Tuesday 31 March 2009

Stationery poetry

All of my life, I've been using notebooks which always say a single sentence at the back. 'Až dosloužím, chci do sběru.' This simple line has been accompanying me throughout the childhood, every day at school. It was a source of great excitement when I first managed to read it. Later on, I was trying to add, erase or modify letters to give it a funny meaning. When that passed, I simply ignored the sentence, not even noticing it at the back. There's only so much one can do with a simple sentence like that.

I can only be jealous of the children here in Taiwan. Notebooks and other stationery inevitably carry a piece of poetry at the front page. Some of these are undisputable masterpieces. Here's a selection for your pleasure:

Good times are sharing with friends...
I had a beautiful day.

Journey of a paper plane
under the blue sky
riding on a pleasant mind.

Let's listen the message
of ocean plants and animals.
You will be able to meet nice pals.
They are always humorous.

Where are the dreams that we once had?
This is the time to bring them back.
Do we forget or forgive?
There's a whole other life waiting to be lived.

I'll say goodbye... to all my vexation
and by tomorrow i'll
ride my motorcycle
on my way.
Let me take you far
away on a vacation.
Sunshine on my shoulders
makes me happy.

And my personal favorite:

A popular bear, boy bear
lives with his many friends
in an old toy shop in fairyland.


- this one is accompanied by a picture of a teddy bear, who says: "Never say die."

Monday 30 March 2009

What we didn't do this weekend

We had many wonderful plans for this past weekend. Wanted to climb up the Qixingshan, the highest mountain of Yangmingshan, a decent-sized hills just north of Taipei. The weather was bad though, so we gave up on the mountain and looked for other activities instead. First, play some billiards, which is available freely at the university. One just has to borrow the equipment from the staff at the information counter. However, there was noone at the counter, and the cues and balls were locked up. No billiards. Then we decided to go ice-skating. Upon arriving at the Taipei Arena, probably the only place to go skating in Taipei, we found the ice-rink hopelessly crowded. It shouldn't come as any surprise, really, as every type of leisure activity gets hopelessly crowded on weekends. So we decided to come back on a weekday instead.

One thing that turned out well and dissolved all the sorrows was preparing and eating home-made mashed potatoes. That might seem like a too common of a thing to result in such a joy, but consider the Taiwanese environment. When eating out, potatoes are rarely seen, other than few bits in their curry meals. After 7 months of rice (6 times a week), noodles (5 times a week) and noodles made of rice several more times a week, it is natural to start looking for other options. Our local supermarket usually sells only sweet potatoes, which just don't cut it. At last, a more knowledgeable friends directed me to a nearby street market that actually sells proper potatoes at reasonable prices.

The days prior were equally interesting. One weekend before, a professor took about half of IMICS students on a "mentoring trip" to La La Shan (the Lala mountain). In a typical Taiwanese fashion, we spent about 3 hours on the bus driving there (one hour on the freeway, followed by two hours climbing up the mountains in the Taiwanese inland on narrow, winding roads high up over canyons and valleys), then had a lunch, followed by a short walk, then got back on the bus for the trip home, 3 more hours. The trip was only interrupted by dinner break and a short stop at a strawberry farm. See some pics at the end of the post.

On Wednesday, an Octoberfest took place at the university. For a small fee, we got to indulge ourselves in a fine selection of German and Taiwanese beers. The German beer was fine, except for the huge lines and the fact the beer was called Le ble d'or. No way that is a German beer. There were no lines for the Taiwanese beer, which was warm and bad. (though normally the local brews are pretty decent). Seeing how terms and words are used rather liberally here, it should come as no surprise that Octoberfest in Taiwan means drinking Belgian beer in March.

Pics from Lalashan:

A collapsed dam. During typhoons, the little innocent stream actually turns into a big river, fills up the entire river bed and has enough power to break a concrete dam like this.



A trail in Lalashan.



The main tourist attraction are these huge, old trees. Some of them are up to 2800 years old. Our group was however more interest in the centipedes, which were swarming the area.



Some random bridge.



On a side note, I didn't win anything in the receipt lottery.

Tuesday 24 March 2009

Receipt mania

A special time of the month is coming. Time to rummage the wallets, purses, bags and garbage bins for receipt slips from shops and stores. Time to painstakingly check the numbers on dozens or hundreds of the slips, hoping for a positive match. Time to dream about the exotic vacations in a faraway land. Six times a year, this is what we do here. The lucky ones get 200 NTD out of all that, the less lucky ones go over the slip numbers once again, thinking they must have missed something, read the number wrong. The winning ticket must be somewhere in the pile!

What am I talking about? It is a well-kept secret for many newcomers to Taiwan that all official receipt slips are involved in a government lottery. Every two months, winning numbers are announced. Whoever finds that the eight-digit number on their slip matches the winning number, walks away with 2 million NTD. Only a partial match carries lower prize money. Last three matching digits mean winning 200 NTD. I've played the game twice. Collected 60 or 70 slips. Didn't win anything on either occasion, despite using modern technology (MS Excel) to make sure I didn't miss anything. Sure, the odds were against me - 3 three-digit combinations, out of a thousand possibilities, mean that only one ticket in 333 wins. I think I'm almost due my (200 NTD) payday. I've heard of people who have done it. One friend won 4000 dollars once.. But that was karma giving him a small reconciliation as he had been robbed of 8000 dollars one week prior to that.

Tuesday 17 March 2009

Where do I live?

We've been living in our apartment and furnishing it for over two months. We finally decided it was about ready (keeping in mind the fact that I will only live here for a year and a bit more and it is not very practical to bring all the equipment back to Europe), and it was time to celebrate the fact with a housewarming party this Saturday. The doorman watching the entrance was a little concerned when I announced it to him, perhaps worried about a party full of foreigners - we as foreign people, young ones especially, don't have a very good reputation here in that regard. But the neighbors were not banging on the walls, neither did the police come to break the party up (apparently, that happens here. The neighbors don't come to ask you to be quiet, they just call the cops straight away)

Anyways, it was a very successful event. We had 17 guests from 4 continents and 8 countries (Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, England, Finland, Germany, Slovakia, Taiwan) Here we are:



I spent almost 2 months looking for a place last fall, and it paid off, as the place is the biggest I've seen, though the price is the same. Surprisingly, we haven't found any serious flaws that would justify the low price. Sure we have seen a cockroach or two, experienced a little flood and found weird fungus growing on the furniture upon returning from the Philippines, but that seems to be a rather normal thing in Taiwan. The devices to kill insects and drive mold away are readily available and the plumber got here on a very short notice during the flood (and the landlady paid for his services). Anyways, we have three floors: Here's the first - kitchen / living room



And the second floor, kind of a working area. Also big enough to dance, put together large puzzles, accommodate guests and so on.



Third floor is just big enough for a bed. Instead, below is a view from our balcony. A view like this is pretty rare in densely populated Taipei. Luckily, we are at the very edge of the city, at the foot of the mountains. This is not very convenient for most people, but perfect for us, seeing as the university is only 10 minutes' walk away.



The apartment is also fairly hi-tech equipped. Best example of that is the toilet, which has about 5 different buttons on the side, as well as many lights which flash, turn on and off at various times and so on. Said toilet, especially its bidet function received a lot of attention from the guests to our party.

Thursday 12 March 2009

Awkward bits and funny bits

I can't believe it's only the third week of classes. I didn't expect to be this busy with school until June. However, one of my classes is intensive, because the professor is from the States and only staying in Taiwan for several months. In fact, there class will be over in 2 weeks, and that's also when the term paper is due.

I went to the gym earlier today. Of the people there, there was one girl performing some high-level taichi, two girls performing a lower level aikido and a whole bunch of guys lifting weights. Strange thing about those guys, about half of them was wearing jeans. In fact, every time I go to the gym, I see many Taiwanese guys exercising there in jeans. With an exception of tuxedo or a rain coat, I can't think of worse clothes to work out in. I also have to add that several other guys in the gym were walking around without a t-shirt. They spend most of the time checking out their bulging muscles in the mirrors. To make things even more awkward, I passed a football field on the way home, with at least 40 or 50 people on the field, playing football. It was pretty crowded.

As announced earlier, I bought my plane tickets home. I will arrive in Prague on June 18 and go back to Taiwan on September 8. The best deal I could find anywhere was flying with KLM, Taipei to Prague with a short stopover in Amsterdam, for 30 000 NTD (this is some "early bird" special price), so I bought a ticket. I was a little annoyed when just yesterday, I checked their website again out of curiosity, and saw exactly the same ticket for 26 500 NTD. Oh well.

Since I'm a media student now, I've been paying increasing attention to news stories about Taiwan in the Czech media. The job is pretty simple, as there is approximately 1 story per 2 months. As far as I remember, the last one was some time in December, I even wrote a blog post about it. Just recently, another story came out. Any wild guesses what it might be about?

It's about the famous toilet-themed restaurant in Taipei. See the report here.

Finally, one thing I haven't had here yet, are Taiwanese jokes. Here is a couple.

Disclaimer: If you're not fluent in Chinese, you probably won't understand them :) No worries, they are not too funny anyways.

--------------------------------
First joke is a little political. Deng Xiao Ping (the former leader of the Communist party in Mainland China) arrives in the United States for the first time. American journalists are already waiting for him with their questions.

First, they want to test whether he has any knowledge about the country he just arrived in: So they ask him: Do you know what is the capital of the United States?

The poor man doesn't know a word of English. However, he assumes that, like in China, the first question people ask each other is what their name is. So he replies: 我姓邓.

Very good, think the journalists. He's done his homework. They question further. Your wife isn't here with you, where is she?

Mr. Deng hasn't completed the introduction yet, so he answers: 小平.

Oh, you wife went shopping! Say the journalists. How did she go?

Mr. Deng really doesn't know what they are asking him, so he thinks of other common questions people ask each other in China. "They probably want to know my age", he finally concludes.
"八十"

Ah, the wife went shopping by bus, understand the journalists. At this point, they want to go to some serious news reporting, so they ask questions about Taiwan. "Mr. Deng, who do you think will be the next president of Taiwan?"等會!

The journalists write down the prediction. 李登輝 will be the next president of Taiwan. And they want to know more: What about the next one, after 登輝? Who will be the president?

Deng doesn't want to deal with these reporters any more. Whatever, he wants to tell them. 隨便!

Hahaha, wasn't that a wonderful joke? Here's another one, equally potent, but at least considerably shorter. A taxi driver told me this one.

Q: What color is spiderman?
A: White.

蜘蛛人是什麽顔色?
是白的人。

Friday 6 March 2009

The weekend

Today, I'm going to mix things up a bit.

Tänään kirjoitan Suomea. Miksi? Suomi on vaikea kieli. Osaan jo vähän Suomea, mutta haluan harjoitella.

Mitä teen viikonloppuna? Lauantaina nousen myohään, koska en mene yliopistolle. Nooran kanssa syömme aamiaista. Syömme leipää, hilloa, jogurttia ja kurkkua, juomme teetä ja maitoa. Ilma on huono. Se on sateinen ja kylmä, niin että jäämme kotiin. Minä luen kirjaa ja kirjoitan, tyttöystäväni myös kirjoitaa.

Laitamme illallista sitten. Illalla katsomme televisiota tai pelaamme tietokonepelejä. Sunnuntaina aamupäivällä teemme pannukakkua. Syömme mielellämme pannukakkua. Sitten menemme kauppaan. Kaupasta ostamme asuntoon esineitä. Se on todella hyvä viikonloppu.

Don't freak out, considering how long it took me to write these few sentences, even with substantial help from Noora, It will be a while before I attempt another post like this again.

Monday 2 March 2009

Back in Business

First week of the second semester is over, so I'm back to my boring normal Taiwanese life. I spent last week going to different classes and deciding which ones to take and which ones to drop. While many people around me are basing the decision almost entirely on the amount of work required to pass each class (and choosing the classes with the least amount, obviously), this has only played a partial role in my choosing. The other big and important aspect is, when will the class be finished and will it allow me to get out of Taiwan by the middle of June to go back to Europe? So far it seems that my efforts have been successful, I am planning to buy my ticket within the next few days. The date of my return will be announced soon, so that my fans can get ready to come welcome me at the airport :) It will be a return ticket though, I'm still coming back to Taiwan in the fall.

The classes I will be taking this semester are:

Mainland China Communication Studies
Media and Globalization
Political Communication
Human Communication

I expect this to be an interesting mix of a lecture class, research-oriented class, discussion class and a fun class. The professor for the fun class (a Taiwanese woman) had a nice surprise for me, welcoming me with an Ahoj!, as her husband is Czech. Only minutes later, we were cracking inside jokes about mathematicians, as her husband used to study at the Department of Maths and Physics at the Charles University in Prague, as did my brother and his soon-to-be-wife did. (neber si to moc osobně, Oldo.)

This also means that unfortunately, I won't be able to take the by-far-most-interesting class on offer this semester, A Journey Into The World Of Chinese Opera. The class will study the singing, the make-up, it will visit several opera performances and the students will even get to perform some opera themselves.

Grades for the previous semester are also out, and I'm satisfied. The only one that has caused a little confusion among foreign students is a "Morality grade". As Ryan found out for the rest of us, it is a local tradition to grade students on morality. Quite awkward by itself, but it gets really weird upon the discovery that every single student at the university gets a 85% morality grade. Everyone, every semester. And that the grades might be determined by a professor I've met maybe twice in my life. A rumor says that doing something exceptionally good, or something really bad, would cause a change in the grade. The fact that this grade goes on the official transcript may mean complicated explanations to future employers, unaware that being 85% moral is as good as it gets in Taiwan. I can only hope they will put it on in Chinese, hence saving me from the complicated explanations.