Observations

People are pretty much the same the world over.

In class, students pull out their laptops and the first site that comes up is Facebook. You can be in America, Europe, or Taiwan, and that’s how the world works now. You could probably be in Cameroon and still see the same thing. I also didn’t figure I’d see a student answer her phone in class here. Well, it happened. I guess Americans don’t have a monopoly on disrespecting teachers.

Parents are no different either. Is that child shrieking their head off about some inane crap? Throwing a tantrum because the parent didn’t get fries and won’t let the offspring play in the McPlayplace? Well you could be anywhere, there are inconsiderate people all over.

Both of these happened to me in the last week. First in Friday class I noticed everyone in front of me had Facebook open at one point during the lecture. Then the girl next to me answered her phone which I found pretty shocking and rude, but that’s also the same way I thought when it happened at a lecture in college. And I went to McDonald’s to spend some time reading, and there were kids there that just would not shut up. Having a noisy child is one thing, and I understand every infant will at some point be annoying; being completely oblivious to the looks of everyone around you and not saying a single word encouraging proper decorum is another.

There are also some stark differences. Everyone, for example, leaves their helmet unlocked in or on their moped when they park it and go inside. This is something that would only happen in rural small-town America. Here I am in the fairly near suburbs of a big city, though in America no one in such a situation would leave anything worth more than $5 lying about.

Additionally, the international students here are… not quite as diligent as I thought. Here we are in graduate school, and we have a project due this week, Wednesday. Last week the professor was not in class as she was still under the effects of her fever and consequently the first scheduled group did not present their project. The TA didn’t tell us anything about the next week. So the days pass, no one is communicating. Finally it is suddenly Sunday night. I email the entire group, asking whether anyone has spoken to the professor, or what our two leaders plan on doing. These leaders are official positions. The email I sent at 9pm gets 2 responses before I go to sleep 4 hours later. One is addressed solely to me that asks what time we are getting together, the other is from the group leader later asking for ‘opinions’ on what to do. No taking charge, everyone clueless, and most people are simply MIA. We didn’t meet today. No word on tomorrow. I think Wednesday might just be hilarious. Never in college did I ever consider simply ‘not doing’ a project but that’s the way this is going right now. I’ll keep you posted.

One drag here is the showers. I never know whether they are going to be cold or hot. At this point, my ‘hot’ is a sort of lukewarm that I probably considered cold a month ago. Now though, if I can get 5 minutes of precious non-freezing water I feel like a champ. I’m on a roll with two days in a row of not-freezing showers, going for three tomorrow.

One crazy thing here is the receipt lottery. Every two months, the government holds a drawing. They pick about half a dozen numbers. Three of these are grand prize numbers, and if you match all 8 digits, you get a cool 2 million NT$. The others are general prizes, and you can win for matching all the digits but it’s only 200k, though the prizes go all the way down to matching 3 digits for a paltry $200. So how do you enter? Get a receipt. Really. Ask for your receipt from any purchase. Tiny hole-in-the-wall places still won’t have a receipt available, but 7-Eleven and any chain or large store will provide them. Your receipt looks like this:

The purple-pink number at the top is your number. The blue stamp below that is verification from the store that it’s real. The rest of it is regular receipt, with 7-Eleven branding, their own rewards program, and information about the purchase. So why does the government run this gig? Well in theory, it’s to help keep transactions above board and prevent tax fraud. The idea is that the customers request receipts which means the company has to print a copy and then it has its own official record that can be audited. Does it work? I haven’t seen the stats. Anecdotally it seems to be better as a proverbial stick than a carrot. Nobody seems to shy away from the small restaurants that serve all of the cheap and most of the good food here, the ones that don’t give receipts. I can imagine it would be pretty easy for the government to prosecute a halfway-large company that didn’t issue receipts as part of a consistent business plan.

Some other things: election trucks are quite popular here. They are little trucks fitted with bullhorns and painted to be mobile billboards. The bullhorns blare a candidate’s catchy message and idle up and down main streets. One of the Vietnamese students let himself into my room last night. Again no knocking, verbal call, just an opened door. The same guy that corrected my tones. I’ve also been dragooned into doing things around the school I had to give some interview about the dorms and how totally wonderful they all are. I’m sure it will be used in advertising. I also am talking at some panel about culture or something. My English Corner audience is still rapt one said I had beautiful eyes and a beautiful nose. Yes, nose. I was definitely expecting eyes/hair for the blue/blonde thing, but the nose has it. I’ve also found a regular place to get smoothies/冰沙 which rock socks. Of course I don’t even know what most of them are even after tasting them , but that’s not important.

And that’s all I’ve got. The project will be interesting, at the very least in how it comes together or doesn’t.

晚安

Just some odd pictures

 Proof that Obama is a member of the Coffee Party.

 (From Family Mart, a 7-11 clone)

Two percent homme, so 98 percent woman? I suppose based on the picture it's pretty plausible.

(On the table of a restaurant.)

The Zoo Stories

I’ll get classes out of the way again early. Theory of Organization Management was another three hours eradicated. The professor wasn’t there as she was wrestling with something of a fever, but the TA was and we were made to do presentations anyway. The same presentations we had to do because the previous week neither of the two groups that overlapped with each other stepped up to the plate. Our group went second of seven. I regurgitated some stuff from our textbook about horizontal and vertical structures while simultaneously wowing them with the talent I refer to as “White Lighting.” It’s quite easy to pull off. Pick a spot and stand there. Look at people, and be white. Then return to what you were doing; reading, fiddling with your phone, or in my case making a presentation. Continue being white and looking around. Wash, rinse, repeat. For advanced studies in White Lightning, there are courses on idly stroking your thick beard, muttering barely audible words of English, and nonchalantly pulling out your American passport to fan yourself. Personally, I say keep it simple.

Sometimes though, it can backfire. In my class on Marketing Management, I was the lightning rod. With every new example in the powerpoint, the professor quickly turns to me, interrupting my ever-so-diligent studies.

“Er-uh-ka!” Crap. This always happens with Chinese people. They don’t have a hard k sound that isn’t followed by a vowel. Thankfully most of my classmates don’t seem to get it.

“Yes?” I give him the three second look, then a quick glance at my computer and a drawn out examination of the projector, showing how enthralled I am.

“Do you prefer Coke or Pepsi?” As an American of course, I am not presented the opportunity of liking neither. But I live up to this stereotype and like all colas, so I play ball. (For the record, I am an RC Cola man.)

“Ummm… I don’t know. Both, I don’t care.” Pause.

Maybe it was a tiny cock of the head, or his smile drooping a tiny bit, or a furrowed brow. But I knew instantly; in a question with only right answers, I managed to get it wrong.

Rather than backtrack I went the explain-my-fault route. “Whichever one is cheaper.” Hey, this is a business class, right? And it’s true besides.

Good enough. “Hah! Okay! When I went to America I drink the Coke...” He starts in on an example of marketing product to local consumers. I drift back to the internet. He quizzed me three times over the course of the lecture. Before you say that’s not a lot, it was three times as much as the rest of the class combined.

Which brings me to the White Lightning-vs-Dancing Monkey problem. They are rooted in the same thing, i.e. skin pigmentation. The White Lightning is about receiving respect that I quite frankly don’t deserve, or perhaps haven’t merited. I haven’t been particularly brilliant in class, I don’t ask insightful questions, hell I barely talk. Yet there is an unmistakable sense of awe, even by people who are deemed educated. Then there is getting poked and prodded, told to go this way or dance that way. Sometimes literally. While passing another group studying in the hall of my dorm I was accosted and asked if I like to dance, if I could dance. The truth is grey (alcohol helps in both departments, but if I ever need to dance my way out of a political prison I will pop lock and drop it so fast Huey wouldn’t know what hit him) but I said no, because I wasn’t feeling in the mood for a public showing.

“All Americans can dance!” The guy proclaiming as such was from Vietnam.

I left no time for more groupmates to pile on: “Do you know kung-fu?”

“No! I’m from Vietnam!” He might have been offended.

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied, “All Asians know kung-fu.”

“No we don’t!” I don’t know who said it, but from the group makeup she must have been Indonesian, Mongolian, or Vietnamese.

“Same with Americans and dancing.” I continued on to my room and awaiting noodle dinner.

The constant attention can truly get annoying. When I go to 7-11 for a Coke and some crackers, I don’t want the world to stop, gawk, and gossip. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, not having a bunch of other Americans at my back means there is no way to deflect this, even if the reaction is the same as it ever was. So over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling like all the attention has made me paranoid and given me an undeserved superiority complex. Surely not everyone staring cares that much, or thinks I’m that awesome right? If only.

A few days ago I went to many of the side streets near campus, stalking restaurants for 餃子jiaozi aka 水餃shuijiao which is simplest to describe as potstickers, or at least an ancestor of them. I ordered two servings, paid, got my food, and moved over one shop to a tea stall. Purchased my coffee smoothie, and as usual charmed the pants off all the shopkeepers with such linguistic wonders as “Hello,” “Two, please,” and “How much money?” The typical meal protocol for new places, with typical compliment deflection. Happy with a 3 dollar meal-and drink combo reaching an 8.5 on the deliciousness scale, I wheeled and started toward the main boulevard that cuts through campus and leads to all the good-eats side streets. Not ten yards away was a couple of cute girls looking at me. Not uncommon. As I was getting at earlier, everybody looks; professor and student, girl and boy, dog and goldfish. I returned the look, but then something weird happened, or rather didn’t happen. They kept looking, making eye contact. Nobody here does that! How dare they! Wait a second, this means, uh oh…

You know those moments where you just know what’s coming next, but it’s already too late? Like when you’re leaning back in your chair, your center of gravity is too far over, and you reach for the desk to pull you back but your hands grasp air and for .2 seconds you achieve perfect clarity of thought, when your mind instantly and totally refocuses on the impending disaster? Yeah, that happened. I knew where this was heading.

One of them opened up. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Sure hit that one out of the park, Eric. The other grew tired of all the small talk, apparently.

“You are very handsome.”

“(stupid silence)” Even when the chair hits, you’re still stunned. And I definitely wasn’t expecting anything that blunt. After maybe a second: “Uh, thanks.” This would be the time to respond with something like “You’re very pretty,” or perhaps “That’s a pretty dress,” or even “Did you catch that Yankees-Rangers game!” Anything but blank staring.

The one that greeted me giggles. She is wearing jeans.

Pretty Dress is only getting started. “Do you have a girlfriend?” Jeans laughs again.

At this point I’ve more or less recovered, able to respond to her English questions in Chinese. “No.”

“Why not!? You-”

“I’ve only been here two weeks!” Admittedly, I’m flustered. Thankfully she reins it in a little, though I don’t think it was out of pity. She moves on to another question.

“Where are you from?”

“America.”

“Oh.” (Approving nod.) And if there is a god, he certainly shined his good graces down at that moment. A mother and little boy walked past. The mom was so pleased I spoke Chinese. She and Pretty Dress had a small conversation, blessed reprieve! The boy asked me in surprisingly clear English, “What is your name?”

“Ma Ai Rui.” He laughed a little bit and ran around. Pretty Dress picked him under the shoulders in a Simba grab and said something pretty fast. Then Jeans spoke again.

“Do you have MSN?”

“Ehhh… uhhh.” I do, but I hate using it because it sucks. Not a problem though! Everybody has Facebook, and that was her next question. I exchanged my email address for Pretty Dress’ real name in characters and Jeans’ Facebook username.

“Okay! Bye-bye!”

And then I just walked away, replaying the conversation in my head and wondering endlessly. Being so popular is truly an embarrassment of riches. It’s annoying, and hard to deal with. Being upfront and aggressive is one thing, and I can definitely understand that. If she knows what she wants and goes for it, kudos to her. The problem is my lack of information. I don’t know her. I do know that she doesn’t know me, which means I have been selected solely due to my whiteness. Is it a ploy to anger her parents? Is she looking for a foreign boyfriend because she thinks white guys are here only for girls and I’m an easy mark; or perhaps it’s because she thinks that as a Westerner I’ll play by some different set of dating rules? If she thinks I’m super attractive, am I even going to get the opportunity to show her my personality and find hers or is that not even on the radar? I know this all may sound like spoiled whining and don’t get me wrong I’d much rather be in this situation than being regarded as hideous or invisible. Still it’s important to realize that while being white in this highly homogenized place can make you seem like a C or D list celebrity, it cuts both ways.

Adding to the list of differences, the international students on my floor don’t seem to knock. Bathroom door closed? No problem, just go ahead and open it! Don’t knock, don’t say anything, don’t knock and wait two seconds, just walk in like you own the place! I know this is a cultural thing and we all need to learn to respect differences, etc… but I must disagree on the grounds that when you throw a bunch of people together, everyone’s reaction should be to be as cautious and accommodating as possible. If it makes me insensitive for thinking everyone else should be sensitive, then I guess I’m just a cultural imperialist. Related: the Vietnamese guys come into my room and touch my stuff. Oh is this a metal die on your desk yes I’ll just pick this up and throw it to myself while chatting with you. And don’t mind me while I help myself to your Coke Zero as I ‘ask’ while it’s already in the air flowing down into my mouth. Also I’m going to help myself to a couple of these empty water bottles on your desk. I don’t really care about any of those things in the slightest, and if they asked or even mentioned it I’d be pleased to say yes. But I haven’t known them for a decade much less a month, so it’s not typical American behavior. Builds some sort of understanding I guess, and I can forgive it. I just hope whatever terrible faux pas I commit are likewise excused.

While we’re on the subject of things that irk me, a Vietnamese guy (not the Mr. David Tran who went to Taichung with me) was correcting my tones just earlier today. Now, being brutally honest is great when it comes from a native speaker or someone who has studied it for a long time. It’s the only way to learn and correct entrenched mistakes. When he has been studying for a month or two, has obvious pronunciation deficiencies of his own, and doesn’t even know the correct order of the tones, my reaction is not just neutral, it’s outright disdain. Funny karma: his employer called while we were talking and he started speaking in Chinese but had to repeat several phrases five times before dropping it entirely and moving on. I’m no savant at this whole Mandarin thing but I’m a Buckeye fan before I let him give me sass.

Things that don’t irk me are the baozi at 7-11. Seriously, they sell steamed pork buns in a convenience store. They aren’t exactly the most authentic thing around, but they work in a pinch and are totally adequate. Their hot dogs are actually pretty tasty too.

I also started my tutoring at the English Corner this past week. I am one of two native speakers they have, and if the rest of this post hasn’t given you an idea, the time I’m there it’s often quite crowded. Thankfully one of my three hours is during prime class time so I can rest a little then. Mostly I just talked about mundane subjects, the usual name/age/major/city and then go from there. Some people are very talkative and others sit back and do not respond to any attempts to get them involved. Their choice, not mine. In some of that downtime I was able to chat with the Mongolians who were seated with me. One, an MBA classmate, was officially a tutor as well, but all of them knew pretty good English. The other two I discovered were sixteen. They knew more Chinese than me, spoke pretty damn fine English, and really I mean they’re sixteen. I feel like it’s too early for me to start saying this, but when I was their age I played Magic Cards and World of Warcraft. So I sat there for a little while tossing that around in my head but before I could inquire further some students came in looking for conversation so we had to start conversing with them.

That’s pretty much how this last week has shaken out, or at least the highlights. The shuijiao I discovered really taste great, they’re deep-fried and come with some sort of plum sauce and fries. I also found another mom and pop restaurant with solid fried rice. The food’s getting tastier which only makes everything better. And sorry for no pictures, just didn’t happen this week. 

再見

P.S. I tried to friend Pretty Dress on Facebook but Facebook thinks I’m spamming unknown people so blocked it, Jeans’ profile seems not to exist, and I haven’t received an email.

Young Turks, Mongol Hordes, and ALL NATURAL MALE ENHANCEMENT

My room, my side on the left.

First week of classes under the belt, and I have to say I’m bored to tears. They’re three hours long and I honestly don’t even know what we’ve learned. Research Methodology was very similar to the library orientation freshman year of high school: journals are your best academic sources, anything not peer-reviewed is suspect, and you can use different Boolean operators to refine your search.

Woooo.

With the boring crap out of the way, I’ll start in on some more interesting things. The Engrish here hasn’t been as tragic as it was on the mainland, but that clearly doesn’t stop people from wearing shirts that say PORN on them. Though technically not Engrish and not as funny as YAMP, it’s the funniest clothing I’ve seen yet. There are also plenty of typos everywhere, including large billboards. Hey, why buy eyewear when you can buy eyewaer? And should we get a chiken sandwich for lunch?

Another similarity here is the traffic. Size matters, and right of way is measured in kilograms. Buses are on the top of the food chain, then trucks, large cars, compacts, mopeds, bikes, and pedestrians. Also, if you want a bus, you have to hail it. If you’re standing at a stop it will breeze right by every time. And while waiting for a bus, I saw an genuine Chinese fire drill. At first I didn’t believe it was actually happening, but they stopped at the red light (shocking in itself) and got out, rotated counter-clockwise, and were on their merry way.

Yet more similarities: I’m the token American, except now I don’t have 60 others to share the title with. I am 1 of 2 at this school, the only one in my dorm, and so far the only blonde I’ve seen. This means a) more stares than in Tianjin and b) everyone wants to be my friend. Everyone, including Gentry. Or maybe it’s Jentry, Gentri, Jentri, or whatever. I don’t really ask, but I like to think it’s Gentry for the irony factor. In his case, I don’t care to know. He’s creepy. Why? Well he’s from Indonesia. He’s Christian. So far, no problems. He’s getting a doctorate in pharmacology. Okay, cool. He’s friends with Obama – wait what? And he saw a blue light come from under a door and zap him in the heart. Huh? Which turned out to be his guardian angel so now he likes blue but it’s also the color of part of the American flag and liked by a lot of Americans so he’s clearly American too and hey he used to have a green card and had the number for it but someone stole it so he can’t go to the US but he will use his contacts with Barack if only I could put Gentry in contact with 44 and by the way getting a green card means he is totally a citizen but wait maybe not but hey if he marries a nice American girl he can become an American but she has to be Christian no Muslims or Jews because they’re dirty and he wants one that’s super attractive and he will always love and support her so if maybe I
have some friends that want a husband that will provide [absolutely nothing] for them I could go ahead and call them as a favor to both him and her since I have blue eyes which basically means we are like blood brothers and besides he’s studying pharmacology so he can refine the extract from some plant in Indonesia that you rub around certain parts of the anatomy to make them magically grow in less than 3 minutes and it’s really great if only he could sell that he would make millions but hey Gentry can use my MBA expertise together with his bullshitology and we can rule the world like if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs got together with Sergey Brin and Larry Page and basically out anything it would be really cool and oh if I could just help him get to America since being a citizen I clearly have pull with all 300 million of my compatriots.

If you were able to parse that in one read I commend you because that’s pretty much how our ‘conversation’ went. He would talk at me and I wouldn’t even dignify him with a smile and nod but rather space out and cruise the internet. He seems to be a misogynist, racist, zealot, and the icing on the cake is that he smells bad. In no way do I want to associate with him.

The locals here are pretty cool. I find them to be quite 友好, friendly, despite the numerous stares. In search of lunch one day I walked down a street adjacent to campus, and then kept walking some more after turning at an intersection. I found an establishment that had dumplings, just what I was looking for. I stopped in, tried to get the old woman’s attention as politely as possible, and ordered my dumplings. Then she started talking at me quite fast and I wasn’t able to pick up too much. With the dumplings I also got beef noodles and a terrible, horrible drink. It was some sort of tea, and it was the worst non-alcoholic drink I have ever tasted. It was simultaneously too bitter, too sweet, like tea on road rage if it were sentient and angry. Still, not finishing it was simply not an option. I killed my dumplings, worked on my noodles, and every so often took great heaping gulps of tea, careful to slosh it straight to the back of my throat. Punishment over, I paid and got up to leave. Then, the lady told me to wait a second and produced some produce. She thrust a heavy green fruit into my hand. I took it, and the next day dissected it. I could immediately tell it was citrus, but beyond that had no clue. As I found out later, it is in fact the pomelo fruit, which Microsoft Word doesn’t even have in its dictionary. Nice. And just today I bought some meat-on-a-stick, 11 sticks for supposedly 110 kuai, but the bossman refused to accept more than a hundred.

This weekend I spent with the Mongols and Turks basically. On Thursday I went for a walk. Then I kept walking, walked across a dry canal, skirted a farm and through bushes. I wound up close to the golden arches and decided I needed a snack. I popped over to McDonald’s and saw three classmates sitting outside. As I discovered, they were Turkish and all on the MBA track like me. Again I found it convenient to be un-American in geography, and the two-city strategy paid off; knowing of both Istanbul and Ankara made quite the first impression. This definitely helped to offset the image of a sweat-soaked blonde dude literally walking out of the bushes with thistles and branches hanging off him. We made small talk about our countries and majors, and then went back (by bus thankfully) since they had already been sitting there for a while.

Limbs, after I tried cleaning up from the bushes.

The next day I went out to take some night photos. Sadly I’m still crap at it. On the way back though, I ran into my roommate Yaoo and his Mongolian friends sitting outside the gym, drinking beer. There are no open container laws, so I never really made it back to the room until later. I turned around and hit up 7-11 and bought some Asahi, and we proceeded to roam around campus for the next 5 hours. We mostly discussed music, as everyone had a turn going through my phone to see what kind of music this genuine in-the-flesh American listened too.

The next day was another with the Turks. Osie Selman, and Zehra asked if I wanted to go to a coffee shop. I met them, and being hungry, we first went to… McDonald’s. Their idea, not mine. As it turns out they go quite often since they can’t really take most any of the local food. Well it’s their loss I think, as I’ve had some damn fine fried rice, noodles, and dumplings here. But hey whatever. After the quick ride over and back, we eventually hit our target destination, a shop called Circus. Nothing Circus about it, and the playlist draws heavily on Fort Minor and Eminem, but no complaints there. I ordered a strawberry smoothie, and absolutely blew the waitress away. The Turks speak no Chinese, and their English is not that spectacular. So rolling up with a wo yao yi bei cao mei bing sha put the waitress on her feet and had her repeating it to her coworkers. We settled in as the Turks smoked and demanded English out of me. I tried my best to appease them and monologued for a while, then got tired of it. I wanted to talk with them, not at them. So I went for the question surest to get an interesting answer:

“What do you think of the United States invading Iraq?”

The next time I checked my watch it was almost 3 hours later.

We talked about war, (it’s bad) pipe dreams, (we should all just ‘get along’) George W. Bush , (not a popular guy) and bloodthirsty Americans. I tried to explain how a war wasn’t in the people’s best interests, how we don’t just drop bombs indiscriminately, and did my best to dispel myths. It’s not easy but I think I was changing some opinions. Or maybe they were just changing mine.

After talking for many hours we returned. I for one was still in recovery mode from the Mongolian adventure the night before which kept me up until 6:00 AM. I managed to stay up long enough to see the Badgers open up 14-0 on the Goofers, then awoke to a satisfactory final. Today I had to meet with group mates for a presentation this week, on Arrangements of Reporting Relationships in an Organizational Theory class. And since I’m the only native speaker in the entire class, I’ve been tapped to deliver for our group. Yay.

拜拜

Welcome to the Jungle

At least that’s what it feels like. For the geographically challenged, Taiwan/Formosa/The Republic of China on Taiwan/Rogue Province #1 is a subtropical island. It’s sort of like Florida in that it’s humid, hot, constantly bombarded by typhoons, and yet still has 20 million people. Entirely expected, but still my first impression on leaving the airport.

Ah, the air travel. It was supposed to be bad enough with a 3-leg journey, ORD à DTW à NRT à TPE. Getting to Detroit was a quick hour and fifteen, then Japan was the 13 hour ordeal. It went pretty typically of those transpacific flights among us plebeians jammed into “economy” class. The entertainment consisted of an episode of Psych, The Karate Kid (remake with Jackie Chan), The Joneses, and Date Night. The worst part of the flight was the typical 7-8 hour mark when it’s starting to get really long, and you just can’t bring yourself watch another movie in succession. I skipped out on Diary of a Wimpy Kid when I thought my eyes were going to bleed and eardrums explode. Sidenote: thanks again for the earphones John. My utter inability to sleep on planes was no help. To make a boring story a little shorter, the long flight concluded, I landed in Tokyo, and then boarded my flight that was delayed by half an hour, or so the placard said. It wasn’t quit the experience that my first flight to Beijing was, but we waited on the tarmac for about 2.5 hours since there was a problem syncing the navigational equipment from plane to ground.

Landed in Taiwan at midnight local time, reeking thoroughly of Unwashed American. I changed my shirt in a futile effort to make a good impression on my pickup crew at the airport. Immigration, customs, were a breeze. Found my waiting escort, got the car, and were off by 12:30. My helpers graciously offered to take me to Carrefour where I could buy bedding. This turned out to be clutch since when I arrived at the dorm at 3:45 AM (2.5 hour drive, plus shopping) I discovered that I am sleeping in a box. Seriously; it has a bottom, and raised walls on each side, including the end for your feet. This is actually explicable by the fact that I am living in a quad dorm room, so the beds are lofted and partitioned equally. Thankfully I can just fit inside without resulting to contortionism.

Awesomely, my quad is only occupied by two people. My roommate Yahoo was actually awake and playing video games (DotA) when I arrived. The next morning I awoke at 10:00 ready to tackle… wait, what was I here for again? What room number was I going to? How do I get internet, or food for that matter? And am I supposed to go to classes soon?

These questions were the focus of my Wednesday. I wandered around, returned to my room, examined the school map online, and then found the International College. I went back that afternoon, and started registering as a student, and going through preliminary steps to procure an Alien Resident Card (ARC). Still no classes though, forgot to ask before leaving the office. Can’t say I was crying too hard about that. I was able to get to an ATM around the corner and withdraw some Nationalist Traitor Dollars (NTD). Legal tender in hand I left the building and was immediately confronted by a distant mirage. Could it be? That most universal of images, more synonymous with America than Old Glory, nearly as much of a world citizen as the United Nations, with a caloric density rivaled only by lard. Yes, it was; those Golden Arches, a giant smile beckoning me to a place I truly belong.

I didn’t actually go. I still haven’t actually eaten at McDonald’s even though I’ve been inside one twice already (more on that later). I just went to a street slightly off campus, hit up a 7-11 for some hangers and hand towels, then some chicken breasts in some weird cinnamonish powder. Meal for the day secured, I returned to my room and attempted to stay up until 10. I had still only managed 6 hours of sleep in the past 48, and a decent sleep schedule is always my primary objective. So I killed some time reading, and cruising the internet.

The next day I realized I still hadn’t seen a white person on campus. I thought I did, but then I saw him from the front and nope. Then I saw another false positive. The only 2 I had seen were at Carrefour. As of press time, still none. I went to the downtown of the little town I’m in, Wufeng, and bought some pictures for ID use. I also converted the bulk of my USD into NTD. And in the interest of full disclosure if you haven’t Googled it yet, it’s New Taiwan Dollar, not Nationalist Traitor. If only. Those errands finished I bought some Ethernet cable and a pink fan with an anime face on the front. I was in the store, looking at fans, and it was in a nondescript cardboard box. It also had no ostentatious branding on it, yet there sits my fan. This fan is only made necessary because of a dorm rule stating (and enforcing) the A/C cannot be turned on until 4:00pm. It turns off sometime at night. In another Physical Plant Fiasco, my ceiling light just broke yesterday. I don’t think my roommate knows about it yet seeing as how I haven’t seen him in more than 48 hours now. Hopefully it can get fixed sometime this week. Time to get that lamp I was previously considering.

Thursday I was able to register for classes and also met a Vietnamese guy named Huan. Or maybe Juan. Perhaps Hwan, Hwon, or crazier. I don’t rightly know. He seems pretty cool, and though he seems to have no concept of personal space, being all touchy-feely and close, I can overlook what must be second-nature to him. Huan informed me his professor was going to a Vietnamese restaurant with said professor’s undergraduates and Huan. After checking my jam-packed social calendar for conflicts I accepted. First we met the professor and talked for a little bit. The prof did his undergrad in Taiwan, then went to The University of Illinois for an MBA. Cool beans. We then segued into being foreign students, etc… when the subject of stipends came up, he asked what the grade threshold was. Eighty percent, I replied. His next statement was one of those understated ones that sort of blows you away after you hear it, process it, then do a mental double-take.

“You should tell that to your professors before you take your finals.”

Wait, what? Now it’s no literary bombshell, certainly not the first sentence of Moby Dick nor the distilled torment of Kurtz’s realization on the human condition. But the meaning behind it is unmistakable. The work, it would seem, is mostly optional. In what academic environment does the graded make suggestions to the grader? What if I say my planned job will require a 95%, should I mention that too? Now I can’t say I’ve even started a class yet and don’t know for sure what it will be like, but as my most solid piece of information it’s a little disconcerting. As with many things here, I’m taking the wait-and-see approach.

Conversation over, we took the bus into Wufeng and found our restaurant. I eschewed the Pho in favor of some fried seafood balls with house sauce and julienned veggies. I don’t know what went into it, I probably don’t want to, but it was delicious. Best tasting meal so far. Also at dinner we ordered some Vietnamese beer. According to everyone at the table, it was the best brand. It tasted like your standard mass-produced non-light beer, and didn’t do anything to change my opinions on the lack of good beer in Asia. I don’t find the American conglomerates to make beer any better, but any liquor store you go to will have plenty of excellent craft beers. Not so here. I finished my beer pretty quickly, which seemed to surprise most people. I then shared another and downed that pretty easily. Again this was found impressing, but instead of shotgunning one and starting a power hour right then and there, decided against it. Also apparently stunning was my knowledge of Vietnam. When I would ask the undergraduates, whom were also Vietnamese, what city they were from, many said “the north” to which I replied “Hanoi?” Much cooing followed. Then one said not everybody was from there. “Ho Chi Minh City?” Again, appreciation for knowing two cities in a place where some communities were literally bombed back to the Stone Age. Dispelling myths about Americans, one dinner at a time.

The next day I was to apply for my ARC in person at the office. The office, unfortunately, is in Taichung City. My school is in Taichung County. In between lie a labyrinthine network of buses, and woe be to any foreigner who dreams of actually navigating them. But was I to go alone? No! I had the company of another foreign student, a Mister David Tran. Honestly, he introduced himself as Mister Tran. He also said he didn’t have an English name, so I gave him David. As I was walking back to my dorm and mentally preparing for my bus adventure, I ran into him. His face lit up and he asked where I was going. Taichung, I said. He asked if I wouldn’t mind waiting until noon. Not a problem I said, and an hour and a half later we were off.

His English is quite frankly terrible. At first I thought his Chinese was better than mine, but slowly that theory unraveled. First he knocked on my door and we left. The English problem was quickly discovered, so we used Chinese. And for a while, two hours even, he would talk my face off, and I couldn’t understand him. I was worried, thinking to myself about how crappy my Chinese was, how I couldn’t understand nearly as much as I thought. After two hours we had ridden two buses to their termini and were about to board a third. This was where the directions got hazy however, and in a stroke of luck at our bus stop was another foreigner who spoke English and knew exactly where the National Immigration Agency was. Better lucky than good. After I submitted my papers, I asked Mister David Tran what he wanted to do in Taichung. Previously in passing he had just said ‘things,’ in English. Now he said ‘find work,’ in Chinese. So we started to pound the pavement.

I was doubtful. But I certainly admired his willingness to go straight for what he wanted, not settling for anything less than face-to-face contact. In a sense that’s required since not every mom and pop storefront has website, but his spirit was admirable. So at lunch we found a paper and with the help of the staff he circled some classifieds. Then we started walking. We literally found a sufficiently busy street, walked down it, and stopped at every restaurant and gas station, asking for employment. He seemed to converse easily with the locals, but then I started paying attention. There were many blank looks. At a couple restaurants, the owner would flatly tell them they didn’t understand him. Then we went to McDonald’s. He was turned away the first time and told to come back when they were less busy. Then he asked me a question. I couldn’t make it out. Instead of smiling and nodding I told him as much. In heavily accented English, he asked “You want to eat?” Wow. For those at home speaking Chinese, it sounded like ni xian jin, 你現金嗎？ Ostensibly he was saying ni xiang chi ma, 你想吃嗎？ It sounded nothing like that. He also pronounced yuan like juan and qu as du. There were many others that I simply didn’t understand. The situation suddenly crystallized though and I felt much, much better. I also looked upon Mister David Tran (who sort of reminds me of a certain someone from Chinese class who was totally jacked and wanted to get a six-pack as in two weeks) as a little worse, and sort of dumbfounded at his inflated sense of self. At one gas station interview he had to ask me the meaning of such trivial words as ‘birthday’ and ‘height’. I wasn’t tracking strikeouts to hits, but the ratio wasn’t good. I wouldn’t hire someone who was functionally illiterate and heavily accented for a service position either.

Towards the end of our odyssey I was growing tired and more than a little bitter. Twice he had said we would take the bus and return, once we never made it to the bus, once we got on and rode for a while when he requested he get out. I wasn’t missing out on any plans; hell this whole adventure constituted my plans for the day, but anytime promises are repeatedly broken, it’s irritating. If you don’t want to go yet, just say you want to stay until you get one solid lead and not some lame “don’t call us we’ll call you” response which was what he was getting. Anyhow, eventually one place sat him down for an actual interview. The owner wasn’t there but some supervisor was. The supervisor herself was interesting if only for her clothes or lack thereof. Her shirt was more or less normal, but her shorts, or whatever piece of clothing was below her shirt, were a feat of engineering rivaled only by the Hoover Dam.

I simply couldn’t stop staring. Not because she was exceptionally attractive, though she wasn’t bad looking and it definitely didn’t hurt, but rather I just didn’t get this garment. Now, everyone is prone to exaggeration once in a while. While regaling friends with stories everyone, your author included, is prone to overstating for effect. I try to limit that on this blog. To make up for the boring content that is my tale of classes, registrations, and transport, I try at the very least to bring the truth. A 13 hour flight is truly a 13 hour flight. When I say I didn’t sleep at all on the plane, that I can’t sleep on planes, it’s true I just can’t. (Disclaimer: If I am in an exit row and have room to lean my head forward onto the tray table I can sleep that way. I cannot sleep using just the seat.) Now please believe me when I say the shorts this girl was wearing were between 4 and 5 inches long. My basis for this is my phone which the developer states is 4.5”. When held next to these shorts I’m sure they would be approximately equal. These shorts were simply a marvel of the textile arts, true evidence for intelligent design if ever there was any. Okay maybe not that far.

After three hours of walking around and a few job nibbles, we boarded another bus which this time took us straight back to campus. It was a combination of us walking really far throughout the day, and getting a bus that was express or the like. We got back exhausted, having had dinner at KFC in Taichung.

And that’s pretty much where things stand. Today I woke up at 6:30 AM again as has been usual, but this time I was able to go back to sleep so maybe I’m starting to get over the jetlag. I’m thinking of buying a bike soon and start exploring more, but I’ll have to weigh my odds of getting run over by a bus running a red light as tends to happen here. Also, I’m still on the guest internet since I don’t have my student ID and can’t login to my school account. So no pictures I can upload yet! Maybe soon!