I live in Taiwan where we had two kids delivered two years apart for about $12,000NT, or 400US. That included the delivery, and three days care for mother and child in a private room.
She then spent the rest of her month off from work (paid) in a maternity center where she was fed 6 meals a day and the babies had round-the-clock care. It was clean, quiet, and the food was excellent. This was a private hospital, though, and it cost a whopping $500US or thereabouts. To insure my family of four, around US$90 is deducted from my paycheck every month. We go to see the doctor whenever we need to, and see whichever doctor we choose. Our family physician will recommend a specialist if needed, or I can just turn up at the hospital and ask to see a specialist. Each doctor's visit costs between $3-$5. Trips to the emergency room are unavoidable, but with a fifteen-dollar price tag, it's not an agonizing decision to make whether to stay at home to see if the swelling will go down, or go ahead and get an X-ray to see if the pint of ice cream really did break my hand. When my kids are sick, I don't have to wonder if it's serious enough to call the doctor's office and make an appointment for god-knows-when, instead, my wife and I take them by the doctor after work. Convenient, huh? We work evenings, but the office is open until 10 at night. What time does your doctor go home?
There are several pediatricians in our district and there are absolutely no restrictions on who we can go to see. Do we have time for one more? My knee surgery with general anesthetic cost about twelve bucks American. The MRI had cost me four. I honestly cannot understand why so many of my countrymen are allowing themselves to get so worked up over this. There's a lot of vitriol being slung, including footage of a woman yelling "Heil Hitler" at someone who was trying to talk about the health care system in Israel. Whoa! I have yet to hear a rational argument as to how the current system in place in the States can provide better health care than I am enjoying in Taiwan. "Death Panels" and "Socialism" are just scary sounding catch-phrases that have nothing to do with the current situation. Taiwan is not a socialist country and National Health Care would take America no further down the road to Communism than Eisenhower's Highway Projects, or NASA have. The Death Panel bureaucrats do exist, but instead of being government employees, they're the ones who work for insurance companies that decide that your grandmother's bone marrow transplant is unnecessary. Walk into any small town convenience store in America and there next to the cash register is a jar with the picture of a young, happy, child, whose parents cannot afford to pay for his new kidney. When you argue against Health Care, you are arguing for a slow death for the children who stare up at you from the counter. Pro Life? Yes, Please.
This time last week, we were a giddy bunch. At my day job, there were no classes because the students had been taken on a field trip to Miaoli for a BBQ. As the day wore on, it became more and more obvious that our presence would not be required the next day, and a holiday atmosphere began to well up within the teacher's room. We talked about typhoon days from the past, and near-typhoon days on which coworkers had gone ahead and gotten too drunk to stand up and teach anyway and not been able to come in to teach. This is the life of the English teacher in Taiwan.
Last Thursday, I said have a nice weekend to job #1 and went to job #2, and didn't get wet, so my typhoon was going well. By 1900hrs, they had cancelled school for Friday and I was happier than a pig in shit. Come on, a three day weekend in a country where those are in short supply. Who could blame me for being enthusiastic for the storm?
The wind came through my neighborhood on Friday morning. I know this because I had left an empty water bottle outside my window for the purpose of watering plants which are no longer there. When the wind picked up, that bottle rattled around the safety cage like a bingo ball in a retirement center on Tuesday night.
All day Friday we stayed inside and played with the kids. My neighbor came upstairs and helped me finish a few beers before noon. Typhoon Day is that kind of a holiday. We watched movies, and ate dumplings. There were plenty of provisions thanks to a last minute shopping spree at Carrefour that ended around 2330. We didn't turn on the news until later that night when I called my brother on Skype to talk about the slowly passing storm.
The news was all the same, I said. Just like a snowstorm in the American South, I said. Same obvious news stories on each channel. There's a typhoon. It's raining. People who walk outside in the rain get wet. People on scooters are getting blown over. It's windy. Here's a picture of some rain in Taipei and a sign that fell on a car. There were the obligatory pictures of people shopping.
I can't remember if it was CNN or Wunderground where I first saw the phrase "over two meters of rain." In less than two days. That means, if I was standing in a hole 2 meters deep, I would be in over my head. I think that's what that means, though it sounds like a story problem, and I shut down at the start of a story problem.
The problem with this story is that I had no idea what was going on while it was going on. Saturday morning, we had a below average breakfast at some new place on Chung Ming Rd and I remarked dryly at the number of leaves the staff was clearing from their treeless tiny front yard.
Then, I started noticing the stories pop up on Facebook. The first was of this hotel falling into a river.
The guy who works at the Starbucks where I occasionally go for decaf told me that he was about100m away from the building when it went down. He was sure there was no one inside at the time. Good news as earlier reports had said there were perhaps a hundred trapped inside. He noted that most of the people staying in the hotel that day were tourists from China. No Comment.
The video above was our first clue that the effluvia was hitting the air moving device in Southern Taiwan. Then there was this one of the water under the high speed rail in Tainan County.
But it really wasn't until Monday, I think, that the gravity of the situation began to flow into our heads. Monday when we were all going back to work. Monday when the party was over.
700 missing in one single village.
Rajen Nair, a writer based in India, emailed looking for some first-hand accounts of the storm, and as I could only tell him what happened inside my apartment, I enlisted the fine folks at Facebook who came up with Tony Coolidge who writes about Living in Taiwan at LivingInTaiwan. His story is in The Guardian here.
After the storm passed, and before fingers began to be pointed with any vigor, Michael Turton, the omniscient blogger of The View From Taiwan, collected some serious money in a very short period of time and headed south with a van packed full of cleaning supplies. His updates are a testament to the hard work of volunteers who flocked to Tainan and Pingtong in the days after the landslides. In those early days that the Central Government was refusing aid offered by both the US and Japan, I was glad that American expats in Central Taiwan were able to put together a few drops in the bucket.
Now, ten days after what is now to be known as "8-8" (which is Taiwanese Father's Day) the first American military aircraft in 30 years has landed in Taiwan delivering much-needed supplies. The international community is being allowed to respond. The international press is not being kind to the Mayor/President/Mr Ma who is just over one year into his term as head of Taiwan. His lame excuse five days after the worst typhoon related disaster in five decades was that he had "warned residents to evacuate and they just didn't." Echoes of the mess in New Orleans were that most residents of the villages that have been wiped off the map were the elderly and the very young.
I was just thinking, FINALLY an Oldish Testament name for a typhoon that would reflect God's wrath and the whole nine yards. But, I misheard. It's Morekat. No, it's not. Morakot, which is not, as my coworker informed me "Indonesian for Makeup Day," is dumping an assload of water on my route home. The word came out shortly after seven this evening that school and work were cancelled tomorrow for Taipei and Taichung.
Speaking as an errant blogger who has no time set aside to blog specifically--and how else could I speak after a postless July when so much has been happening in Taiwan?--I've got to say I don't have time to post right at the moment because the kids are in their bathing suits and screaming with freshly inflated colorful swim rings around their middles wondering when they're going to get to go to the pool as the temperature has soared to 39C (102F) on this Sunday afternoon. Who am I to hold them back?
Our summer vacation is just around the corner--something like ten days off. Or is it 7? There are a couple days of report card writing and planning in early July, but then we're off. Received word a couple of days ago that the teachers were going to be taking an annual trip together on the first Monday that we have off. Destination? The old dictator's mausoleum. Can I just have the cash? Isn't there a beer factory someplace that gives tours? I'm sure there is. I KNOW there is.
Brought this up at the meeting. Not the beer, the trip to Dictator Chiang's digs. It seems that part of the attraction at least is that it was closed down for the period of time when the old man's party was out of power, and now only a limited number of people can go in and look around. I can't imagine what the atmosphere there must be like. Are there old waishenren men selling sausages along the pathways, and would they play ignore the foreigner or charge me the "special price?"
I told them no. I wavered a few moments ago, thinking it might be interesting for the list. I mean, I've been to Kruschev's grave & could find a few more despots around Asia to add to the macabre list, I guess.
But it's so hot now, and if they rent a bus, I'm nervous that it might have an operable KTV machine and that my colleagues would misuse it for their catterwauling. No, I couldn't possibly go. Good. Settled. Thank you, Internets.
The word is that rat poison has been dumped into the water supply at Tunghai University here in Taichung. University officials reacted by putting a cork in it. The hot water dispensers are shut off, no running water in sinks. No water for the dairy cows. No word on flushing the toilets. Jeez, what a mess.
UPDATE: The water at Tunghai University (which is way on the other side of town from me if you're worried) tested positive for rat poison.
The reason it tested positive is that the faceless loser debter pictured above (Taiwan News) between the law enforcement guys in the snazzy vests, a Mr Yeh, hung a bag of rat poison in a water tank at the university. He did this on the same day that he wrote a letter to the president of the university asking for NT$5 million and 50 taels of gold (FUN FACT: a tael is about 50 grams) to be placed at several locations around the city for him to pick up. He called back the next day and told the president to inform the other universities in the area that they'd better pay up, too, or they'd get some more of the same.
I saw this front page article on the demise of piracy in the Taipei Times on Sunday while I was getting my haircut. There should have been a warning about getting your haircut while reading the article, because when I got to the quote from Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the US Trade Representative's office in Washington, I nearly fell out of my chair and now have a very odd racing stripe that goes from behind one ear diagonally up around the back of my head up to the ...uhh...the place where there's less hair to cut. Here's the quote in it's glory:
“Taiwan was a haven for pirates. Today, it has strengthened its enforcement, strengthened its laws and demonstrated a commitment to becoming a haven for innovation and creativity,"
I can't wait to tell my students this after the holiday! This is just what we've all been waiting for! Goodbye rote memorization, hello critical thinking.
True enough, Taiwan used to be a place where you could buy movies on DVD while they were still playing in the theater. Movies which often featured the heads of audience members coming in late or standing up to take a phone call on the other side of the theater. You could buy them from seemingly unmanned stalls at the nightmarket. Haven't seen that in at least four years. I haven't been to the nightmarket in four years, either.
Enough is enough. All this talk of piracy and intellectual property has made me hungry for a nice schmitschmorrent.
I am much too stubborn and thick-headed to be living overseas. I should have known something was up after the first couple dozen run-ins with coworkers at a previous place of employment, but I have a head like a pig. Even when one of my Taiwanese friends fended off each of my "Why don't..." questions with "Taiwan's just like that," it never struck meto stop beating my head against a wall.
This may very well turn into another one of those whinging "Why aren't things more like the way they are back at home" posts. If that's not your bag, consider yourself warned.
Had lunch with my good friend Craig today and laid out for him the particulars that are paining me at the moment. Briefly, these are that I have a group of students that are in the highest level in the entire school system of a private school that currently has kindergarten through 9th grade classes. If the contents of the package matched the label, this would be fantastic. They are a good bunch of kids regardless. I've heard horror stories from my coworkers about hellions they have, and I feel blessed that my chief beef with my students is that one or two of them answer too many questions!
The ninth graders are approaching the Chinese New Year Break of their most stressful year of their academic careers. The holiday is a two-parter for me. I think I get ten days off, straight, then I have to come clock in for a week to teach three or four classes, before getting another couple days off before starting back right around Lincoln's birthday. I think it's 14 days off total--nothing to sneeze at. My ninth graders inform me that they get nine days off, then must come back to review for THE TEST.
Reviewing means taking practice test after practice test. They've been doing this since August for an entrance exam that is given in late-May this year. Their English classes have been cut back to make way for more review sessions. Enter the meat grinder, children.
But this is life. This is how things are. This is how things will always be and nothing I say or do is ever going to change anyone's mind about the wisdom of this system. I can stamp my little size 15 feet and pound my head until powdered rocks fall from my nose, but I'm never ever going to change anything.
But what would you be, if you didn't even try. You've GOT to try.
My kids yesterday were full of life in class. I told one particular boy to be quiet while I was out of the room testing, or I was going to make him sit with his desk facing the wall for the rest of the year--meaning until December 31st, 2009...four months after he was to begin high school. He had fun pretending to care about his work, and I had fun pretending to try to catch him not pretending hard enough.
Friday morning was a whole nuther ball game. We're doing "Life on the Mississippi," and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. A third of the class is ready for this, the other guys are floundering, but they try. Not Friday. I couldn't hear students reading over the sound of other students' snot faucets. My package of tissue ran out before eleven o'clock. Noses, I could hear. Voices, not so much.
Something was definitely wrong. I gently set down the Twain and promised not to go any further until they told me what was going on. One of them finally mumbled, "Teacher..." (She's a real battle-axe) The next word I managed to coax out was "homework." No one wanted to talk about it, but I dug in and waited. Turns out, about 22 of 26 students hadn't bothered to do their homework the night before, and the homeroom teacher was writing home to the parents about it. Yeah! Bitch! Naturally, I said, "What's the big deal? You guys NEVER do my homework." Not a one of them. Ever. In eighteen months. Of course, I didn't understand. The note was going in THE CORRESPONDANCE BOOK. Oh damnation! It's the equivalent of THE PERMANENT RECORD. If ever a group of students needed to be turned on to the Violent Femmes, it's this bunch. I gave them my specialty pep talk, which didn't fix anything, because I am foreign so I don't understand.
I used to not understand shit because I was too young. Then, I think I didn't understand because of my Y chromosome, which I still have. Now, everything I don't understand can be attributed to my place of birth: New Jersey.
Alright, to get back to the drama of English Classroom 4, after relaying the story of distress to a coworker, he told me that one of the kids in the class--who happens to be one of the brightest students I've met in Taiwan, and who, incidentally, had done her homework--spent the previous day's lunch hour being chewed out by the aforementioned ironclad homeroom teacher. The girl is at the top of the class in all of the classes that matter and often has her picture in the paper for passing this test or that. Academia briefly aside, she is also an accomplished swimmer and the only girl in school who knows the butterfly stroke. She didn't do so well on the practice test for the high school entrance exams which are five months off. Not doing so well means, the mercury didn't shoot out of the thing that measures how hot someone's score was. You would not believe the guilt trip that was laid on the poor girl. The whole school will lose face if you don't do better than that. You're going to let your parents down. You should be ashamed of yourself. And the klinker. Are you still practicing swimming on Saturday after school? QUIT IT.
The one opportunity this kid has to dive into the water and drown out the voices that are telling her what she must do is now being yanked away. All because of a test. I'm sure that this is not all that is wrong with education in Taiwan, but it's the first thing to jump out at ya. For all of the faults of the American education system, I hope to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that my kids can escape into it by junior high.
Yesterday was the second Wei-ya, or year-end party, I've been to with my current employer. It was everything that I expected it would be: loud, regimented, crowded, and with a short supply of libations. The invitation and map was mostly in Chinese, but I could read very clearly the times "11:10-11:40" --a little early for lunch, but I would be happy to look over such if it meant I could get back to my family early in the afternoon.
No, the fam didn't go with this time. Last year, we all went to an evening event and were seated directly in front of one of the speakers, making conversation at the table impossible. Then all the running around after the rugrats meant that I couldn't sit down at the table and sneak vodka into my juice from the flask a coworker had brought along.
All that was to be different this time. I went stag. I got in at about 11:30 and there was next to no one there. The whole thing didn't start until some time after noon. By that time, the fermented grape juice had been choked down, and most of the juice had been drunk twice. Someone at another table passed a beer to our table. That was 1.5 oz per person sitting there. Oh, except there were nine of us, rather than eight because someone refused to acknowledge the seating chart. So it was more like 1.33333333333333333333 something oz per. I won't factor in the Baptists.
The decision was made that someone should go to the 7-11 and buy some beer. Perhaps 12 or so. Perhaps someone with long legs who could get there and back quickly. And so I was chosen.
I rode the elevator down from the third floor with some colleagues of the boss, and stepped out into a sort of wedding procession. It was louder than hell on the first floor, and as I looked towards where that godawful music was coming from, I saw a man, maybe my age, maybe much older, being dragged out of the banquet hall by four big guys. He was in a fancy tux with lots of gold chains (because one's wedding is an auspicious event for which much gold must be borrowed/worn) and kid gloves. I stepped aside so as to let his entourage pass by, and then the lucky bride, five paces back, when the groom lifted his head up to me and said, "Hallooooo! How do you doooooooo? Today is my...my...my Wednesday!"
I nodded back and smiled, trying to remember the last time I'd had a such a Wednesday, and prounounced "gyong hee" in Taiwanese. My only phrase. It was, after all, his wedding day.
I live in Taiwan where we had two kids delivered two years apart for about $12,000NT, or 400US. That included the delivery, and three days care for mother and child in a private room.
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