It's all weird. Weather, activities, people..

The last 2 weeks have been quite intense, with 5 presentations, a paper and several small yet annoying homework assignments. Now that I'm done with those, there are only 3 final papers to write and 1 book to read. Piece of cake (or maybe not).

I also got to try several rather unusual activities here recently. Well, they would be pretty normal in Europe, but not so much in Taiwan. First of all, after months of preparations, we finally got to go ice-skating. They have a really nice, big, new arena in the center of Taipei, with an ice-rink which is always open. Going on a weekend turned out to be impossible, as there were so many people that I couldn't even see the ice. Literally. But there was almost nobody on Monday evening, other than the few children involved in their figure-skating practice and a group of young adults, who apparently saw ice for the first time in their lives. As representatives of ice-hockey nations, we fit nicely in the middle between these two groups in terms of the skating ability. Upon renting the skates, we also had to rent a helmet (mandatory) with the option of also renting knee and elbow pads. We frowned upon these, but immediately after stepping on the ice, a member of staff came to us, insisting that we do wear the helmet.

What's even weirder, I got to play floorball here in Taiwan! For those of you who don't know, floorball is a game a little like hockey, played with a stick and a ball. It is very popular in several selected countries of Europe (Sweden, Finland and other Nordic countries, Switzerland, Czech Republic), also played in some other European countries as well as Singapore and Japan, and virtually unknown everywhere else. Taiwan belongs to this everywhere else group. Obviously, the equipment for the sport is also not available here. However, I discovered through my contact in the local Swedish community that they do have several old, broken sticks (many of them repaired many times) and balls and occasionally get together and play. Having played every week for several years, but not at all for the past year, I missed the game a lot. Got to join these Swedes few weeks ago and it was indeed a lot of fun.



On Saturday, I spent a pleasant afternoon at a foreigners' picnic in a park in the middle of Taipei, sitting in the mud, tasting all the delicious things people brought and getting to know other foreigners living here. Shockingly, the weather was nice that day. Shockingly, because it has been really weird in recent weeks. We've usually had 2 or 3 overcast, rainy days followed by one or two really nice ones. Recently though, it changes about every 60 minutes. Nice and sunny for a while, then a thunderstorm with buckets of water pouring down all of a sudden. We even had a small earthquake last week - about the third I've noticed during my time here; earthquakes are common on the East coast of the island. There were 27 of them since the beginning of the year already. Most are not noticeable in the Taipei area though.

Back to the rain issue though. Seeing how the weather is, I seriously have to question the logic of the Taiwanese people in their love for scooters. Sure, they are cheap, convenient and fit well into the city traffic, but they don't make much sense in this weather. The weather is very unstable. It rains a lot. Often times, it's pouring rain. It's scorching hot in the summer, and buses and subway are air-conditioned, unlike scooters. And yet, people here don't seem to be concerned. When it's raining, they simply put on a wonderful plastic raincoat (usually pink or yellow) and set off for the streets. People also like to wear jackets backwards, when driving a scooter. Perhaps it's more comfortable that way? Not sure. I also have yet to figure over why do some scooter drivers wear oven gloves.

This is a fancy raincoat.



OK, last few notes to point out: People have really strange public transportation manners. When there are two unoccupied seats next to each other on a bus, many locals will sit in the aisle seat, leaving the window seat empty. When another passenger expressed a desire to sit in the window seat, the aisle seat person won't scoot down, or stand up to let them in. Instead, they simply stay where they are, letting the other passenger squeeze past them, through the tiny space between the knees and the seat in front. The more polite ones will push a few centimeters back into the seat or slightly rotate their body to generate an extra inch of space. The high level of propensity to push and squeeze is further confirmed, when, on a crowded bus, passengers from the back of the bus choose to squeeze through the entire bus to get off through the front door, rather than taking the door in the middle (which is also open and which they had to pass on their squeezing mission.)

And finally, the other day I was switching through the TV channels and a golf tournament was on. Tiger Woods was getting ready to tee off.. and the Chinese commentators were calling him
老虎 - Lao hu, which in Chinese means tiger. They translate everything into Chinese! Normally the translations are phonetical though - so San Francisco in Chinese is [Sheng fu lan xi si ke], Prague is [Bu la ge], but I've never heard meanings translated like in the Tiger case. I wonder if they called George Bush the Chinese word for bush too?

A neighborhood which I pass on the way to school.

As for plans for the next days and weeks, we are planning a trip to the East Coast of Taiwan this weekend, a Chinese proficiency exam next weekend and a 4-day trip to Korea two weeks from now. I have to get a close look at what games those North Koreans are playing with their missiles.