December in Taiwan is lovely.

My December schedule is simply lovely. This week, I held two smaller class presentations. For a breather, had a traditional Czechoslovakian "free beer" night on Wednesday (there must have been at least 20 CS-people there this time!), and an IMICS Christmas dinner on Thursday - with majority of first and second year students, staff and several professors. A picture I've stolen from Lily:



It seems that this dinner was the last enjoyable event for most of us for the next few weeks. The remainder of my December schedule:

Dec 13 & 14: A conference on the topic of de-westernization, which all of my classmates 'voluntarily' join.

Dec 23 - a presentation about a TV show / movie through cross-cultural perspective.
Dec 24 - a presentation of the book "Researching Communications"
Dec 25 - a presentation of my research plan

(Christmas? Hello anybody?)

Dec 31 - a presentation of yet another research project

Dec 31 evening - 7 - 10 p.m. If interested, there is an option of joining a lecture on the topic "Demographic Changes and Dynamic Welfare Information System: The Application of GIS in Policy Research"

(I still have to see about this one. Never been to a lecture on New Year's Eve before!)

In the meanwhile, I look forward to finally taking a break and traveling around Asia in January and February. The options at the moment are 1. Philippines 2. Thailand, Laos, Vietnam.

I also became a defender of the reputation of the Czech Republic in Taiwan. As a part of yet another class project, we interviewed a Taiwanese student, who spent 2 years working and studying in the Czech Republic. Some of his notable observations about the country were:

* Beer and wine are not considered alcohol. Therefore, it is perfectly normal to drink beer with breakfast, or to bring a bottle of beer to school class. Huh?

* People who are not heavy drinkers and chain smokers essentially have no chance to make friends with other Czechs.

* Going home from a pub at night, one has to frequently step over drunk, unconscious people sleeping on the pavement.

* In winter, it is quite OK to shower only once or twice a week.

* Czech students (living in dormitories) are lazy to walk to a toilet. So they all have a plastic bottle on their window, and pee inside.

* He heard that Prague was a really dangerous city, but learned that "other than the chance of getting robbed, the city is quite safe"

* When this guy came to Prague for the first time, he met a friendly Czech man, who offered to make my Taiwanese friend a movie star, and invited him to an audition. Only after he arrived there and was asked to remove his clothes by the "director", he ascertained that it is in fact a porn audition.

* And yet, he claims to have loved every single aspect of his life in the Czech Republic.

Now, most of these experiences come from Brno and Třebíč, which I don't know that well, but seriously, is this really an image that an unbiased foreigner gets of the country? I've only been away for 3 months, but still feel reasonably confident that I did not observe any of the above listed characteristics during my 20+ years of life there. Has it really changed so much?