At the moment, my biggest concern is what to do about malaria prevention. The advice I'm getting is mixed. While there is some risk of malaria in the Philippines, including the parts on the itinerary, it doesn't seem to be too serious. Malaria pills are an option, though these would only lower the impact of the disease, not protect me completely. Also, the pill that seems to be most available is the infamous Lariam. Lariam is fairly inexpensive and effective, but it has quite severe potential side effects - including depression and suicidal tendencies. However, I've already taken Lariam twice before, during my trips to South Africa and Cambodia, and the idea of jumping down the bridge never crossed my mind during those trips. So it should be quite safe.
To celebrate the end of the semester, we've had several parties here in the recent weeks. First, we've had an IMICS cooking party - all of my classmates as well as the significant others (wherever applicable) gathered at the house of one of our professors, and each person cooked a dish. It was my intention to make bramboráky. It quickly became clear that the zemiakové placky, which Lenka decided to do, are in fact the same thing, and so Czechoslovakia once again reunited, over the stove in this instance. The other party was a beer party. There is a pleasant little bar in downtown Taipei, which offers 3 hours of unlimited consumption of beer for 199 NTD. As any Czech will confirm, it is possible to drink a lot of beer in 3 hours, making this a very favorable deal.
As we were sitting there, Kai - a Canadian classmate - received a call from this Taiwanese guy. He was asked to go play in a commercial the following morning. As it turns out, the Taiwanese marketers like to cast foreigners in their commercials - perhaps they seem more trustworthy, or help the products sell better. Who knows. Thing is, there are not many foreigners in Taiwan, so the producers have to take whatever they can get. Many foreigners around the table shared their own experiences, seemed like i was the only one who hadn't done anything like that. That was about to change soon. Kai was busy on Saturday and couldn't do the commercial, so he asked around the table if anyone would be interested doing the commercial instead. Don't ask me why, but I agreed. Therefore, I found myself getting up early on Saturday morning and traveling to a video studio. There, they put a shirt, a tie and a white coat on me. I was asked to pretend to be a doctor, and to say some (likely fabricated) statements for the camera. The advertisement was for "Emu oil", basically some lotion oil. I convinced the viewers that this product contains only natural ingredients, which will never cause side effects to our skin. It has amazing effects for healing wounds from cuts, burns and bug bites. It has been around for centuries and as an expert, I can confirm its miraculous effects. Extremely unethical by Western standards and apparently, these things are quite arbitrary in Taiwan. In my "defense", they pay good money for little effort. I just hope nobody tries to beat me up when they put on the emu oil with good permeability and all the wonderful natural ingredients and it gives them a rash.
In case you were wondering, I'm not going to the Philippines alone. Joining me is Noora, a (future) student of Chinese here at Zhengda, and incidentally also the person I'm sharing the new apartment with. We've been exploring Taipei a bit better in the recent days. Few pictures follow:
The Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. I think that's what it is officially called at the moment. Like with almost anything, Taiwan is very polarized on the Chiang Kai Shek issue. For most of the new Taiwan history, he was the national hero without doubt, with statues all over the place, the airport named after him, having this humongous memorial etc. However, the other political party doesn't like him too much, so every time they are in power, they change the names of every CKS monument. So this building was a "National memorial" (or something like that) for a while, but now it's probably back to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall.
The National Theater of Taiwan
Noora & Borek
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1 comment:
Zdar,
docela ti závidím cestování... Já jsem se vrátil před dvěma týdny z Kolumbie/Venezuely a zase bych vyrazil. A to jsme se dostali k malárii - za celou dobu, co jsem tam strávil, jsem potkal jenom dva lidi, co řešili nějaký medikamenty proti malárii, tak bych to nijak nehrotil. Chce to mít nějaký silný prášky pro případ nouze, než se dostaneš do nemocnice, ale jinak... podívej se na mapu malárie a pokud to bude oblast se slabým výskytem, tak stačí repelent (to mi řekli na očkovacím středisku pro Prahu východ...). Jinak Lariam je v pohodě, ale jeden kámoš kámoše měl nějaký duševní obtíže. Nicméně na posledním obrázku, co tu v postu máš, je pěkný pár? He?
Čaf.
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