The Repository

2004-01-12T00:16:00.000+08:00

I've switched to Xanga, so maybe I'll be more likely to write. It looks so much nicer!

http://www.xanga.com/Private/home.aspx?user=WildeWitXII

2003-12-29T22:54:00.000+08:00

Last weekend I went swimming for the first time in years and to a sauna (both wet & dry!) for the first time. Its true. People look different when they are naked. I think. I am prettty much blind without my contacts & glasses, but they seemed pretty different with their clothes on. The dry sauna harked up memories of the "boy, its like a sauna in here"/"they're real and they're fantastic" Seinfeld episode.

Did you know that Japanese Buddhist monks can get married and families? Fascinating. The Catholic church had better follow suite, and quick.

I've been here for over 4 months now and I can't say that my Chinese has gotten signifigantly better. Its doesn't help that everyone uses English after class and that I teach English 10 hours a week and that English is used at home with my aunt and uncle. But its both encouraging & scary how I still hang on to Chin-glish, tacking on "-ed" to certain Chinese verbs and can't ever seem to remember how to say "liu(2) li(4)" in English ("fluent"). My classmate JiaYing and I are going to start dishing out money to attend another school after class to improve our conversational Chinese. I found a pamphlet on Fair Trade coffee at Starbucks in Chinese, so hopefully I can get that all deciphered and start talking about things that matter in Chinese.

How do you explain the meaning of "subtle", "irony", and "sophisticated"?

"Why in the world does the concept of the plea bargain exist in the US? Why do we allow criminals negotiate for less severe sentence when they are clearly guilty?". "Why are people racist in the US/ how come they can't forgive and forget?"- my Japanese friend Akiko asked me on our plane ride back from Hong Kong last month. Being forced to question the basics is strangely refreshing.

Happy New Year.

2003-12-19T00:26:00.000+08:00

Not a lot of mask actions going on today, save the government buildings and the hospitals which I peeked into as my bus whizzed by the area. The Mitsukoshi (sp?) department store around Tapei Main Station, where I teach on Wednesday nights, however, had a huge line outside of it which was a bummer for me because I had planned to borrow its bathroom after my long bus ride from my other job. It turns out they were taking everyone's temperature by aiming this device at people's forheads as they entered. But for the most part, people aren't really freaking out. The dude with the SARs apparently was a SARs researcher who wasn't following procedure and had an accident while working with the stuff. I guess people are hoping its an isolated case.

My 11-year old student Linda started gushing about her boyfriend of 10 years to me during our lesson. At first I thought she meant "friend who is a boy", but then she asked me, "Do you know what his eyes look like?" "Umm...no." "They look like...a BA-by's....He's soooo cute! (delivered with huge grin+squinting eyes+the lovey-dovey shrug). " The guy, though, apparently bites. From what I gathered from her explantion, Korean boys play games where they fight and bite one another. But he does not bite her. Why she proffered up this piece of information about her prince, I do not know. I asked her if this was the kind of guy she would marry. "Sure! I want to marry him. I like him (voice faces sofly as if consumed by adoration)". I forget what its like to be 11. Bejeezus. That was more than 11 years ago. Over a decade ago. Beejeezus, I can say things like "a decade ago". I feel old.

2003-12-17T22:07:00.000+08:00

I thought I would keep myself posted on what's going on by listening to the BBC Worldservice online as I get ready in the mornings and having NYT as my homepage, but apparently that won't cut it because I was just admonished by my tutee's mother for not knowing about the first SARs case that broke out sometime today. I came home to my uncle's warnings about not getting sick, which I've kind of been expecting to be sometime soon since it is the the season.

In the last few weeks, I've seen at least one person everyday wearing a mask on the streets and I've always kind of written them off as being paranoid. Maybe they have the right idea now. It'll be scary as shit to get sick here with everyone looking at you like some of kind of walking disease everywhere you go, and every scarier still to actually get SARS where you're quarantined and have to face everything alone. Not to speak of the stigma you face if you happen to recover. Jesus Christ. I'm good at scaring myself. I'm going to be eating oranges up the wazzo. I hope SARs ends with this first case. And to think, the last few days I've been toying with the idea of staying here a few more years for a free M.S. This SARs factor is be another variable to be deliberated.

They were already doing body temperature screenings at travel agencies last week, I wonder what is to come. I'm going to count the number of people I see wearing masks tomorrow...should I be wearing one tomorrow?kadjflk;ajdskf.

What a crappy page. I've been meaning to switch over the Xanga because of the reply/reponse function, and because it looks better, but I'm not sure if its worth is, especially since I'm so bad at updating as it is. Maybe the nicer aesthetics will encourage me to publish more. We'll see. Am pretty busy with my 6 (going on 7) students. I should write about them sometime. They are interesting. Maybe later. Meanwhile, I need to correct one of my student's essay on "Freedom" and learn how to write "mutual fund" and "Moslem [sic?] restaurant" in Chinese.

2003-11-03T14:42:00.000+08:00

I almost forgot! My "do one thing that scares you every day" thing yesterday was snacking on frog legs at the reception. And yeah,as trite as it is to say, it does taste like chicken.

Follow-Up: so we were discussing the strippers issue in class today, and apparently the same thing is staged at funerals as well. Weddings and funerals!!! Beejeezus!

2003-11-02T21:51:00.000+08:00

I accompanied my aunt and uncle to a xi(1( jiu(3) event this afternoon, which is something akin to a wedding reception, only Taiwanese people can choose to do this either before or after the ceremony, and in today's case, it was three days after their ceremony. I wish I had a video camera. It was held at a fan(4) dian(4), which literally translates into "Food Store", but in actuality, is the name given to fancy schmancy hotels. Even though I rarely attend wedding functions, I think I can safey say that today will be one the the tackiest receptions I will ever ever attend. For a fancy shmancy hotel, I had the wind blown out of me, when the MC pulled down a screen and guided us through a slideshow of the lives of the bride and groom to the sounds of a very very loud boys choir and disco lights in their otherwise elegant dining room. The real killer came when they got the whole damn kitchen crew out their, some with plates of lobster headed by some holding out lighted torches, literally marching in formation like a fucking marching band, to very loud music that evokes uncanny comparisons to The Chariots of Fire. In the end, the head chef marched up the stage, spreaded his legs to get a good stance, took a deep breath, glanced at his posse of torch holders to his sides, looked sternly at the crowd, nodded and folded his arms just as the music concluded. It was like a mini-Vegas show in our dining room. I swear the choice music could have been from Circus Circus, the volume certainly echoed at the same volume and acoustics as the acrobatic show. The only difference was that instead of the annoyingly deep, fake manly voice announcing shit, it was the really annoying high-pictched cutesy feminine voice doing it.

I'll be going to another wedding sometime January in the South and I heard that tradition there is to have strippers present at the reception. My Japanese friend attended one in Taoyuan, and apparently that sort of thing is big in the South and in Taoyuan. She's says the kids could barely eat at the reception, they were too busy observing the three stippers give men lap dances.

Which reminds me, they've got traveling strip shows here. You know those big cargo carvans that circus people use to travel on back in the day? Pinnochio was in one. It really looks like that. And on 10-10, Taiwan's day of Independence, one of these traveling strip shows planted itself right by the playground and park where half a million people were staked out at for the evening fireworks. In the beginning, the women were dressed like Elton Jon's whole powder-wig get-up he wore for this big birthday bash, and one by one they strip, right in front of grandpas and children and everything. When I passed by the wagon later I saw the bra appear so I'm guessing they really do the full monty. I find it amazing that the Taiwanese put up with this IN PUBLIC b/c it would never fly in America, where we're considered more loose and immoral anyway. Its a wonder.

I was a Walking Contradiction for Halloween. I rented a Osama Bin Laden mask and luckily, had brought Janet's I LOVE NY t-shirt with me to Taiwan, so I wore that too. Too bad everyone at the club we were at either didn't dress up or dressed like they were ready to do a porn film, so that was no fun. Plus it was hard to breathe through the mask so it mostly dangled around my wrists the whole time. I felt like a dork wearing a I love NY t-shirt amongst the exodus of people wearing club gear. So much for celebrating Halloween in Taipei, Taiwan.

2003-10-25T00:51:00.000+08:00

Is this Steinbeck or not? : We are a nation of public puritans and private profligates. Either way, its damn good.

2003-10-22T17:52:00.000+08:00

Nothing gets me to exercise more than Anger. I was steaming like a mofo the Wednesday I was forced to confront the depths of Californians' stupidity. Its been almost two weeks and still, the feeling has not subsided. Its at once dumbfounding and infuriating- as a result, it has cut me off from reading the news consistently since doing so can really dampen the day. Plus, it will probably only prematurely expedite my way into getting high blood pressure. I haven't been so pissed since earlier this year and went to the stadium down the road to run for the first time in months. Lo and behold, I became super distracted with the sheer number of geriatric wonders. It was full of old old old men. And during the run, I was privileged to be outpaced by a gaggle of four grandpas, two of them running topless, mind you. I am glad I have a running buddy now that I can laugh with, b/c that day I was laughing out loud to myself and probably added to the attention I already was getting since me and some grandma were literally the one females in the place. The place is certainly amusing. I wish I had a camera. Yesterday, a record of twelve (12!) topless grandpas passed me up and I almost died.

2003-09-19T15:56:00.000+08:00

Come tomorrow, I will have been in Taiwan for a month. And so far, I have learned this:

Go Karts and fast and fun.

I still cannot resist Shuffleboard at the arcade.

You've got to buy your phone numbers here. Then your cell.

You can get a substantial discount if you buy all the unwanted phone numbers that end with bad-luck # "4".

You can get neato prescription nerdy glasses here for $1500 NT ( approach $43).

Gravesite are not permanent fixtures here. Rather, one rents out a plot for a period of time, say ten years or so, and is required to relocate the body elsewhere when the lease ends. Land constraints play a role in the funereal.

Men my age are ugly, and homogeneously so while the women are homogeneously pretty, in that delicate & cutesy way that makes me feel androgynous. For a society that reveres and obsesses for baby boys, Taiwan as a whole has produced a terrific supply of unattractive males. Maybe the forthcoming generation will be neither pretty or ugly. Neutral. The concept of attractiveness and ugliness completely eliminated, or more realisticaly, redefined to lesser standards.

Homeless people do not seem to exist. But there are brushes with near-heartbreaking encounters with stick-thin scraggly old gentlemen, probably grandfathers, kneeling by the walkways holding up Juicy Fruit 5-paks to you as you walk by, pleading, hoping to sell a pack. And then there are the disabled people who sit their with the lottery tickets, decorative tasseled pencils and travel sized tissue packs arranged in neat rows on boards rested upon the arms of their wheelchairs, looking up at the bypassers who pretend not to see.