This blog is boring, don't read it!

Seriously, run away! This is your last warning.

I've had a cold for the past few days, which seemed to accompany itself with an annoying headache. So I took off work on Monday, which, I knew would be difficult. For one, we're a 3 teacher operation that is already running short staffed with 2. So classes get shortened, and the school owes some extra hours. But reducing it to 1? I don't know what happened on Monday, but I imagine pretty much half the school closed. I had told my boss I wasn't feeling well that Saturday, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. But her attitude turned into one more akin to a worried mother when I called in.

"Well... make sure you drink plenty of water."
"And get a lot of rest."
"And go see the doctor."

The socialized medicine here really is awesome, but I think Taiwan relies on it too much. They'll go see the doctor for tummy ache. I've had plenty of colds in my life. I know what cures them - time. If you want to be slightly less miserable, antihistamines, antitussives, and analgesics. I don't need to wait for a doctor to tell me what I already know. Gyah, I sound like a stubborn old man.

Anyway, the cold's pretty much gone, and I'll be back to work tomorrow. Speaking of my boss, she has become... I'm not going to say more cool, but I will say less bitchy. She pretty much leaves me alone, and does not do her passive aggressive nonsense nearly as much anymore. I still don't like her, and think she's a fairly bad manager... but she's not quite the scum of the earth that she used to be. But she talks to the local staff really harshly. It's a shame, really. I don't pick up on all of it but, some decorum would be appreciated.

Taiwanese graffiti - we mostly just correct your English

And speaking of Chinese, I'm putting a lot of effort into it as of late. Usually I would try and study 30 minutes a day, but it's closer to two hours now. I don't think Chinese is an exceptionally hard language, but I do think the tools available for it are just plain awful. They all have two problems - they talk at a rapid pace right out of the box, because nobody will talk at a slow pace in the real world. Well no shit. But English 101 should not be taught by the Micromachines guy. And the other problem, which is more of the fault of the government in Beijing, they all teach "standard" Mandarin - which is only spoken around Beijing. It's a weird accent that ends a lot of words with an "R" sound. Nobody else speaks Chinese like that. Not from Qingdao, to Nanjing, to Hangzhou, to Ningbo, not in Dandong, and not in Taiwan. When you speak with the Beijing accent, it's like you're saying "Fuhgetaboutit, let's get a bag-el and caw-fee." You're so stereotypical it's funny.

So for more exciting, travel related things - I went to check out the last noteworthy night market, that I know of, in Taipei. It's also the first night market in Taiwan, so I suppose that's noteworthy. The Raohe Street market is a bit far from the MRT station, but still not super far. It's medium sized, but they do have some pretty great food. Of particular interest was the giant "meat and vegetables in a cone". Of particularer (yeah that's a word) interest was the Oreo shop. This guy sold everything Oreo. Deep fried Oreos, Oreo pudding, Oreo cupcakes, and what I got, the Oreo and Banana smoothie. The kid running it by himself had to be like, 14 years old. He was lightning fast, and chopped up a banana faster than what I thought was humanly possible.

Tiffany and I went to check out a place I had heard about, and was eager to try - the Taipei Miniature's Museum! Say whaaaa? It would seem Taipei has quite a collection of really tiny things. I will say this - those tiny houses are like, really well detailed. Some tiny fingers spent countless hours assembling tiny people to live in their tiny rooms wearing tiny clothes and eating their tiny food. I mean, it was kind of cool. But there are just way too many gorram tiny houses in this place. You can only say "Wow, this is like a regular size place, but really small" so many times before you get fed up with it. I did enjoy the tiny TV, supposedly the smallest in the world. I hope the tiny people had tiny glasses, because the picture on it was terrible.

At the end though, they had Lego models submitted from local schools. HELL. YES. Now this is something I can get behind. It was divided up into various sections, each more amazing. 1) Bicycle Playing Cards (made in Erlanger, KY, whatup) 2) Legends of Chima 3) Halo 4) Star Wars 5) Pirates. If the entire museum was this, I would be so happy. While we were there, we were going through the museum behind this girl who was in her 20s or so. Tiffany and I were trying to guess her English name by shouting out random ones until she turned around. We got into a heated discussion on whether or not "Madeline" is a common English name. I have two students named Madeline, I say it is.

And I will fight that belief to the grave.