Not My Job

The Taiwan International Animation Festival is going on now. I went to see one of the series yesterday. The theme was Monsters - Not So Scary. It began with a short about these cute little creatures, entertained by a set of monster like version of the characters. Two fall in love, become separated, and finally reunited after a tragic accident. Quite imaginative with both character design, lighting and camera angles. The last one was also quite memorable with 3 very grumpy claymation figures. When the grumpiest of all swats a fly, he transforms into a colorful, bright, cheery fellow - coming off as insane to the other two. He then spreads his joy to the second creature and they find comfort in their shared joy, much to the 3rd's complete discomfort. Finally, the third succumbs, yet surprisingly remains grumpy. The wonderful ending shows that he too is also quite joyful inside, but only showing a disgruntled face. It's quite funny and enjoyable in the way it's shown the viewer.

The Festival is being shown on three theatres in the Shin Kong Cineplex near the 西門 (Ximen) MRT station. It was my first visit to that neighborhood and so I wandered around for an hour exploring the different streets and alleyways. It looked like a bad tourist trap, with lots of carnival like things, a massive cluster of cell phone shops, and expensive but teenager-ish looking clothing stores - including a section dedicated to second hand (二手) clothing and hip-hop wear. I did spot a gem among the rough - there were about 20 people in front of one little food shop, either eating or waiting in line. By far the most popular spot, so I jumped in line and ordered what everyone else was having. It was a delicious steaming hot bowl of noodles, mixed with oysters, a little soup and some spice. [Post edit: This noodle place is called Ah-Chung 阿宗 (a-zong)]

After the movie I walked around the 2-28 Peace Park...which in comparison to 大安 (Da'an), is much more open, and as a result, more noisy as well (from the nearby traffic). I then walked north and west, passing some night markets all the way home. It was quite a long walk and my feet were beat by the time I got there.

I got a call from Dan reminding me of a Puppeteer group's party at his place (he's got 5 other roommates in his 100 year old house - something always seems to be going on over there). So I headed on over to meet the mostly French-speaking folks. Low and behold Elodie showed up! The same woman I had met at the Chen house in 林口 (LinKou). It was nice to see her again - she's one of those instantly likable people. Her husband Matthew also showed up a little later. Again, when the French folk found I knew some French they asked me to use it. Even the slightest effort to call up French words causes the equivalent of a train wreck to go on in my head. I swear the Chinese and French are kept in the same compartment in my brain, and there's only room for one. My recall ability only gets worse and worse - Chinese just comes flying out of my mouth! I suppose it's a good thing that Mandarin is more natural for me now, but I am sad that I've lost all fluency in French.

I met another woman who's been in Taiwan for years, recently moved to Taipei and only just starting formal lessons in learning Chinese (her original goal when moving here). She's been teaching English the whole time and continues to do so now. Another man told me all about the films he's screening in the next 5 months in Taipei - most sound foreign. Another woman, German, but from the Netherlands, runs her own production company and travels around the world collaborating with people and putting on shows.


As usual it was freakin hot out. These poor guys, all dressed in black, had to stand around all day holding these little bottle of free sample Zero Cokes and HOLD their pose! Meanwhile a cute woman in front handed out little cans on a tray for tasting. They certainly drew my attention, and I tried the coke (which was gross), but I'm glad THAT is not my job.

Da Run Fa

I had to laugh yesterday when I found out the real name of what I've been calling "Da Lu Hua". This is the giant hypermarket I went to with PoPo a month ago. Now that I know that she can't say the F sound and replaces it with H, and that the R and L are commonly interchanged, the real name of Da4 Run4 Fa1 and her approximation of the name Da Lu Hua makes sense. No wonder no one knew what I was talking about!

I've also cleared up the difference between her saying "niao" and her meaning of "niu" (bird vs ox).

Yesterday, for Confucius' Bday, my class went out to Luo 先生's restaurant, Cosmopolitan. He bought us all drinks and appetizers and desserts. I got the Eggplant Pepper Linguine, but was disappointed that it only came with half of one tiny eggplant. The desserts were VERY tasty though. The He siblings couldn't make it b/c they were going to Green Island. However, one of 張 (Zhang) Lao Shi's previous students came to join us. 他是法國人 (He is French). From Bordeaux in fact, where I just was in May this year. We got to practice a lot of Chinese listening and speaking which was nice.


Luo 先生 mentioned that his restaurants host a Language Exchange night the last Sunday of every month. 2 hours dedicated to Chinese and English. There's one coming up this Sunday that will likely be at Cosmopolitan, but possibly at the other restaurant closer to Nanjing E Rd MRT on Fuxing N Rd called Brass Monkey.

Blink

I just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I'm back at the Taipei Public Library, waiting near Shida for a track workout. I had hoped to find another book he's written - The Tipping Point, but I couldn't find it. I still can't read very much in the library - I looked the book up in the catalog (in English) but the libraries are listed in Chinese and I can't tell which one I'm at. The other problem is that the books are very much out of order. If you have a call number, be sure to browse the shelves above, below and even next to the one where it should be. In fact, I often see books that are off by 100's, so if you have the patience, you might just want to scan the whole section.

Back to Blink. I liked it - an easy read with lots of interesting cases in it. He mentions some online tests you can take (5-15 minutes) at https://implicit.harvard.edu. I took a few to see how I would compare - I did end up out of the norm for one test, where I ended up associating Asian Americans with America more so than Europeans. I would attribute this to 1. me being Asian 2. having spent most of the last 12 months in Asia or with Asian people. However, on some of the other tests regarding other races, genders, etc, I did just as poorly as the average test taker, which was eye opening for me. I like Gladwell's suggestion of seeking out positive associations to change your Blink attitude. I just have to figure out what negative associations I have and then find out how to reverse them.

Another interesting book I read the other week was about using computers in Language Education (I forgot to write down the author and title). The book was from the early 80's when computing speed and space was still extremely limited. But even worse than that was the limitations of the software designers, in creating very one dimensional programs, that ended up not being much better than putting a student to sleep in the classroom with a boring drill lesson. I'm not familiar with how things have developed in the last 20 years, but I know ShiDa still uses books that suffer very much from the same problems that he discusses in the book. I have the CD that comes with Practical Audio-Visual 1, and it is just a reading of the text. We watched part of the VCD in class one day, and it was mildly entertaining in how bad it was. I like the idea of interactive learning, encouraging practical use over memorizing grammar rules, and increasing listening skills. Of course it all depends on intent - I'm not sure I had much intent for French when I was a kid besides fulfilling a language requirement. I definitely came out with reading and writing skills. I went to France and could read books from the library but it was hella hard to listen to conversations. Now that I'm in Taiwan, I have a stronger preference to learn listening and speaking, along with some reading, and the traditional method is not conducive to that. Luckily, Zhang Lao Shi takes time each class to have conversations with people and I find this vastly improves my listening and speaking skills.

A Few Good Men

We're hoping a few good men will attract more women to the ultimate field. Not that men-crazed women are really the best suited for ultimate. I'd probably go after soccer players. But that's beside the point. Here are a few of Sunday's players trying to look their best. Dan hosted a BBQ, which is a traditional activity for celebrating the mid Autumn Moon Festival. However, Stanley tells me that when he was a kid, the only tradition was eating moon cakes (yue bing). But then somebody started advertising the absolute need to BBQ about 10 years ago and now everyone does it. Go figure! (In the pic, we're about to dig into some delicious grilled vegetables along with fish and sausages. It was nice to have a pile of veggies that weren't fried!)


On Tuesday, John and Becca took Tommy and I to Wulai for some hiking. This was my first hike in Taiwan and I wasn't sure what to expect. So I did what I would have done in the US - wore some sturdy sneakers and brought water. It wasn't what we were expecting. We paid $50NT to take this mini train along the side of the mountain, and then ended up walking along a wide paved path. Granted, it was surrounded by trees and waterfalls. But there were lots of people with bags of McDonald's and fires to grill their lunches. A bit different. At the end of the path, there was a booth to charge $80 NT for access to what we presumed was a longer, wider, paved path ahead. We decided it wasn't worth it and turned around.

On the way back, Tommy noticed this tiny little sign on a very narrow path going up the mountain. Becca assured us it didn't say anything like "DANGER! Turn back now", so we decided to see what it was about. The whole path was extremely narrow, but clearly maintained. We went up and up, nearly slipping off the path down the steep hill at times, but all made it safely -- to the middle. That's when we decided we had had enough - what with not knowing where it was going and for how much longer and starting to get hungry for lunch. I enjoyed the walk and learned more about the past lives of my three ex-pat companions. It seems most people here have an interesting story, and I quite like the variety.

On our way back, there were bigger crowds of people by the waterfalls. We stopped to get some Grilled Goodness - I got something that looked like fishcakes, but tasted very QQ (instead of like fishballs).

Aboriginal carving in Wulai


My second poster promoting Renegade Province Ultimate - 6 people interested so far!

Demolition

On Thursday, I paused as I was leaving the apartment, noticing that I could see in through the window across the street - I could see a family sitting on a couch in a very nice living room. Their curtains are usually closed.

Friday I woke to the sound of a building being demolished. It went on all morning, nearly deafening at times (It's really not great background noise for a phone interview). When I returned home after school, the whole thing was gone. The destruction and removal process was amazingly quick and thorough. My grandma said they were going to build a new apartment building like the one behind it (though I can't be sure I translated that right).

Today, I joined John, Becca and Dan to the east coast. The intent was to go surfing. They brought their own boogie board and we rented a couple full sized boards for us to share. However, I didn't get to that point, b/c I soon realized the water was too powerful for me. After a while, everyone came out of the water - the waves were coming in one after the other too quickly. Because of the typhoon on Tuesday, what was once a nice sand beach was now a very stony beach. As the waves came in near the shore, rocks would pummel into your legs. Further out, this didn't happen, but your ability to reach sand bottom was unreliable as the bottom floor had been dug up by the storm.

We came back to Taipei and enjoyed a late lunch/early dinner at a Din Tai Fung-like place, just a little further down YongKang from the more famous dim sum place. I had mixed feelings about the meal - the cha siu bao were terrible, but the luo buo gao was good. The xiao long bao were OK, and the zong zi and bamboo were excellent. Afterwards, we enjoyed a Jumbo Mango Ice from the other famous place in the area - Ice Monster. It was enjoyable, but I still think a good ripe mango beats it. Though, on a hotter day, the ice mound might have hit the spot more. There are a lot of antique stores down the road (combined with some caged chickens) - which reminded me of being in France with Brianne and exploring the antique shops there. It was interesting to see the Taiwanese version of the same thing - including old photographs, posters and porcelain.


We demolished this Mango Ice


Dude, how does this guy sell ANYTHING!?