up being over $100 CDN) & will rock a lot. We are going to Hualian (in Yilan) and Taizhong (see map). Also, she invited me to come visit her house with other choir students sometime in the break. Hooray.

I got on the bus and was freaking out because outside it said left line, but inside it said "right line." Turns out it was left, and I got home around 6:30. While on the bus I realised I had two tickets for a concert, instead of one. So I called my host mother but she had to work night shift at the paper. Or evening shift, or whatever.

Once home, I made a few calls and finally Mrs. Chen agreed to come, so I said I would meet her at CKS Memorial Hall station at 7:10 (the concert being at 7:30). I wolfed down dinner, changed into some non-school clothes and hopped on the subway. We got there just in time. Again, the seats were on the 4th level, but this time instead of being way at the back, we were right on the edge about 10 rows from the back, which afforded a superb view.

The orchestra was really good, it was the private orchestra of some random corporation. In the second act they again wheeled out the grand piano, this time for one 35-minute-long piano/orchestra piece. The pianist was good, and it was kind of a virtuoso demonstrative piece, but the guy from before was better. I've also seen Rie Okamura (who across from the twins & plays for A Capella Plus) play better. Afterwards, some fun orchestral numbers that were very famous pieces. 3 encores, including one dedicated to the tsunami victims. This orchestra, like NTNU's, has a harpist. Go harp, something I don't see enough of in Nanaimo. Like orchestras. Or virtuoso pianists busting out on full-length grand pianos (the one at the National Concert Hall doesn't even have a music holder on it--nobody unable to remember whatever hardcore piece they're playing uses it).

Saturday morning I got up early to meet the guys at Xindian station for paintball. This was part of Scott's birthday celebration, and the following people were in attendance: Scott, myself, Wil, Kyle, Fabio, Raphael, Yoshiteru, Noemie. We took the Green 3 to the end of the route, then walked a little to the paintball place in the hills south of Taipei. It was a little cold (but I always play paintball in the winter) and the ground was a little muddy. Wil went fucking hardcore, lying prone, crawling on his belly, and slaughtering the other team. It was fun, and when we played in the barrel area it was really scary because when a ball hit the barrel it made quite the sound. Pictures!

After a while we started playing random 1-on-1 deathmatch games. The Taiwanese guy called it "PK". That was pretty sweet too, I have a few videos of Yoshiteru/Kyle as well... in the last game I took a lot of hits, and got some marks on the shoulders. Some hit me in the face, which got my hair, but didn't hurt due to the mask. I love paintball.

Afterwards, went to Scott's & we watched the bonus features disc of Spiderman-2. The movie CD wouldn't play because the player said it was wrong region (though other region 1 stuff works). So we played Worms for a while then I went home & read Maclean's magazine, which was from another package I got--thanks guys :) Turns out I missed out on an invite for the evening with AA & AC.

Today I went and played pool with Raphael, Fabio & Scott at Ximending. It was pretty cheap; I'm not sure how long we played but over an hour. It cost 295 NT, which worked out to less than 3$ CDN for each of us. After that, we went to the arcade & Scott/Raph played shooter games as a team. Raphael is really good though I think Scott might be the better shot in real life. Tomorrow is Scott's birthday. You might want to head over to that blog of his and write him a birthday message. *wink wink* [1 hour 30 minutes] K out

Also, I'm drinking really good "strawberry milk tea" right now. Mmm...