B@tTaiwan Podcast #2: The Expat Is Us Edition https://soundcloud.com/phatbatt/episode-02-the-expat-is-us

The response to Episode 1 was enough of a reinforcement that I got to work on #2 The Expat is Us  right away. Thanks for your suggestions and encouraging words.


"Got to work right away" is not in the least an overstatement...I got distracted, about a week into it.

This time, though I learned a bunch of new things about recording. I've started working with Abelton Live and a Novation Launchpad to produce music-ish sounds. I also cheated and used a couple loops straight from the Garageband catalogue.

Interviewing Michael Turton is a blast because he knows everything about Taiwan and things kind of go on autopilot. This is a sin I paid for later when editing. I think something got missed out. Still very much a learning experience on this end.

Since the first show, I've really been blown away by the number of people who have been kind enough to reach out and tell me what they liked, and for the people who took the time to offer constructive criticism. That helped; keep it coming!

LINKS:

The View From Taiwan: michaelturton.blogspot.com

B@Cast Podcast Episode 01--"The I Have No Idea What I'm Doing" Edition

EPISDOE 1: I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

I got one in the can! I got one in the can! Hawt Dawg!

This is the one where I started in Garageband and did a music bed, then decided that that was too easy and shifted over to Adobe Audition and thought that was pretty cool,  but it took a good four weeks to discover that I oughta just go back to Garageband and finish the podcast and learn Audition when I need to learn Audition.

So I came back to Garageband where I can spend my time that I'm not standing in front of a class talking on a Thursday, to sit behind a microphone and continue talking.  I'm sure that there are worse uses of my free time.

I'm looking for anybody with an interesting to tell. I've got some ideas, you've got some ideas. Let me hear your ideas. Tweet me!

And, if you manage to hear this in the next 24 hours or so, make sure that you head out to Red Room Taipei to hear the short stories!

Show Notes:

RED ROOM TAIPEI: www.redroomtaipei.com

ROUND TABLE READ ALOUD: http://redroomtaipei.com/a-round-table-readaloud-2-oct-2015/



Contact Me:

Twitter: @phatbatt

No, I Don't Blog, Do I?

Well, I think Facebook has just made me lazy. Writing takes a bit of time. Tweeting takes about as much time as it does thought, especially when re-tweeting. Most of the writing I've done in the last 8 years has been on one or the other. Or it's been in the form of lesson plans or final exams.

I haven't written because I haven't seen the point, beyond the pleasure of putting one word next to another, and the way I've been living my life for the last little bit hasn't offered the opportunity for simple pleasures.

There are so many excuses to not write. Busy. Mundane.

I've got to convince myself that there are more reasons to write than there are to not write. Uhh....I like it. Writing is gouda.

Cheese or not, it's what I like to do. But why blog? I could write and be happy in my Day One journal, right? No. That's not enough. Gotta see my name in lights. And what better place to show that I'm an individual being than the Internets?

Time to Crank Up the Old Content Mill

I think it's safe to assume that most people who used to read this blog have stopped, given up hope of ever seeing anything here again. That certainly frees me up to try something new.  Watch this space.

You still watching? I have no earthly idea what I'm doing, but as school is about to start, I might as well find something to distract myself from "important matters." To that end, I've purchased a bitchin' USB microphone called The Blue Yeti. I like it I like it I like it. It's also given me the opportunity to get back to work on figuring out Garage Band. I'm way behind the curve on this. I've had it for at least five years now and haven't produced any major hit records.

Pat Flynn's Podcast Tutorials have thus far been super helpful as has the excellent website PodcastAnswerMan.

I should take a moment and thank Brian Hartenstein for drinking too much with me and having brain diarrheas over many nights as we we talked about who to interview and what to talk about and this, that, and the other. He's a great guy. Buy his book.   Or just steal a copy from his classroom. He'll never miss it.

Ok, let me get back to work. Just, y'know. Keep an eye on this space.

Tag, Wallzit

Nice clean wall, meet Thick black marker.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Dasyue Road,Situn District,Taiwan

The Shakes

Early Sunday afternoon we were preparing to leave Xitou Forest after a nice long walk in the woods. We had spent the night in the lodge and were a little sore and ready to make the 90-minute drive back to Taichung and begin another week of work. The kids were in the backseat and the doors were closed, but Maggie hadn't put the key in the ignition yet.

Suddenly, I felt like I was six years old again and my brother Peter was standing on the rear bumper of the family Chevrolet station wagon, bouncing it up and down on the springs. Wondering how the hell Franklin could be making the car shake so violently from the inside of the car, I turned my head to the right to look back at him.

Before I turned all the way around, I saw that the writing on the mini-bus next to us was rolling up and down with at least six inches of amplitude. About this time I became aware of the sound of the bedrock below us growling more persistently as the shaking increased in intensity.

I looked at Maggie. No one had to say "earthquake." We looked around. The hotel in front of us was about 20 meters away behind a stand of bamboo and pine trees. If there had been some place to run, we might have, but the car seemed to be our best protection against falling wood so we waited it out.

The sound of an insistent and continuing crash reached us inside the car. I looked towards the entrance of the park expecting to see a hotel fall across the pavement, but it never happened, and I realized it must have been a landslide. It sounded distant.

It only lasted about 30 seconds, but the shaking seemed to go on for much longer as all the quarks in my being regained their equilibrium leaving me with a strange uneasiness that lasted for several minutes. I stepped out of the car, wobbling slightly on steady ground, and looked around the parking lot at all the other wobbly people looking at me.

There were no shouts, no panic, just a brief reprieve from business as usual. I walked to an information booth and tried to ask if there had been any major damage, but the girls just smiled and said, "We're okay." When I turned to go back to the car, I scanned the ridge line just below the clouds and saw that the mountain face had slid off leaving a triangle of cleanly shaven rock with some traces of dust lingering in the wind.

Our car joined the line of cars from parts unknown deeper in the mountains headed to other parts unknown further down or out of the mountains. The first place we came to was the township of Lugu. I had hoped a cup of coffee from the local 7-11 might calm my nerves a bit, but when I got to the door, I saw that it was blocked by shipping crates and that the whole store smelled like it had been on a bender. There was a pile of chocolate on the floor and the back wall was shore to a sea of beer. 7-11 was closed. Never in my life have I seen such a thing. Never will I forget. I've lived through 13 typhoon seasons and never has nature closed down 7-11. 6.3-6.6 degrees of magnitude will do that.

The roads were packed and movement was sporadic. There were no signs of any major structural damage as far as I could see, but there were several boulders the size of basketballs along the sides of the roads and chunks of branches being knocked about by car tires.

Further down the mountain, there were more convenience stores in cleanup mode, in fact whole communities, it seemed, were out sweeping up debris. Tea shops, souvenir stands, and furniture stores were all still standing with no visible damage to their structures, but inside, the damage was obvious and costly. Bookshelves, and display cases lay at odd angles with contents spilled out upon the floor. Small mountains of broken porcelain stood outside some places, and man-sized pieces of treated red cypress formed a ruck inside others.

When I saw the first ambulance, I told myself that it could be a coincidence; there have been ambulances in the mountains before. The second ambulance was almost as easily brushed off, but eventually, when nine of them had come and gone, I realized that some people emerged from the afternoon with more than wobbly knees to speak of. By the side of the road, amongst a pile of broken pots and planters, an elderly woman was having her head attended to by a young man. In a lodge in the town where I'd drunk a beer the evening before, a man lay dying of a head wound.

This isn't the largest Taiwan in living memory for much of the population. I arrived a few months later than the 7.6 temblor that struck the same area as the one yesterday. I am perfectly happy to have not experienced a 7+ quake, and these smaller ones are more than enough to begin a new round of "So-when-ya-comin'-home" questions from the family in hurricane-, wildfire-, and tornado-prone parts of the US.

The time has not come.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thinking of it as a Gift

I've really got no idea what I'm doing, but this is, as they say, familiar territory for me.

I don't know whether teaching is an art or a science. I hope it's both and that it's ok if I mix in a little more of one than the other. If not, I've been doing it wrong since 1998.

An incredibly interesting semester seems to be upon us. For the first time in a long time, there appear to be fewer restrictions on what & how to teach.

I am fortunate to be working in a school with a new campus and equipment that was in sight of cutting edge when the purchase orders were approved for it last year. I'm also lucky enough to have at least several students out of over 100 that are motivated to learn and to create.

Like any other school in Taiwan, there are communication problems, misunderstandings, and extended periods of mind-numbing annoyance.  There is a certain equilibrium between students that have changed my hair color from what it looks like on my ID photo to what it looks like on my head, and the students who snooker me into thinking that ok, perhaps I can do this teaching thing for just one more year.

I need to work out which set is more detrimental to my well-being.

Happy Year of the Snake

I Get Knocked Down...And I Get Up Again

 In Japan, this guy is called Darumasan. He's shaped like a weeble, in that he wobbles, but he don't fall down. The Darumasan toy that the Japanese have is a little smaller than this one, which was about four feet high, but like its American counterpart, he falls down and doesn't get back up.

Actually, when we say "eenie, meenie, miney, moe" the Japanese say, "Darumasan ga korounda" which means, Mr Daruma falls down, but he gets back up. There's a lesson in perseverance to be had.

This particular Darumasan was waiting in the downstairs lobby of the American Institute in Taiwan's Kaohshiung branch office where we went a few weeks back to get my daughter's passport sorted out. I asked the guard what this guy was called in Chinese, and he wasn't too sure. He guessed that it was DaMo.  I'm not too sure.

Gods Visiting a Local Shrine for the Holiday.

At the Lunar New Year, it's time for the gods to go back to heaven to have a big dinner party. I asked my relatives if it was kind of like the year-end Wei-ya that our company has before the holiday, and I assume that I wasn't too far off-base which is close enough for me. So the gods have been working hard all year granting wishes to all the folks who want their businesses to grow and whatnot; hard work, need a break, as do we. Their year-end party is a mother of a blow out, that lasts for ... well, what is time to the gods? It goes on for a while by our standards. All around the world, people send snacks to heaven via the incense network.  Below is a collection of dishes for the potluck of the patriarchs ( a term I choose for its alliterative quality, not because I have any idea what I'm talking about.)

 

It doesn't matter what the dishes are, but the gods have to have 12 of them. 

Food is all well and good, but we like to have a little walking around money, and so do the gods. God money comes in all denominations, and is often budgeted strictly for clothes or certain kinds of food.

This is called Shou-shen. It's money used to grease the wheels in heaven and attract blessings. 

This is for kids. When kids have a problem, this is what the gods are given to bless the young-uns. 

Money to burn.

Da Jia Gong Xi

The statuary gets red envelopes, too. 

Quality Is Coming

Not now. But it's coming.

What Else Can I Do But Sit and Watch

I got one of those emails the other day. You know the kind I mean. 18 point font, lots of exclamation points, multi-colored text. And, unfortunately, the sender hasn't realized the function of the BCC window in his email composer, so the entire CC list of 83 email addresses was before me. If I were a nefarious individual, which I claim not to be, I might try to do something nefarious with such a long CC list.

Is this short enough to quote here?

Attorney General Holder says,
"WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO POSSESS GUNS"

TAKES 10 SECONDS ... DO IT AND PASS IT ON

Guess they were not happy with the poll results the first time, so USA today is running another one...Vote now...

Attorney General Eric Holder, has already said this is one of his major issues. He does not believe the 2nd Amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms. This takes literally 2 clicks to complete. Please vote on this gun issue question with USA Today. Then pass the link on to all the pro-gun folks you know. Hopefully the results will be published later this month.

Here's what you need to do:

First - vote.

Second- Send it to other folks,

               then we will see if the results get published.

Click to vote:

USATODAY.com

Sure, why not. In my email, the font is HUGE, and I swear there are five different colors. I voted, and the pro-gun-control folks were taking a shellacking, 98%-2.

This may be the third time I've gotten such an email from this older relative of mine, and each warning is just as preposterous as the one previous. Normally what I do, is I check Snopes.com for the history of the story, and then email everyone on the CC list back, and entreat them not to take such foolishness to heart.

But this gun control discussion, needs to open up. It needs to be a dialogue. We need to find common ground and hold it. So, I wrote back.

Can anyone give me some context for the alleged stance of Eric Holder towards your right to have a gun to protect your castle? Any video, or links to his comments on the matter. As much as I would like to take the original poster's word for it, I have no idea who the gentleman is and you know what Mom said about accepting shiny (or large multi-colored font-laden) things from strangers.

Also, I'd expect the results of this sort of poll to be somewhat skewed as gun rights supporters are the ones who are actively passing this around. I'm also pretty sure that USA Today does not have as wide a readership as one my suspect, but no matter.

I hope you get to keep your guns. I would hate to see on the news what would happen if the police/army attempted to go house to house and pry them out of your cold dead hands. Besides, apart from the time a teenager, pointed a loaded shotgun in my face, I'm sure most gun owners teach their kids to handle weapons responsibly, and the occasional 4 year old that takes one to school and blows away a classmate is just acceptable to ensure our wider freedoms.  I think the guy I knew in college who shot off his Glock in the middle of town, pointing just over the tree line knew what he was doing, because he'd had military training...driving tanks. But I digress. We've made our bed, let's get comfortable in it.

There are tons of stories on the net about people who have interfered with robberies, burglaries, home invasions, attempted rapes, etc. and shot the suspect dead. I know this because it's easy to find these stories on the net. It's just as easy to find stories about kids who take guns to school, or who are accidentally killed by firearms. These two kinds of sites are separated by some great divide where neither side appears to care much what they other one says. Our nation is so polarized and isolated that I think the chances of us getting together and making progress with a national dialogue is impossible because we've accepted the demonization of anyone who believes differently from us. 

I know gun people. I am not one. The ones I know who are irresponsible are by far in the minority. The sample size, however, is extremely limited as I live in Taiwan, where citizens don't have the right to purchase guns. (I've digressed before, I reserve the right to do again...there are stories of soldiers serving their compulsory military service standing on guard duty who have shot each other with their M-16's because they haven't been taught gun safety. The problem got so bad, that the bases stopped equipping guards with ammunition. Gangsters then drove up to the bases and stole the weapons from the hapless guards. There's a lesson for someone in there somewhere.) None of the gun people I know have cases of AK47's in their basements, or have purchased 100 round drum magazines. I think this is because for personal safety, these are not convenient tools for the job of getting the stranger off of your front porch. 

Surely there must be some people, though, in this Cc: list that consider themselves to be ProLife and who pray and struggle every day with knitted brow for an answer to end to deaths of innocents. To stand for something so noble is to be applauded. As the gun industry is almost entirely unregulated, aren't firearms providers just as culpable as abortion providers? 

I voted in the survey, btw. My side is taking a beating. 

Peace and Love to you all,

So I waited to see what might happen. I was immediately inundated with emails!

Apparently, someone's address book isn't up to date, and I got a lot of "there's no such address" replies from robots.

The next day, however, I got a living breathing person to reply. She works for an insurance company and asked me to take her off her  mailing list. Swing and a miss, for dialogue.

The next response was from Caroline H. who suggested the wording of the USAToday poll may have helped to slant the results. She suggested the question be "SHOULD the 2nd Amendment give citizens to right to bear arms?" instead of "does" and she would be hesitant to say yes. Baseball metaphors, while All-American and therefore Good, will not play out very well here because I'm either going to strike out, or get a piece of something. I'm not looking to knock anything out of the park here. If we're going to have a national dialogue, we're going to have to stop arguing and start listening to what the other side's concerns are.

There was another response when I woke up from David S:

First I want to make it clear that I am a Life Member of the NRA (National Rifle Association}.

For those of you that are not aware of a piece of Horrific history, in 1938 +/- a year or so, Adolf Hitler has all civilians turn in their firearms.

This was quickly followed up by the Holocaust!

I strongly urge that we tell the "liberals" in Washington to keep their hands off our Second Amendment rights

It took only three emails from human beings before Godwin's Law was invoked. Still, David and I are on different sides of this vast ideological gap. And he WROTE to me. It could be that I'm taking this email as an attempt to open a dialogue in the same way that I think that the cute Barista at Starbucks is hitting on me. Whether or not, he's typing on autopilot, I wrote back to him this morning:

Dave, thank you so much for writing back to me.

You are absolutely right about Hitler. However, I think you may be drawing a comparison that is a bit of a leap. I don't think that you are directly comparing our leaders in Washington to Hitler, nor do I imagine that you feel that our men in uniform from the top down would stage a coup and attack civilians at large.

As an NRA member, you're obviously a gun owner. If you've ever made purchases online, I think there's an option where you can round up your total to the next dollar and donate to the NRA. I don't think the battle over gun control has anything to do with taking away your 2nd Amendment Right to bear arms, but more with the NRA's desire to maintain this crucial influx of donations. Call it the trickle up theory if you will.

If you look at the phrase in question, "Gun Control,"--yes, I've seen the bumper sticker about steady hands--there is nothing at all that leads me to believe that anyone wants to take away your right to have guns. But, we do need more controls on what can be purchased. 

There's a reason that you can drive a pickup truck down the street, but not a McLaren F1 race car. Those cars are not street legal. I could buy a Bugatti Veyron, with a top speed of over 250 miles an hour, but if I drove it that fast in the city, I would have troubles.  If I had the money, and new how to fly, I could buy a jet, but I can't buy an F-16. They are regulated. There are certain drugs that can be purchased, and certain ones that have not been approved for consumption by Americans. 

Cars must be registered with the government. Your marriage, your house, your business, maybe farm equipment? I don't know. Elevators must be registered and inspected. Public fountains that feature lighting, must pass government safety standards. Doctors, lawyers, HAIRDRESSERS have to be licensed by some form of government regulation.

Yet, the argument is that registering guns limits your freedom. The purpose of a gun is to kill. And the industry is so loosely regulated that there are millions of guns all over America in who knows whose hands?

Cat's out of the bag. The guns have spread through both legal and illegal channels. They're out there. And there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it.

I understand that in Juneau, Alaska where there is a high percentage of concealed carriers that the crime rate is quite low. I've read those studies, and I do not believe as I once did that all guns were bad. I know that it's a sport, I know that people hunt with them, and that they need them for protection.

What I don't understand is the availability of semiautomatic assault rifles with high volume magazines. An assault rifle, by its name is not a defensive weapon. Does anyone need 100 rounds at their fingertips to do anything except shoot at a lot of .... people?

The reason that I'm worked up and writing about this now--and I thank you greatly for reading this far--is that NONE of the things that would have disallowed this guy in Colorado from making those purchases online. He had no criminal record, he had no documented history of mental illness like the guy at Virginia Tech. In a few weeks, this guy purchased 6000 rounds, body armor, and guns. Are these not signs that he was planning to do something? They were, but we would have no way of noticing them, because...why?

If he had been limited to a 12 round magazine, he still would have killed people. And we would still be saying "What a shame, what a shame." But the body count would not have been nearly so high.

Sorry for going on so long. Thank you for taking the time to read this far. If we can continue to have a discussion on this topic, I would feel honored.

Haven't heard back from him yet. But I would like to ask him or anyone, if assault weapons are acceptable products for sale to the general public, what about hand grenades? Landmines? I almost had a boss who owned a few Sherman tanks, but that was a little different. Where, indeed, do you draw the line?

Yo Foreigners! Get Registered to Get an Absentee Ballot

Remember, no matter how long you've lived abroad, you have the right to vote in Federal elections. U.S. election laws have changed, so no matter what you've done in the past the safest thing is to register or to request a ballot every election year.

Step 1: Go to www.votefromabroad.org and request your ballot.
Step 2: Print your ballot request, sign it and mail to the address required.
Step 3: When you receive your ballot, go vote!

Close Encounter

I was at the park with my delightful daughter last night, alternating between pushing her on the swings, doling out the M&M's, and sipping on a cup of cheap, but overpriced coffee from 7-11. Each time I go to this park, people talk to me. It's nice when it's not an interrogation. That is, it's good not to be ostracized as "That Big-Nosed Foreigner," but it's good when there's a little give-and-take in the conversation.

Bumped into a couple of Mormon missionaries, late, after the park lights came on. They sort of arrived out of nowhere, announced by the bright white shirts subdivided by black ties, before their faces came into focus. Nice guys.

We didn't talk about Romney. We just, y'know, "shot the shit" as they like to say. I think sometimes, when you're a missionary, you need a break and maybe it's just good to talk to someone from "back home." Who knows. They'd been on the island for three months and six months, so they....

....  I can't even remember what it felt to be three months into a stay in Taiwan. I think I probably still looked at Western faces on the street in the hope that they might be willing to spare a moment or two for idle small-talk. Christ, how long has it been since I felt like that....

I tell my students, occasionally, if they are looking for someone to practice English with, taxi drivers are possibly the worst choice, but Mormons are a pretty good bet, but they should be approached with care. With a plan. The game, I told them, they could play was, how many questions can I ask before they talk about The Book of Mormon? I usually stretch the conversation towards 5 minutes before they bring up their church about the same time that I remember my appointment.

It's a bit of a rude game, but I'm getting better at it.

Last night, we discussed reasons for coming to Taiwan, plans for the future, foods, courses of action for language learning, who learns Taiwanese vs who learns Mandarin. We talked about the Mormon settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois that I visited as a child, finding common ground. As individuals, they were friendly, interesting, and polite when I told them that as a potential convert, they would be best to write me down as a "lost cause."

I didn't bring up coffee, or multiple wives, or ask them if they took their family dogs on vacation tied to the roof of the car. I didn't think to ask about baptizing Anne Frank. I have my opinions about missionaries, and they likely have their opinions about dirty hippies. But it was nice to have a relaxing, late-evening conversation in a park, with a couple of kids from back home.

My daughter was tired of the conversation before I was and reminded me that it was time to go get her brother from math class. We said goodbye and got on the scooter. Before I left the park, I zipped around and found them unlocking their bikes and told them the story which is my reason for not giving Mormons shit when they come up to me:

When I first came to Taiwan, 12 years ago, and was lost on the weekends and couldn't find my way on a map, I used to walk to the nearest major intersection and wait for the Mormons to come around on their bikes, because they were not only the most-visible Westerners in the city, they were also the ones who were most likely to know where shit was.

So, fellas, I continued, if you go two years and don't make a single conversion, you may well make an impact in other ways.

Just a note about a conversation. Please do not seize this opportunity to contact me regarding The Book of Mormon, or services at the local temple. I'm not interested. But, feel free to see me for a chat on the street.

Lost

Last weekend, on the Sunday morning, early, we put on our go-to-meetin' finery and set off, map in hand, for family pictures on the kindergarten's dime, being our dime, as we pay the tuition and they don't just give services away for free. The invitation said 0900 in a such an obscene manner that you couldn't imagine. There's no good reason to be up that early on any Sunday. And to be lost amongst Chinese street signs makes the injury a double blow.

Car radio don't work, wife slept late, kids are hungry. And picky. We left the house at five minutes before we were to arrive across town at the photo studio. The street signs weren't making any sense. Our target was just this side of Chungde Road off to the right on a side street. We missed it the first time. As well as the second. The fourth time around the block, I opened Google Maps and experimented with several spellings before giving it up as a poor investment in my sanity.
After an exploration off to the right which turned up nothing more interesting than a hospital, I asked Maggie what the big, black box on the lower left represented. Turns out it was the B&Q on the Northeast side of town. There were other strange illustrations as well, perhaps the most interesting of which being an upside down isoceles triangle pointing at the character 北, which it may be helpful to point out indicates the general position of North on the map.
"What stupid Motherfucker puts 'North' at the bottom of a goddam map?" is a sentence pattern which you would be surprised to hear my sweet four-year old daughter spit out before she hears me repeat it a few more times and I hope it shall never come to that for as it is the only person I've encountered who sees this as normal is a Taiwanese photographer who uses a printed backdrop of a grand staircase in his studio for family portraits for people who want that fake I'm-in-the-money look.
There was no hurry to get there, though. Although all the graduating Kindy kids were supposed to be there, few could find the place.
Both the kids and both the adults in our family thought the photographer was an asshole. From the over the top costumes from 1001 Nights to the gimcracks the assistant put in Gretchen's hair we wanted out. I pulled Maggie aside, conferred with out eyes, and understood that we weren't buying any of it. And this was before he started whistling to get my daughter's attention as if she were a showdog.

Train Gone

I just had a brain freeze. I mean a thought. One of those glorious ideas that you get when you’re flying down a dual carriageway at half-past ten at night with your son on the back of your scooter and you can’t reach into your pocket to get out your iPhone and once you do anyway you do a search for Dragon Dictation at the red light and fail to find it and try to record the thought but you don’t because you didn’t put it back on your phone after getting the phone replaced for a dicky battery so you attempt to redownload it and continue to have more and more great thoughts while the app isn’t downloading because of spotty reception and traffic, but when you get to your basement parking lot and dismount you can’t download it because you’ve got two floors of concrete above you and the signal is non-existent and by this time the revelation is getting weaker and weaker until you think it’s actually a bad idea and not worth the hassle of even opening your lap top to record.

THIS is why I haven’t been blogging. Or writing at all. Or being creative in the least. I know better than to say it’s because I have kids.

What to do what to do.

Another school year has begun and everyone around me is freaking out 24/7.

...and that was last week. Completely lost the train. Maybe later. 

A Sketch From The Ocean Park

The stars of the dolphin show at the ocean park in Hualien are likely more intelligent than the presenters. But they were both light years ahead of the volunteer from the audience, a ten-year-old boy who was asked to give an addition or multiplication problem whose answer would be ten or less. The dolphin was to give the answer with slaps of his tail. But the kid couldn't come up with the question, instead settling on the tired and true fallback of "I don't know." This went on for far too long before the bubbly host went for the fake and told the kid to whisper in her ear what his question for the bottle-nosed dolphin was. " Eight Plus Two" she shouted to game approval from the crowd of a couple hundred. The dolphin gave the answer with ten slaps of the tail and the crowd was about as excited as you could imagine. The audience volunteers were to be given prizes in exchange for their cooperation and an assistant emerged with a picture of the mascot with maybe a button attached to it. The reticent child spoke distinctly when he said into the microphone not "Thank You" but "Can I change it for something else?" to which a few dozen audience members quickly fell just short of booing to show the brat their disappointment. We all watched on the giant screen as he scampered up the steps of the arena to meet his approving mother.

The Road Not Taken

We just finished up the poetry unit in summer school and I'm in the middle of grading exams. The first couple classes were ... well, dismal. The last class will not require curving and has provided some smiles and laughs. Especially question 21. Especially S's interpretation of the poem.

On The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
21. What do you think the poem means? What is the poet telling the reader about?

Refresh your memory if you haven't read it in awhile. It's good for you. Skip down to the end if you're lazy.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

And the student's response:

He is a traveler, I think. Maybe it's about love, so he needs to choose which would be the better one. He decided to break up with two girls at the same moment.

I'll admit there was a WTF moment upon reading the answer, but then I looked at a couple lines of the poem, figured, yeah, why not, and gave him full marks.

• Yellow, in Chinese, can mean pornographic, as in "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood."
• The line "...I stood/and looked down  one as far as I could/To where it bent in the undergrowth/ Then took the other, as just as fair" certainly could be interpreted as being "Yellow" as they say around here. 
• But the next phrase about the fair one "...having perhaps the better claim/ Because it was grassy and wanted wear" hits it out of the park. 

The student didn't use specific examples from the poem to defend his answer, but another one that could offer him some help would have been "And both that morning equally lay."

I shall indeed be "telling this with a sigh/somewhere ages and ages hence" whenever I teach this poem as a morality tale about running around with loose women. God bless that kid. Drove me crazy all year long and then provided me with the biggest gut laugh I've had in quite some time this morning.

Job Security

I've been in Taiwan ten-and-a-half years and I'm STILL seeing mistakes
like this on the road? Perhaps I need to rethink my position. Is there
a market for grammatically-correct T-Shirts in Taiwan?

Successecities!

I first got my Taiwanese learners' permit about 5 years ago so that I could legally drive the family car when it came time to take our first child home from the hospital. I went up and borrowed the test study guide, a collection of 90 pages' worth of questions from which the test is composed.

I had had a drivers license in the States since the 80's and laughed off the suggestion that it was something which needed to be studied for. The motorcycle test had been easy enough.

I got about halfway through the computerized test, though, and was humming a different tune. It was the most profane humming one has ever heard. By the end of the test, I was telling the computer to go plug it's USB into its mother, in similar language.

As I exited the test area I was sure that I could save the world by just giving the bastards my business card and telling them when they were ready to clean up the language on that piece of shit, I would be wiling to help them out. Then I let the door hit me on the ass on the way out.

Five years I waited, and they never called asking for my help in rewriting the test. I still shake my head about this lost business opportunity. I probably should have done a PowerPoint presentation to show the woman at the counter, but it would likely have had just about the same effect as shouting at her in the kind of English that one learns early on from his older brother.

It's time to take the kids back to America and show them the land of the free etc. But to do this properly will require a bit of driving. There's really no difference between driving without a license in America and driving without a license in Taiwan, except the American cops are more likely to know phrases like "step out of the car and put your hands behind your head" that make the eventuality of getting stopped by the fuzz more daunting than in my adopted home.

So, another trip to the DMV was in order. My learner's permit was expired, so I needed another physical exam consisting of an eye check and one deep knee bend with my hands held parallel to the ground administered by an extremely aged doctor in a clinic that was blaring a Sinead O'Connor tune on the radio.

I marched back with my sharp eyes and fully functioning knee joints and ran upstairs to sit down at the computer terminal where I had a choice of about 8 languages to take the test in. I figured English would be challenging enough, and put on the headphones to find out that the feministic voice on the recording was reading slightly different sentences than were on the computer screen, so I turned her all the way down and trusted the Force.

This time, I had no questions at all about taxi driving, or about how to load cargo on to a truck. Absent also, were questions about how many years I would need to have a private license before I tried to get a bus driver's license.

Dig:

True or False: Traffic laws maintain traffic order. The most important principle of maintaining traffic order is not only to understand but to obey the spirit of law can achieve an objective of good traffic safety.

The spirit of law being more important than the letter, or character.

True or False: Driving is both physically and mentally tiring. Only by leading a regular life, driving safety can be ensured.

Is that about eating enough roughage, or not working 6 days a week?

True or False: I find two drug dealers whispering in my taxi In order to help my country, I should think up a method to report the police station and not let them escape.

I don't pretend to understand how detaining a Ketamine dealer in Taiwan is going to help the USA, but as the openings for Western cab drivers are as few as they are far between, I don't have to worry about narking on one.

True or False: A car should break down because it runs out of oil or water.

I stared at this question for a full two minutes before I flipped a coin. I answered correctly, but have no record of what the correct answer was. Personally, I don't think it should ever run out of oil in the first place.


I missed three and scored 90%.

Wednesday, I went back for the road test. (here it is in Google Maps)

The road test is the most horrific thing that has happened to Taiwan ever. Worse than the White Terror. Those who have tried and failed to get past it speak of it in ominous tones and avoid eye contact. Something about an S curve.

Before you do the course, though, you have to be aware of and understand "The Rules:"

1. Self car should be parked at the assignment area to practiced in the test area is prohibited.
2. Bring your identification card, test admission, and some papers all the time for review and to be on time to test
3. While on your waiting interim should obey order not allowed to stay, to stroll, or to racket in the test area.
4. To explain the road test rules to score standard and to test route on pretest if any question please offer them in time.
5. A role call based on the number and check identificaiton photo then to get on car to test on order
6. In accord with the invigilator's instructions and respect their duties
7. A testee has reached over 30 score deduction that is judged that has failed his test should terminate his test and get off his car to sit on rear seat and then the invigilator will drive the car back to the initial test line
8. If there some illegalaties of insult or bribery occur to the inviligators while on the his test will be prosecuted right away
9. If someone help testees with gestures languages on the test will be rubbed off their scores
10. If one of them the cars facilities damaged while on his test should restore them or compensate their own prices
11. Those who are bare feet, bare shoulders or wear clogs, slippers that are not admitable. Also not allowed to smoke, to chew betelnuts on the test.
12. Those who are not obey the rules or use an inappropriate means to attend the test will be prosecuted by the item 70 of the traffic safety rules.

Many foreigners will leave at this point. The stout hearted, or those who don't read the rules, get into the car with an instructor or two. I was blessed with two invigilators. Each of them told the other one that they needed to practice their English on me, but neither made any serious attempt. They both rode in the car with me as we did a practice lap of the Test Course, explaining in triplicate over each other about how many points were deducted for each crossing of lines. The invigilator at the wheel demonstrated that if one were to cross one of the unseeable border lines between the road and the curb, sirens would blare, lights would flash, and a sign post would light up showing how you how many points had just been deducted from your total.

Lose 30, and you're driven back to the terminal in the back seat. In deep shame.

All those touchy-feely New Age self-help books talk about visualizing success or some such, and in the hours leading up to my test, I visualized a trip around the track like a pro drifter or the Stig in a Bugatti Veyron.

The S curve is created to test your ability to drive into those narrow alleys that you see on Penghu when you get lost heading out of Makong. (You're better off renting a motorbike there anyway.) This emasculating alleyway looked simple enough, but when I saw the sensor cord hidden by the edge of the curb, the Toyota suddenly seemed as wide as a Hummer.

There's no hurry at all, so it took about five minutes to drive 10 meters in and back 10 meters out. This was the hardest part of the test, without question, but I made it through without a buzz.

I backed out onto the road, hit the turn signal and ambled over to the next obstacle where I simulated backing into a parking garage space. This one was a bit more realistically narrow keeping in mind how difficult it is to park in some of the shopping malls. I lost my 16 points here with a jarring siren in my left ear that caught me by so by surprise that I farted. Fortunately, the invigilator was assessing this part of my performance from outside the car.

It's quite possible, though that it wasn't me. When you sit at the terminal pondering the instructions and trying to work out what an "invigilator" is, the empty course is alive with alarms. It could be the wind, it could be sticks falling from the trees. It's imaginable that a squirrel, frightened by my approaching rear wheels, scurried for cover and landed with all of his weight on the sensor setting off the alarm, and that my test was, in fact, flawless, because in the parallel parking, stopping on a hill, and slow and steady, I never made another mistake. I even managed to keep my head together and come to a complete stop at the fake railroad and pedestrian crossings that rounded out the test.

The three people who came out to watch me do the test all congratulated me on my fine motor skills and said something like, "If all drivers in Taiwan had the skill that you have demonstrated by passing this extremely difficult test on the first try, then Taiwan would be a much safer place."

I couldn't agree more.

Ten Years On/In Taiwan

When I left Indianapolis a solid DECADE ago today, it was my intention to stay here for two years, complete two contracts at a chain school, take as my second contract bonus the proposed return ticket to the States and Start Over.

Things don't always work out the way we plan them for one reason or another.

From time to time, though not as often as before, people stop me and ask why I decided to come to Taiwan in the first place, and I usually say 921. 9/21 was the day that a massive quake struck the central part of the island back in 1999, killing thousands, and sending hundreds of foreign English teachers looking for safer surroundings.

At the time, I was teaching ESL at IUPUI in downtown Indianapolis and eager for a change. After lunch, I was supervising students in the language lab when I saw a headline on CNN about the massive tremor. And the events that brought me to Taiwan began to unfold. No reason to bore you with them now.

If I'd had a few more days to ruminate over them, I'd have collected a basketful of changes that I've seen in the past ten years, but honestly, it wasn't until I was signing homework books this evening that the numbers 12 and 17 placed so close together struck me as somewhat familiar. When it dawned on me why, my respiratory system attempted to sigh and gasp at the same time and my chewing gum went up my nose.

Now that I've been here 5 times longer than initially anticipated, I figure that I'm about halfway through my time here, having started a family and a business in just such an order. There's a list floating around somewhere of signs that you've been in Taiwan much too long. One of them is "Your friends and relatives stop asking when you're planning to move back."


I have no idea if anyone has ever asked me that question, because I surely can't remember the last time it happened. Once I got over here, there was so much on this side of the world that I figured I owed it to myself to go see, and Taiwan was the sort of place where you could live simply and save up some cash and go out and see stuff.

A beautiful woman who's as good with numbers as she is with people has the power to change everything. Except I still throw my socks on the floor. And here I am. Still. In 2009.

China still hasn't invaded, so I guess I'll stay on living here for the next little bit.

Health Care In Taiwan

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.