Struck Down in My Prime

I've been afflicted with the Asian flu. Well - I assume it's Asian. I can't possibly be to blame for it.

Nothing much to report. I bought two weird plants to cheer up my bat cave, and they're doing well. Thirsty little buggers though.

Stuff Wot I Are Doing

Here's a pretty typical day in Taiwan...

6:30am - woken up by incessant construction noise.

6:35am - squashes pillow over head in attempt to block out the above.

7:30am - woken up by woman on megaphone, yelling at kids at the high school across the road. Mostly it's in Chinese but occasionally she shouts "L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E, LOVE LOVE I LOVE YOU!"

7:30-7:45 - curses existence of teachers, megaphones, high schools, and location of apartment.

10am - gets up.

11:30am - wanders off to school.

11:30 - 1:30pm - stares dumbly at "lesson plan", aware of irony in the name. Am usually convinced I am teaching them nothing, and certainly have NO plan. Am eventually rescused by kindly Chinese Teacher, all of whom I suspect think I am retarded.

1:30 - 4pm - the lesser known Chinese torture technique. Insanity and death by 7-year olds. Emerge older, greyer, deafer, and covered in grime. Why grime??? Well, despite all attempts to ward them off, kids perversely adore me. Sticky fingers all over me, hands on my leg while I mark their work, gifts bestowed...

4 - late-ish - sit in Teachers Room, attempting to plan next day's events. Eventually convince myself my time would be better spent eating noodles and watching TV on my laptop. Drag carcass home.

late-ish - bed time - Eating noodles and watching TV on my laptop.

Bed time - lies in bed listening to neighbours. One sings in the shower, one right next door can be heard pissing in the toilet. Another is a firm believer that phlegm belongs out of the body at all costs. Attempt to sleep, but can already hear woman with megaphone...

Fun stuff! The weekends are slightly different, I swear.

Fist Shake for America

Damn Americans and their bully-tactic cultural imperatives! Or something like that. Taiwan is gripped by Halloween fever. And since I teach the retarded - whoops, I mean CHILDREN... I have to bloody well dress up in some stupid costume, and take the little basta... whoops, I mean darlings (my spelling is atrocious today!) around other classrooms to beg for highly processed sugar infested treats.

What an inspired idea. Let's pump them full of MSG, saturated fat, complex sugars and food colouring. Then let's try to teach them English.

3 Tigers and Some Weevils

So, you probably remember how much I love spaghetti puttanesca. I think I ate it about once a week at the very least in NZ! I've been having withdrawal symptoms, so I bought all the ingredients and settled in for the evening for a saucy treat. Which took some skills, as I only own 1 saucepan.

Anyway, all was well until I opened the pasta and dozens of nasty weevils ran out! I assume they're weevils - but they honestly looked more like fleas only with longer legs. EW YUCK. For about 10 seconds, the Evil Jody in my head was very persuasive... "Oh well, they'll die in the hot water. You can still eat it, you can you can..." But then Good Jody managed to wrestle the microphone away from her, and firmly declared it to be a bad and possibly deranged idea.

So I just had sauce for dinner. Ah boo.

Tofu

It really is delicious.

Two Horses and Two Tigers

1. It's taken me a while to notice, but Taipei doesn't seem to have any stupid-ass boy racers! And no drunken teenagers either - probably because the poor kids are in school until 9pm every night and Saturday mornings as well...

2. There's a horrible sulphur smell coming out of all the storm drains today. Should I worry?

3. The taxi drivers in the city are mostly from outside of Taipei. They come here during the week, and work ALL the time, then go home on the weekend. They sleep in their cars, mostly under bridges or in the few pockets of semi-rural areas still remaining in the outskirts of the city. You have to keep an eye on your driver if you take a cab anywhere, in case he falls asleep!

4. All the bread here is sweet. It's awful. And you don't even want to know how many "treats" they can make out of red beans and rice. Blurggghh.

5. In Chinese, the answer to "how are you?" (assuming that the answer is going to be 'so-so' or 'ok' or something) translates into English as "two horses and two tigers". That's definitely how I feel some days?!!?

Anyway, better go. I need some dinner. Hope you are all feeling two horses and two tigers at the very least!

10-10

So, yesterday was Taiwan's national day. They just call it "double ten" day, so for a while I was very amused and thought they had made it a holiday simply because it's the 10th of October and it's a double ten. I wouldn't put it past them - it's really hard to get a cellphone number here that does NOT contain the number 4, because 4 is very unlucky and all the 4-free numbers have already been taken. The colour white is also bad. And also making any large business decisions during Ghost Month. And leaving your chopsticks in your rice.

Anyhooooo, I celebrated by going shopping with Sanchia at Taipei 101. I am pleased to announce that I have lost SO much weight, I now fit nicely into the largest size trousers available in Taiwan... Joy.