noodles and pork chop – bun thit nuong

my brother, the face of the riders

My brother is a crazy Saskatchewan Roughriders fan. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. At least once a season his image appears in the paper, on their website, or online. So far this year he’s been in the local paper as part of a crowd and now the picture for an article about centennial celebrations. Go crazed fan brother!

bits and bobs

I don’t know if anyone still reads this, but I’ll put something up for memories and search engines.

1. The World Games came and went. It was a bit of a fiasco in terms of organization (at least, according to the foreign community) because so much of it was only in Chinese – ticket sales, commentary, the opening and closing ceremonies, most of the volunteers. Get this: there was one native Russian speaker for the entire event. One! A couple of beginner Taiwanese students, but anything more than, “Can I help you?” and “Please stand over here,” and they were shaking with nerves. It didn’t help that the Russians were rather surly – they reduced a number of Taiwanese women to tears. Everything finished fine, but I think Kaohsiung will not get the international reputation it desired. People will talk about the fun they had and how nice the people of Taiwan are, but they will also laugh about the Chinglish and the frustration they felt when no one could answer their questions. Christine was a volunteer for Spanish-speakers, but all of the foreign-language volunteers were confined to helping people deal with insurance – not one was allowed to help anyone at a venue, even if the team spoke neither Chinese nor English. There was a lot of that sort of thing going on.
2. I enjoyed the games a lot, hitting 12 events in all and wishing I had seen more. Korfball was by far my favourite – it’s like basketball and ultimate put together. You can check out some pics on flickr.
3. I drove by a pet store the other day with a brand of dog food for sale called V-1 DOG JISM. Ew.
4. There have been three discernible earthquakes and the worst typhoon/flooding to hit the south in fifty years in the last month. It’s been OK in the city here, but outlying counties have been hit hard by the typhoon (the earthquakes have not cause any damage, luckily). Chris and I have been out a wee bit helping and both of us just constantly shake our heads and wonder what we would do if this happened to us. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a humanitarian tragedy and it’s….hard. And I’m not even affected! The people of Taiwan have been so good to us, I just feel that it’s unfair. Is it ever fair?
5. We went to Penghu this summer, as well as a trip down south to the beach town of Hengchun, and I did a big hike to an area that probably won’t be accessible for some months or even years now (due to the aforementioned flooding and typhoon). The hike is up on flickr, as are the beach town pictures (sadly without any beach, it was a rainy weekend) and the Penghu pics will be up very soon. All were very enjoyable in their own ways. I’m enjoying seeing the island more this time back.
6. I’ve had two photography exhibitions this summer. Both had a fair number of people come by, one had mild financial success (and would’ve been better if a tropical storm hadn’t blown through opening night) and the other faired pretty poorly. Ah, win some lose some.

Alright, that’ll do for now. I hope to get back here more, even short little posts more often instead of big, long, highly irregular ones.

the foreigner

Something that makes all foreigners chuckle here, whether they’ve been here for a month or a decade, is the designation of foreigner and how freely it’s used. Tonight we went out for dinner and our receipt was labeled FOREIGNER (in Chinese) so that the server would know how to find us (even though we had a number at our table). My boss, even after something like seven years in the same apartment, still gets his cable bill address to FOREIGNER (again, in Chinese). Honestly, it’s an easy distinction here that most foreigners don’t mind – one aspect of living in a homogenous society. And, it almost goes without saying, something you would never, EVER see at home, both for practical and political reasons. Could you imagine writing on a receipt “BLACK GUY”?

grobal warning

GROBAL WARNING

Brappers Care

Brought to you by

EARTH

There is little we can do sometimes

********

Sometimes, you just have to sigh and laugh.

imitations

Can you do any impersonations? I have never been able to. At all. No famous people, and Chris laughs at all of my accents that aren’t English (that one I can do) and says they all sound like a bad Australian accent, except my German/Austrian, which sounds like Ah-nold. I’m kind of glad I haven’t been called in to do any voiceover work for characters in a cartoon or anything, I’m not sure I could do enough different voices. I guess I’ll cross that bridge later.
Anyway, this attack of vocal self-doubt was brought to you by this great video of the lyra bird on BBC wildlife. It’s pretty fantastic.

visions of paradise

I found this off of a link from Photojojo (great site for photo doodads and projects!). One subscriber submitted a photo to a National Geographic contest and won. Gorgeous images. They are some real visions of paradise here.

weird pillows

I haven’t seen any of these pillows here yet, but believe me, I’ll be keeping my eyes open. There’s crazy stuff like that here, you just have to look at it. We did happen across the Hello Kitty store the other day, though it didn’t have any of the Hello Kitty wine we found at the Stuff store on the corner a few months ago…

piao! piao! piao!

(that’s the sound kids here make for explosions)

Approximately two dozen strings of firecrackers went off within earshot of our building before nine a.m. this morning. I don’t know what today is a good day for (every day in the two weeks between New Year and Lantern Festival is a special day in one way or another), but it seems that noise in on that list. Some were like cannons, other just lines of small firecrackers that went on for a full minute or two. Oh, and it started around six.  6 o’clock! I felt sorry for the people who lived around the temple where we did our kung fu demo back in September (the group we were with did the same thing, firecrackers at six in the morning) – now I know how they felt.

Later: It was a good day for praying for good luck and enshrining statues of Buddha. So maybe that helped. Lots of praying. Now with more firecrackers! I think that enhances the prayer. I’ll try that next time I go to church…

eating dirt? good? not in my school…

Since all instinctive behaviors have an evolutionary advantage or they would not have been retained for millions of years, chances are that this one too has helped us survive as a species.

I remember playing in the dirt a lot as a kid and I know that I ate a good portion of it. Dirt cakes? You bet. I used to get sick basically once per year really badly and that was it. My brother had asthma and allergies and he’s basically outgrown both because of, I believe, the fact that my parents let us play around outside while still being careful with him.

Here in Taiwan, dirt is an even worse situation. Chinese medicine has its place, but a little girl’s grandmother came in the other day, in the middle of cold season and with half the school sniffling and sneezing, and stated that her daughter was not allowed to wash her hands because water would make her sick. Oy.

On our last day last week three of us took our kids to the park and let them play in the dirt and sticks and run around without telling them to not have so much fun (yes, I’ve been told to tell the kids that before). You know what? They had a great time and it probably did them a world of good.

I hope to do it again in the future so that these kids can build up a natural resistance, because they sure aren’t going to get it anywhere else. One of my kids takes five pills every day. You’d think he was 70, not five. Probably 2/3 of Chris’s class take some kind of medicine (preventative or active) every day. It’s almost frightening.