Well Worth $59.95 + Tax

In Which Rowan Journeys South And Anticipates An Anniversary

About a month ago, my friend Thomas suggested that we go south to Kenting to find a desert he'd heard about.  "We'll hang out on the beach, look at the moon, drink a coconut, wander around in the desert, it'll be great."  

So I went to Kenting with Thomas and Matthew (a friend of his) last weekend, and it more or less blew me away.  I used to play Monkey Island when I was in fifth grade (hello, Aaron, if you ever read this), and the southern tip of Taiwan is just like that, unpixelated.  After taking the high speed rail that wasn't ("Dude," said Matthew, "You took the slow train!"), we got there at nine or so on Saturday night, and rented a scooter to get to our campsite.  We thought we'd be renting tents, but the guy running the camp told us that we could stay in a cabin for a very reasonable price, so we did that instead.  The beach was across the road and through a little gap in the trees, and it was both beautiful and deserted.  It was apparently used in the movie Cape No. 7, which I have not seen, but will now have to look into.  We hung out on the beach for a little while that first night, and I wandered alone down to the shore.  It was many things I've sorely missed: a large body of water, quiet, and dark.  Really dark.  The third night, the milky way was actually visible.  That first night was cloudy, and there were strange, tiny glowing things washing up with the waves.  They landed on the beach and shone blue there for about five minutes before fading out.  We waded around for a little while before turning in.  Thomas found a rather large cockroach in the shower with his foot, which was the evening's entertainment for Matthew and I.  We all more or less passed out right away, and I woke up at 5:30 the next morning to sunlight, birdsong, and a kick in the side.  

I took a shower and walked barefoot down to the beach, where I got to watch the light come up over the hills behind me to hit the waves.  Matthew and then Thomas came down when they woke up, and we went to grab breakfast at a little outdoor café that had very brightly colored koi in a little pond.  After everyone was actually awake, we started on our journey towards the desert that Thomas had heard about.  I rode on the back of Matthew's scooter and we occasionally stopped for pictures, when we couldn't deal with how pretty everything was anymore.  We drank coconuts, as advertised, and eventually came to a place where we could see what we were heading toward.  It looked like a sand dune to me, but that was alright, too.

It was a dune, more or less.  There were even dune buggies irritatingly scooting around on it, with screaming girls and smug looking guys.  It was pretty cool looking anyway, even if I did get a bit sunburned.  I'd bought sunscreen just before we left, but hadn't put any on yet, and by the time I did the damage was already done.  Thomas slathered some on his face and neck around the same time I did, and we went walking around the dune and surrounding area.  I collected shells on the beach and scraped my knee climbing a wall, but we had some shade and food at another small cafe and headed back to our scooters.  It was at about that time that we started to realize just how sunburnt we had gotten, so we headed back to the cabinsite.  The very charming and friendly host took one look at Thomas and told him that we could use his own personal garden of aloe plants to apply to our scorched skin, so I snagged a piece and daubed it on myself before taking a nap.  The gentlemen decided to wash Matthew's scooter and take a walk, insisting that they didn't want a nap.  When they came back, I'd woken up.  They both fell asleep, so I went back to the beach and walked along it for a while before deciding to go wake them up for dinner.  We ate at a great little Thai place that had some wonderful coconut drink and some decent food, then went back again.  We had a few beers and stared at the stars and the waves for a while before going back to bed.  

Matthew had to leave on Monday, so we spent the morning walking around a forest area (where the evil sun couldn't reach us).  First, though, we went and got Thomas a very fine hat.  I bargained the lady down because of a smudge on the brim, and we wandered through the forest happily.  We encountered some interesting snacks in the visitor's center, and Thomas was enamoured enough to buy three of them for the toys included.

Matthew took off after we left the forest, and Thomas and I drove down the coast (we only got lost once) to see the sun set at the southernmost point in Taiwan.  Then we drove back.  We talked on the beach for a few hours, and then I positively had to go to bed or pass out head first in the sand.  Not having any aspirations of being a large flightless bird with a frightening kick, I chose the former.  We went to sleep after a hilarious interaction with our host in which we tried to pay him what we owed him, he reduced the amount by 1000 NT, we tried to pay him what we owed him, he refused, etc.  It was bargaining, but backwards.  We headed out first thing the next morning, at just the right time.  I was still sad to leave, but it was just before I'd have started to get sick of something, like the way my hair wasn't ever really getting clean.

Tomorrow I will be opening my 10 Year Box.  I'm a little apprehensive about this.  I anticipate feelings of inadequacy, hilarity, wistfulness, and pride will abound.  I intend to post results soon.

跟我自己 or With Me Alone

In Which There Are Changes And Journeys

I purchased new glasses a few weeks ago.  You can see the new glasses over there on the right.  They're photo-greys, which is convenient, and also represent the first time I've substantially changed the style of my eyewear in about ten years.

Anyway, while I was at the ocudoc's (I really want to make a joke about Doc Oc, here), I naturally got my prescription checked and readjusted.  They did this with the most fascinating tool I've seen in a while.  Glasses.  But not just any glasses.  Spectacularly Victorian spectacles.  Naturally, I had to try them on, and I convinced Sarah to do so as well.  The results were, perhaps, predictable.

Katy's father and step-mother are here, and we went on a few tours in the early part of the week.  I think they plan to do more, but I'm occupied with work and can't join them.  The first few were lovely, though, and I was glad to be able to go.  We first went to a little temple in a name-of-which-I've-forgotten place.  It was charming, in a gaudy sort of way, although I have still not gotten used to seeing the swastikas everywhere.  Then we made a trip to Yeliu, which was lovely.  Very weird, but lovely.  There were rock formations of sandstone that looked like morel mushrooms, and little round holes in the rock shore that made for very nice rock pools.  We didn't stay nearly long enough, but it was drizzling and we had a tourist shop to get to, so we left.  I got a lot of pictures out of it, though, and Katy and I think we'd like to go back some time.  The famous bit of rock there is called The Queen's Head, and Danny, our guide, told us that it will be gone within twenty years.  Poor girl's head will snap right off when her neck gets too thin.  He also told a story about a noble (but poor, naturally) fisherman who saw some kids swimming in the ocean thereabouts and a storm came up and the kids started drowning, so the fisherman jumped in to save them.  He managed to save one before drowning himself, so the government at the time, wishing to present itself well, paid for the fisherman's five children to attend school.  This is a very Chinese story.

We went on another tour that same day to a little rest-stop-ish place where we looked at the waves and admired the strange stone jacks that were apparently keeping typhoons at bay, but it was a bit of a let-down after the bizarre formations of Yeliu.  Then we went to Jiufen (9 shares), an old gold mining town that's since turned into an artists' village.

The next day we took a trip to Yilan and saw some really fascinating cultural stuff, the best of which was a trio of musicians (later with a singer) playing music which I will try to upload here.

This one contains the trio of musicians: one was playing a hammer dulcimer, one a mandolin of some kind, and one that looked like an autoharp, but a very large one that was tuned by moving around little pyramids under the strings.

Let me know if you'd like to see the other one - I know these get pretty hard for people to load if they've a lot of video or images.

Anyway, the Williams family took off on Monday morning, and we are back to normal before the next visitor shows up.

The Visitor

In which Hobbes Sees Our Lives Up Close (Poor Thing)

Hobbes flew in on the evening of Saturday the third.  Katy and I took a bus (a very posh bus) to the airport.  We were both excited, and reminisced about our own arrival.  Katy made a welcome sign in Chinese.  We held it up through various stages of excitement, anticipation, hope, and then weariness at entirely the wrong terminal for a while, before figuring out that there was a much bigger terminal accessible by sky train (creepily deserted, but effective).  We collected a somewhat worried Hobbes and found our bus back. 

We came back to our apartment and more or less slept immediately that first night.  The next morning I had a one-on-one class at School 8, so we met up afterwards and had dinner at a very nice little noodle place next to Da'an park.  After eating, we went to to see the flowers again.  Katy and Hobbes hadn't seen the show yet, so we wandered around for a bit and tried the candied tomatoes (Hobbes was a fan).  I saw some sections of the display I hadn't come across yet, but went home pretty quickly afterward due to exhaustion.  Katy and Hobbes split off and went to find dinner and the meditation group.

The week was, for me, a blur.  I left on Monday morning to do some editing, met Hobbes and Katy at the vegetarian buffet that I frequent, took Hobbes with me to the School 8 area, and deposited her at a Starbucks with instructions to meet me there after I was done with my classes.  I unfortunately (and unusually) had two that day - a regular class and a make-up.  I picked up Hobbes at 9:10ish and we made our way back to the Linsen area.  On Tuesday Hobbes and Katy went up to do some walking in the northern area of Taipei, while I prepped for my Tuesday class and graded their homework.  They had an oral quiz, and all did pretty well, apart from the two girls who have been entirely uninterested in the whole class.  

Wednesday morning Hobbes and I went to walk around the area with the art park and the art museum.  The art park was closed, but we finally made it into the Story House.  Weird stuff.  It was, when we went, housing a display of television and newspaper advertisements for nine or ten Taiwanese brandnames.  Soap, soy sauce, snake oil, stationary, toothpaste (see hei ren for a somewhat amusing history), and the necessary overpriced gift shop.  No photos were allowed in the building.  After my Sanchong class, Hobbes hung out at home until both Katy and I returned from our classes (another unusual thing - I had another make-up class on Wednesday).  On Thursday Hobbes took herself around and saw the touristy bits of Taipei - Taipei 101, etc - while Katy and I had class and editing.  I got done at 7 on Thursday, after a somewhat disturbing class in which one student was upset and wouldn't tell me why, and met Hobbes at the Taipei Main Station where we got some dinner and hit up the cultural gift shop for "hey, I've been to Taiwan" gifts for the folks back home, I presume.  I tried to find a trinket with the Taipei Railroad symbol on it, but the only one available was a hiddeous little alien figure with the symbol for a head.  Anyone wishing to take up metalsmithing is welcome to send me a Taipei Railroad symbol necklace.  Perhaps I'll find an arc-welder.

Friday morning we headed to the Peace Park area.  It was a pretty park, and we had lunch before-hand at another vegetarian buffet that was quite tasty.  The Peace Park (2-28 Park) commemorates an incident on February 28, 1947.  We wandered around until both of our cameras lost batteries, and then I had to go into work.  I dropped Hobbes off at the Starbucks again, and she uploaded her photos while I taught a couple of classes.  I finished my classes at ten, by which time Katy and Hobbes had eaten dinner at a little restaurant somewhere in the Da'an area.  We all met up back at our apartment and Hobbes and I stayed up while Katy took a nap.  We left the apartment to find transportation to the airport at 4 AM.  The busses weren't running yet, but we were approached by an extra-enthusiastic taxi driver who insisted that he could take us there.

The taxi driver was very nice, in spite of our initial suspicions.  He charged a bit less than the others (we considered the possibility that it might be a scam), and he was non-intrusive for the duration of the forty-minute ride.  He played a CD quietly and let us be giddy from exhaustion in the back seat.  At the end of the ride, we noticed that the music had a lot of harmonics in common with ABBA, and no sooner had that occured to us then a Chinese version of Gimme Gimme Gimme came on.  I asked him to write down the name of the guy singing, and he pulled one better and gave us the CD.  It turns out to be a CD he burned, and written on the disc are the words "hǎo tīng de gē."

We arrived at the airport at about 5:00.  It was deserted.  There was no one at the check-in desk, and after some peering blearily around, we discovered that it would not open until 6:15.  So we sat down in the waiting area and variously went to sleep (Katy), noticed our surroundings (Hobbes), or fought an all-consuming battle against startlingly heavy eyelids (me).  The staff got there promptly at 6:15, and Hobbes checked in and we hugged our goodbyes, then Katy and I made our way back to the terminal from which the busses left.  On our way to the sky-train, we ran into a young mother with a kid on her hip, one on the way, and a touchingly devoted husband who was having trouble with their metric ton of luggage.  We helped them get their baggage together and listened to her spout "Ai-o!"s and gratitude.  We made the bus and I spent most of the trip back staring vacantly at the seat in front of me.  When we got home, I made myself a cup of tea and promptly fell asleep before being able to drink it.

Animals and Children

Animals and Children

There are certain computer and video games in which you have to travel through an area using the information found in a journal left behind by some eccentric loner with occasionally very poor handwriting.  I got a little notebook to take notes in about my classes - not the official class notebooks in which I write my finished lesson plans, so I don't have to worry about making mistakes.  It was intended to be a book full of rough outlines of my lesson plans.  It's turning into that Eccentric Guide in a Spidery Hand.  It contains obscure phrases that correspond to certain computers which must be turned on in a certain order.  It stores the phone numbers of important people who can help you on your way.  It has mysterious admonitions in different colored ink, and occasional notes about the local language.  There are maps that only make sense if you're standing on a certain street.  And it's all in a little plastic-jacketed notebook graced by two stylized monochrome bears and a yellow bird.  The text on the front says: "a cute little milk&charcoal bear."  The bird says hello.

I started my A10 class since our last update.  It went very smoothly.  They're very advanced English speakers.  We talked about concepts like have to vs. got to vs. should and must.  I also have a job editing textbooks that starts tomorrow.  I don't yet know how that will go, but it's extra income doing nitpicky work that I can enjoy without giving it my soul.  More on that as I know more.

Katy got a little sick about a week and a half ago, but I'm managing to so far stay healthy.  Expect news of my ill health next week, now that I've made that claim.  Schools are breeding grounds for illness, and I have two schools, plus whatever bugs Katy brings back from hers.  Fortunately, fresh orange juice is readily available (and I'm thinking of getting a juicer and making it myself, we'll see) on the way to the MRT station at Minquan, so we're getting plenty of vitamin C.  Also, we have lots of garlic to put in our food.

Our food, which we're cooking ourselves, now.  We bought a wok, a sauce pan, and a rice cooker, and those are really all we need.  The Wellcome supermarket (I did not spell that wrong, there are two Ls in the name) has a pretty decent selection of vegetables to put in our stirfried concoctions.  Right now we've got carrots, pea pods, some kind of sprout that doesn't shrivel and die (or vanish) upon contact with heat, a very hearty cabbage that needs to be cooked for a long time, and some stringy mushrooms.  I'm hoping to find some spinach sometime soon, although I'm not sure what to do with it here.  It's not really a stirfry vegetable.  The supermarket also sells a lot of tofu, broccoli, tomatoes, and various other vegetables that I may have seen once in a dream.  We do most of our cooking at night, throwing rice into the Supa Fine rice cooker and vegetables into the wok and mixing them all up later.  Katy wanted me to point out that she also cooks.  I have proof, for those of you who doubt.  She made a very good dinner with carrots and other vegetables, and nothing was burned.

She and I and her conversation partner, Jenny, went to the Taipei zoo on Sunday last.  She told us it was the largest zoo in Asia.  They had no cephalopods.  I was deeply disappointed.  Nevertheless, it was a beautiful place.  We took the MRT there, and used our MRT cards to pay for admission.  These Easy Cards (a rough English translation of the Chinese casual way of referring to them) are possibly the most convenient things in the world.  We saw the Formosan animals first, which Jenny was kind enough to tolerate, but she was the most excited about the penguins.  I thought the lion and cub were entertaining, but the zoo's very colorful version of Chicago's Cows sort of took the cake.  It was a long trip, and we were tired when we got home, but it was fun.  Jenny seems very charming and friendly.  

Today is "Double Ten Day" ("Shuāng Shí Jié" in Chinese) which is Taiwan's national celebration of the ultimate collapse of the Qing Dynasty.  Everyone gets the day off.  Fireworks, military parades (probably what I saw them practicing for when I walked through the Art Park), etcetera.  Katy and I are going to the National Palace Museum.  We've heard good things.

Things That Aren't Classes

We had a movie night on Wednesday at our apartment. Joel and Gill and Dave came over and we watched The Sting, which I had never seen. It was fun to have people over - made me feel like we actually live somewhere. We had another movie night last night at the home of Georgia and Cat, two of Katy's co-workers. We watched The Princess Bride, because no one doesn't like that movie.

On Friday, I did some laundry (which I hung in my closets with the doors open - laundry dries in about 24 hours here, unless it's fabric like denim, in which case it takes more like 30 hours), got some groceries (tomatoes, scary individual cheese slices, and sprouts !sprouts!), made myself a sandwich, and decided I'd walk to meet Katy at her MRT station near Shilin.  The first thing I passed when I walked north of the Minquan/Linsen intersection where I usually turn for the MRT was a pretty building that looked like a temple.  For all I know it could have been a tchotchke shop.  There was a restaurant that had three bird cages outside, and one of them had birds the restaurant manager called "qise" birds, or seven color birds.  They were very pretty and not at all frightened.  The other cages had canaries and finches, but I'd passed them by the time I thought to take a picture.

I walked up to the Art Park, which has clearly seen better days.  Nevertheless, it was nice to be walking in a park.  It smelled like a park, which was nice.  It smelled like 4:00 in a park on a late summer day, and since it was 4:00 in a park on a late summer day, it was a very appropriate smell.  I forget how things are connected until something is familiar and it strikes me as odd.

There was something going on in the military complex next to the park - some kind of rehearsal or drill or something.  I took a few clandestine pictures (I wasn't the only one), listened to the music for a while, and watched them twirl their rifles like batons.  They were very good at it.

I passed the Art Museum itself, which was pretty cool, and the Taipei Story House.  I hung out in another park for a while, watching the airplanes fly overhead and watching some little boy throw his sister's shoes in the sand.  She didn't seem to mind.  After a while I headed north again to cross the river towards Shilin.  I took a bunch of pictures of the clouds (they were very pretty) and set my camera on a wall to take a picture of some leaves.  When I turned around, there was a gentleman in a shocking state of deshabille, casually doing his business there on the side of the road.  I made a hasty exit.  This was clearly not the place for young ladies of delicate temperament.

Every time I pass beneath a bridge here, I want very much for it to be an aqueduct.  It never is, but I can pretend.  This isn't Taiwan, it's ancient Greece.  Complete with huge letters graffitied on a hill in the Roman alphabet.  Just like Hollywood, but different...

As soon as I got to the Jiantan MRT station, where I was to meet Katy, it started to rain.  I had very thoughtfully neglected to bring my umbrella, so I sat under the overhang of the rails and waited for it to let up a little.  As soon as the rain got somewhat more like mist, I made a dash for the nearest café, where I sat down and ordered myself some tea (rose tea!) and toast.  There was some confusion about the toast.  The waitress asked me if I wanted one of two options on the menu, but I knew what neither of them were.  She went back to the woman who turned out to be her mother, and after a whispered conference, the waitress came back and said, quite clearly, "Butter. Or. Penus Creme."  I did my best to hold it together.  "Peanut butter?" I asked.  She shook her head.  "Penus Creme."  Her mother came over and repeated the same phrase four or five times, to make sure I'd heard correctly.  I had.  Then she gestured to indicate little nodules.  "Peanut butter," I said firmly, and made them repeat it.  "You know how you have this word for bird?" I said.  "And how sometimes it doesn't mean bird, but something different entirely?  That is what you are saying.  Peanut butter is the right way."  They laughed and nodded.  I hope that people will correct me when I'm saying terrifically laughable things in Chinese.