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