A Mother's Love

Over the course of human history, there have only been two great inventions.

Sure, there have been plenty of pretty good inventions: the yo yo, the electric spaghetti twirler, the polio vaccine, etc. But all those pale in comparison to the two greatest gifts ever given to the world:

The first was the Gutenberg printing press. The second was the tampon. One was the springboard for modern democracy. The other made every day of the month worth living for half the world's population. I'm not going to say which was more important. Okay, I am: the tampon.

There are some super old printing tiles at the National Palace Museum, but I have no idea where Taiwan is hiding all the tampons. They cannot be found.

In most all grocery stores there's an aisle full of pads, all shapes and sizes, all variety of pastel packaging (cue: shudder). Then, hidden in some dark corner, maybe there's one sample-size box of o.b.

I emailed my mom and asked her to send me my matchstick jeans and Basic Economics: A Citizen's guide to the Economy. My dad bought the book for me three years ago. Now that the world economy is going to hell in a hand basket, I need to actually read it. If I'm going to spend the first decade of my working life in a bread line, I should know why.

I suggested to Mom maybe she could substitute packaging peanuts with tampons. I let her know if she couldn't find my book and jeans, just sending a box full of tampons would also be acceptable. Because, for serious, there are none here.

Mom sent all three items, bless her heart. Now I can get educated, I can wear my fancy pants, and I'm not confined to the couch for an interval of the month lamenting woman's lot in the world.

Plus, since Ma sent the tampons in the original boxes, I have a delightful centerpiece for the dining table. Every night I look up from my rice bowl and this big blue pyramid reminds me of all the wonderful things America has to offer.

It Takes All Kinds

I've had rotten luck making friends here. Sure, there's the good folks at the Correspondents Club, but they're mostly older than me. And they have things like careers, and spouses, and savings accounts - all of which diminish our ability to relate.

I'm looking for other direction-lacking, twenty-somethings like myself. I thought I would find plenty of these teaching, but I teach at small schools without many foreign teachers. I'm sure there are oodles of nice, well-adjusted people teaching English all over Taiwan - but I haven't found them.

What I have found are a handful of other foreigners who I don't want to be friends with, but who I will gladly make fun of. They are, in no particular order, as follows:

The Overly-Loud American

A short guy with a lip stud that reminded me of Blink 182. He was eating lunch today at the same pizza joint as I was. And he was chatting with a tall blonde with a German accent.

"What did they make you do for a health check?" he asked her.

I couldn't hear her response, probably because she is a conscientious person who understands what a reasonable voice level is for a tiny restaurant.

"When I came I had to have the full deal, had to go see a doctor, he rubbed my back, and felt all up on my nuts. I had to take a TB test, they took blood, and they even wanted a stool sample. So I had to shit in a bowl."

To me, pizza is sacred. For years I ate it several times a week. My mom regularly worked 10- and 11-hour days when I was in high school. We had pizza Wednesdays, and we always ordered enough so I could eat it for breakfast through Friday, plus have a couple slices for afternoon snacks. Now I only get to eat it about once a month. When I'm having my pizza time, the last thing I want is to hear about is someone pinching a loaf into a piece of Tupperware . Thanks, asshole.

My health check for my Taiwan work visa only entailed a blood sample and a chest x-ray. There was no securing of the feces required.

The Smarmy Salesman

I have nothing against most salesmen, just this Australian one we met shortly after arriving. He was a few years older than us. He was in Taipei selling advertising for an insert in the Japan Times. The problem was he was telling people he was a journalist from the Japan Times, which was a lie. He was an ad salesman.

We met him a couple times because he wanted James to do translation on the phones for him. But he only wanted to pay in peanuts, and when James realized how duplicitous the whole deal was he told the guy no thanks.

We nixed him from our potential friend list. However, we did get significant mileage out of him as entertainment. On the bus, in the subway, at the dinner table, when there was nothing else to talk about we would have whole dialogues ribbing his deceitful pitch in our best Australian-accent impressions. This went on for several weeks:

Me: "This is DYE-no, I'm co-ling from th jaPAN Times. I wahnt to know if the chancellah received my fax."

James: "Yes. I'm a jah-nah-list from the jaPAN Times, may I please speak with his secretary? It's about an important intahview."

Me: "PLEASE put me threw to his secretary!"

I realize this isn't a credit to mine of James' sense of humor. It merely indicates how desperately we need to meet new people.

The Self-Righteous Gap-Yearist

A couple weeks ago we met another American guy, our age, who has been in Taiwan for a year and plans to spend one more year in-country. James and I chatted with him for 15 minutes, an interval of time in which Self-Righteous Gap-Yearist told us how he was right about everything.

On the subject of spending a whole year away from home:

Me: "I figure all my friends will be doing pretty much the same as they are now when I get back, only they'll be making a little bit more money than me."

S-R G-Y (accusingly): "Why would they make more money than you?"

Me: "Um, you know - because they'll have been working a whole more year."

S-R G-Y: So what you NEED to do is go home and parlay your time abroad into a higher pay-grade.

On the LSAT:

Me: "Yeah I took it but I canceled my score."

S-R G-Y (again, accusingly): "WHY would you do that?"

Me: "I didn't think I did very well. And everything I've read says schools only like to see one score."

S-R G-Y (with much triumph): "But they can see you canceled your score too."

I muttered a non-committal response to this. See, S-R G-Y was about to take the LSAT again (only he hadn't canceled his first score), so I can see where this was a point of sensitivity. However, everything I've ever read about law school says if you don't feel super-duper on test day, cancel your score (in which case you don't get to see it).

I'm not sure I'll ever retake it. More and more I'm thinking my crummy test day was God's special way of telling me I will never fill the shoes of Judge Mathis.

Then I asked S-R G-Y what he wanted to do once he gets back home. Ideally, he said, he wants to be secretary of state. At least he aims high. Hillary Clinton, stand back.

The Asianphile

It's not so much personal observation as platitude: A compelling reason foreign men come here is to date the Asian honeys. Don't believe me, see Stuff White People Like - the all-encompassing list of white folks' turn-ons.

However, the Asianphile I met was a Canadian lady. I met her in between interviews. The supervisor was making copies so we chatted for a couple minutes. It was mostly what you'd expect - how long have you been here, where do you live, etc.

But in two minutes' of mingling she made a point of letting me know:

Her: "I live with two Taiwanese."

Me: "Oh, Yeah."

Her: "Yeah. I don't really hang out with..."

White people. She didn't say it but what she meant was white people. I promptly crossed her off my potential friend list, because - uhh, you know - I'm white.

How am I supposed to respond to that? Offer congratulations? Right now I only hang out with Asians too, because I only know James' family - not because I've forsaken whitey.

Her: "Yeah a lot of the other people here ... they're in the bar until 4 a.m. All they do is drink..."

The golden takeaway from this not-very-interesting conversation was all my potential friends are waiting for me in the bar. At least I know where they are now.

The Best of Taichung Grocery Store

This weekend we stopped in to your average grocery store in a small town I've since forgotten the name of. While everyone else busied themselves buying food for us to cook in the mountains, I took pictures of my favorite food stuffs not found in the old USA.

Digestive wheat. Or as I like to call it, wheat package that makes me think about poop.

Pudding dog! A dog full of bite-size pudding packets.

Crying girl ramen. She's so sad. And her face is messed up. Buy these instant noodles

James Quote O' The Day

"How come when you try to look hot you just look slack-jawed and stupid?"

Isn't that charming?

The context makes it less appalling: We were standing in the elevator and I asked him if my glasses made me look like a sexy librarian. Whenever I make a sexy face, I try to hyper extend my jaw. Hasn't anyone else ever noticed that high couture models never have their mouths closed? I figure the more molars you can see, the sexier. Not so, says James. Jerk.

Adventures in Taichung

James and I were at the station buying our high-speed rail tickets to Taichung before 7 a.m. Friday. I tried to stay awake for the 40-minute ride south, but staying up late watching Wild at Heart got the best of me and I slept the whole way.

Jojo was asked to give a keynote speech at an ecotourism conference at Yushan National Park. He and Joma invited James and me along. When the four of us stepped off the train we were greeted by a man with park-service green pants and betel-nut brown teeth. He drove us to the Yushan National Park building, about an hour from the train station.

We abandoned Jojo for his speech-making, and the park service dude drove Joma, James and me to ChuCheng, a small town once supported by logging, now supported by tourism.

Once supported by logging, now supported by tourism ... that's an apt description for Florence, Oregon - my "permanent" address.

Like good tourists, we went to the logging museum. I took pictures of pictures in the logging museum because they reminded me of photos I've seen of the olden-days Flo'.


The museum also had a piece of meat-shaped wood and a cabbage-shaped wood, akin to the meat-shaped rock and jade cabbage at the National Palace Museum.

Outside the museum there were several pairs of stilts. I had the opportunity to demonstrate the fruits of 11 years spent as an only child.

See how happy I am?

It's because I'm totally owning James at stilts.

Before I had to wipe poo off Billy and Ricky's asses, I spent many a summer day by myself. I walked up and down my driveway on my plastic stilts. Up and down. All alone. It was a long driveway. And here I am today with all the obnoxious winning traits of a first/only child plus a black belt in stilt walking.

This was another fun toy outside the museum, the trick was to walk in unison.


We visited a plum winery. I don't like plum wine, too sweet. They also distill liquor from plum here, which is more gag-inducing than a warm shot of your cheapest grocery-store label vodka. Horrible. I did buy some plum vinegar, though. Joma told me Asian women drink vinegar to keep their weight down. I have dim hopes of ever acquiring the figure of an Asian woman, but plum vinegar is delicious - not too bitter - so I'm going to drink a little every night. After lunch Jojo rejoined us and we drove down to Sun Moon Lake for a boat ride. Sun Moon Lake is Taiwan's biggest honeymoon destination.


At the risk of infuriating any Taiwan Touch Your Heart tourism officials who may stumble upon my blog, I was underwhelmed. I spent the summer before last in my hometown Anchorage, Alaska. Every other weekend I hiked into some new, beautiful, frigid mountainy valley with an alpine lake. The weekends I wasn't backpacking, I was driving from Anchorage to Seward to crew sail races. That drive is replete with gorgeous views of mountains and water. I've been making that drive since I was 9 months old. I'm a hard sell for lake views.

After the lake we drove to an experimental tea factory. I was hoping it would be staffed with midgets wearing feathers and body paint doing interpretive dance. Unfortunately, the only experimentation going on was with the tea itself. This particular factory was cultivating red tea to sell to Russians who will pay top-dollar for it. On our way out of the factory, the tea people gave each of us several boxes of different teas and one box each of their top tea. Jojo looked extremely uncomfortable, which makes me think that one box of tea was pretty expensive.

At dinner we were joined by three more college professors who were conference attendees. They'd all studied in the U.S. and were kind enough to converse in English at the table. When we finished eating it was dark out. The seven of us piled into a van for a two-hour ride up a twisty mountain road to our accommodations.

We spent the night in a Japanese-style lodge built in the 1920s (when Taiwan was a Japanese colony). There wasn't any heating, there were no bathroom towels, and no pillowcase covers. The bed, like a lot of Asian beds, was very hard. But there was a boss karaoke system in the common area. Priorities, right?

Two hours of withstanding hairpin turns in the backseat coupled with the change in barometric pressure gave James a splitting headache. That - or he is developing migraines. He's hoping it was the former.

James is usually exceptionally healthy. When he gets a cold, I get pneumonia. Once we went out with friends at 'SC to our favorite burrito stand and all ordered chili fries. The rest of us dashed home clutching our stomachs and squeezing our sphincters. James strolled back hunting for more food he could maybe eat off the ground since he wasn't quite full. For having such a strong constitution, he's been a sick old goat since we got here.

I went to bed feeling awesome about how much healthier I am than he. Then I got up in the middle of the night, and when I came back to bed I hit the headboard and gave myself a small black eye. I guess that makes us even.

Saturday we hiked around Lulin Mountain.

From Taichung Weekend

Pretty

Saturday night we moved down the mountain to a different Japanese-style lodge with even more uncomfortable beds tatami mats. The Japanese got sleep all wrong. In the morning my back hurt so much I tucked my knees under my chest and attempted to get another twenty minutes' shut eye in the earthquake-drill position.

I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese...

But before we went to sleepy-sleep, the college profs and we busted out the boss karaoke system that this Japanese lodge had as well. Taiwanese culture is very musical. I challenge you to find four random middle-aged professionals in the U.S. who can carry a tune together when handed a mic. And do so willingly.

There was a limited English selection. James and I sang "Unchatined Melody"

We got back to Nankan late this afternoon, and not before we received an open invitation to visit some of the profs in Hualien!

Check out more pictures from the weekend here.

I' COMING!!

I don't know what this bus ad is selling, but whatever it is I'm buying. Don't you dig it?

Breaking my Vow of NaBloPoMo

You probably don't know unless you're participating, but it's NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month. To partake of the NaBloPoMo, one is supposed to blog every day.

However, we are headed to Jade Mountain for the weekend. Jade Mountain is the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia, if you count Taiwan as part of Southeast Asia, I'm told.

I'm up and it's not even light out because we have to catch the train at 7 a.m.


We'll be back Sunday, so I'll only miss one day. Although, it seems like kind of cop out to have one of my blog posts for NaBloPoMo be about how I'm going to fall short of NaBloPoMo perfection.

Oh well. I need to go find a hat.