pingtung pt 2

so the original plan was to head down on sunday.  problem is, I have class on sunday until 1 pm.  then I have to go home, pack up, head to the bus station, hop on the next bus, and arrive 5 hours later.  so at best, I’d be getting there at like 7 or 8. pretty late. I also don’t know where I’m going, staying, or getting off the bus.  also, I didn’t know how to get in touch with tessa and youming.  I tried sending them a facebook message, but didn’t have a response by the time I got back from teaching, so I settled in to wait until I heard more. after I few hours, I realized that youming’s phone number might be on his facebook, and sure enough it was.  I gave it a call and talked with tessa and decided to catch the 3 am bus to pingtung so I wouldn’t have to pay for another night’s hotel.  money was getting a little tight at that point. I went to bed at 9 so I’d have a few hours sleep.
the bus ride was uneventful, I slept through most of it, and woke up in some city. I couldn’t understand the bus driver, but I though pingtung was the last stop, so I got off with the last person.  turns out I went one or two to far, and after walking for a while I caught a cab back to where youming and tessa were staying. I got a hotel room in the same place as them, and took a nap until about 1130 when we were supposed to meet people for lunch and start the day’s activities.  after a quick shower, I met up with tessa and youming and we got some lunch by ourselves, the plans having been slightly modified while I slept. 
eventually, sam came by on his scooter to join us.  the day’s plans involved liangshan falls, a moderately well known tourist attraction that was about a half hour away by scooter. I rode with sam, tessa rode with youming. this was my first time riding a scooter farther than across half a parking lot, and I was a little nervous. where do I put my hands? not around sam, that’s for sure. that’d be awkward even if taiwanese people weren’t weird about touching.  turns out there’s a little handle thing behind where you sit, so I just hung onto that for dear life until I got more comfortable. 
liangshan falls is a series of waterfalls that turn into a little river.  the first one is used like a spring, with lots of people sitting/swimming in it. the second one is a little bit of a hike up the mountain, and has a big pool underneath it that you can swim in. the third is by far the most impressive, but people don’t see it too often because the path up collapsed during a mudslide and hasn’t been repaired.
we weren’t gonna let that stop us though, and we decided to go to the third one first and work out way back.
to be continued…

pingtung, belatedly

a few weeks ago I was feeling really bored and lonely.  there weren’t enough hours at work, I don’t have an overwhelming number of friends, I’m still bad at chinese… it was just a quick case of the blues on a gloomy rainy day.  so I decided to treat myself. I went to a relatively cheap but delicious italian restaurant and ordered a tortellini as big as my head. 

I was just getting into it, but my phone rang. which is kind of an event in and of itself, given how infrequently someone needs to get in contact with me. I picked it up, and it said “unknown number.” which ordinarily I wouldn’t pick up, because I get enough wrong numbers, just people speaking chinese on the other end and confusion for everyone, but since I was lonely and bored, any human contact sounded good.

“hello?”

“kevin, hi, it’s tessa. [nicole’s friend from her program in pingtung, we met a couple times, she’s great] I’m at the airport right now trying to get to kaohsiung [city in taiwan near pingtung], but they changed my flight and now I’m routed through taipei? can I crash at your place in like 6 hours?”

so I’m thrilled. clearly, god has looked down from on high and decided to take mercy on this poor lonely boy by sending him company from out of the country. 

“yeah, that should probably be okay, I guess. what time are you landing?”

...

later

...

tessa lands at like midnight, has to take a cab the entire 40 minute drive from the airport because the buses closed right before she got there, and shows up around maybe one am.  somehow, she has a smile on her face, despite what sounds like one of the top 5 worst travel experiences I’ve ever heard, involving cancelled planes, broken tickets, and astonishingly unhelpful “customer service.” at least they didn’t lose her luggage. 

she’s going to pingtung to visit youming, the taiwanese boy she started dating right before she had to leave taiwan. unfortunate timing.  she’ll be staying there for a little over a week, and would I want to come down and visit at some point?   hell yes I want to come visit, I need to see more of this country while I still can.  I figure I can dip out of taipei sunday afternoon and stay until maybe 2 pm tuesday. one full day.  we set up very tentative plans, went to bed, and when I went downstairs in the morning, tessa was already gone.

to be continued.

haha, oh man, asia

so i was awake a few nights ago and flippin between the english movie channels and i saw what looked like a game of starcraft. (if you don't know starcraft, you've gotta be either female, over 30, or have played some organized sport at or above the high school level. it's a computer game that some people take really seriously, and sterotypically asians are really good at it [like everything else].)

turns out it was starcraft. aparently they air tournaments here. i was bored enough to watch it, even though i understand none of the professional commentary and don't know the heartfelt stories of the competitors.  i thought maybe you'd want to see it too.

commentary/pregame

drama building...

oh my goodness!

the thrilling conclusion

anyway, i'm mostly just uploading this because i thought it was hilarious that starcraft tournaments are on tv in asia.

taiwanese people are CRAZY about lines

seriously. they see a line and just herd behavior into it. waaay more than in america. I guess it’s nice, like being part of the group? but it gets ridiculous. there’ll be no one in line for a street stall, but if it ever gets above 4 people in line, oh man, it’s gonna be 10 people long in less than a minute.

here’s an example. they just opened this store called uniqlo across from my gym.  aparently it’s like the gap of japan. they opened yesterday. this is one of the two lines out in front of the store. one of two. there’s another one.

 

people are craaazy

taiwanese healthcare

so now that the three day weekend/holiday is over, i was finally able to get to a hospital.  (they close all but the emergency room on sundays and holidays.)

i show up, find internal medicine, hunt down gastro, and tryto figure out what to do next. this super great old nurse grabs me and literally holds my hand to the registration desk. then she makes some joke and everyone laughs except me? "please do something for this poor hopeless foreigner." and everyone does! seriously, how nice is everyone here. so helpful to the dumb american.

so i meet the doctor and he’s fairly helpful, there are a couple mistranslations but his english is probably better than my spanish.  anyway, he gives me some meds for my stomach. slightly different but he recommends it. time to go pay.

edit for parents: the drug is called salazopyrine, it's got a slightly different active ingredient. they use the same mechanism but one has a sulfate group on it, it doesn't get recommended as much because some people are allergic to it. it's the same thing as in aspirin that people are allergic too, so i should be fine. also, some people apparently react suuuper well to it compared to mesalamine. so i figure this might be nice thing to try for a while what with me being in a flare right now. one rare side effect is extreme depression in young men, so if the blog gets really weepy over the next month for no reason, we'll know why lol

i get up to the payment counter and i bust out my taiwanese health insurance card that everyone working in this country gets. she rings me up: 350 nt aka less than 12 dollars. for seeing a doctor and a month of pills. in the usa, the pills alone cost 35 a month, a meeting with a doctor is like at least 30, and all of that’s with insurance that has to get paid for back home! I love this country!

here’s hoping obamacare is this good when it gets all the kinks ironed out. no complaints here.

breaking news: friend?

I made a friend today. her name is madelaine and she is from switzerland and she is here for school and we met because asian kids in a grocery store wanted to take pictures of us.

then we talked about buying cereal and yogurt. maybe we will continue to be friends? time will tell…

anyway this is my life now. I should hire people to take pictures of me with other people so they’ll be my friends. this is the lesson I learned today.

taiwanese animals

all the dogs here are waaaay better behaved than the ones in america.  the vast majority walk slightly behind their owner, whether they’re on a leash or not, and I’ve never seen two dogs out for a walk get in a fight. I don’t know if it’s because we spoil dogs back home or what, but the dogs here are great.

which makes it less terrible when they’re sitting in the kitchens at restaurants or on top of unused tables. there’s no taboo on dogs here, they can hang pretty much wherever they want. lots of stores have like, a spokesdog. maybe the owner doesn’t want to leave it at home, I dunno. but they just hang out by the register and don’t bother anyone. 

wild dogs are a pretty common thing, and cats are allll over the place.  I see like 8 cats a day when I spend a decent amount of time outside. they’re very shy, but the dogs totally just want to be your friend. I always want to pet them, but I also don’t want fleas.

so moral of the story, nobody eats dog here? taiwanese people all say that’s the koreans giving asia a bad name, but the people who visited korea say nobody did it there either. lots of finger pointing and no one eats dog?

trains

okay so people probably know that I live right next to the mrt, taipei’s subway system.  I want to have an article about trains, because I’m just still so excited about them. every day, whenever I get on a train, I just think, “wow, I’m gonna get on a train!”

I guess I was train-deprived as a child, I’m just way too into it now. standing with other people, or even better, all by yourself in an empty station, little red lights on the ground near the tracks start flashing in time with each other. there’s a rumbling noise that gets louder and higher as the train comes down the tunnel, and a huge wind just rips through the tunnel. it smells fresh, I don’t know why, I can’t imagine them putting air-fresheners in the tunnels, but it’s usually really hot, and it’s just this big refreshing relief, and then you get to ride on a train! sometimes they’re even pink and covered with cats! advertisers pay to cover the trains in cute things, how great it this country.

seriously, it’s like one of the highlights of my day every single day. 

okay that’s it for trains. I’m gonna miss trains when I leave here.

saaad day

so now everyone’s gone.  90% of the princeton review teachers, nicole, the friends I met through nicole, everyone, all in one sad weekend. admittedly, it was kind of an awesome weekend, but now that’s over and I’m left with crumbs. well not crumbs, I have jenny, thekla, jack, and angelica, but I never really hang out with jack or angelica and jenny and thekla have their own people.  we’ll probably still hang out outside of work, but probably less because there won’t be a really fun big crowd.

solution: gonna go find this group that plays ultimate frisbee, make them be my friends, and then have lots of fun with them. added bonus: I get to play ultimate again. so rolling with the punches over here. 

still don’t know about the tpr full time job, might find out by friday, but I don’t know how soon it would start.

solution: go traveling around taiwan with my savings for the couple weeks until that job starts, and if I don’t get it, call around to find something else.  odds seem somewhat in my favor right now though.

other than that, been reading a book or two and sleeping late.  nothing huge going on.

more job chaos

so I’ve been talking to a recruiter over the last few days. a recruiter is a nice lady who will put me in touch with places that are hiring for teachers in exchange for about 200 usd. I interviewed with a school today, but it turns out everyone’s hiring people to start on monday, which conflicts with my tpr job and the end of my contract. also, right after I called the recruiter a couple days ago, I got an email from tpr’s hr guy saying oh hey now we are hiring for at least one full time position, you should apply!  he sent it to me and about 6 other people, 4 of whom I know, 2 who are new to me and just show up as email addresses. 

so now I don’t know what I should be doing, because tpr is the better job, but holding out for it may put me in a position where I am less able to get a worse job if I don’t get the tpr thing. which entirely depends on who applies, I know that one of the guys who got the email was a teacher in the us and I pretty much modeled my teaching personality after his, he’s great. so if I were tpr, I’d hire him before me. but this guy also just opened up a restaurant and is doing part-time law work for some us firm, so I would be pretty shocked if he applied. basically, I think I’m the best candidate who will apply, outside of people who I don’t know. 

so it’s a gambling game, go for broke with the nice job or settle for less but safe work. I think I’m gonna hold out for tpr at this point, because I’m just that guy (sorry mom, don’t freak, it’ll be fiiiine).  I was reassured by the recruiter that pretty much anywhere I apply will want me immediately because I give a good first impression and am pretty (her words), which makes me a little more confident in finding a job later. I should know by tuesday definitely, so it shouldn’t be too late to find something.