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!

The little things

can be very gratifying. It's always a massive psychological reward when you can use any skills, however feeble, to accomplish something concrete and beneficial. I felt that way in France five years ago on my 3-week exchange program, and it's still just as true. Yesterday I mentioned that our AC unit was broken. Well today, breaking with typical Eric fashion of "let-it-lie-maybe-it-will-get-magically-better-or-someone-else-will-fix-it" I decided to get it fixed. I took the AC remote and went down to the lobby. By complete happenstance the lobby also just received a package from me which was thrust into my hands by the receptionist. I then told her that our air conditioner was broken, gave my room number, and tried to explain that it could be I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to use the remote. She didn't seem to notice or care about the last part, and as soon as she took down the number she told me that someone would be contacted. A half hour later or so a mechanic type guy came up, messed with the settings to make sure it wasn't just me being dumb (it wasn't) and cleaned the filter. Then, after making her repeat it several times, I gleaned from the housekeeping woman who was also in the room that she would come back in a few hours to see if it was now working. She did, and it wasn't. So she got the mechanic and another guy to come up again, they opened the window and started working on the actual AC unit that was outside our room. They got it fixed. All of this happened within the span of 3 hours or so. It was a really big warm fuzzy to get our cold steely going again.

The oral midterm went okay, it was a little short but there were some parts I absolutely nailed which the teacher pointed out at the end. The package, for those curious, mostly contained foodstuffs including Goldfish, Nutrigrain bars, and Flipsides. My father thought there was a slight chance it wouldn't make it, which I shared upon learning that my mom did not lie on the customs form about packing food.

Final word: does jelly and/or jam need to be refrigerated upon opening? I feel like it does but that is really not an option here...

This post is really long, and in addition, laundry sucks

大家好！That basically means "hello everyone" if I haven't used it yet.

Saw this on a car the other day, Autobots represent!

Well it has been a week since last posting, sorry for that. No particular reason other than I didn't feel like making a long post and I knew it would inevitably come to that. We are going to try this post Memento style, backtracking from what is currently the future several days from now regressing all the way to the day after my last posting, Thursday. Ready? Well we've already started. (Note: I have never actually seen Memento so I'm terribly sorry if I somehow oversimplified such a brilliant piece of cinematic artistry from the one and only M. Night Shyamalan.)

We have Friday off this weekend though I have no clue why, which makes it a long weekend. I am going to Penglai, which is pretty close to Qingdao. In addition to being the home of Qingdao beer (it was run by the Germans who had a territorial concession in Qingdao) Qingdao is famous as a seaside vacation spot. Penglai is a little more off the beaten trail than Qingdao but apparently is still legit and supposed to have great natural beauty, etc... It may blow my parents away that I am a) going toward the ocean and b) just mentioned "natural beauty" after the Butchart Gardens Mathis Family Fiasco a decade ago permanently handicapped my sense of natural beauty but so it goes. I will also not have my laptop with me so this will be the only update you get for at least until Monday. Enjoy it. Anyhow, I have no clue what I'm going to see in Penglai, but I am sure it will be supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.

Before the calm however, is the storm; Thursday is our midterm date and tomorrow, is the oral mid-term. I will probably have to talk for 15 minutes about my opinion on why Chinese food is bad for your health, why I came to China, and a bunch of other mundane topics. It shouldn't be a problem though, as most of my TAs think I have "very perfect" pronunciation. Perhaps I wouldn't last long in the real world but in a classroom I'm not too worried. The written mid-term will be a blast I'm sure and they'll probably pull out obscure words we learned but never went over too much. Stuff like "statistics." We'll see how it goes.

This is a tank. Tanks are cool.

Which having covered Wednesday and Thursday takes us to today. I got a quiz back, got 9/10 (this was higher than my first couple weeks' average of 8.5 or so but in the past couple it had been closer to 9.3) and realized for the umpteenth time just how nice and yet arbitrary our teachers are. I missed 3 of the 5 characters and 1 of the 5 pinyin words, and also missed all the key/new vocab in the sentence. It probably should have been well below an 8.0 but because my teacher thinks I am just the bee's knees it's a 9.0. I guess it really is about who you know and not what.

One thing I have just noticed is that the Great Firewall of China has been modified significantly. This blog, and the entire *.blogspot.com domain is suddenly unblocked. However www.thepirateybay.com which is a massively popular and extremely shady illegal download site now is. (Don't worry John, I am specifically taking advantage of my time here to use that site. It's not even illegal because I already own all of the West Wing anyway.) So in a minor irony I now must use my school's Virtual Private Network (which bypasses China's filter) to access The Pirate Bay, download the tracker, then close my VPN connection and lose my campus-associated IP and startup the actual BitTorrent program to perform the shady activities.

Our air conditioner broke. It just blows cool air now, doesn't get anything near the 17 Celsius it used to be able to do, much less the 23 I would settle for. It makes for quite excruciating nights of sleep when it hits 90 Fahrenheit outside and your alternatives become burn under heavy covers or use one thin one and expose yourself to the myriad species of insect that always manage to get into the room. Last night was my worst night of sleep yet, simply because of the unceasing harassment by bugs.

Another thing that sucks about this country (there are many, I'll be making a list. Perhaps a Pros vs. Cons at the end) is that everything is too gosh-darned small. Now, I am not a particularly big person. I am a little over 6', perhaps coming in at 6'1" with shoes on. According to my Google research, this puts me in the 75% percentile for my race, age, and gender. The bed, as I may have mentioned before, is about exactly my height. Given it is built into the wall and a few inches of space between my head and the headboard are absolutely necessary for basic comfort, my feet always slightly hang off the edge. So the bed sucks. So do the desks. I feel like they are puny little things I could toss across the room. When sitting down with no slouch, my feet flat on the floor, my knees touch the bottom of most of the desks. There is a larger "model" but there are only 3 of them in our classroom. The desk in my room I am at now suffers from the same problem. My thighs are thick enough that I can raise my legs a little and tilt the entire desk. The Great Wall was another place where my size obviously did not fit in. If I were running around in and out of guard towers without being careful, I would have smacked my head a couple times.

On Sunday, my roommate Ricardo and I along with another guy went to Culture street in search of the ever elusive purple drops. While there, I learned that my sign is actually a rabbit and not a dragon, which sucks because dragons are awesome. Still, the wikipedia entry on my sign had a pretty spot-on description of me. I am 100% aware of the total load of BS it is and put no stock in it, but it was still nice to see myself described correctly on the 8.5% chance that there was. I am now going to have to return to America with some sort of rabbit gear in tow.

Cultural creations at culture street. A molasses butterfly and a painting.

Also at Culture Street, I had an interesting bargaining experience. I was on the hunt for any decent-looking jurley for my sisters. Walking along, I saw a silvery bracelet with some characters on it that looked fairly cool, given what I think my sisters would wear. I asked the guy whose stuff it was how much money it was after handling it for a little bit. I am an admitted bargaining novice, but one thing you cannot do is show too much interest in anything. Even if it makes you swoon because it's the only Hello Kitty vs Sailor Moon Limited Edition African Soapstone Battle Trophy left on earth, I find the best thing to do is act with as little interest as possible. You can't try to play the storekeep for an idiot, they know that anything you buy will almost by definition be interested in, but you can't show any attachment. With this silver bracelet it wasn't too hard, but the point stands for anything. Anyhow, after I asked him how much for the bracelet, he quotes me a price, 100 kuai. I was expecting something like this, and immediately scoffed at him, shot him a glare that basically said you're an idiot, and told him it was maybe worth 20 at the most. From here, things got interesting. The woman shopkeeper next to him laughed a little. The man who gave me the price smiled, and replied with something that was not a new price. Then, while I was holding it in my hand, he started almost shooing me away. By this time we had a small crowd of 6-10 onlookers, some shoppers and some sellers. Ricardo, who had been listening and nearby the entire time, said that he was saying I should just take it for free. I agreed with his assessment. However, I was not about to take a $3 bracelet and not pay for it just to get beaten up by a Triad 15 minutes later. I was also not 100% sure he was offering it for free. I kept looking at him, said something like "I can take away?" in some terribly broken Chinese and he seemed to respond in the affirmative. His neighbor the woman who had laughed earlier, was looking on and smiling during the entire ordeal. At last, I offered to pay him 20 kuai, and he seemed surprised given I had just "confirmed" that I could have it for free. I insisted on giving it to him, and walked away. I didn't take a look back to see if we had picked up more spectators, or if anyone was having a laugh at me. I'm still not sure what triggered the entire exchange. It could have been so many things; my hostile and quick reaction to his price humoring him and offering it to me as a gift to a foreigner for (apparently?) not being an idiot and getting taken for a ride. It could be that it all worked out as he planned and once he heard 20, thought it was a great price, and the rest was just theatrics. Perhaps he felt a little humiliated with the way I shot back at him and maybe it had something to do with his competing neighbors/friends. Or perhaps I misdiagnosed the entire situation and he was either genuinely angry, or didn't understand a word of my Chinese, or something else. It really was one of those moments when you wish you had a recording or transcript of the entire thing so you could go back and figure out just what in the hell happened back there.

Also while at culture street, I bought a 2 kuai rock carving of a turtle for myself and a couple rings, once again for my sisters. Here you can see the lewt, along with a 1 kuai coin, inside a silver dish that I stole from a Korean restaurant. I do genuinely feel bad about the stealing, but I don't think a restaurant is the type of place that will accept my offer to give them 20 kuai in exchange for it. It's also a unique thing that I have a 0% chance of finding somewhere else. I hope that rationalization is enough for you dear reader, because so far it has been for me.

Tragedy struck this weekend as my mouse died. It keeps spazzing out and says it is alternatively plugged in and then not, and loses power when not plugged in as though there is some sort of actual microfracture in the wiring somewhere. My Age of Empires 2 exploits shall for now remain only in my daydreams while in lecture class.

On Saturday I went to Yummy Cafe, which is a tiny establishment a block from our school. It was the cafe's first birthday party, which was cause to celebrate and eat American food. There was cheese, salsa and some sort of taco bites, chicken wings, and many other delicious things to eat. There was a keg of Carlsberg. (or so I am told. I am not one of those beer aficionado types but it was a keg, and pretty good) And with that keg naturally came... beer pong China Edition. As the picture clearly illustrates, resources were limited. It was 6-cup instead of 10 simply because the table size was quite lacking. Lines were used in the brick because slam-dunks wouldn't be very kosher. Friendly fire counts, and it did happen once. Perhaps worst of all, we could not find ping pong balls, meaning we used 2 plastic bottle caps, the exact same kind you would get from opening a 2-liter in the states. Despite all this it worked out fairly well, though the team on the left of the picture dominated basically the entire night up until being dethroned in the last game by myself and an oh-so-clutch partner, though not the one shown. I am simply glad I can check off the Eastern Hemisphere on my beer-pong bingo chart. (No mom, those do not actually exist.)

Friday was our hottest day yet here. I believe the temperatures hit the mid 90s. The pollution was among the worst while we were here, which probably contributed to the problem. Despite this we decided to play ultimate and what started as a 5v5 eventually got up to something like 11v11. We played on a field that was mostly dirt with some sparse grass, with a topography as consistent as the housing market. Afterwards my lungs were tired enough that if I breathed too deep I would get short of breath and have to cough, similar to after the wall. I'm not sure if it's because I am completely out of shape or the fact that visibility is better measured in meters than kilometers, but it's probably not a good sign either way. Before the Frisbee activities, I went with my tutor to the supermarket and located the essentials. I bought water, Lay's, apples, and peanut butter and jelly. I will probably actually begin consuming breakfast now that I can make something decent and fast.

That's everything. All that happened on Thursday was that I decided to pop in the CD that came with the book and was extremely disappointed to find it was one low-quality video track, 20 minutes long, of a woman reading every story in the book. It was incredibly low budget, and quite unremarkable.