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December 17th, 2009
- - Temporary Update
I know it's been a LOOOONG time since I wrote anything here. My excuse is that, since the hullabaloo leading up to Malaysia, I've been in the vise grip of grad school applications. And now we're off to Thailand tomorrow to spend Christmas with Brian and Summer.
I've made it over the hump with my applications, so as soon as I get back, I'll have lots to say and time to write it. I'll also be going back and filling in the month-long chasm between now and my last entries.
In the meantime, I wish everyone a very merry Christmas!
- Colin
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November 9th, 2009
- - The Salty Stinger
Ashen gray skin like burned charcoal. Sunken eyes. A sloppy bright red dress. She took another long, angry drag from her cigarette.
"You complain and complain, 'There is so many mosquito here!' How you think is for us? Damn right there is many mosquito here, and only one of you! You would no believe the competition; is crazy. We swarm, we swarm, we swarm, and for what? For small chance at bite your leg. I want bite, my sister want bite, crazy Gemina across pond want bite... we all want bite. And you? You no want bite! We in somewhat disagreement, no? 'Oh, my leg itch!' Well, small matter to me - otherwise I no eat; my children no eat. You so selfish, you know? I can no go other place; there no food! Can no move in with parents - they die yesterday; I die tomorrow. So it goes. And so we wait and we wait and, finally, you walk by, but so fast! My vision, not so good. Must fly in circles, find where you smell. Try land, hang on, bite while you walk. Is so hard. You no appreciate.
Even reason no matter to you - I go buzz buzz in your ear, 'Hey look, we make deal. I take little your blood; you no need so much. I bite clean, no itch. Win, win, yes?' No, you smack yourself in head. Silly silly. I bite anyway, make much itch. Bite again, again. You want listen now, yes? Ha! Too late. But short victory - soon I crush, or die anyway. So it goes.
"You think times rough for you? Recession? No matter have job, no have job, you still just hop in car, drive to food store, drive to restaurant... no even have to leave car, you so lazy! And still you complain, 'Oh, my life so hard! I no have job for have money buy new TV!' Sit around eat potato chip, have job or no. What difference? Try chase your food around as it want crush you before you take bite. Settle down for nice meal and BAM! You dead. And wind - don't get me started on wind! As if our life not hard enough already. You try grow up in stagnant water. Is not so nice.
"But you no think. You never think. Always me, me, me. Only one that matter. Well, I tell you what -think next time you see mosquito. We all have trouble. Yours not so bad."
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November 7th, 2009
- - Fire in the Sky
Best. Fireworks show. Ever.
I was skeptical at first. From the moment we arrived at the MRT exit, amid a sea of people flowing endlessly onto the continuous line of shuttle buses with animated fireworks marquees, I thought this couldn't be worth it. It took our bus almost an hour to crawl less than a dozen blocks through the mounting traffic; when we finally arrived, still two blocks away from the waterfront, the roads were clogged with thousands of people, all pouring toward the only two entrances to that area of the park, divided from the city by a (and to all appearances useless) huge concrete wall. If that were enough, each entrance consisted of a single door scarcely wider than the sliding door to our balcony. It was like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a keyhole.
Inside the park was not much better; it was barely recognizable as a park, so thickly was every surface covered in people, sitting, standing, jumping up and down. I have never been somewhere that felt so ridiculously crowded. The arteries of traffic were clogged down to little tiny cracks where people could only move one at a time, in only one direction. Almost a half an hour and some five-hundred meters up the waterfront, with no sign of a thinning crowd, we squeezed into a tennis court where we could at least sit down.
My interpretation of the event had included food, of some sort, but on our first sortie, it appeared that, for once in the history of all events in Taiwan, there was an absence of food vendors. That, of course, would have been impossible occurrence, and we eventually located the small oasis of stalls down-river, their competitors having apparently already packed up and left. Strange. You see so many random cart vendors along the side of the road, even in places where there is little to no traffic, and yet here, with at least 10,000 people and no other recourse for hunger, there were only a handful of stalls, each with lines stretching at least a dozen back. Those lines were not, however, anything compared to the lines for the single-stall toilets which were several-dozen long, and moving at such a pace that I think it would have taken at least thirty minutes to get to the front. By then, the fireworks were to start in fifteen.
After consuming a bland hot-dog and some wilted fries from the stall with the shortest line, I returned with Valerie to the patch of green our group had staked out on the tennis court and the fireworks began almost immediately. I can scarcely describe the show, so filled it was with intricately choreographed bursts of color coming from places all along the opposite side of the river. The best I can do is compare it to a recreation of the Bellagio fountains in fireworks - giant gold ones that lit the entire sky and rattled the ground when they exploded, streams of silver light, red and purple sparks that hung unnaturally in the air like so many fireflies, giant smiley faces and hearts, and many more, some of which I had never seen before; ones that spiraled up violently, or exploded once, then broke apart into smaller fragments that propelled themselves a second time out in all directions.
It was more like a symphony than a typical fireworks show, the varieties of fireworks coordinated and paced into movements much like a piece of music (but not at all like the music that accompanied it which, while pleasant, was not at all audible over the din of the fireworks), painting fiery landscapes in the sky. And, unlike the traditional Chinese/Japanese fireworks show, which comes haltingly in little bursts, followed by long pauses (presumably while the operator searches for a new box of matches), the entire half-hour show was like an extended finale, a climax from beginning to end, the end of which was more a spiritual experience than a spectacle. The show ended with a sustained volley of giant gold bursts and purple, red and green sparks that took up the entire field of vision, tripling the stars and creating a hundred dancing colored constellations. The crowd went wild. And I certainly did not regret being among them.
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November 6th, 2009
- - The Mosquito Buffet
Our bus pulled up to the front of the Wenhua campus on Yangmingshan in the fading light of a Friday evening. The international student office had arranged a fascinating event to incorporate celebrations of all the major Western and Chinese holidays. Christmas, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mid-autumn festival - all packed into one, three-hour holi-fest (that's holiday festival, in case you didn't pick up on that).
Of course, like everything in Taiwan, the main focus was on food. In this case, they had set up a self-serve barbecue table, from which we filled out little cardboard bucket with raw ingredients. Three cooks were working two Mongolian barbecues; the line was long and the air was thick with mosquitoes. That was, in fact, the most notable feature of the event - the food was good, the activities were mildly entertaining, but the mosquitoes stole the show. They were not just mosquitoes, they were massive mosquitoes. And they made a truly impressive turn-out for such a small space. Mosquito-magnet that I am, I put on my rain jacket in order to put as many layers as possible between me and them. But they had no trouble biting through denim pants, so, while periodically swiping around my face and neck with the disposable chopsticks I was holding with my barbecue bucket, I was also shifting my legs around to keep them off. It probably looked like I had to pee. And/or was mentally unstable. But even without exposure to such a dense supply of mosquitoes, I manage to maintain a collection of at least ten bites at any given time. I don't know how. I think I get attacked a lot in my sleep. I'm hoping that all this exposure will eventually help me build up a resistance to mosquitoes. Or perhaps I'll turn into the Spiderman's mosquito counterpart. Perish the thought.
Insect infestation notwithstanding, the international office did a wonderful job of putting together the event, and I'm just sad that there was not more interest in the (activities, which may have been more suited to elementary or middle school students) like pumpkin-rolling races, or love-song karaoke (Celine Dion, anyone?). I think most of the students, after partaking in the barbecue, wandered off onto the rest of the campus, which boasts a stunning view over Taipei, especially on a clear night. After perusing all of the activities, I joined the loose group of students at the look-out point on the edge of campus. We spent what was left of the evening there before heading back to catch the bus back down into the city.
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November 2nd, 2009
- - Gluttony.
There's no other word for it. Gluttony - the second and most delicious sin, for which the punishment, according to Dante, is an eternity lying in dirty black slush and freezing rain. Small price to pay for a bite of chocolate cake, right? Well, hopefully they'll consider the big picture before throwing me down there because my normal meals consist of unseasoned rice, bland noodles, plain vegetables and oatmeal. But today, Bacchus himself would have given me a tip of his hat, or his grape-crown-thing, or whatever it is he wears. I foolishly scheduled two meal dates in one day (and not four hours from one another!) - one with my dad's cousin's friend Paul, and the other with my Aunt Linda and Marie's cousin, Roger. In my defense, these were dates suggested by the treating parties, so I was reluctant to object.
At 12:30, We met Paul outside the Yuan Shao yakinikku restaurant near the Songshan airport. He escorted us inside, where his wife and son were already seated. The restaurant is owned by the same person that owns the upscale sushi restaurant that Jeffry took us to and was thus decorated with a similar simple elegance. In keeping with the Japanese tradition of yakinikku, there were small grill-stoves built into the tabletop in front of us. After pleasantries and the whole ordering kerfuffle, the waitstaff brought over baskets of smoldering coal bricks and placed them under our grills.
What followed I would liken to a freight train of meat headed straight for my stomach tied to the tracks, like in those old robber movies. Except that my stomach was not struggling to get away, it was drooling and thinking "beeeef." The first bite was "mmmmm," delicious. Only about halfway through my man-hole-cover sized platter of meat did I slow down and think, "hmmmm." Then the "hmmmm" became an "uuuuuugh" and by the time the second and third courses came out, my stomach was battered and stretched to a bloated pulp. I was thoroughly disgusted with myself; I don't think I have ever eaten that much meat in one sitting. And then dessert came out: brown-sugar panna cotta. I stared it down the way a woman stares down a Gucci purse. I convinced myself that I had just enough room left to make it through, though I was already starting to feel queasy and all the formerly-pleasant lights and decorations around me were beginning to press in as if admonishing me for my decisions.
"This was fun," were Paul's words cuing the conclusion of the meal, and my release from the game of try-not-to-look-as-uncomfortable-as-you-feel. Except that, after a sincere expression of gratitude on our part and a warm farewell, they were headed in the same direction. At the next corner, Paul pointed out the way to the metro. I thanked him, and said goodbye... and then he started walking in the same direction. I had wrongfully assumed that him giving me directions meant that we were parting ways. This was beginning to feel slightly awkward. Finally, we reached the point where they were to turn off, and made yet another attempt at goodbye. Then Valerie's phone rang and it was our landlord, speaking Chinese. We imposed on Paul's son to translate for us before, finally, saying goodbye. I had to go sit on a bench for a few minutes to recover.
It was 2:30 and we were to meet Roger for dinner at 4:30. Valerie and I walked along one of the nearby underground pedestrian malls, stopping just before the food-court area - the sight of which I don't think I would have been able to bear - to do some homework on a bench. 4:30 rolled up more gracefully than I would have expected, and Roger picked us up outside the MRT station. In the car, he was saying how early our 5:30 dinner reservations were. I agreed as heartily as decorum would allow, hoping that we might push them back a bit and give my stomach a little more time to return to normal capacity. To no avail. Instead, after briefly and inexplicably perusing a computer store, we showed up at an elegant but casual Italian restaurant named Grazie. After a glass of wine and some light conversation, I noticed that the pressure against my belt had subsided somewhat and that the thought of eating a few slices of pizza no longer seemed so entirely revolting. In fact, after an (entirely unnecessary) appetizer, I was looking forward to the first pizza I've had in three months with almost as much anticipation as if I had not just eaten an entire herd of cows three hours prior.
I survived - and enjoyed - that dinner; the food was really good and the portions were less epic. I was even able to walk out of the place on my own two feet. In fact, we walked quite far, out to what Roger described as the computer and electronics mecca of Taipei - a Taiwanese Akihabara, if you will. It wasn't anywhere close the real thing, but made an admirable effort, in spite of the rain. We walked aimlessly through the three floors of tiny shops and vendors and I discovered that my once burning passion for technology has dulled immensely. Perhaps that change is commensurate with the thinning of my wallet, but I think it has more to do with a shift in values. In any case, I didn't feel the slightest impulse to buy anything and thus very little motivation to even look.
We caught a cab over to Ximen, which is the hip-and-fashionable district of Taipei, where all the stylish clothes shops peddle Engrish, punk and purses to the with-it Taiwanese youth. There are movie theaters, snack shops, arcades... everything a teenager could want. (There was even a condom shop.) Except that I'm not a teenager anymore, nor is Valerie for that matter. I suspect that Roger didn't really know what to do with us, and he knows that young people tend to hang out in Ximen, so we would probably like to go there. It was nonetheless an interesting visit - quite the opposite of the frumpy part of Taipei that I call home. Roger was very kind and pleasant company. He insisted on accompanying us down into the metro to make sure we could figure out our way home on Taipei's three subway lines. Not entirely necessary, but appreciated; not unlike the copious amounts of food I consumed.
Tomorrow, I will seek absolution in a small bowl of oatmeal.
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October 31st, 2009
- - Less-than-thriller
I can't say I didn't see it coming. It happens the same time every year. And Valerie was in the habit of reminding me a few times a week. The surprise with which it hit me, then, was not at all surprise, or rather an entirely intentional lack of preparation. Of the assortment of holidays I take abroad with me, Halloween is very near the bottom - on par with the socks that I use to cram in the nooks and crannies of my suitcase. Easter gets entirely left behind. But I take Halloween with a certain grudging nostalgia, for all it used to mean to me as a child, when I virtually worshiped candy. But at this age, without the candy and the trick-or-treating, it's really just an excuse to have a party, and not the kind of party I'm particularly interested in attending. Copious amounts of alcohol and the anonymity provided by a costume (which is, paradoxically, not necessarily very concealing, in some cases) tend to encourage, let's say, some rather unbecoming behavior. But I think too many years around Isla Vista may have unjustly prejudiced me against the occasion. Since I left, none of my Halloweens have involved wading through tens of thousands of staggering, drunk (and often obnoxious) college students or having policemen confiscate any item that is not physically attached to my person. In fact, there has been practically zero police presence at most of the Halloween events I have attended since I left Santa Barbara. So I think that reflects well on Halloween as a whole and negatively on Halloween in Isla Vista, but I'm sure you could find more than a few people who would disagree on both counts.
In any case, the Wednesday prior to Haloween crept (haha, creep, get it?) up on a still-costume-less me. I would have been quite happy to stay that way through Halloween, but Valerie was very eager to attend a party and I had made some verbal commitments to attending the kickboxing club party that night. After inviting Pascal and Andy, there was no backing out. But there was still the option of putting virtually no effort or thought into a costume (as opposed to past Halloween costumes, which have consumed upwards of five hours of arts-and-crafts time). Thus, I picked up a pair of black dress pants I was already planning to buy for professional purposes, added a black beanie and a black shirt, cut off a strip of the unused portion of our couch cover and BAM, I'm a burglar. But not just any burglar - Valerie dressed up as a cat and that made me a "cat burglar." Ha ha. ha... Witty on the cheap and easy. OK, maybe not so witty, but cheap and more creative than cowboy, which was my other option.
We met Pascal and Andy outside the MRT station and were soon joined by Anders, Melissa, and a growing flock of foreigners. The Taiwanese people were mostly confused, a little suspicious, and only sometimes amused. Mainly the children. There was a little girl on the metro that was giggling herself to pieces at Valerie's cat costume (which was as simple as black clothes, some face drawing and a pair of ears). I can only imagine the kind of attention Pascal and Andy received, impeccably dressed as they were in the attire of the Mad Hatter and Alice, respectively. Pascal's costume was truly impressive, with a home-made felt hat, blazer, over-sized bow-tie, and ridiculous socks, and Andy had the advantage of already being English and resembling Alice.
We arrived at the (relatively) spacious second-floor apartment of our host to find Halloween decorations in the form of ball-point-pen drawings on printer paper, with perhaps a smidge of crayon or colored pencil. Good thing no one was expecting decorations. Admirable effort, nonetheless. Probably more than I would have done. We passed the evening in conversation with some people I knew from the club, a few people I didn't, and, of course, Pascal and Andy. There were a few clever or elaborate costumes, but all small game compared to the standard fare in Isla Vista. The best-costume prize went (rightfully) to the guy who built an entire shower around himself, complete with shower curtain and shower head.
At midnight (when I would have liked to have been on my way to bed any other night), we left en masse for the Indian Beer House, informally known as the dino restaurant, so called for the giant dinosaur skeletons that form the centerpiece of the decorations in the three-story building. It is actually pretty impressive - the walls are all earthen-textured and contoured to give the place the appearance of underground. While it is normally a family restaurant, the place was fully converted for Halloween (although the giant skeletons everywhere gave it quite a head-start) into a three-story club with separate bars and DJs for each floor. With all the loud music, booze and general chaos, it felt almost like an Isla-Vista Halloween, were it not for the large Taiwanese presence among the otherwise expat congregation.
I enjoyed myself until about 2:00, when I was finally tired of the crowds, the loud noises, and the sticky, booze-sodden floor, and just plain tired. Fortunately, that corresponded rather well with our departure shortly thereafter. We caught a taxi home and that was the end of it... for another year.
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October 29th, 2009
- - Congratulations do exist
At 12:32 a.m., while I was busily working on something very important, being productive, and not chatting with friends, I received an email. Were this back in the era of AOL, I could have begun this episode with a more dramatic "You've got mail!" beep, but it began instead quite casually with a "(1)" after the title on my Gmail inbox tab. Rather than another useless email from Facebook or my online econ course, I was greeted by the subject "Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) Results." My heart jumped; in three short weeks, I had almost forgotten I had even taken the FSOT, let alone that I should be expecting the results. But there they were, calling out to me in Times New Roman. All I had to do was click. "Calm down," I chided myself, "you were never expecting to pass this, let's not get all optimistic now. Besides, this means relatively little on the long path to the Foreign Service." I took a deep breath and clicked. "Your results for the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) that you took recently are now available. You must download a copy of your letter..." OK, so this was not the climax, it was the rising action. I prepared myself again for the climax, bracing for the bad news on a secret pillow of optimism. I clicked on the link to my letter.
"Please log in to view your letter." My fluttering stomach, not at all grounded by insistence from my brain that it ought to stay seated, paused again. Again, not the climax I was expecting after I clicked the button; I was beginning to feel led-on. But OK, log in - I can do that. The adrenaline started back up as I clicked yet again with the expectation of learning whether or not I had passed. Finally, I was directed to a PDF that began with the word, "Congratulations." I floated. I had wanted that to be the the first word in so many of the notification letters I received last year, I was beginning to think that it had fallen out of usage, or perhaps that it just didn't apply to me anymore. More often, my letters started with the word "We." This was usually followed closely by "regret" and soon after by the rest of the phrase "to inform you..." I have become very well acquainted with the regret of these nameless, first-person-plurals. And I'm quite sure that they didn't actually regret it - certainly not as much as me. But there was a time when I used to be on a first-name basis with Congratulations, back in the world of academia. "Congratulations, you have been accepted to [insert name of university here];" "Congratulations, you have been awarded highest honors;" and even slightly afterward with Congratulations on acceptance from the JET Programme. It was enough to give me a rather high opinion of my capabilities for quite a while, until last year's grounding lesson in humility and egg-basket distribution logistics. It's been a long "regrettable" dry spell since then and I can only hope that this is the beginning of a new period of success, measured by the wisdom I've gained from a more realistic evaluation of my goals.
So, while I am happy to have passed the written portion of the FSOT (which I had thought would be a much larger obstacle to my pursuit of a career in the foreign service) I know that it is only the first step on a long and arduous uphill journey to where I'd like to be. But it is a first step, and that's just important as the second and third, so, if nothing else, I am encouraged to continue with the process and to try again if I don't make it all the way through this time. I am still hoping for some positive news regarding my Fulbright application and my as-yet-incomplete grad school applications - things I would like to do before making any long-term career commitments. Should I be successful in any of those pursuits, the foreign service will become a secondary (or tertiary) concern, for the time being.
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October 28th, 2009
- - The Café
Found something I wrote several years ago:
Overstuffed chairs and bagel crumbs,
Not quite our old locale.
You wear the earrings I've never seen,
And I wear my smile like a shirt.
We talk about the weather
And the things we did that day.
I pass the awkward moments
Looking in your eyes,
For the light that lit my life
Or the tear that was my flood
And finding empty glances
Over a yellow coffee cup.
Staring down our empty mugs,
It's time you have to go.
Again sometime, you say.
And I smile again, and nod.
Lost faith and wasted words
On a face now unfamiliar.
A thousand things to say
To shout, to scream,
To whisper; and to cry,
But only saying...
Goodbye.
(8/16/04)
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October 21st, 2009
- - Cut-out
Kevin, said his name-card. His lack of English said something else. And the blonde-highlighted semi-topknot he wore above an otherwise shaved head said something I didn't understand. But he was, nevertheless, a hairdresser, and the one that Pascal had recommended. He was very nice, speaking to me from the threshold of the small, two-seat salon where he worked alone with his assistant and a receptionist. Using some newly-acquired vocabulary, I negotiated with him an appointment; tomorrow.
For reasons unknown (or not understood), I couldn't get an appointment before class, so I had to make one after, which was threatening to run dangerously close to the start of the networking event that Anders had invited me to. But I figured I had better be late than shaggy and thus 5:30 found me sliding into a salon chair with two magazines the assistant had handed me. Good idea, I thought. Pointing to things always works better than using my words; a point is worth a thousand grunts. But as I began leafing through the pages of the magazines, I was greeted by the emotionless disembodied heads of Chinese male models. They all bore slightly disapproving looks on their faces, as if to say, "This haircut will never look as good on you." I am going to tell you that I could scarcely tell them apart, but before you go scoffing to yourself about how typically American that is (or nodding your head in agreement), let me clarify that it had nothing to do with their albeit equally-empty faces, but that all of their haircuts looked almost indistinguishable - and indistinguishably hideous. They had been herded into categories - very long, long, medium, short, and very short. Except for the very long, which resembled the voluminous locks of an 18th-century duchess - and the very short, which was essentially the length of my hair at present, they all looked the same - giant fluffs of wispy, unevenly cut mop, borrowed from the top of Japanese chic. There was not a single coiffure in either of the magazines under which I could walk down the street without feeling absolutely ridiculous.
Fortunately, when Kevin came over, he brought with him a magazine that had Western hairstyles in it. From outlandish rock-star, to the short-and-military. I pointed to a couple and the procession began. Measure. Comb. Smack me on the back repeatedly with a brush. Awkward shoulder massage from assistant. Shuffle over to another chair. Hair rinse. Shampoo. Rinse again. Scalp massage. Conditioner. Rinse again. Blowdry. Comb. Begin cutting sides with scissors, one hair at a time. Snip fruitlessly for two minutes at a patch of air by the corner of my head in which there may or may not be a hair. Consider. Snip some more. Engage in requisite small talk. Listen politely through my halting, phonetically abysmal responses. Call assistant over for occasional interpretation of three sentences into one word. Cut. Comb. Reflect. I felt like a bonsai tree.
All the while, in my head, I'm screaming, AAAAAHHHHH! Don't get me wrong, I would appreciate the thoroughness of the service under any other circumstances, but with a relatively short and ever closing- window of time before I was supposed to be on the other side of town, I could have done without the scalp massage. It had the equlibrating effect of both relaxing me and making me more tense. Every so often, I would calm myself down a bit with the knowledge that no amount of exsperation would get me out of there any faster. Had I only known the words for, "Do you mind if we skip the foreplay? I've kind of got a thing to get to."
An hour and forty minutes after I sat down - now ten minutes after the start of my networking event - Kevin shook out my hair-poncho and I was released on $400NT bail. I scrambled out the door, up the street and, quickly abandoning the complicated series of bus connections I had concocted that morning, hailed a cab. "Taipei yi ling yi fuqin de jilong lu!" (there are tones in there somewhere) I urged the driver. Holding the seatbelt down across myself for lack of a buckle in which to click it, I was ferried across town through rush-hour traffic in just over ten minutes. I buttoned my shirt up wrong in the elevator and had to rebutton it at the top. Up a flight of stairs to the roof, I found myself in a crowd of suits, ties, and evening dresses on an elegantly-lit brick terrace looking almost straight up to the illuminated tiers of the majestic Taipei 101 skyscraper. I could feel the meat buns I had grabbed for dinner incubating in my overstuffed schoolbag as I walked by ornate platters of catered food. A minor oversight compared to my attire and (lack of) punctuality. I squeezed through the rings of well-dressed business-men and -women - all in their mid-thirties or later (which I can no longer call "twice my age") - to find Anders on the far side of the terrace. He introduced me to one or two people, and then I was left alone, like a little fish to swim with the... much bigger fish.
This was the sort of event at which I knew there were connections to be made; the soirée in the heart of the business district of Taipei was bristling with up-and-coming entrepreneurs as well as many established business-owners and professionals. Money was on everyone's mind, business in their voices. Everything was right for some serious, profitable networking, except me. I emptied my wallet getting a haircut, my business card has no business on it, and I was in the sort of company that made me feel ashamed for admitting that I'm a student - and nothing else. No matter what lofty intentions I followed that with, it was of little interest to anyone, as it doesn't fit anywhere into their market, and is such a banal thing to be here, right at the bottom with cram-school English-teacher. Furthermore, I had practically no interest in what they were interested in - sales, growing customer base, increasing commercial profile. In fact, I'm not even terribly interested in making money, which I could unjustly boil down to be the sole interest of the other guests. Of course, I want to live comfortably, and save for retirement, and everything else. But increasing profit margins does not strike me as a particularly interesting life pursuit. I spend much of my free time reading about global politics, listening to recorded lectures on international policy, and thinking of where I can go and what I might do there. I would love to talk about the current refugee problem in Nepal, the future of micro-financing in Africa, or the implications of political revolution in Honduras. Where are the people who talk about those things? Sometimes it feels like everything that I'm learning just falls into an abyss of hope and good intentions. Of course, they have some inherent value and are interesting to me, but that has not, as of yet, translated into income or professional experience, both of which I sorely need right now.
So where does that leave me? Where are the opportunities to do something meaningful that don't require a) that I starve or b) that I be far more qualified and experienced than I currently am? Do I need to give in to the rank-and-file and play the money game first? Should I just give up on what I really want to do in order to do what's in front of me? Change my priorities? I feel like a little boy with a pail and a shovel trying to build a real castle.
I spoke with only a handful of people that night and they were all long and relatively pointless conversations about this and that and business in Taiwan; most of all a conversation with "Frank," a Taiwanese intern at one of the companies hosting the event, who, after several beers, seemed tickled to be speaking English and showing how much he knew about American culture by listing off rappers and hip-hop artists I didn't know, then guffawing when I shook my head at each one. He also went on about how great business is, how laws are just things that stand in the way of business, and then, at twenty-one years old, he began telling me what you've got to do "if you want to be the boss" and make the big bucks. Very much not my kind of people. Halfway through, the organizer gave a short speech about the importance of telecommunications in business, and then passed out a quiz about telephones and telemarketing statistics with the promise of a prize for the highest score. With nothing else to do, I gave it some thought. "When was the telephone invented?" "What percentage of businesses in Taiwan have telecommunication services?" The prize was a gift certificate for telecommunication services that I certainly did not want to receive, so I marked the remaining questions without much consideration. Then imagine my surprise when, chatting at a table on the far side of the terrace, I heard my name announced (and pronounced incorrectly, of course) for the runner-up T-shirt prize after having answered 9/10 questions correctly. If only life's questions were that easy. I suppose I'm expecting more than a T-shirt though.
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October 20th, 2009
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It is 9:00 in the morning and the children at the pre-school across the street are screaming along with a Chinese-language techno version of "She'll be comin' round the mountain" while a women on loud speaker chants "Jiayou, jiayou..." (Go, go, go...).
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October 19th, 2009
- - The Cows of Grass Mountain
Today, our class took a fieldtrip to Yangmingshan, just to the north of Taipei. It was called Grass Mountain until Chiang Kai Shek renamed it. The fieldtrip lasted the whole day, and involved at least eight separate bus rides. Our "hike" was a ten-minute walk up a concrete incline to a flat gravel path that led to some rolling green hills, where semi-wild cows grazed amidst groups of tittering tourists. They were quite impressive to see up close - the cows, not the tourists. Massive chunks of muscle under a rough, furry hide. I'm sure they could have knocked me flat if they had wanted to. But they didn't seem thus inclined - rather, they seemed interested in nothing else than munching the grass, which made short, little tearing noises like ripping up carpet as they ate. Their eyes were big, doey brown marbles casting lazily about as if the whole world was just an in-flight movie to go with their meal. The only time I saw one of them get a bit agitated was when someone's dog thought they would make a good playmate. A bull, no less. As the dog pranced about, the bull raised its head briefly and took a step as if to chase the dog, but then decided better of it and returned to eating the grass.
Little cow, big world.
A dog, a cow, and a man.
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October 16th, 2009
- - TBF Fridays
Taiwan Beer is the ubiquitous spirit of Taiwan. Any establishment that serves beer sells Taiwan Beer, a few imports, and nothing else. They are the Microsoft of the Taiwanese beer industry, if Microsoft were to merge with Apple. But despite the lack of competition, it is fairly decent beer (Valerie really likes it). They run a factory in the heart of Taipei aptly named the Taiwan Beer Factory. In a large, converted warehouse at the back of their compound, fronted by a long wall of kegs, they serve beer and a decent selection of overpriced food. The walls are a mottled, sea-foam green, topped by a standard warehouse ceiling over a concrete floor. Light-bulbs snake down from the rafters, with covers fashioned of bottomed-out beer bottles. Outdoor seats, as well as those along the walls, are fashioned from the factory's own metal kegs, while their tables are no more than circles of wood nailed to the tops of old wooden barrels. The main seating area offers more family-friendly long, wooden picnic tables and benches.
We ordered one of the signature green plastic mini-kegs of Taiwan beer, which holds about four liters. After Andy arrived, between the four of us, we finished a second one. Pascal and Valerie were hardest hit (probably because they drank the most), but there were no retro-esophageal fireworks. Thankfully. All the same, I think eight liters is a bit much for four people. Will keep that in mind next time.
Not halfway through the night, a small group of foreigners, not all of whom were American, got up on the stage, inexcusably drunk for 9:00 p.m., even on a Friday, and started slowly windmilling their arms about while tipping back and forth in a style of dance that I don't think was popular in any decade and is especially inappropriate to Green Day's "When September Ends" as well as The Cranberries' "Linger." The apparent ring-leader and rock-star-in-his-own-head was a Spaniard in a trendy pink T-shirt, wearing one of those trucker hats that were popularized by Ashton Kutcher in the early 2000s and a pair of pretentious aviator sunglasses - indoors. At one point, he broke into an air-guitar solo... right in front of the lead guitarist. They stayed up on stage for at least four songs, with no indication from the band or from any of the apparently non-existent security guards for the bar, that perhaps they ought to step down. All of this in front of a largely unconcerned warehouse full of families, couples, work parties, and a few larger groups of friends. The room was at least ninety percent local Taiwanese, and yet here was a band of foreigners, who couldn't have been older than 17, jumping around on stage as if this were their own private party. Oh, how I loathed them for the image they were painting, here in front of hundreds of Taiwanese, of how foreigners behave. I had half a mind to go up there and pull them down myself, but I figured most people actually weren't paying them any attention (the band included) and a kerfuffle probably wouldn't have improved the situation any. Eventually, they did help themselves off the stage, but only when the band took an extended break between sets. And not twenty minutes later, they were back up there with the band, but they had multiplied to the point that the lead singer of the band was trapped behind them at the back corner of the stage.
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October 15th, 2009
- - Shall We Dance?
Around 6:15, I finally, after two months, decided to call up my dad's cousin Tina's friend Paul. I don't know why I had waited so long - certainly not because I didn't have the time. I think it had something to do with my strong aversion to imposing on people. I was hoping to get his email address so I wasn't just calling him out of the blue and saying "Hi, my name's Colin!" I suppose that's how things were done before email, but I know how busy people can be, and I certainly don't want to inconvenience anyone, especially when I'm getting by fine on my own. It turns out that has not been an issue in either case so far though, as both reactions I've gotten have been "Why didn't you call me sooner?" And in that manner, after I introduced myself to Paul on the phone, he responded. He seemed even a little bit offended, like perhaps I couldn't be bothered, or didn't have the time. I tried to assure him it was nothing of the sort. I don't think he was actually offended. His next sentence was to tell me that I would be having dinner with him tonight. Dinner was clear on the other side of Taipei. And by 'tonight,' he meant at 7:00, in just over half an hour. There was no way I could decline, so I turned off the stove and started getting dressed. He gave me an address and, in response to my inquiry, said the dress code was casual. "It doesn't matter, you can wear shorts is fine!"
And so within five minutes, Valerie and I were out the door, power-walking our way down the street toward the MRT, which seems to be our manner of walking the majority of the time (not by choice). We had to take three different subway lines to get there, and there was a minor hiccup in navigation when we got on one going in the wrong direction. But shortly after 7:30, Valerie and I walked up to Lulu's, behind the Sherwood hotel. As an impeccably dressed hostess swung open the door to an elegantly lit dining room of immaculate white table cloths, each hosting an army of flatware, it struck me that this was not the casual restaurant Paul had described. (Fortunately, I had learned from past occasions and decided to err on the side of formality with a dress shirt and pants.) But the confused pair of foreigners quickly drew the attention of a well-dressed group at one of the nearby tables and Paul, among them. Of course, I only assumed that the man in shorts and a T-shirt was Paul, as I didn't know why else that group would be getting out of their chairs for us; but my assumption was soon confirmed as the casually dressed man introduced himself as Paul. Introductions were made all around, including Paul, his wife, and three people he described as his American friends - all more or less my age, American-born Chinese.
I gawked at our menu, whose prices also reflected the less-than-casual nature of the restaurant. I did a mental inventory of my wallet and discounted the majority of the menu. Paul encouraged us to order the set. I complied, reluctantly, eyeing the ATM across the street and hoping it wouldn't come to that. As we were drawn into conversation, it came out that all of the other guests were from California as well, including a very pretty girl who Paul made a note of introducing as "a singer." I took this very casually, "Oh, what sort of music do you sing?" Only when we were leaving did it come out that she is actually the most recent winner of Taiwan's version of American Idol, One Million Star Avenue, and is already a huge celebrity and soon to be more so.
Although they were all American, they also spoke fluent Mandarin and a good deal of the dinner conversation was conducted in Chinese - some of which I was able to follow, but to which I was able to contribute nothing. Nonetheless, Paul was jovial company and dinner was delicious, right up to the second bite of seared salmon, after which my stomach began a very ill-timed mutiny. I found myself searching for the least impolite way to excuse myself to go vomit, and hoping the bathroom was easily accessible. This was not the kind of restaurant I could puke in front of. In fact, it was not the kind of restaurant that would permit any sort of regurgitation, anywhere, although decorum would hold their tongues. Quite fortunately, it never came to that. However, I was unable to eat any more of the scrumptious and ridiculously expensive meal sitting expectantly in front of me.
As she removed my plate, the waitress asked if I was not satisfied with the way the salmon was cooked. (I must note, though, that the service was, not surprisingly, in line with the rest of the place - the wait staff were even so observant as to notice that Valerie is left-handed and lay out her flatware accordingly. Incredible.) My misery doubled when the empty patch of table in front of me was refilled with a plate of tiramisu like a beautiful French girl in a chocolate-brown dress at an evening ball. (Yes, I know tiramisu is Italian, but Italy doesn't quite evoke the elegance of that dish, with its long, curled chocolate ornament, almost like a peacock-feather plume). She invited me to dance and, with a heavy heart, I had to decline. I think I lost a part of my soul that night. But only a small part, as Paul, after paying for everyone's meal, kindly asked the wait staff to wrap up the dessert for me.
We gave our sincere thanks and made our goodbyes, Paul insisting that we meet him for dinner again in the coming weeks - at our convenience, of course. And as we walked back to the MRT station, my stomach gradually began to recover. By the time we were on the train, I was feeling fine except for the pressing hunger of a fickle stomach. I have not been so frustrated with myself in a long time. Yes, my life is hard. Pity me.
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October 14th, 2009
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Last night, Valerie and I had dinner with Kyle and her friend Lali at a middle-eastern sort of restaurant.
The next night, we met them and some of Kyle's other friends at a bar/club named Roxy 99. It was mostly expats, as they were playing mostly classic American rock. I did spend a while speaking in French to a guy from Marseille. He had some interesting opinions about the differences between Taiwan and France. I did not entirely agree. In fact, I entirely did not agree. He said how clean and well-organized Taiwan is compared to France. Yes, perhaps, comparing the nicer parts of Taipei to the dirtier parts of Marseille, that may be true, but speaking of countries as a whole, no. A hundred times no. Yes, people in France might have trouble picking up after their dogs; and yes, what they fail to pick up may wedge itself between the stones in the cobbled streets. But there are stray dogs running around all over the place here, and no one really picks up anything, let alone dog droppings. Of course, Taipei is far from being the dirtiest place I've been, and I have never been to Marseille, but this is certainly not France.
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October 10th, 2009
- - A mild adventure in eating
Today was 10/10, Taiwan's National Day - similar to our 4th of July, but marking the establishment of the republic rather than independence, per se. As with the Mid-Autumn Festival last week, festivities were curtailed out of respect for the typhoon victims. After failing to locate even a small celebration, Valerie and I went with Pascal and Andy up to Danshui, at the north end of the Taipei subway system. From there, we caught a bus out to the fisherman's wharf to get a beer at a bar & grill I had read about in my guidebook. We walked up and down the small ocean-side strip twice in search of the purported pub, only to come to the conclusion that my guidebook is out of date and that the establishment has since been closed, and perhaps turned into one of the other expensive-yet-unappealing looking restaurants. I grabbed a homemade donut from one of the many food windows (all of which had terribly translated names, see below) before we hopped back on the bus to Danshui.
In Danshui, we perused the night market in search of a suitable restaurant. We passed a scruffy, emaciated stray dog rooting around some trash on the side of one of the walkways. As Pascal and Andy waited for their squid to cook, I bought a cheap corn-dog and took it back to the hungry dog. Unfortunately, it was fresh out of the fryer, so my act of charity backfired. I had to watch the poor dog paw frustratedly at the scalding hot piece of food, trying to get it to cool. Meanwhile, a teenage boy was teasing it with another bit of meat on a stick, pulling it away just as the dog went for a bite. It seems immaturity is universal.
Our search for another restaurant eventually petered out into a sampling of various bits of night-market food here and there along the streets of Danshui. We had agi (a local specialty of noodles stuffed inside a tofu wrapper and covered in sauce), some deep-fried mini-crabs (shell and all!), and some artfully-served ice cream. Pascal talked himself into trying the little-sausage-in-a-big-sausage, but it turned out the bigger sausage, split open like a hot-dog bun to hold the smaller sausage, was made of rice. I also stopped at a stall that had a bunch of newspaper clippings up that seemed to indicate that it was famous for something. The man behind the cart only sold meat buns and veggie buns, so I took a meat one. It was pretty good; I don't know if I'd write a newspaper article about it though.
That's all. That's why I called this a mild adventure. Not sure it was even worth writing about. On our way back, I saw the empty cornbread wrapper of the cornbread I had fed to the dog. I guess he couldn't have been that hungry after all.
Other tidbits:
Valerie was sick for a week before I caught the bug. It wasn't that bad, as colds go. About a week start to end, with one or two fairly miserable days. I worry though - one of our classmates took three days off to go down south and came down with the swine flu the weekend she came back. So we haven't seen her since she left for Kenting, but I don't know enough about swine flu to say with certainty that she didn't have it before she left. Maybe it takes a few days to manifest. I really don't want to get swine flu... or I guess we're supposed to call it H1N1 now out of respect for Mexico.
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October 9th, 2009
- - Shufa
This morning, we woke up "early" to get to school for a free, three-hour calligraphy class before our normal Mandarin class. The last time a free event - a fieldtrip to a cake museum - had been offered to us by the school, the sign-up list was full an hour after the building opened on sign-up day. Needless to say, we did not arrive within the first hour of opening. So, this time, Pascal, Valerie and I went to sign up immediately after the announcement, hoping to beat the rush. We began as the only three people on the list. We ended as three of only five people who showed up for the class, which is too bad, because it was a very good class. The teacher was very nice, although I think she assumed we were at a higher level of Chinese comprehension than we currently are. The other two students in the class appeared to be advanced-beginner or intermediate. She started the lesson with about an hour-long lecture (in Chinese) about the history of calligraphy, the various forms, and who developed them. I was quite surprised to find that I was able to follow most of the lecture, enough that I was able to answer a few of the informal quiz questions she gave at the end.
What followed was a crash course on the basic principles of calligraphy and a very confusing explanation of how and why each stroke had to be done in a particular fashion. Just as I was hoping it would not be, the entire practicum portion of the lesson was spent drawing straight lines. I encountered this problem when I was studying calligraphy in Japan - the idea that, to form a proper foundation in calligraphy, one must first spend several weeks perfecting basic strokes, such as the straight line. Only then can one advance to make a straight line with a hook, or perhaps a swoop and two straight lines. It's all very very strict and structured. Not the sort of thing that you want to try to cram into an introductory three-hour course. My instructor in Japan was aware of the problem with this when I approached him with the idea of studying calligraphy for just a few months before I left Japan. He was hesitant at first, saying that one must study at least two years to learn even the basics of calligraphy, but I eventually convinced him just to instruct me in a half-dozen specific characters. I learned a little bit of calligraphy without going through the tedious let's-draw-straight-lines phase, and had some nice looking characters to show for it. I would argue that that is the best way to introduce someone to calligraphy, just as you would not spend an entire introductory soccer class doing conditioning - no one would want to come back!
However, I was not about to question the methods of the teacher, especially when she was giving us a free lesson that she had obviously put a lot of time into preparing. So we drew lines. They were mostly straight. Some had angles. That's about all I can say. She tried to explain more of the theory and minute details behind it but, somewhere between the complexity of the Chinese and our lack of calligraphy experience, it was mostly lost on us.
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October 8th, 2009
- - Happy Meal
This morning was a re-enactment of last Saturday, waking up at 7:00, leaving the house at 7:30 and makign my way over to the American consulate. Except it wasn't Saturday, it was Thursday, so 7:00 was smack dab in the middle of rush hour and instead of the peaceful, sleeping streets of my last trip, there were suits and skirts pushing left and right to the tune of blaring horns and screeching breaks. A whole different set of vendors had replaced the mid-day and night-time regulars, offering more breakfast-appropriate eats, and some less appropriate fare, like the disgusting nearly-empty white-bread-with-the-crusts-cut-off triangle "sandwiches" that they sell here. Outside the MRT was an enormous stack of newspapers and everyone who entered the station grabbed one. As I came down the escalator to the platform, I found a phalanx of morning-goers all standing behind identical newspapers, open in front of them like shields, waiting for the train.
The walk and check-in procedure at the consulate went exactly the same as last time, minus the rain. The other examinees were the same people who had sat through last weekend's tribulation, minus the guy I had spent the most time talking to, who lives outside of Taipei and works on weekdays. Everything went smoothly as far as the technical implementation of the test, except for some minor complications at the beginning, when my screen told me that I was not registered to take the test. But after a few tense minutes, the proctor had sorted it all out with ACT and I was on my way to completing the first step to becoming a foreign service officer.
Except that, for various reasons, I'm not really expecting to get through the entire process this time around - not the least of which is my lack of competitive professional experience or relevant post-graduate education. I thought that another major barrier to my success would be the difficulty of the test and my lack of preparation, but I no longer think that is the case - or at least not to the degree to which I believe it to be at the start. The test was actually fairly straightforward; there were none of the esoteric or obscure historical and cultural knowledge questions that had so worried me in the half hour or so I had spent attempting to prepare. Going even further back, during the handful of Foreign Service info meetings I attended at UCSB, the representatives had consistently expounded the difficult and arbitrary nature of the written component of the foreign service exam. I think there was a major revision of the test and the whole selection process recently, which would explain why I did not counter a single question similar to the frightening example I had been given at one of the first presentations, "Who won the Oscar for best female actress in 1951?" No, the questions on this test were mostly cursory job-knowledge type questions. Many of them had to do with management, of which I know nothing. However, either management is based entirely on common sense, or the questions were worded in such a way to make it appear that way because I had absolutely no problem with those. Most of the history and geography questions were very general in nature, and there were a handful of laughable questions about how to work a word processor, simple internet terminology, and other topics designed, I believe, to weed out anyone who has not been breathing for the last fifteen years.
I walked out of the testing facility confident that a year's worth of preparation for that test would only yield marginal improvements in my performance. I met Valerie in Daan park to study for the Chinese test we were to have that afternoon. As we sat on the bench, we saw a gang of Ronald McDonalds in the distance, moving on the other side of the hedge lining the park. At first, I thought it was a group in costume, but they turned out to be statues on a truck, bound for benches and sidewalks at McDonalds throughout the city. I stood up and saluted them as they passed (not really). Spread the good word, my friend. You are a true American hero.
After class, our teacher invited us to dinner at a restaurant just behind the school. It's a small, hole-in-the-wall kind of place without even much of a sign, along a narrow residential alley. It was still closed when we got there, much to the confusion of our teacher. But within a minute or two, the owner came out the door of the neighboring apartment and apologized for opening late. We waited for him to clear out the handful of bicycles he was storing in the five-table dining area before entering. Apparently, the place has a bit of a reputation, as evinced by the wall of photos of Taiwanese celebrities with the owner or his daughter. Taiwanese celebrities are not, however, celebrities anywhere else. Our teacher seemed to have some difficulty in understanding this, as she pointed out and named celebrity after celebrity and gawked in disbelief that we had nor heard of any of them. "Well surely you must know... ??" I tired of that game rather quickly and went back to my seat.
I don't think I've described our teacher yet. We all call her 'laoshi,' which is the Chinese equivalent of 'sensei' and means teacher. She's probably in her mid to late thirties, but certainly doesn't look it. She's short, in pretty good shape and very energetic, almost bubbly. She has a cute haircut and always comes to class fashionably dressed. She is quite demanding, but has a good sense of humor and does a good job of keeping us engaged in the class. She is working on a PhD and instructs at a teacher's college when she's not teaching Mandarin at CCU.
That said, dinner felt a tiny bit like an extension of class, and I realized that might have been her intention. Nonetheless, it was a good time, if a little bit silent for our inability to make more than simple conversation and hesitance to speak in any language other than Chinese. The food was as good as she had boasted and they were mostly Taiwanese dishes, served family-style.
Other tidbits:
I sprained my thumb during sparring in kickboxing - the full force of a kick got caught on the thumb of my glove and bent it back in the wrong direction. Now it hurts to move it at all. I've had my hand bandaged for a week.
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October 5th, 2009
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Today, Valerie and I picked up our business cards. I had decided to order some to complement in my search for work and professional networking here. We were told, in order to save money, to design them at home and then take the design in for printing. Valerie designed both of ours:
Other tidbits:
Valerie and I bought rain boots. Our feet are now impermeable!
What does it say about our political system that politicians' fund-raising pools are called 'war chests'?
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October 3rd, 2009
- - Rabbit in the Moon
The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節), also called the Moon Festival, is the second largest celebration of the Chinese lunar calendar. It is essentially a harvest festival, with a very old myth attached to it. There are many versions of the story and a few sub-stories, but the general idea goes something like this:
The Earth once had ten suns and they all took turns in the sky so that only one was ever up at a time. One day, all ten suns appeared at once and scorched the earth, causing widespread famine, drought, and suffering. A great archer by the name of Houyi took it upon himself to save the world from the ten suns. He shot nine of them out of the sky, leaving only the one sun that we know today. In gratitude for this heroic deed, he was made king. He eventually grew to be a vain and cruel tyrant. He ordered his alchemists to create for him a pill of immortality.
Houyi had a wife named Chang'e, who was kind and selfless. Just as the immortality pill was presented to the tyrant king, she stole it and ate it herself to save the world from eternal tyranny. After eating the pill, she floated up into the sky and stopped on the moon, where she now lives.
There is also a rabbit on the moon in most versions of the story. In Japanese, the rabbit is pounding mochi; in Chinese, he, the Jade Rabbit, is in front of a mortar and pestle pounding medicine for the gods. And there are several stories as to why he is there, but my favorite is the Buddhist tale:
A pitiful old man and goes into the forest and asks for charity from a fox, a monkey and a hare. The fox and the monkey are both avid hunters and gatherers, so they have plenty of food to give the old man. The hare has nothing and so throws himself into a fire to provide food for the man. The old man reveals himself to be the Buddhist god Sakra and, touched by the hare's sacrifice, immortalizes him in the moon.
In an unrelated legend, a great revolution was organized in China by hiding messages inside small cakes, which are now called moon cakes and eaten during the Moon Festival. It has also become customary for families to get together for barbecues to celebrate.
This year, out of respect for the victims of the recent typhoon in southern Taiwan, the majority of public celebrations were canceled. The weather seemed to agree with this decision; it was drizzling all day and the clouds were covering the moon. Nonetheless, Valerie and I headed out to the Bitan bridge, where our teacher had told us there was usually some sort of gathering for the festival. I was skeptical that anyone would be out in such weather, but Valerie insisted that we go. And with good reason. It turned out they were having a festival there after all, in the long strip of riverside park, complete with market stalls and a concert stage.
We met Pascal and Andy for dinner at some vegetarian restaurant that Valerie had read about on the far side of the bridge. It took a bit of effort to find, but we were soon sitting around a large round table, giving Andy moral support as she translated our menu. The sign on the door clearly said vegetarian, but there were various kinds of meat on the menu. I couldn't quite figure out why that was, but I decided to order the beef plate anyway. After we had more or less figured everything out, a couple of people from the table next to us came over to offer their assistance. They were all Taiwanese and about our age. They spoke varying amounts of English and, as is always the case with these volunteer interpretations, they translated all of the easy words that we knew, because they were also the easy words that they knew in English. We ran into some difficulty with the more difficult items, but we appreciated their consideration nonetheless.
It turned out that the place is actually vegetarian, but they have created substitute vegetarian meats, and fairly good ones at that. So my beef plate was entirely vegetarian, but it tasted vaguely like beef and had a similar texture. Andy had vegetarian fish, Pascal had tofu, and Valerie had this sort of ketchup spaghetti with vegetables. Short end of the stick.
After dinner, we wandered back out into the street, which was teeming with the festival spirit - a spirit that, like everything else in Taipei, would not be complete unless cars were trying to run you over. And they were, so the festival was complete. We walked back over the pedestrian footbridge, itself a worthy sight; a simple suspension bridge over the Xindian river, roughly marking the edge of the urban development. Upstream, the river snakes off into the dark green jungle and peaceful hills. Downstream, the city sprawls out into the distance on the other side of the large, concrete, but not entirely unappealing vehicle bridge. The bridge rocked irregularly under the steady crowd of pedestrians pouring across it from either side. On the water below, a few swan-shaped pedal boats were still perusing the river.
Back on the other side of the bridge, we made our way over to the concert stage where, in front of a decent crowd of perhaps a thousand, various singers were taking turns on stage singing primarily older American songs. At first I thought it was a bad karaoke contest, despite a few deserving acts, but as the applause rose at the host's introductions, it became clear that these were all celebrities of some note. I suppose I am just not accustomed to hearing Frankie Valli sung with a heavy Chinese accent.
Some of the songs were in Chinese, though, and they were pretty good. Each performer had some unique effects to accompany their act - one had jets of fire, another had smoke, lights; it was a professional production. With perhaps, the exception of the camera work, which projected a larger view onto a big screen above the stage, like they do at a lot of concerts. But this screen was fairly small and oval, so that the image of the singer being projected onto it was only about ten-percent larger than the actual person. Thus, this did nothing to improve the view for spectators further back.
As we stood at the back of the crowd and watched the concert, the clouds broke apart to reveal a crisp, white full moon. There was a momentary diversion of attention from the stage to the sky as the moon got a standing ovation (in that there were no chairs). Pascal and Andy had thoughtfully brought some moon cakes to share. They were all good, except for the last one, which tasted like meat.
The festival ended around eleven o'clock with a fireworks show, partially set to Nessun Dorma from Turandot. As Calaf reaches the crescendo, the crowd turned to see fireworks pouring off the pedestrian bridge in a waterfall of dazzling light. The fireworks display raged on continuously (as opposed to most fireworks shows here, and in Japan, which only set off three or four at a time, and then wait for a minute or two before setting off more) another ten or twenty minutes as the crowd slowly dispersed back into the city. I think they ran out of material during the show, because those last ten minutes were accompanied by a single song cheesy American song played on loop.
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- - Conspiracy Theories
Everyone knows that China is the antithesis to all that we hold dear: freedom, justice, and McDonald's. They are the anti-America (China, not McDonald's... obviously). In fact, they have been trying to take us down ever since we invented Panda Express and outdid them at their own menu. The most recent manifestation of this burning, commie desire to bring down the greatest country that ever existed is cyberterrorism. The same people who know that China is the antithesis to America (i.e. everyone) also know that Chinese people are inherently better at computers (and math and textile manufacturing) than Americans. As a result of them being better at computers and stuff, they have taken free reign to pranking our websites and compromising our national information security.
Now their plans are finally coming to a head. I've figured it out! It all makes sense. I've witnessed it first hand. Chinese hackers are sabotaging ACT servers so that no one can take the Foreign Service Officer Test. If no one can take the exam, then no one can become a Foreign Service officer. When there is no one to replace diplomats and officers as they retire, our ability to implement foreign policy and protect American interests around the world will slowly decline until we spiral into helplessness, or Canada. China knows they can't beat us in an all-out war, and why should they if they can simply compromise our infrastructure and let us collapse from within? That could be in as few as twenty-five years. Of course, by then, China's economy will have already strip-mined America, Europe, and India, leaving us a desolate wasteland of marauding motorcycle tribes. But those tribes will still need international representation, and if we do not have properly trained Foreign Service officers to make sure that our economic interests are promoted amongst like-minded marauding tribes in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world then, well, I don't know what will happen. But it will probably be bad, and it will all be China's fault.
A very clever plan. I bet they didn't think anyone would catch on. But they have underestimated American ingenuity! And that same ingenuity gives us another thing: Paper and pencils. This new, technological development is 100% hacker-proof. It allows us to conduct standardized testing via a decentralized process that, as a whole, is invulnerable to sabotage. Sure, they may be able to sneak in a mole or two to break all of the pencils right before testing, but that will not stop us. Foreign Service Officer Tests will be administered independently in schools and government buildings across the nation, allowing us to replenish the ranks of our country's most important foreign-service resource. Data will be 100% digitally secure because it won't be digital at all. Pencil and paper are the wave of the future. We shall prevail!
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