Shit my boss says (3)

Working in a private cram school you soon become accustomed to the fact that you don’t work for a ‘school’ in any normal sense of the word. No, you work for a money-making machine whose product is small pieces of paper which apparently serve the purpose of assuring parents that their special little angel isn’t a complete fuckwit. Student enrolment is the fuel for this machine so education unashamedly takes a back seat to class numbers and any student leaving classes is an instant black mark against the teacher.

In Taiwan there exists a certain disconnect with reality which affects many of the population (my own personal hypothesis is that people are taught nothing vaguely resembling critical thinking or independent learning, but that’s another post for another blog) and this manifest itself in my school as the boss’s tendency to lay the blame for any student departure squarely on the shoulders of the teacher. This happens regardless of the actual reason and he will lie to your face about said reason if the real one doesn’t suit his purposes. (Incidentally, lying is integral to Taiwanese and Chinese culture, used to ‘save face’. Unfortunate, as nothing will cause someone to lose face faster in my eyes than lying to me.) His purpose in doing this is unclear but the current best guesses among my coworkers are 1) a belief that stress and low self-esteem will make us happier, more productive workers and 2) the fact that he’s utterly unqualified to run a business.

Why do we say unqualified? After all, none of us have run our own businesses so who are we to talk? Well, one of the basic facts of business, any business, is that over time you will lose customers and that in many cases there will be absolutely nothing you can do about this. It happens, businesses deal with it. The key is attracting new customers to fill the gap (and then some) to ensure a steady flow of income. My boss has failed to grasp this fundamental law and seems to assume (probably thanks to his astrologer) that new students will just come to him – he has built it, they will come. Of course any attempt to ask him about his efforts to attract new students are met with “Erm, well…” *mops brow* “tough market…” *mops brow* “thinking of something…” *exits room*

So anyway, here are some of the reasons for student departures as given by my boss first, then the real reasons gleaned from my teaching assistants. Yup, all my fault. I am a poor teacher.

Dora and Tammy (twins) – Boss: “We don’t know, they’re not coming back. This is not good.” TA Melissa: “They’ve gone on a long summer holiday to America. They might be back after.” Fault: mine.

Joe – Boss: “He just said he’s not coming back. We don’t know why. If the class was good he would have stayed.” TA Christy: “He’s moved to DaJia (35km away), it’s too far to drive every day.” Fault: mine.

Shinny – Boss: “She says the class is too easy for her” (NB: she consistently finishes middle of the class in scores) TA Christy: “She’s moved to another school because it was cheaper” (NB: my school is one of the most expensive in the business, and incidentally pays almost the lowest wages) Fault: mine

Dora – Boss: “She doesn’t want to come back, she must not like the class” (NB: Dora was one of my favourite students because she always enjoyed the classes and even made her parents let her come when she was ill) TA Steven: “She thinks there is too much homework, it’s too much stress. She might come back and join one of your low level classes” (NB: homework is set by the school, it is entirely out of my hands) Fault: mine.

Here’s my favourite though. Benson, a very bright yet insolent and loud student, left  out of the blue. I’d been working to get him calm down since arriving in Taiwan and it was finally working, we’d established some level of mutual respect and he was in the middle of a huge breakthrough. On the final day of his most recent course, when parents come to the class and certificates are handed out, he committed the heinous crime of putting his first place certificate in his bag while my boss was addressing the class. He was bawled and screamed at for a good two minutes, to the extent that the other students, my TA and myself were all clearly uncomfortable. It was a totally unwarranted and disproportionate display. The following day I was informed that Benson would not be returning for the next course.

Boss: “I don’t know. It is very sad”
Benson, on meeting him by chance in a supermarket near the school two weeks after this incident: “Eric is an idiot. He shouldn’t have shouted at me like that. If he had asked me to stop and listen I would have done it, I just wanted to put the prize away, and he always tells us to put our things away. I’m at another school now.”
Fault: mine.

That’s a taster of what we have to deal with on a daily basis over here. Sorry for the rantage but recently things have been getting pretty damned stressful and some venting was necessarily. I promise the next post will be about kittens or some such…

Shit my students say (2)

Tony.

I could write a whole blog about Tony. In this culture where ‘saving face’ is so important it can be seen as embarrassing to admit that perhaps your child has special needs. As a result all manner of kids get thrown to the mercy of the general public and private school populations and us teachers, almost none of whom have any training for dealing with these kids, are left to cope as best we can. This can be by turns infuriating, depressing and tiring but with Tony it’s all gravy.

He arrived in one of my classes a few months ago and at first we had no idea what to do with him. His grasp of English was great for his English but trying to give him the simplest instructions to get involved with our games was like teaching hopscotch to a particularly obstinate brick. After some time and perseverance (and convincing the class that there’s the rules and then there’s the Tony rules) he’s been adopted by his classmates as something of a mascot, both them and I becoming rather protective of him. Constantly smiling, eyes always wide with wonder and prone to occasionally grabbing his crotch like Michael Jackson, he’s our sustenance whenever lessons get difficult or dull.

It’s his random outbursts which grant me most succour though. Fleeting snatches of poetry, profundity or deeply disturbed imagery which would have HP Lovecraft edging towards the door. Sometimes it’s a simple team name like “Listen to the bees. They are smiling and they say ‘We like honey’.” as opposed to the usual “Rabbit” or “Car”. Sometimes it’s the unexpected answers to questions such as “Tony, what do you eat for breakfast?” “I cough up spider-juice cakes.” It’s the unprompted insanity which makes my day though, yesterday being a case in point.

The scene was set thus – a series of food flashcards on the board, above each a simple drawing to prompt the kids for the pronoun required. A stick figure man for ‘he’, a woman for ‘she’, a  pair for ‘they’ and for ‘it’ I decided to do a monster. All hairy, big teeth, frowning eyes, they love that kind of thing. No sooner was the sketch completed than the class start excitedly shouting “Haha, monster, it!” and laughing, my intended reaction.

And there it is, Tony’s unmistakable voice behind me, utterly earnest and deadpan, unleashing the inner workings of his cerebrum. “Because god is a monster too. Very scary and he is angry. Do not look at him.” Followed in a hoarse whisper by “I did not say anything.”

Ho. Lee. Fuck.

Was he stringing random thoughts together? Is he the captive of some bizarre cult? Or is he just smart enough to have figured out that if a god were to actually exist it would have to be one seriously twisted motherfucker in order to come up with the world we find ourselves in? My money’s on the first option but I’m still hoping it’s the last

There will doubtless be more from Tony to follow, stay tuned…

Shit my students say (1)

Nominally introduced as a source of levity to counter the depressing posts stemming from my boss’s insanity/inanity. This first entry is just a tad tear-inducing for me though. Test day yesterday for my CE14X class, a relatively easy one with an oral section which was a walk in the park. Correction – should have been a walk in the park.

Me – “How long have you been studying English?”
(Expected answer – “I have been studying English for x years/since x year”)
Leo – “I speak long spoke English is in 2 hours.”
Me – wailing and gnashing of teeth

I have failed.

Sexism and ‘male white privilege’

This past couple of days has seen a minor shitstorm go down on a local Facebook group for teachers in the Changhua area, home to a couple of my friends. The kindling for the inferno was a post someone made about a Taiwanese woman looking for private English lessons and stating specifically that she would prefer a female teacher. This was a red rag to certain bulls and before long the thread was hijacked by allegations of sexism being thrown around with nary a thought for the woman’s thoughts and intentions. I disagree with the sexism label being used here.

For one thing it is overwhelmingly likely that since this is a request for private lessons then the woman is simply concerned with her safety and may also want to improve her conversational English to chat with other female friends. Stating that there is generally a massive difference between male and female topics and styles of conversation is not sexist, it’s merely pointing out a fact. Furthermore, even if it were purely a sexist remark then so what? There is no law against holding abhorrent views and unless you are an organisation or individual receiving taxpayer money for your endeavours then hire whoever you please.

This is all beside the point though. What really stoked some people’s fires was a statement by the woman who facilitated the initial request to the effect that this cannot be sexist because it is a woman making the request. This woman, going by the handle of Mere Greta, lambasted others for their lack of education and the fact that they hadn’t read enough Simone De Beauvoir (a good thing too, her writing style is dreadful) but went on to make the harmful, offensive and just reality-defying claim that sexism is a one-way street and that sexism towards men cannot exist because men haven’t had to endure millennia of instutionalised discrimination.

Not only does this fly in the face of every definition of sexism in dictionaries and encyclopaedias around the world (discrimination based on sex) but it contains a deeply disturbing underlying assumption, one more prevalent in fundamentalist sects of Abrahamic religions than anywhere else. Namely that the current generation of men trying to redress the age-old balance and institute some form of sexual and racial equality are somehow responsible for the uninformed and brutal behaviour of their ancestors and are therefore not deserving of the same protections they are attempting to provide others.

This is nothing but Bronze Age thinking transposed to the modern day and it simply doesn’t work. For starters it is based on nothing more than the ridiculous pre-genetic notion of bloodline and some manner of essence being passed down the generations. The simple fact is that I share around 50% of my genetic info with my father, 25% with my grandfather, 12.5% with my great-grandfather  and so on. Go back 10 generations and we’re as different as any two people on the planet. This great chain of sin simply doesn’t hold any water. By the same reasoning, if someone in Bulgaria returns a Transformers DVD late then everyone on Earth should be joining together to pay the fine.

Even if there were some great eternal chain joining me to those in my distant past, or even men in general, there still would be no grounds to hold me guilty of their crimes. The simple fact is that I am not them. I am not now and can never be responsible for the actions of another, neither my ancestors nor my offspring. As Sartre pointed out, the fundamental condition of humanity is that we are always responsible for our own actions and only our own actions. To imply otherwise, as Greta did, is foolish and dangerous.

Now, in response to Greta’s claims there were several angry replies, some implying that she was ‘crazy’ among other things. This provoked a backlash against the backlash (a frontlash?) and produced the usual excessively PC protestations one might expect when someone’s mental faculties have been questioned. This was amusing to me as clearly someone who is so detached from reality may well be described as ‘crazy’ or any equivalent yet mysteriously less offensive terms. What invoked my ire was the frontlasher playing one of the most misused and abused cards in modern debating history – Male White Privilege.

Now I believe I fully understand and appreciate the concept of MWP. By virtue of being born with white skin and a penis I have been almost assured an easier passage through life than many others. This isn’t due to some massive conspiracy or anything so sinister, it’s simply a result of history, the way the world is right now. MWP probably won’t exist in a few centuries but it does right now and the best that us white guys can do right now is to try to recognise it and be aware of it at all times.

However, that does NOT mean that non-whites and/or non-males have the right to use MWP as a sledgehammer in debates which aren’t going their way. This is how it was used on the conversation in question and how it is almost always employed in dialogue outside academic circles – as a tool of censorship. It essentially says “You were born with white skin and a dick so your opinion cannot carry any weight in situations regarding sex and/or race. Please be quiet and let us oppressed people get on with it.” A second’s consideration will reveal that this sentiment, while ostensibly well-meaning, is utterly vacuous and not in the slightest bit helpful.

Lets take it to its logical conclusion. I am a teacher. I teach English as a second language. I have never learned English as a second language. Therefore I am not qualified to teach it. Imagine I am a drug counsellor. I counsel addicts through their withdrawal and continued abstinence. Yet I have only personally been addicted to barbiturates so I cannot help those escaping heroin, cocaine, etc.

This is so obviously wrong yet it is the same mistake the abusers of the MWP card are making. I lack specific experience in a given situation so my opinions are rendered invalid. My right to engage in the debate is rescinded. Opinions are restricted to those already in the group and outside experience is neither desired nor required.

It saddens me that we still have to endure sexism, racism, homophobia (hey, why don’t they get an -ism?) and the like in the 21st century but that we do is a fact and we must deal with it and try to eradicate it as best we can. Attitudes like those above do not help this cause, they merely serve to frustrate those who would try to help and reduce the causes they are ostensibly promoting to warped caricatures, making it all the more difficult to engage with them productively. If people would stop being so over-sensitive, insanely PC and engaged in a little more rational analysis then perhaps we might work our way to a better world all the quicker.

Chinese Diary (中文日记) Part 1

Since one of my New Years’s resolutions is to learn to read and write 1,500 Chinese characters I’ve been thinking of ways to get some practice. This is one such idea. Each week Wendy (安欣), my Chinese tutor, has me write a diary in ZhuYin, the Taiwanese phonetic alphabet, to practice my new vocabulary. Given that I’m just a beginner it’s hardly Samuel Pepys but it’s enough to try some new grammar and the like. However, the fact that it’s in ZhuYin (or BoPoMoFo) means that I don’t actually write the characters so I hit upon an idea – type my ZhuYin into a Google Translate box and I can get rough guesses for all the characters I don’t already recognise (i.e. the overwhelming majority of them).

This is the result. I’m hoping that I can use this exercise to a) get quicker at using ZhuYin input on my computer, b) speed the process of character recognition and c) get some constructive criticism from friends and corrections from Wendy. The first batch is from the first week of the year when I was hideously ill with pneumonia. Future updates will not be in chronological order, they will be posted at haphazard intervals and they will mostly consist of shoddy Chinese. For my non-Chinese speaking buddies around the world – just run it through Google Translate and trust me when I say it actually makes sense…

Oh, and thanks to Bear (熊熊), 我的女朋友, for her help and patience with correcting this

1/1 – 我下午兩點去呼嚕咖啡，可是我覺得我感冒了。我七點和熊熊一起去日本餐廳吃晚餐。好吃！因爲我生病了，所以我九點就回家了。

2/1 – 因爲安欣去了韓國和她的男朋友碰面，所以我不用上課。我還在生病所以我早一點十一點鐘就去補習班，再去看醫生。他告訴我「你一定要去醫院！」。所以我去了醫院。醫生跟我說我有肺炎，好可怕！我回家，吃很多的藥。我很悽慘。

3/1 因爲我生病，所以不用上課。我應該要休息但是我還是去了默契咖啡，喝普洱茶。很好喝！我寫了三個小時的中文字。

4/1 我還是在生病。我早上去呼嚕咖啡一下子就回家了。我晚上看很多的電視。

5/1 下午熊熊來我家。她媽媽幫我煮的湯麵，真的好吃！雖然我生病，但是這讓我很開心。

6/1 我今天身體覺得有點糟所以我和我的老闆的妹婿去醫院。醫生給我很多的新藥。

7/1 我下午去默契咖啡，喝普洱茶和學中文字。晚上熊熊來我家。我們吃晚餐，看「Real Steel」然後上英文課！我們兩點左右睡覺。

8/1 我好了，可是我的聽力還是不好。中午我去默契咖啡寫作業。我好多了！

P.S. I know that this is a very short entry. Most will be even shorter as this takes me an insane amount of time to do

More LCA+ shots

Finally got this film back after the fuckwits at the local processing store developed the negatives but forgot to scan them. Four days to get a film back? And not even a sniff of compensation… But ach, who cares? It’s the results that matter and I must say I’m still happy with the new toy. I’m still managing to forget about the focus zones and just today shot 8 pictures with the camera set to the wrong film rating but I’m getting there. By the way, all the shots I upload from it are entirely as given to me by the shop, no touching up afterwards at all. Guess there’s a purist streak hiding in me somewhere…

By the way, experimenting with this slideshow thing but I’m unsure as yet. What do you think?

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Recovery mode

Unfortunately I’ve been laid low for the past week with some unspecified but terribly annoying illness so my planned post of more LCA+ shots has had to be postponed. However, today’s surprise recovery led to a wonderfully Sunday-ish Sunday, the way Sundays should be.

It all kicked off with a rare long lie, snoozing intermittently till somewhere just shy of 10 o’clock (that’s late for me…) before emerging from my cocoon to cradle the acoustic for a while. Hunger started to kick in but was soon enough assuaged as I met Bear for a spot of brunch at  K。布朗, a popular spot a stone’s throw from my flat which had somehow evaded my attention till now. The bear-filled interior gave it a bizarre, cutesy charm – a strangeness matched by the menu. I opted for the French Meal, details of which were in Chinese beyond my knowledge. French you say? That’ll be croissants and the like, obviously…

Nope. If memory serves it was fried chicken, fries, sweet mayonnaise, a solitary toast soldier, ham omelette and french toast doused in caramel sauce. Yup. Bear’s Norwegian meal was no less eclectic, featuring bacon, sausage, egg, cheese, fruit, salad and cake. Seriously. An odd start but oddly delicious Over the course of the meal I was treated to an impromptu Chinese lesson, Bear seemingly reveling in the opportunity to teach me all manner of handy phrases including “I’m going crazy”. 謝謝老師

Brunch over, Bear headed of to Forro to start her shift while I went on a shopping spree. Aside from the weekly essentials I had a brainstorm to help with my recent forays into learning to read and write Chinese – an ambitious plan without an official teacher. The shop at the National Museum Of Fine Arts sells some gorgeous books and on my last visit I spied a Snow White story book with traditional Chinese characters – mostly Greek to me – backed up with ZhuYin, which I can actually read. ZhuYin is a Taiwanese phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, allowing one to at least pronounce words without necessarily knowing the meaning. Chinese characters offer no clues to pronunciation themselves so this has been an invaluable aid to me. Fingers crossed I can use the ZhuYin to allow me to decipher (via friends or dictionaries) characters I don’t yet recognise (i.e. 99.99% of them). As an added bonus I spotted a similar storybook for Belleville Rendezvous/The Triplets Of Belleville for 99NT. Score!

According to my Chinese teacher, Wendy, the Belleville book’s language is a tad tricky but I’m assuming that familiarity with the story will help. If not I’m in for a rough ride but hey, that’s half the fun.

(The small characters to the right of each large one are ZhuYin)

With the shopping mission complete it was time to hit Forro Cafe for round two of the epic tongue twister battle between Ponni and myself. I was tasked with reciting the following Chinese torture implement:

石獅寺有四十四隻石獅子
四十四隻石獅子吃四十四枝濕紫柿子

Which is pronounced roughly as follows (with the addition of tones to mess things up further)

“Shi shi si dzi si shi si zhi shi shi dzi, Si shi shi zhi shi shi dzi chi si shi si zhi shi dzi shi dzi.”

Ponni’s challenge was the classic:

“Swan swam over the sea,
Swim, swan, swim!
Swan swam back again,
Well swum swan!”

Somehow – and I still maintain the decision was wrong – a jury of our peers (Bear, Ivy and Michelle) awarded me victory over my valiant adversary. A travesty of justice to be sure but I accepted the honour. As a reward Ponni made me the sweetest gift – a rubber stamp bearing the phrase “Forro” and my Chinese name, “堡羅”, with the two parts blending into each other. It’s easier to display than explain…

How she made this I have no idea but it was rather touching so I gave her the gift I’d prepared in case of her victory anyway, an album of photos taken by my LCA+ at Forro the previous week. We brainstormed the next event over my introduction to the local delicacy of thousand-year-old egg, which I’m glad to report tastes a hell of a lot better than it sounds. Her next challenge is good old “Red lorry, yellow lorry” repeated five times while I have something of a Chinese equivalent.

The gist of this, as far as I could glean between the snickers of Bear – who was responsible for choosing it – Ponni and Myron is that it describes mythical beasts of varying colours. I’ve got a good feeling about this one if I can master the tones, bring it on.

Now it’s 9:30, I’m all ready for the week ahead, listening to some Chinese music I’m not allowed to mention and preparing to re-acquaint myself with the wonder of Belleville Rendezvous. Yay for Sunday, see you in a few days when the latest batch of prints are processed.

First shots from the LCA+

Whoop, got my first rolls of film back from the shop and the shots don’t all suck! Last time I used a film camera I remember always being disappointed when the developers would only return a handful of shots, the rest being washouts. The past couple of days I’d been expecting the same to happen, every shot blurred beyond belief or badly exposed. Surprise, surprise it’s actually not half bad, especially for a first run where I was basically just rapid-fire clicking to burn through the rolls and see some results.

Here are a few of the better shots…

Chalkboard wall at the back of Forro Cafe, my home from home

Outside Forro, I'm always tempted to ride this thing...

This is why I love Forro. Where else has a tree growing from the ceiling, next to a wall of Post-It notes and an Escher-esque staircase ending nowhere?

Chinese homework and a glass of 學校生咖啡 - perfection...Ivy and Ponni hard at work behind my Friday Night Beer (tm)

Ivy and Ponni again

Bear after a long shift - this girl works too hard

 

Bear and Asuka looking all spooky and double-exposed

Iced cappucino at my other favourite haunt, Match Cafe

Sarkis, one of my students. His name sounds like 'circus' and he acts like an animal. Funny that...Adrian hard at work in the teacher's room. I love how the colours make it look like a psychiatric institution. Very apt.

View from my rooftop at night

I just liked the text on the t-shirt

View down GongYi Road

The One Hotel, pretty much dead centre of town

Double exposure at CMP Block

This shot was only possible for a split second thanks to wind and a fidgety subject. Yay for lucky timing.

Kids outside CMP Block

Erm, I have no idea but I like it. Happy accident I'd happily use this as an album cover actually...

That’s all for now, more to come when I get them developed. There were 72 in this first batch and they all, bar one, came out well. These were just my favourites. Verdict? I really, really like this camera. Things are going to get expensive…

New toy! My Lomo LCA+

Just couldn’t resist, savings be damned. I’ve indulged my photography addiction and got myself a new piece of kit. Not the ultra-wide lens I was planning on, not a new DSLR, but something completely different. Yes, I’ve finally succumbed and joined the ranks of film junkies – not with a bargain pro camera but with the Lomo LCA+, a refurbished Soviet icon which has attracted a cult following thanks to its vignetting, over-saturated colours and the charm of its simplistic design and solid build quality. My friend Bear at Forro Cafe (呼嚕咖啡) sang its praises over my initial choice, the Diana, and after five minutes of picking up her own older model and playing with it I was sold.

My Lomo LCA+ with wide angle lens attached (thanks to Bear at Forro Cafe for the photo!)

Taking the leap back to analogue photography isn’t easy after training yourself  in all things digital and becoming accustomed to the safety nets and comforters it provides. Near-unlimited storage thanks to increasingly cheap memory cards? Gone, now every shot counts and costs. Fire-and-forget photography is no longer an option, you have to get it right first time or not at all. The instant gratification of the LCD panel? Forget about it. Now I have to wait for a little counter to creep up to 36, find a camera store, wait for processing and printing and only then will I know if I got even a single keeper. The entire roll could be a bust, who knows? Even something as simple and commonplace as autofocus is gone – I now select from 4 ‘focus zones’ of 0.8m, 1.5m, 3m and infinity, the first three with unforgivingly narrow depth of focus. In fact any semblance of control is now gone: I choose my focus zone, ASA setting and that’s it. No white balance, no shutter speed or aperture, no B/W option, nothing. Scary…

Still, I did this in high school and absolutely loved it and I’m already feeling addiction creeping in with this camera. There’s something about not only hearing but really feeling the ‘click’ of the shutter button that makes it somehow more real (sorry to sound like an obnoxious hipster). Anticipating the development of the first roll already has me excited, despite the fact that I have to get someone else to do it. Note to self – look up places which might let me use darkrooms…As an added bonus, this new model has a nifty button on the underside which allows for simple multiple exposures without fiddling around with rewinding films – prepare for some uber-cheesy images! The wide angle lens I opted for as well (thanks to the Taichung Lomography Embassy Store for a good deal…) has given me the little bit of flexibility I need. The other accessories for the LCA+ are weird and wonderful and I’ll no doubt try them out soon enough but for now it’s time to play.

The only downside to this – I was given two rolls of 100ASA film as a starter but my hours and the current weather make that a less than perfect choice. I’ll burn through them as practice as quickly as possible and pick up some 400 to give me more shooting options. And maybe some expired film for shits and giggles. And a colour flash. And the tunnel vision lens. And… and… and…

Oh dear.

Oops, slipped…

Yeah, guess I kinda forgot that this thing existed for a while there. Don’t worry, all is well in the land of Cannonball. I’m just too damned busy with life’s multiple pleasantries to have bothered with blowing the dust off the blog. By the time I remembered about it I needed an industrial vacuum cleaner just to graze the surface.

So what’s poppin’ daddy-o? What’s the word on the street? Well things haven’t moved on considerably from the last update – Taichung’s still entrancing me and working its magic at every turn. The past six weeks have seen me finally tapping into the music scene – supposedly dead if you believe the majority of westerners here but still alive and kicking in an underground ‘fight the power’ kind of way, kept alive by the vigour and determination of youth and by the unstoppable force of rawk. This long-overdue immersion in a buzzing live scene has had two major effects on me, primarily quenching the thirst for music which has dogged me since Thailand where the best you could hope for was a semi-decent version of Thee Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ or the ever-present ‘Desperado’. To finally rediscover the kids rocking their socks off has been a most pleasant revelation.

However, one thirst is quenched only to see a fresh hunger arise. Standing in the audience for  an all-day concert partly organised by an acquaintance of mine at Stock 20 I suddenly felt my fingers itching, feeling for frets and pick, my right toe seeking out the comforting click of the ODB3. I need to join and band and I need to do it now, lest the forces of disgusting rock thunder rising in my belly burst through my chest a la John Hurt. Specifically I need to join an original local band – I’m loving the Taiwanese music vibe and have an urge to add my own sleazy bass to that mix, no offence to the many ex-pat bands out there! The feelers are out and I may have a spot in a covers band set up by some friends of a friend but there are creative urges stirring within me and it may finally be time to unleash my own musical malevolence upon the unsuspecting populace. Think Kiltreiser Mark 2 mixed with the sleaze of Zodiac Mindwarp, the swagger of Monster Magnet and the psychosis of White Zombie. Think of that and weep for the future…

In other news, the Chinese learning is coming on at pace thanks in no small part to the efforts of An Xien, my fantastic teacher. Since the last post I’ve made my first forays into typing in Chinese using ZhuYin/BoPoMoFo as an intermediary but it’s a hellishly slow and painful process. For starters I don’t have a Taiwanese keyboard on either laptop, meaning I’m forced to look at an image of such a keyboard, memorise the keys required for the relevant symbols and then enter those on my chosen application. Then, if I’m lucky, the correct translations will magically appear on my screen. If. If I’m lucky. Usually I’m not and my knowledge of Chinese characters is abysmal so I’m forced to cycle through the seemingly endless alternative possibilities which correspond to my ZhuYin entry, eventually entrusting my literary fate to the vagaries of Google Translate (at times my best friend or worst enemy).

So no Chinese for you this time around but my plan is to write my next post all in Chinese. That’s right. If I start now it’ll be finished by Christmas…

On the ‘other news’ front, the endless summer seems to finally be on the way out here and the temperature has dropped a glorious ten degrees or so since last week. The difference this has made to my ability to sleep has been immeasurable and I already feel more energised. Just as well because the cooler climate makes cycling to work a possibility again. This shopping list keeps growing – bass guitar, bass distortion pedal, new road bike (old one to be donated to Pedals For Paws), smartphone, more bedroom furniture. Just as well I no longer give so much of a damn about saving seeing as I’m likely here for the long haul now.

Also I managed to meet  with an old flame for a pleasant wander around the parks and galleries of Taichung. Admittedly I was a touch nervous beforehand – okay, really fucking nervous – but it was almost like we’d gone back to the friends phase we enjoyed before we became involved with each other. Hopefully this means it can happen more often with a similar lack of awkwardness, sadness or anything else. To add to the Thailand-related news, another old friend is finally leaving the land of smiles and is almost certainly heading for these shores, yay for familiar faces. I’m still working on getting another one to abandon the wild cornfields of Iowa for the gentle pace of Taichung, will see how that goes…

Well, this Chinese homework isn’t going to finish itself so time to get the nose back to the grindstone. Until next time – which I promise will not be as long coming as this was - 拜拜.