I finally got a new battery charger for my camera, so I am now picture-enabled again. And, while I won’t be writing on the blogs for a while, since I’ll be taking lots of pictures again I’ll just give quick little updates like this one when I’ve updated the Flickr stream, at right.
Felt it for the first time this week. Don’t know why now and not any other time. And I’m not really even sure what it is I’m ’sick’ for. Just some sort of nostalgic reminiscences, I guess.
Because the thing is — and I’ve known this for basically as long as I’ve been here — I’m not going to have anything to come back to. My total possessions in this world include everything here in this apartment (which can fit into two suitcases), and then twelve boxes of books scattered throughout three different locales in Ontario, and whatever money I have in the bank. That’s it.
Another aspect of moving to another country is meeting other people from around the world who have done the same as you. Taiwan is quite loaded with ex-pats, as Taipei is one of the central hubs of Asia for business and one of the best (read: best paying) places to teach.
Now, these foreigners tend to fall into two general categories: normal people (like myself), and what can be described as ‘LBHs’ — Losers Back Home. These people could have been losers back home because they are just utterly socially inept (the white-socks-and-sandal-wearing D&D type, who of course are harmless and loveable), or, maybe they are of the other variety — people with such strange notions of how to act and what is proper that everyone else just thinks their weirdos.
We have (although he’s leaving very soon so it will be ‘had’) a teacher at our school who is an LBH of the latter variety. 50-ish Canadian guy, married to a Taiwanese woman. Nobody likes him (as far as I can tell); he’s one of these people who drones on and on and on about things that nobody else is at all interested in (like renovations, for instance), and always says things like ‘Greetings and salutations’ when he sees you . . . and means it.
He’s leaving our school because he’s opening one of his own. This morning, as I was checking my e-mail, I just happened to decide to go through my spam folder and I came across this: Keep reading →
. . . is well under way. There have already been four of these in the Pacific this year so far, the fourth of which, Typhoon Fengshen (pictured above), did some pretty heavy damage to the Philippines this weekend (although, really, if you know there’s a typhoon coming, why the hell would you go out in a ferry, and why would the ferry company even send it out? It’s like, last year, there was a guy here in Taiwan who died during a typhoon because he crashed his motorcycle into a stop sign . . . I mean, going out riding, in a typhoon?! Did that guy even deserve to live?).
So, basically, I’m going to be getting a stiff wallop of stifling forty degree heat mixed in with massive storms every few weeks . . . just a regular summer for a Taiwanese.
Fengshen is actually scheduled to hit Taiwan either tomorrow or Wednesday, our first hit of the summer. We’ll see what happens.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
23:41
I saw a child on the train today with a strange facial deformity — a slightly cleft palate and her right brow about twice the size of her left, which had the unfortunate effect of nearly swallowing her right eye and puffing out her cheek (or perhaps that’s due to the palate). Now I think it could have been caused by many things — such as difficulty at birth — but, at the time, given that both her parents looked oddly similar and both seemed, to put it politely, ‘dim’ (the mother kept turning around in her seat and tapping the woman behind her, even though by all outward appearances they did not know each other), my first thought actually ran to inbreeding.
On the way home I heard, through the thin walls of one of the apartments in my alley, a child screeching in agony while being beaten by (I’m assuming) its father. I could hear the blows landing on its body. Just as I was forming a dim thought to try and investigate which exact dwelling it was coming from, the noise receded, the child obviously being moved to an inner room in the home. Within seconds all was quiet again.
Where am I again?
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
0:02
The biggest earthquake of my time here in Taiwan occurred on Sunday night:
An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale rattled northern Taiwan at about 1am yesterday. No injuries were reported, the Central Weather Bureau said.
The earthquake had a depth of 95.7km and its epicenter was located 20.9km north of Ilan City, said Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋), director of the bureau’s Seismology Center.
Given the depth of the temblor, the earthquake had an intensity of only 3.0 in Ilan City, Kuo said.
Other areas that felt the quake at an intensity of 3.0 included Taipei City, Hualien, Taichung and Nantou counties, Seismology Center officials said.
Reports said that buildings in the Taipei area shook for about 30 seconds.
So what does a three on the Richter scale feel like?
Well, there are tiny earthquakes very often, which I would guess would rank about a one or less than a one; those feel like nothing more than tiny vibrations in the floor. The one Sunday night was a lot more noticeable. First, there was a slight shaking for maybe a second, at which point I thought it was just another of those small ones; then the floor shook for about three seconds to the point where you could plainly see it moving. Not hard enough to damage anything, or knock anything off of anything — but enough to get your attention. It says thirty seconds in the article but I didn’t notice it going on for that long. The fact that it made the news Monday morning, however, tells us it was more than run-of-the-mill; but, thankfully, merely an interesting experience, with no harm done.
Nope. Not a thing. Not a single thing to say, utter, speak, or even intimate, whatsoever. You may keep reading this post thinking that I’m being facetious, thinking that eventually I’ll drop this ruse, but you would be incorrect. There’s nothing. Not one item or topic or theme or anything of the sort. Just plain bupkis, through and through (I may have spelled bupkis incorrectly).
Why do I have nothing to say? I don’t know. Why do birds fly and fish swim? Why do kings rule and paupers pop? Why do horses horse and plants plant? They just do. And so, in that same vein, I have nothing to say.
I’ve just started another big project for the school. The first, of course, was the two conversation textbooks, which, I am happy to say, seem to be working very well, and as of yet there haven’t been any complaints about them from any teachers or students.
Starting last week, I am now involved in developing a testing system — something to determine what level a student should be starting his/her studies at, and something to test them once they’ve finished a level so they know if they are ready move on or not. It’s not that hard, but it’s time consuming, and so, for the moment, the novel is on hold for about a month.
Back to the daily grind.
It began with that earlier post, but I just had way too much to write, so instead of continuing in the comments I decided to make a whole new post.
First of all, I’m going to ask that anyone making assertions provide sources and evidence, as I have.
Secondly, this is the last time I’m going to mention alcoholism, as it is emphatically not related to this topic. While it could be argued that the effects of alcohol consumption and of these ‘passion chemicals’ are similar — that being a chemically derived euphoria or, at least, sensation in the brain — they are completely different because the ‘passion chemicals’ are produced naturally by the body, based on an evolutionary biological response, and alcohol is an external chemical introduced to the body. Therefore any genetic conditions or mutations based on alcohol have to be regarded as a separate genetic issue from what we’re talking about.
I recently came across an interesting article in one of my ESL textbooks, that, while not news to me, seems a good summation and explanation of a lot of things, and so I will re-print some of it here:
Love is not forever. In fact, for most people, it lasts no more than 30 months. After that, according to one of the world’s top researchers into the nature of romance, couples face the choice of breaking up or continuing on out of habit.
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