normally, this place isn't all that horrible.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Picture comparison - typhoon / no typhoon
Typhoon is long gone now, so as I promised, I took normal pictures of our campus river to compare:
Thursday, 18 September 2008
The first week of classes
The first week of classes is almost over now. After the nightmarish boring typhoon weekend, I got up on Monday and the rain was gone, after almost 3 days. It was still cloudy and wet, but people were walking around as if the ice age had just finished. On Monday we had an orientation and welcome party for my IMICS program. Altogether there are 12 of us (as the first-year students). Half is foreigners, half are Taiwanese. The foreigners apparently come in clusters – we have 2 Canadians representing North America, girls from Chile and Mexico representing Latin America and the Slovakian Lenka and myself representing Europe. This program must be really popular for the Czech people, as another guy, Adam, came by to the orientation. However, he will only start next year and is studying Chinese now. In fact, even the foreigners have all been spending time in Taiwan before the program started. I’m the only one fresh-off-the-boat. The students have very different backgrounds, working and studying in various areas, but so far it seems that the group will get on very well.
Monday afternoon was the mandatory medical check at the university. Fortunately, no leprosy tests this time around, but it was still pretty awkward. All of the masters students (several thousands) had to undergo the check in just one afternoon, hence the checks look a bit like prison admissions. Everybody lined up in a large hall – they handed us test tubes and put us in a line in front of several portable toilets. Then, after filling the tubes one by one, everybody had to proudly walk back around the line with their urine to have it tested. When that was done, the blood giving part came. Again, big line, people one by one sitting with a nurse, having their blood taken. There were some tears and several people fainting. The hard part was over, after that we had a quick dental check, hearing, vision, blood pressure, chest x-ray and questionaires (how many pieces of fruit a day do you eat, when did you start smoking..)
Tuesday was my first Chinese class. I signed up for one that takes place 3 times a week, for 2 hours. The class was opened for people who have studied Chinese before. There are 4 of us altogether – a German guy, Danish girl (with Chinese roots), Dutch guy (with Indonesian roots) and me (with Czech roots). The teacher is a Taiwanese miss, who wouldn’t tell us her age, she appears to be about 18. She is very enthusiastic and active, hence no time to get bored in class. I believe we will be able to learn a lot with her. The first homework due Thursday consisted of answering several questions with about 300 characters altogether. An assignment like this would be really easy to type on the computer, as one can just type the pinyin (Romanized Chinese) and transfer it to characters through software, but being the good and hard-working student that I indeed am, I wrote the whole thing in hand instead. It took a while, but was quite rewarding. Enclosed is a photo of what homework like that looks like.
Later that night, we were sitting in the dormitory cafeteria with several other foreign students, drinking beer. When we got to the point of having about 20 empty beer cans at a table of 5 people, the local students started giving us looks of shock and disbelief. I guess they wouldn’t fare too well in the typical European beer rallies.
Wednesday nights are reserved for Czechoslovakian parties. There is a bar called Roxy 99, which gives 4 free beers to the first 400 people to arrive. So of course, this is a perfectly natural place and opportunity for our little community to meet up.
Weekend is coming up really quickly, and after Friday’s Chinese class, I will have 3 days off, and am planning to spend them exploring Taipei and the surrounding areas. The bigger trips will only come up later, as I joined all the other scholarship students in a “September saving regime”. Basically, there are big and inevitable expenses in September (the tuition, insurance, books etc.), but the scholarship is always delayed this month. Hence, everybody is walking around, looking for cheap places to eat to survive till the end of the month. But then, “In October, I’m going on a splurge..”
I will write more about my classes once I figure out what they are really all about.
Monday afternoon was the mandatory medical check at the university. Fortunately, no leprosy tests this time around, but it was still pretty awkward. All of the masters students (several thousands) had to undergo the check in just one afternoon, hence the checks look a bit like prison admissions. Everybody lined up in a large hall – they handed us test tubes and put us in a line in front of several portable toilets. Then, after filling the tubes one by one, everybody had to proudly walk back around the line with their urine to have it tested. When that was done, the blood giving part came. Again, big line, people one by one sitting with a nurse, having their blood taken. There were some tears and several people fainting. The hard part was over, after that we had a quick dental check, hearing, vision, blood pressure, chest x-ray and questionaires (how many pieces of fruit a day do you eat, when did you start smoking..)
Tuesday was my first Chinese class. I signed up for one that takes place 3 times a week, for 2 hours. The class was opened for people who have studied Chinese before. There are 4 of us altogether – a German guy, Danish girl (with Chinese roots), Dutch guy (with Indonesian roots) and me (with Czech roots). The teacher is a Taiwanese miss, who wouldn’t tell us her age, she appears to be about 18. She is very enthusiastic and active, hence no time to get bored in class. I believe we will be able to learn a lot with her. The first homework due Thursday consisted of answering several questions with about 300 characters altogether. An assignment like this would be really easy to type on the computer, as one can just type the pinyin (Romanized Chinese) and transfer it to characters through software, but being the good and hard-working student that I indeed am, I wrote the whole thing in hand instead. It took a while, but was quite rewarding. Enclosed is a photo of what homework like that looks like.
Later that night, we were sitting in the dormitory cafeteria with several other foreign students, drinking beer. When we got to the point of having about 20 empty beer cans at a table of 5 people, the local students started giving us looks of shock and disbelief. I guess they wouldn’t fare too well in the typical European beer rallies.
Wednesday nights are reserved for Czechoslovakian parties. There is a bar called Roxy 99, which gives 4 free beers to the first 400 people to arrive. So of course, this is a perfectly natural place and opportunity for our little community to meet up.
Weekend is coming up really quickly, and after Friday’s Chinese class, I will have 3 days off, and am planning to spend them exploring Taipei and the surrounding areas. The bigger trips will only come up later, as I joined all the other scholarship students in a “September saving regime”. Basically, there are big and inevitable expenses in September (the tuition, insurance, books etc.), but the scholarship is always delayed this month. Hence, everybody is walking around, looking for cheap places to eat to survive till the end of the month. But then, “In October, I’m going on a splurge..”
I will write more about my classes once I figure out what they are really all about.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Typhoon pics
A view over the surrounding area. Though you can't really see much. Good thing the dorms are so high up on the hill, it will take a while for the river to reach us.
A little yard area in the dormitories. During a typhoon, it can be used as swimming pool.
The few brave people who still went out on the street..
The same brave people, from a different angle. It doesn't really look too bad in these pictures.
There really is a lot of water.
Normally, there is almost no water in this river. I will take a picture for comparison, once it gets back to its usual level.
And the same river, looking the other way. All these buildings belong to the NCCU campus.
We always used to have pictures of presidents in classrooms at schools. Chiang Kai-Shek has statues.
My first TW auto-portrait
Typhoon Sinlaku
My first weekend in Taiwan is almost over now. I had planned a whole bunch of exciting activities together with the other students. We wanted to go hiking on the nearby mountain, explore Taipei and surrounding areas and join some of the Moon Festival (Mid – Autumn Festival) activities. Instead of all that, a typhoon came.
I guess typhoons are pretty common in Taiwan over the summer. Ever since the middle of next week, we were receiving these warning messages.. a typhoon is coming.. We were advised to prepare enough food and water, flashlights, a radio and bunch of other stuff. The power might go off at any time. The international students were walking around with concerned looks on their faces, but soon decided to follow the example of local students, who didn’t seem bothered and were certainly not getting the emergency supplies ready. Soon, more warning messages followed. Please secure all the windows and stay inside at all times. All the campus activities for the weekend were cancelled. Still, the locals remained calm.
On Friday afternoon, it started raining heavily, and it hasn’t stopped since then – at the time I’m writing this, it has been raining for over 50 hours non-stop. The river just outside the campus, normally a little stream with hardly any water inside, can barely hold all the water inside. Walking anywhere outside means walking in several centimeters of water at all times. It really is a little waterworld.
However, it hasn’t looked anything like a major natural disaster. There have been hardly any winds at all – apparently, on the Eastern coast of Taiwan, the typhoon reaches 100 mph, but the mountains block the winds and protect Taipei. There is a youtube video from a typhoon in Taipei last year, with traffic signs flying around, but that hasn’t been the case in this one.
So in the end, most people do end up staying inside the dorms. Outdoor activities are nonsense in this weather, and half the shops are closed anyways. Most people sit by their computers, or sit in the cafeteria, or walk around with bored looks on their faces. I even went downtown with Ester, an Italian exchange student, on Saturday, but there isn’t really much to do. Few people in the streets, few open shops. There wasn’t anything dangerous about this typhoon though. We even saw some Taiwanese doing at least a little bit of their usual Moon festival celebrations. Normally, they are supposed to get together with friends and family, have barbecues and watch the full mean, which should be extraordinarily big at this time. Good luck trying to spot the moon in this weather though. So these guys were sitting on the sidewalk, just outside a shop and still protected from the rain, doing a little barbecue on a gas burner. Well, at least something.
I went around the campus on Sunday to take some typhoon pictures. Those are coming in my next post.
I guess typhoons are pretty common in Taiwan over the summer. Ever since the middle of next week, we were receiving these warning messages.. a typhoon is coming.. We were advised to prepare enough food and water, flashlights, a radio and bunch of other stuff. The power might go off at any time. The international students were walking around with concerned looks on their faces, but soon decided to follow the example of local students, who didn’t seem bothered and were certainly not getting the emergency supplies ready. Soon, more warning messages followed. Please secure all the windows and stay inside at all times. All the campus activities for the weekend were cancelled. Still, the locals remained calm.
On Friday afternoon, it started raining heavily, and it hasn’t stopped since then – at the time I’m writing this, it has been raining for over 50 hours non-stop. The river just outside the campus, normally a little stream with hardly any water inside, can barely hold all the water inside. Walking anywhere outside means walking in several centimeters of water at all times. It really is a little waterworld.
However, it hasn’t looked anything like a major natural disaster. There have been hardly any winds at all – apparently, on the Eastern coast of Taiwan, the typhoon reaches 100 mph, but the mountains block the winds and protect Taipei. There is a youtube video from a typhoon in Taipei last year, with traffic signs flying around, but that hasn’t been the case in this one.
So in the end, most people do end up staying inside the dorms. Outdoor activities are nonsense in this weather, and half the shops are closed anyways. Most people sit by their computers, or sit in the cafeteria, or walk around with bored looks on their faces. I even went downtown with Ester, an Italian exchange student, on Saturday, but there isn’t really much to do. Few people in the streets, few open shops. There wasn’t anything dangerous about this typhoon though. We even saw some Taiwanese doing at least a little bit of their usual Moon festival celebrations. Normally, they are supposed to get together with friends and family, have barbecues and watch the full mean, which should be extraordinarily big at this time. Good luck trying to spot the moon in this weather though. So these guys were sitting on the sidewalk, just outside a shop and still protected from the rain, doing a little barbecue on a gas burner. Well, at least something.
I went around the campus on Sunday to take some typhoon pictures. Those are coming in my next post.
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Dorms
There is a bit typhoon approaching, and it is supposed to hit Taiwan this weekend. I will use this opportunity to briefly describe the dormitories.
The dorms for master's students have rooms for 2 people. (The poor undergrads have 4 people in a room). I share mine with a Taiwanese journalism student called Joyce. The rooms are pretty small - see the picture below. There is one double decker bed, each student has a desk, a chair a wardrobe and a bunch of shelves. Outside of that, there is probably about 5 square meters of empty space. Rooms are equipped with a ceiling fan (we haven't turned it off since i got here) and air conditioning (which we have to pay for. Hence, no aircon in our room.) There is also a telephone and sockets for the internet. That's about it. There is no mattress, pillow or sheets provided (see my previous post). Mattresses have been quite a problem for foreign students - the local people use these very thin "futon kind" mattresses, which are really hard by the western standards. There is almost nothing else available at the university and around. Not surprisingly, there are regular "IKEA missions for soft mattresses".
Bathrooms and toilets are joined, on the floor. They are fairly new and clean. One potential problem I saw in this hall (which has quite a few foreign students) is the fact that most toilets are the squat "hole-in-the-floor" type, and only several of the western ones. However, I haven't encountered a toilet queue yet. Each floor also has a common room (with TV and microwave) and a laundry room. Inside the building, there is also a cafeteria with about 4 "Chinese fast-foods", which serve the typical selection of noodles in soup, fried rice, chinese dumplings and several other things. Finally, a little shop which sells just about anything a student may need - instant food, some drinks, some sweets, soap, toothbrushes, internet cables, towels. Probably no condoms as this is a male-only building. One big relief - they have cold beer down there! I got terrified for a moment once i found out that there are no refridgerators available.
This is what the room looks like - my sleeping roommate as a bonus.
Chinese
As you have probably already guessed, the people in Taiwan speak Chinese. More specifically, Mandarin Chinese is most widely spoken, and it is also the official language.
Some people, especially in the Southern parts of Taiwan, have Taiwanese as their mother tongue. This is a dialect of Chinese, but the differences are really big and it's impossible to understand for someone who only knows a different dialect. Fortunately, here in Taipei one can get around perfectly with Mandarin only (well, fortunately...).
In other parts of the world, Chinese mostly has the reputation of being an impossible language to learn. The sounds themselves are unlike anything else and on top of that, each sound is pronounced in one of 4 different tones, which further distinguish the meaning. The popular example in every language class is the syllable Ma. Based on the tone, it can mean: Mother, Horse, To swear as well as some other stuff.
What really makes Chinese appear scary, is the writing system. Basically put, there is a unique character (or a combination of characters) for every word. The characters contain hints as to what the pronunciation and meaning could be, but one has to have a lot of experience with the language to use the hints. When one approaches an unknown character, it is almost impossible to tell the meaning or the pronunciation correctly. It is said that to read a newspaper, one has to know about 1500 – 2000 characters.
I guess that should be enough to persuade just about anybody that this language really is impossible to learn. But in reality, it’s not that bad. I started learning Chinese 2 years ago, before my trip to Hong Kong – just with books and courses on the internet. I had many Chinese speaking friends in HK, so I tried to talk to them in Chinese as much as possible. One big advantage of this language is the grammar, which is really simple – the words never change, no declinations or weird cases. Hence, the moment you know 10 words, you can already start building sentences. Of course, nobody understood what I was saying at first, but it got better over time. As for writing the characters, the first few dozens take forever to learn, but it gets easier later, as each character is made up of more components (radicals), and there’s not that many of those. In one year, I got to the point where I was capable of smaller conversations on limited topics and of generally getting around in regular everyday situations. I did almost nothing the next year, so I got here with the 1 year of informal studies under my belt.
Since I’ve made a commitment to myself to become fluent during my time here, I try to speak Chinese at every opportunity. Often times, there’s no other choice anyways. Some conversations are easy – buying a bus ticket, or fried noodles, or asking for directions – that’s a routine already. Some are a bit more complicated – like when we were discussing the broken lock in my dormitory with the staff. Still, we worked it out (with a lot of body language and hand gestures), I even learned how to say “lock”, “broken” and “to fix”. It is not always that easy though. Several days later, I went to buy a blanket and sheets for the bed. The shop had all kinds of kinds and sizes for bunch of different blankets and mattresses.. and they were all sealed in plastic, so impossible to look at. The fact that I don’t know how to say any of those things in Chinese didn’t help.
The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, what is this?
Shopkeeper: This is ...
Me: Is this used with the thing you put on the bed?
Shopkeeper: No, this is
Me: No, I don’t want this. Do you have the thing you use with the thing you put on the bed?
Shopkeeper: Yeah, over there. (pointing at a pillow)
Me: No, I don’t want a pillow. I want the thing that is similar to this thing around the pillow (pointing at the pillow case), but bigger.
Shopkeeper: Ah, yes. (hands me a blanket)
Me: No, no. I don’t want a blanket.
Shopkeeper hands me a pillow case:
Me: I want something that is almost like this, but bigger.
Shopkeeper points at something, explains that this is something to wrap the mattress in.
Me: Yes, I want this, but for this thing here (pointing at the blanket)
Shopkeeper gets a confused look on her face.
After about 20 minutes, I bought two items. They turned out to be a case for the mattress (apparently), which is too small for the mattress, and a large, thin blanket. I wasn’t trying to buy either of those things. Slight frustration about Mandarin kicked in.
On a side note, one thing I love here. I was given a name in Chinese – it goes like this:
楊伯瑞. I don’t use my normal name here – ever. I write this on all the documents, this is what they have in the school system and in the bank. My student ID card is in Chinese only and of course, the only name written on there is楊伯瑞.
When I go back home next summer, I will try to get a student discount with that card in Prague somewhere. Really looking forward to that!
Some people, especially in the Southern parts of Taiwan, have Taiwanese as their mother tongue. This is a dialect of Chinese, but the differences are really big and it's impossible to understand for someone who only knows a different dialect. Fortunately, here in Taipei one can get around perfectly with Mandarin only (well, fortunately...).
In other parts of the world, Chinese mostly has the reputation of being an impossible language to learn. The sounds themselves are unlike anything else and on top of that, each sound is pronounced in one of 4 different tones, which further distinguish the meaning. The popular example in every language class is the syllable Ma. Based on the tone, it can mean: Mother, Horse, To swear as well as some other stuff.
What really makes Chinese appear scary, is the writing system. Basically put, there is a unique character (or a combination of characters) for every word. The characters contain hints as to what the pronunciation and meaning could be, but one has to have a lot of experience with the language to use the hints. When one approaches an unknown character, it is almost impossible to tell the meaning or the pronunciation correctly. It is said that to read a newspaper, one has to know about 1500 – 2000 characters.
I guess that should be enough to persuade just about anybody that this language really is impossible to learn. But in reality, it’s not that bad. I started learning Chinese 2 years ago, before my trip to Hong Kong – just with books and courses on the internet. I had many Chinese speaking friends in HK, so I tried to talk to them in Chinese as much as possible. One big advantage of this language is the grammar, which is really simple – the words never change, no declinations or weird cases. Hence, the moment you know 10 words, you can already start building sentences. Of course, nobody understood what I was saying at first, but it got better over time. As for writing the characters, the first few dozens take forever to learn, but it gets easier later, as each character is made up of more components (radicals), and there’s not that many of those. In one year, I got to the point where I was capable of smaller conversations on limited topics and of generally getting around in regular everyday situations. I did almost nothing the next year, so I got here with the 1 year of informal studies under my belt.
Since I’ve made a commitment to myself to become fluent during my time here, I try to speak Chinese at every opportunity. Often times, there’s no other choice anyways. Some conversations are easy – buying a bus ticket, or fried noodles, or asking for directions – that’s a routine already. Some are a bit more complicated – like when we were discussing the broken lock in my dormitory with the staff. Still, we worked it out (with a lot of body language and hand gestures), I even learned how to say “lock”, “broken” and “to fix”. It is not always that easy though. Several days later, I went to buy a blanket and sheets for the bed. The shop had all kinds of kinds and sizes for bunch of different blankets and mattresses.. and they were all sealed in plastic, so impossible to look at. The fact that I don’t know how to say any of those things in Chinese didn’t help.
The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, what is this?
Shopkeeper: This is ...
Me: Is this used with the thing you put on the bed?
Shopkeeper: No, this is
Me: No, I don’t want this. Do you have the thing you use with the thing you put on the bed?
Shopkeeper: Yeah, over there. (pointing at a pillow)
Me: No, I don’t want a pillow. I want the thing that is similar to this thing around the pillow (pointing at the pillow case), but bigger.
Shopkeeper: Ah, yes. (hands me a blanket)
Me: No, no. I don’t want a blanket.
Shopkeeper hands me a pillow case:
Me: I want something that is almost like this, but bigger.
Shopkeeper points at something, explains that this is something to wrap the mattress in.
Me: Yes, I want this, but for this thing here (pointing at the blanket)
Shopkeeper gets a confused look on her face.
After about 20 minutes, I bought two items. They turned out to be a case for the mattress (apparently), which is too small for the mattress, and a large, thin blanket. I wasn’t trying to buy either of those things. Slight frustration about Mandarin kicked in.
On a side note, one thing I love here. I was given a name in Chinese – it goes like this:
楊伯瑞. I don’t use my normal name here – ever. I write this on all the documents, this is what they have in the school system and in the bank. My student ID card is in Chinese only and of course, the only name written on there is楊伯瑞.
When I go back home next summer, I will try to get a student discount with that card in Prague somewhere. Really looking forward to that!
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Campus pics
The Administration building of the university. It looks like the Hilton hotel in Prague, and is almost as big.
Buildings for the Departments of Social Science and International Affairs (edited by Lenka :). Almost every department has its own building of similar size.
This ugly concrete bunker is actually the NCCU gym. Football / rugby field in the foreground.
Arts center
You might think this is one of Taipei's prisons, but in fact, it's the girls dormitory - notice the barbed wire on the fence. They are taking the separation of sexes very seriously. I guess they are worried about guys trying to storm the building.
Muzha / Wenshan. A neighborhood adjacent to the university. These are typical Taiwanese residential buildings.
A view in the other direction. The large building on the right belong to the university.
On the way from the main campus area to the dorms, one has excellent views of the Taipei 101 popping out behind the hills. Especially impressive at night.
I can never understand how can someone play basketball in 30+ degrees, when the sun is shining.. The local students are totally content with that though.
Outside the university - a typical back alley in the neighborhoods of Taipei.
Just outside the main gate. Every street in the city looks like this - the ground level is shops and restaurants, no unused spaces. The locals live on the streets, sort of - sitting outside their shops, chatting, eating, doing their work.. (that includes cooking, repairing mattresses, washing the dishes etc.
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