mid-autumn festival

it's been two weeks since my last post. in the meantime, school is going along pretty nicely. we're about halfway through the quarter and starting to do more conversation in class. we're also starting to learn more interesting sentence patterns besides "i am..." and "i like..." and "i want...". as we learn these new patterns, i'm tempted to think of how i would say something in english and then try to do a direct mapping into chinese with the usual result being that the way i'm saying something is entirely too complex. the pattern seems to be omission where possible.

the rock band club has kind of been a bust. they seem more focused on guitar lessons than getting bands together. besides that, i found out that they don't have any dedicated practice rooms available, at least for new members. instead, i've been playing drums in one of two practice rooms which are open to all students. the first time i played, the drumset i sat at was the most pitiful one i've ever seen. the next week, the staff put new heads on and replaced the crumbling cymbals with new ones. i played on them for about an hour last week while someone in the next room was practicing their flute. hope i'm not making enemies...

i've also joined one of several kung fu clubs here with my classmate amanda. the style we're learning is northern shaolin long fist (長拳) which includes qin na (擒拿). we meet on monday and friday from 6:30pm to 9:30pm. we do a lot of good stretches for maybe 30 mins before we get into the main session. the main session so far seems to be sets of punches, kicks, then learning a section of a long set of movements named liu he quan (六合拳). when i showed up on monday, the class started doing some of this set and i couldn't really keep up. however, on friday, we were given more detailed instruction on the first movements for the set. finally, at the end of class, we learn some 擒拿 techniques or some two person fight drills. i've learned two ways for taking someone's wrist and putting them on the ground. i've also learned three two-person block and attack sets. i'm really enjoying the meetings. it's a lot of fun, good exercise, and a nice way to make new friends. many of the members are electrical engineering students, so at least i can chat with them a little bit about that.

besides clubs and school, the mid-autumn festival (中秋節) was yesterday. i spent yesterday and today staying home, trying not to aggravate the chest cold i have. the weather is starting to cool off and it's been raining lightly for the last two days. i also experienced a minor tremor last night. i was sitting at my desk when i felt the building start to swing around. the best way i can describe it would be like being on a small boat in light chop. at first i couldn't tell if the building was moving or if i was just going to collapse suddenly.

what else? that's been about all the excitement i've had so far. i've done the first extension of my visitor visa so that i'm good until the end of the quarter. after that, i'll need to extend it again until the end of the winter quarter. i'm still looking to take a trip outside of taipei one of these weekends. my language school is having a field trip in two weeks, although i don't remember where to.

that's it for now. until next time.

daily life

i was pleased to find out a few days ago that my dad is reading this and i think he'd be pleased to know that the most exciting thing i did today was to do my laundry and sweep the dust off the floor in my apartment.

i'm in my sixth week here and daily life has slowly transformed from running around, getting setup, into the kind of quiet days i had back home. yesterday i went shopping for a usb drive (4GB for $350NT) and a new set of drumsticks ($330 NT). eventually i'm going to find a night market to buy some new jeans. maybe i'm getting old, or more practically i don't have much money, but i don't mind staying home these days.

i learned on friday where there are free music practice rooms on campus. they have a whole bunch of rooms with pianos and two rooms with a set of drums in them. at the moment, the drums are in need of repair, but i'm going to make it a habit of playing in there when i'm not in the library or swimming. i suppose i ought to find out where i can buy earplugs...

this wednesday is the first meeting of the ntu jazz club which coincides with the first meeting of the ntu rock club. they're even next door to each other so i can drop in on both of them. i'm hoping to be able to play with other people and have more opportunity for practicing my chinese.

that's about it for now i suppose, except for this:



yes, they have busch in taiwan. they also have miller high life, but i didn't get any pics of that one.

why am i not sleeping?

i'm feeling a little bit like a zombie at the moment. the last few nights i've been sleeping more irregularly than usual, if that makes sense, to where i wake up in the morning and feel as though i've just had a nap and i'm picking up where i left off. the weather has been muggy and gloomy since sunday morning.

before all that though, i had a very good weekend. i met amanda and i-shuan to go to the national palace museum saturday night, which i just happened to know would be free after 5pm. the museum is huge, requiring more than a single trip to really have a chance to see what's there. i spent a long time looking at bronze and jade on the third floor with two highlights being the jadeite cabbage and a jadeite piece of pork. most striking about the cabbage is that the single piece of jade fades from a deep green to white with the green being used as the tips of the cabbage leaves. it hadn't occurred to me how impressive this is until i actually saw it. the jadeite pork was impressive in that you could see a shiny layer of fat on top of the rest of the meat. i just wonder at the skill and sensitivity it takes to do things like that.

sunday was a gloomy day, but i had arranged a full schedule for myself. i met my japanese classmate, who we call 章三 (zhangsan) in class, to study for our test on monday. instead, we had some real life chinese usage. first we went to find lunch in an alley near my apartment. we found a noodle house and ordered a wanton soup i think. although his chinese sounds a lot better than mine, he told me he's basically pointing at food and asking how much it costs. for my part, i spoke to the shop owner and asked her in chinese if she could speak english. no luck.

after lunch, we had some language exchange in the basement of the library at ntu. he taught me a tiny bit of japanese and listed the hiragana chart for me as well as helped me with my chinese tones. the tones are the area where i need to most work in. having a deep voice and being more comfortable speaking flatly and softly presents me with some difficulty in pronouncing the high first tone (i feel as though my voice will break), and pronouncing the low third tone (i feel as though i'm growling). especially difficult is when there are consecutive third tones. fortunately, i seem to be able to make the right sounds...

in return, we had some english pronunciation practice, which reminded me of the days when i had speech classes in elementary school for not being able to correctly pronounce "s"s. my teacher would have to explain to me verbally how the tongue should move when pronouncing one thing or another. i found myself doing the same thing when trying to explain "th" which is found neither in japanese or chinese.

i ran late on my meeting with him because i was supposed to check out the school clubs that day too. i left the library at 3pm and found that a third of the tables setup were already empty. i did walk past the ntu jazz club which still had a drumset out with a guy sort of playing on it. i walked up to the table and did my best to look interested. i met one of the leaders of the club and he gave me some flyers. as i was about to walk away, he asked me if i played any instruments. i told him i play drums, so maybe i'll get a chance to play some while i'm here. i found out that the meeting for new members is 9/23 but i neglected to find out what building (the flyer is in chinese) or if there would be a fee. i think i was able to match the writing to a building on my map of ntu, but i'll ask a student tomorrow just to be sure.

my classmates had more success with finding clubs as they were out when the people were still setup. i found out there's a tai qi club, a kung fu club, a glbt (maybe just glb) club, a chinese music club, a hiking club, roller hockey club, juggling club... on and on and on.

monday i had my test and i got it back today. i did pretty well, missing only one thing for grammar and having a little deduction on the speech part for some tone mistakes. i had further success monday night in ordering food. i had gone for a swim and was really hungry. i went to the same alley i was in on sunday and walked around some more until i walked past a shop that smelled delicious. i went in and tried to read the menu but didn't recognize anything. after the shop owner found out i couldn't speak chinese, he pointed at the first item and gave me a thumbs up. i gave him the thumbs up back and ordered whatever it was that he pointed at. it turned out to be bbq pork with cabbage and bitter melon. a decent meal that tasted as good as it smelled from outside.

today i've been sort of brain dead from all the lack of sleep. i took a series of long naps this afternoon, both in the library and back at home. in between i managed to start and finish "the true story of ah q" and read a few selections of sherlock holmes. "ah q" is a book i picked up on friday with english on the left pages and chinese on the right pages. to my great joy, i could read a little bit of the chinese and even recognized some choice curse words.

i've also picked up a chinese dictionary which i've been having some fun with trying to look up words i don't know how to say. it's fairly easy to find things when you know how to pronounce them, but when you don't, you have to figure out what the radical of the character is, and then you have to figure out how many strokes are in the character. with any luck, you can find it in the index and then find it in the main definition section.

well once again, i'm awake way past when i should have been in bed. oh, one more note. i picked up some postcards from the national palace museum gift shop. it's a set of 24 where each card depicts a section of a famous scroll painting. i imagined sending them out and all of the recipients having some meeting to assemble all the cards to see what the scroll looks like and then comparing what i wrote to each of them to see if i had said exactly the same thing. i have the habit of buying postcards in gift shops and never sending them out, but i intend to break that habit this time around.

rooftop party

i've just come back from hanging out on the rooftop of some mid-rise in taipei with my classmates and two new friends, alex and denise. i wasn't expecting to meet them today, but i was hanging around starbucks reading sherlock holmes thinking about what i was going to do for dinner when i got a text rescheduling our little party for tonight instead of tomorrow. i don't have a very demanding schedule so meeting tonight was just fine and it solved my problem about what to do for dinner.

so, dinner included a tallboy of heineken, half a six pack of essential beer (from korea), and a bag of popcorn on the roof. the roof was pretty cool. i wish the sky had been more clear tonight. there's a bunch of roaches on this roof. i was sitting on a chair chit chatting when my friend reached over for some popcorn and pointed out that there was a roach on my knee. i think there were two other roaches on my pants, but i just sort of stamped the ground and they all jumped off and ran for cover. this sort of thing might have bothered me before, but somehow i've been desensitized to a lot of things since arriving here. i figure all the sort of things that might have bothered me at home are just part of the culture here so i've been pretty accepting of all that's come my way so far. this includes bad service at the bank, shady landlords showing me studios, and poor treatment at the hostel.

i was kind of early for my meeting tonight, so i went to the taipei main station area to kill some time. i successfully ordered a pearl tea, with some kind language assistance from the cashier, and i even bought a book titled "the true story of ah q" which i seem to have forgotten at sebastian's apartment as we were leaving.

let me see if i can recap the week. i've been given a ton of homework every night. all the homework has to be completed with chinese characters. it's kind of amazing that after two weeks, i'm able to write some simple sentences with characters.

i had dinner at i-shuan's house last night which was my first home cooked meal in taiwan. it was beef stewed in a meat stock that's been used for ten years with fresh homemade noodles and some greens. very delicious. 很好吃 (hen hao chi)。i also tried "thousand year egg" 千年皮蛋 (qian nian pi dan) for the first time with two different preparations. one was with tofu, soy sauce, and green onions i think, and the other a dipping sauce made with some herbs from her mom's garden. both were pretty good. when i first heard about "thousand year egg" and encouraged to try it with a suspicious smile, i was pretty wary of it but it turned out to be much tamer than i expected. i would definitely eat it again.

i've also had a lot of good noodle dishes this week. one was 拉麵 (lamian) in an area kind of away from the nearest mrt station. i'm still sort of exploring the areas close to the mrt stations and haven't really ventured far away from them.



i also had a good noodle dish near the main gate at ntu. for the life of me, i can't even remember what it was called, but the dish was with flat, slippery noodles and beef. after that meal, i-shuan and i went back to the witch house cafe for late night coffee and some games. we played one called "ninja vs. ninja" which is entirely dice based, and another one called "carcassonne" where you build some fortified towns and try to control as much area as possible.

the ninja vs. ninja game had rules in english whereas the carcassone game we picked only had rules in german. eventually, we were able to get another set with rules in chinese that i-shuan was able to explain to me.

i've been out late every night and so i haven't been around to take out the trash. tomorrow i'm not sure if they pick it up even. it's either tomorrow or sunday that they take off. my apartment has gotten dusty very quickly. i think living near a major street and running the a/c all the time doesn't help much, but my asthma has not really been a problem.

so far, i'm having a pretty good time. i have a test on monday. there's also a thing on sunday where all the student organizations recruit members for their clubs. i'm hoping to find a music club so that i can play some drums. i heard from denise that there are plenty of clubs at ntu, so i'm sure that i'll find at least one that will be to my taste.

finally some night markets

our snake alley field trip went pretty well. we ate a few tasty things and walked around drinking beers from 7-11. one of the things we ate was called 肉圓 (rouyuan) which basically translates into "meat ball". it was ground pork in a thick sticky wrapper, like a stuffed rice cake. after that we had stinky tofu, which was okay but kind of sour. i'm going to have to find another place to try it because i remember it being much better when i had it before. the last thing we had at the night market was oyster in egg omelet with lettuce and onions. this was pretty tasty. we walked over to a nearby fountain with our night market food and our 7-11 beers and sat around and chit chatted until the police came over to kick out everyone who was sitting down. we were actually sitting in a part of the fountain and we soon discovered that all our butts were wet. after we were kicked out, they turned on the fountain.

we finished our beers before heading over to 龍山寺 (longshan temple). there were a lot of people around praying and lighting incense. i didn't really know how to behave except to stay out of everyone's way and try not to knock anything over. amanda had a pretty good observation about the place. amongst all the noise, tall buildings, and bright lights, in the middle of the temple, it felt calm and you could look up into the sky and just have a nice view.

after some time at the temple, we went off in quest of these giant beers amanda had told us stories about. we got on the mrt and got off one stop later at 西門站 (ximen station). ximen has a lot of teenagers running around with boutique shops and cheap places to eat. also nearby are some bars. after about half an hour of wandering around, we stumbled upon the beer place. amanda and i ordered two giant coronas which came out in two handled mugs taller than my head. however, these things were pretty expensive by any standard so i only got one and nursed it until it was time to go.

the next day, i was back in ximen again but this time during daylight hours. i had some fried chicken snacks in a shop where they sing when the chicken is finished. after that, i had a desert of chilled pineapple slices over chopped iced with pineapple juice. very sweet. a little later, we had "opium pearls" (鴉片粉圓，yapian fenyuan) which are kind of clear tapioca pearls over chopped ice with lemonade.

after eating a ton of sweets, i-shuan and i went to an arcade. it was noisy as hell inside. a lot of the games were something like ddr or guitar hero. one that we tried had us playing on a japanese taiko drum to the beat of some pop songs. one that i didn't get to try looked like whack-a-mole except with a 4x4 grid of squares. whenever the square changed patterns, you had to hit it with your hands. we had the chance to watch one guy play and it looked pretty cool. for some, his hands would alternate like a drum roll and for others his hands would sweep around the grid.

for dinner, i had mos burger for the first time. it's a japanese chain that serves japanese-sized burgers. some come with bread, but some come with rice cakes as buns. the one i had was ginger pork with the rice cake buns. more good eating.

finally, for a late night snack, we went to another night market and i had 大腸包小腸 (dachang bao xiaochang), which literally means "big sausage wrapping small sausage". the "big sausage" is a greasy rice sausage. it's heated up and then split open and covered with a little sauce. the "small sausage" is a fatty pork sausage i think. then the whole thing is topped with whatever you like, sort of like a hot dog. i had mine with green onions and lettuce. it was super greasy but nice and filling.

so, after being here for almost a month, i've finally had some adventures in the night market. pretty nice weekend with lovely weather and good friends.

first week of school wrapup

it's saturday right around lunch time. i caught up on a lot of sleep last night and this morning i went for my first swim here. ntu has a very nice athletic center and it's really right across the street from where i live.

they have a bunch of boxes where you put your shoes before you even walk into the locker room, sort of like the things kids put their shoes in before getting into the ball pit at chucky cheese. the locker room has these raised plastic grid things which lets water drain to the floor beneath so you're not walking around in nasty puddles. same goes for the shower.

the requirement to swim here is that you wear skin tight clothing so i bought some swim shorts and a swim cap yesterday. i discovered that the shorts already have a tear in them so i'm going to find a sewing kit to patch them today. my swim was nice. either i've gotten stronger, thinner, or more likely, the swim shorts are pretty effective, because i noticed i was swimming a lot easier than i'm used to.

later this evening i'm meeting with my classmates at 龍山寺站 (longshan temple mrt station) for some fun at the nearby night market. there's a particularly famous section of it called "snake alley" where you can have snake soup, snake venom, and some exotic, expensive dishes. not sure what we'll end up doing but it will be hilarious trying to order food because the stands most likely won't have any pictures and maybe not have menus at all. i suppose we can just point at the dishes as they're being cooked or as people walk away with them.

the first week of class has gone pretty well. i was worried we'd be going slow, but after the first week, we're already writing our homework with characters. this week i think we've learned 40 characters and a handful of useful sentences. i get the feeling that my classmates are doing a lot of extra work outside of class too because we're moving along at such a good rate.

anyway, i'm happy things are starting to settle. it's such a nice luxury to just have a place to lay around. i'm using a whole lot of electricity at the moment, but i can't figure out how to reduce it except to stay out all day or to just open the window onto the busy road below. thankfully, fall is coming and it won't be so hot.

one other thing i've seen around the city is a lot of fires on the sidewalk. i think the other day was the first day of ghost month. it's been described to me as summer vacation for all the ghosts in hell. the gates are opened and they wander around with the living. the fires are burning "ghost money" as offerings to the ghosts so that they don't cause trouble. in an effort to minimize air pollution, these burnings are grouped together in front of large buildings instead of every family having their own fire. i don't know how often this is going to happen in the month, but i've only seen it the other day.

here's a picture of the delicious beef noodle soup i had the other night. the meat didn't look all that tender, but it just fell apart in my mouth. it was so good i-shuan and i ate half of it before i could get the picture. missing from the picture is the stewed tofu we had as an appetizer. this too was incredibly tasty. the place started as a small shop with only five seats. since it's done so well, they rented some more space in a taiwan lottery shop next door.





follow your nose, it always knows.

a little routine would be nice

third day of school and i seem to be jet lagging or at least sleeping like i'm jet lagging. i can't sleep until well past midnight and i feel very sleepy right around 2pm. school is pretty fun so far. i have a good teacher and good classmates. i'm having trouble though getting used to a regular schedule so that i feel as though i'm not getting as much done as i could during the day. today i applied for my library card. afterwards, i wandered around upstairs and found a section with movable shelves. then i found the study area and took a little nap.

i ate in the school cafeteria with my new classmates for the first time yesterday. the food is much cheaper than eating outside, although on the greasy side. there's a buffet area and they charge by the weight of your tray. my tray cost $39 today and i had more food than i really needed.

i finally put up some pictures around my room today. i still have one suitcase to unpack, but i need more hangers to put things on. more shopping to do. so far, i've bought bedsheets, dishes, stuff to organize the bathroom... my latest purchase that i'm sort of excited about has been a washbin to do dishes in instead of the tiny sink. it reminds me of the filipinos i saw last year squatting by the river washing their clothes or dishes or both, except my waste water is going into the sewer.

i got soaking wet this afternoon because of a storm. i've heard we're having a typhoon this weekend. that ought to be exciting, or at least it will encourage me to stay home and study.

what else? i had my first chance to throw out the trash last night. the trash truck played fur elise when it pulled up. i nearly fell down the stairs in the dark as i rushed out to get to it. it's pretty inconvenient when you're used to just throwing things in a dumpster or a trashcan at any time of day. i guess this will either encourage people to minimize their trash at home, or encourage people to throw their trash in places they shouldn't, like bicycle baskets according to a forum post on forumosa.com. well, i'm being a good citizen, so instead i'll either minimize what i have to throw out or else leave it at starbucks.