Thursday, February 28, 2013

I have entirely too much time off.

Yeah as weird as that sounds. Saturday is normally a work day, and we had it off for some unknown reason. Or at least, unknown to me. Then Sunday is an off day. Monday work, Tuesday off, Wednesday work, Thursday off. Long story short, with me arriving near Chinese New Year, I think I have worked a good 3 hours this past month. It's like my job in the states all over again!

As much as I'm sure you'd like to hear tales of me sitting in my apartment, studying Chinese and catching up on old movies I'm ashamed I've never seen (Seriously, I just watched Finding Nemo for the first time), I ventured out.







Pictured - Nobody else
I decided to go back to Maokong, AKA my favorite spot in the city. It was a clear day this time, and I essentially just went up there to get a coffee. I guess not many people travel on the MRT and gondola in the middle of the afternoon, because it was amazingly lacking in people. On the way back I had the gondola and a whole car on the MRT all to myself. Maybe I secretly smelled terrible and nobody told me. Maybe the scary foreigner has cooties. I don't know. But it was a suspicious day full of great views. Also I found a Burger King, which was a nice change but for the most part can go straight to hell. If I want terrible fast food McDonalds is about half the price and better.

Sunday was a fun and quick to describe day. I met the rest of Caitlin's girlfriends, and the 5 of us as well as my former coworker Jesse went out to a fancy hot pot place. I say former, because Monday was his last day - seeya dude. After we wandered around Ximen for a bit and found a skate park where they were filming a rap video. I talked to one of the girls there, turns out shes the star of the whole thing. She said to find her on Facebook, which I did. So now I can say I know a Taiwanese rap group.



Best. Mass Transit. Ever.
Right, and now we have Thursday. I decided to walk through the heart of the city and see what I could find. So I took the MRT a bit north of Taipei Main and cut down south, then back west towards my place. Nothing too too exciting to report on my excursion. I did find Taipei Main's underground mall, which I have seen signs for but never visited. Honestly its a waste of time, as it was just full of womens clothing.

Seriously, Taiwan. Sidebar. I know women like to shop for clothes more than men. But minus any change in public decency laws, we do need to buy clothes at some point. I don't know why you insist on having a 1 to 100 ratio of mens clothing stores to womens. In fact, the few clothing stores I've seen that sold mens clothing ALSO sold womens. So like, what the hell, guys? Either expect male nudity or open some damn stores.







Why god, why?!
Along the way back I stopped by a park which has the National Taiwan Museum in it, so I decided to pop on in. Its only 20 kuai (70 cents or so), but there's not too much to see. I did enjoy an entertaining video about unarmed Chinese troops chosen by god to defend the homeland with their divine boxing skills. I'm sure they meant hand-to-hand, or strength, or something along those lines, but the Google Translate provided subtitles kept talking about their divine boxing. I found this hilarious. But also, there were lots of banners around with 2/28 on them. I thought "Hm, I wonder what that's about - because that's today." Turns out its a really big godamn deal, and is like a day of national mourning. Something about the government killing some folk and trying to cover it up. I guess that's why we're off today. I missed the ceremony by an hour but did get to see some of the band still playing.


And last but not least I managed to find a Carrefour which is A) very close to my place B) is next to an Ikea. Yes, an Ikea! I will definitely be back to eat me some meatballs, even if they do contain delicious horse meat. I was lucky enough to find the variety of tea I like there, along with a few other essentials, like soju. Which I will gladly indulge in, because no joke, I probably walked a good 5 miles today.

Phew.

Friday, February 22, 2013

I'm really bad at this photo thing.

I went to look through my phone to see what I've taken since the last blog entry, and there is only ONE photo since I went about sightseeing. You wanna see it?


I mean, granted, it's a pretty great photo. As mentioned, I live above a Pizza Hut, but next door to the Pizza Hut is a tiny Chinese restaurant. I never ate there before, because well... I'm not sure why. But I went today, and asked if they had ji tui fan (chicken with rice), because shut up, it's awesome. They did, but it was 80 kuai without a drink. Granted that's not too much by US standards. A little shy of $3. But a Big Mac meal with a coke is 100 kuai, so I'm thinking "Hmm, that's a bit pricey." Anyway I get home and pop that bad boy open.

The chicken was as delicious as it looks, and I have no idea what the stuff in the rice was. Good nonethless, and it has inspired me to give this place another shot. I mean, like I have to repeat it, but the old Chinese proverb is true. "Confucius say, never doubt the ji tui fan place next to the Pizza Hut".

I just had my first real week of teaching, more or less. As I confided in some people earlier, I still don't care for my boss. But also as the head office said when I complained "You're not going to interact with her too much, so give it a shot." Well they're right, my interaction with her probably averages 1 to 2 minutes a day. But the passive aggressive, bipolar, micromanaging attitude is not appreciated. Like before the class, I started to erase the board from the previous one. One of the students came up, and in English, asked "Teacher, may I erase the board?"

Well sure, why the heck not? Saves me time, plus if you want to, you used perfect English to ask for it. So knock yourself out kid. My boss is walking by, sees me, and says "Mike, you shouldn't let the students touch the board. That is minus [some precise number] stars." (the point system we use for getting toys). Like, really? You have nothing better to do? I'm reminded of the "That is 50 DKP MINUS!" internet video. Anyway go run your own damn class, and when the kid puts his fist through a whiteboard, come back and we'll talk.

That's an awfully negative thing to end the blog on so I don't want to. I managed to meet another great TA, the lovely April. She, Caitlin and I went out to get some food at a fantastic place, also around the corner from my house. Some of the best fried rice I've ever had, covered with ketchup and pineapple. Yeah, I don't know why it works, but it did.

I have the next two days off, but unfortunately I'm going to be quite boring. My agenda is to finish a couple more lessons of Chinese, plan my classes for Monday, and finish work on programming a lesson plan generator. Yes, it is what it sounds like. The classes there are so formulaic compared to EF, I'm about halfway done writing a program that will do one third of my job for me - now it's just a matter of inputting data. I'm slightly terrified at the prospect of a fully armed and operational lesson planner.

Saturday, February 16, 2013


Okay, for realsies Taipei sightseeing.

It's Chinese New Year, which over here is Christmas, New Year, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one mega holiday. Like in China, the country pretty much shuts down for a week or so so everyone can visit family, drink tea, and practice their kung fu. At least, that's what I imagine Chinese people do on their days off.

Anywho Yllen came to see me for the past few days, so I got to do the touristy things in town. Some were repeats of things I've done before, but most were new experiences. Now that I've gotten everything out of the way, I'm no longer one of those people that says "Ya know, I live here and have never done x."

So the first item of note is the second highest building in the world, the Taipei 101. AKA, the oh-my-god-thats-fuckin-tall building thats actually not downtown, rather slightly southeast of it. It doesn't even have its own subway stop, its about 3 blocks from the city hall one. Anyway it's not like you can miss the damn thing, that's for sure.

It's $400 TWD to go to the top, which is about $13. If you're a chump who doesn't still carry your college ID and pretend you're a student, it's $450. A little pricey, but it's not like I'm doing this every day. And honestly, I was surprised at what you get for that. The whole experience has the observation deck of course, but a lot of history, a movie, galleries, and a beer float for $50. In comparison, the beers at 7-11 are $45, so it's not a bad deal. All in all it took about 2 hours to get through everything, which surprised me.

We went to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's memorial, monument, whatever, but it was mostly unimpressive. But I wanted to see the Maokong Gondola, which I've seen on the subway maps but heard nothing about. It's an extension of the subway, and is exactly that - a gondola. I figured it would be a neat ride we'd take up and back, just to say "yay, gondola!" and call it a day. Oh how wrong I was!

First of all, that gondola is 4.2 km long. When you're moving as slow as a cable car, round trip, that takes some time. But it's no problem, because you get some of the most amazing views of any city I have ever witnessed. On one side, mountains, complete wilderness. Tea fields, dense forest, temples, huge rock formations, etc. On the other side, you get one of the biggest cities in the world in near it's entirety, because you're up so high. Maokong itself is a village way up in the mountains, looking down on Taipei. I wish I had better photos because it was dusk and very misty, but seriously - this was my favorite experience of this city, and I will definitely be back. Since I'm already cheating on this blog by taking a photo from the internet, I'm going to do the same for Maokong so you can see what it's like on a nice day.

You've got your other stuff in there - night markets, touristy shops, old temples. It was good I got out to see all this stuff because it's not something you feel as compelled to do alone. We went to Ximen, which I had mentioned earlier, but there was a big live music scene out this time. Lots of really amazing acts. But I guess the other item of note was Beitou.






Beitou is a village north of Taipei, yet on the subway. When the Japanese had this place back before WWII, they noticed there was no hot spring. They promptly said "Fuck a buncha that", and built one. Now it's a big tourist attraction, and I wouldn't mind living there. It has a good mix of what you'd expect an ancient asian town to look like, with a mix of luxury resorts and modern conveniences thrown in. There were no pictures allowed at the hot springs, so I'm going to shamelessly steal another one from the internet.



I'd never done a hot spring before, but it's quite fun. First of all the water is hot hot hot, and has a lot of sulfur in it. You usually only stay in one of the hot pools for 10 minutes or so, then switch to the cold pool. Then back you go, and so on. I will say going from "I think you could cook lobster in this" temperature water to "I think I saw an ice cube float by" water is quite exhilarating. There's also a bunch of old asian dudes in speedos, so rock on.

Whew! Too much to do, and we didn't get to everything on the list. Maybe I'll finish everything over the next few months, or wait and see if anyone else visits so there's something new.

Seriously though, Maokong. That place is ripped out of a postcard.

Monday, February 4, 2013

I had another blog post prepared, but for the time being, I have *slightly* better internet thanks to my awesome neighbor. It's still not MY internet - it comes from a building nearby. But it is internet that is better than "holding my laptop out the window to catch a packet from the place across the street".

So, screw my old blog post! That was boring and had no pictures! Let's get some color all up in this bitch!

My amazing new coworker and friend Nicole has really gone above and beyond the call of duty to make me feel welcome. As I somberly mentioned last time, she arranged a day outing where we went to the mall, a park, and a really great night market. I got to know her and the fellow teachers beyond "those other people that have the same job as me."






And if that weren't enough, the next day we also happened to have off. Nicole said she and her friend were going to blahbidity blah blah, and if I wanted to come along. Why not? It turns out blahbidity blah is located out of the city in the mountains, which involved a couple of train switches. It was actually an old mining town back in the day, but has since been turned into a cat village.






Yes, you read that right. Cat village.

As part of their tourist appeal, this place is overrun with cats. There are cat shops selling cat things. There was even a PAWn shop - seriously, no kitten! So after we took some purrrfect photos of the mountains, I was told meow we're getting on the train.

Alright, no more cat puns. Beclaws I think that's enough.




The next stop was a sleepy town in the mountains, where you were supposed to write your wishes on a balloon, set the damn thing on fire, and let it float up into the air. For such an environmentally conscious country, I thought it was surprising they advocate "lets set some shit on fire and toss it to the wind." My two companions of course wrote in Chinese, and I asked if god understood English. They said yes, but I didn't think it was fair they could read mine and I couldn't read theirs. So I wrote in German. In retrospect I should have asked if god can speak German. If he/she can't, ah well. But my wish was to light something on fire, so the jokes on you, GOD!

Then I got to eat some chicken ass on a stick. Seriously. If that doesn't count as a good day, I don't know what does.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

I'm sorry to do this to you. I had a post prepared to put up today that I can't, because there's something I need to do first, selfishly. I had said before that this blog is only for me, and that if people like reading it, well I'm glad. I'm not expecting to become some travel writer from it, rather this is just a diary of my current life that maybe in 10, 20, 30 years I'll be able to look at and enjoy. And I didn't write too much about my thoughts when shit happened, because I didn't know what this blog was yet. And I had it in my mind that this was a fun, whimsical thing my friends can enjoy, and I should avoid talking about anything depressing or serious. And if you do like reading it, I hope you continue to do so. But I don't know if that's how I see it anymore. And if you can forgive me stalling, and starting several sentences with conjunctions, I have to get through this one thing, while it's fresh in my mind before I can go back to writing about fun stuff.

I have bad luck with grandparents while overseas. Because I was just informed I lost another one. 5 months short of his 100th birthday.

And at the moment, I'm dealing with it better than I expected to. When my other grandpa died, it was a complete shock to me. I knew when I left this one a week or so ago, it would likely be the last time I saw him. His cancer was getting worse and worse, and I had the thought in my head "Just make it to 100.", like some arbitrary number mattered. I would joke that he would outlive me, because just a few years ago I was taking him to the track so he can socialize and gamble his $2 races. That's just something people in their mid 90s don't do. When I came back in December, and saw his condition first hand, it was a little surprising but not too bad. But just in those short few weeks I saw it progress pretty rapidly. And I knew when he told me he didn't go to the track anymore I knew it was pretty serious. And maybe it's because I made peace with it when I left that it wasn't the blow that the other grandparent was.

I learned about it not 30 minutes before I was to meet up with my new coworkers so they could take me out and show me a good time around the city. Something I have been desperate for, as I've said before my social circle is a lot smaller here. I thought about saying I can't make it. But then I knew I'd just stay in my room and feel miserable for the day, which doesn't really accomplish anything. So I tried to push it in the back of my mind, I went out, and I had a great time. The last time I spoke to him, he said "I don't understand what you're doing over there, but I know it's something you like. So don't worry about us, we'll get along. Keep doing what makes you happy and we'll pray for you." Well, I did and I am grandpa.

I'm not looking for prayers, condolences, or "sorry about your grandpa"s. Please don't send E-mails, messages, comments, or whatever. I've said my peace, I'm okay with it, and I'd rather tell you about the great day I had today. And I hope to find some time to do that soon.