Cornered

Going back to the earlier posting on the receipt lottery, it definitely has its downsides. Or rather one very specific one; some people are just ignorant and/or arrogant enough to request the cashier process each item as a separate purchase. So instead of opening the till and making change once it’s six times. During the rush hour. Right before class. With all four registers operating and dealing with lines six customers deep. Naturally I was behind this idiot. I was sort of surprised the clerk acquiesced to her request but very few people in this country ever initiate any conflict. I tried to give the customer the evil eye but she never turned to look at me.

I think that conflict avoidance is why I effectively blindsided a clerk at another 7-11 yesterday. Sundays pretty much everything closes down so I went in to pick up some ramen and baozi for lunch. I was charged for three baozi instead of the two I had ordered. I brought this to the clerk’s attention. He declared that I was only charged for two even upon showing the receipt to him. It might have just been reflexive, he may have just assumed I didn’t know what I was talking about, I’m not sure. His boss came over and looked at it. She quickly saw the error and apologized to me several times. For what it’s worth, the guy has been working there at least the month that I’ve been in Taiwan but still doesn’t know the price of a baozi (all are NT$20) or how to ring up items without a built-in barcode so maybe it just had everything to do with this employee.

A couple weeks ago I was riding the bus and saw three firetrucks pass. A minute later we met them again, only now they were at the site of the fire. I looked up at a cheap apartment building and although I could see no flames, smoke was pouring out of a top floor unit. The fire department seemed to have it under control though and no one seemed to be freaking out. Just a few days ago, the fire alarm went off in the dorm. First it made an announcement in Chinese to something along the lines of “A fire has been detected in the building,” which was followed up with English that literally just said “FIRE FIRE FIRE” without any of the rhetorical niceties. Ignoring the urgency of the voice, Yahoo and I opted to stay in our room. I couldn’t smell anything and wasn’t convinced the building was in fact burning down. And in the most unsurprising development ever, the smoke detector went off because some guy was smoking indoors. Smooth.

Many of the international students smoke here, but not that many Taiwanese do. While in McDonald’s after a Post Office run, I was looking out the window and noticed an old man walking by. He had no uniform on that I could see, and he was just picking up cigarettes that were on the pavement. Simply a cool old guy walking along doing his thing.

Speaking of walking or a lack thereof, I was returning to my dorm today from picking up some mail and was getting the usual stares. One was particularly long from some random guy, so I just stared back and held my ground until he looked away sheepishly. I continued on as normal and kept getting the standard looks. One girl turned around in response to some friend’s voice or the like and caught sight of me. She kept walking, kept staring, and walked right into a concrete flower planter. She checked herself and almost did a dive into it. She quickly looked around to see if anyone saw, and I wasn’t the only one. Recovering, she looked embarrassed then quickly went to catch up with her friend who was laughing.

The stares are thus continuing at a pretty standard rate. Waiting at the bus stop a couple days ago three girls came over to wait as well, then immediately started talking about me. Sometimes they tried to be subtle about it, but sometimes they would just blurt out whatever came to mind.

Many people here will ask me whatever comes to mind. One of the most common questions I get in English Corner is “Do you like black people?” Invariably what follows is a 15 minute communications fiasco of me trying to turn the question on its head. I’ll end up talking about the history of the slave trade, American treatment of other minorities like Irish and Chinese, violent crime statistics, affirmative action, redlining, and the parts of US history conveniently left out of 4^th grade textbooks. Then I ultimately ask them why they didn’t ask if I like white people. I know the answer of course, but it’s to prove a point. I tell the students that I can no easier lump black people together than I can whites just because blacks are a minority in America. Then I advise them that at the most generous I could be with sweeping stereotypes would be questions on people from a country, because they at least have some sort of material commonality. Am I changing minds? Who knows, I sure don’t. I at least hope I can get them to have a worldview not so black and white. Pun intended.

I didn’t do anything Halloween themed this weekend, but I did spend a night drinking with my roommate Yahoo. Though his English is pretty subpar he always manages to surprise me. He taught me all about Mongolia, a massacre of monks by the communists, logistical problems, mining rights, and more. Then he surprised me even more by dropping the word ‘liberalism.’ That’s a word most Americans wouldn’t even define correctly. He continued to amaze with his knowledge of Churchill, including the famous quote on democracy as a form of government. Wow. So after some heavier discussion and fried chicken we headed back.

Finally, our project is coming up on Wednesday. Now we finally know that we are in fact going. Our professor should in theory be back from her illness.

And that’s pretty much it.