Toshuō

It’s amazing how fast time goes by. Last night was Daniel’s birthday party… again. It’s looking like this really will be the last one he spends in Taiwan.
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I went back to Táibĕi yesterday. As usual, I couldn’t resist hitting at least one night-market while I had the chance.

After that, I headed over to Xiao Yu’s place for Daniel‘s birthday party. He turned 28, and it was a pretty fun group. The group was split pretty much in half between his foreign friends and his English students. One of the students played a trick on me and told me she was Japanese. She was pretty shocked when I just started talking to her in Japanese, but kept her composure well enough to say she’d moved to Taiwan when she was little and that her family spoke a regional dialect anyway. I asked where, and she said Kyoto. “Great!” I said, “My old roommate was from Kyoto!” I then tried some Kyotoben dialect on her and she gave up joke. I guess it was really bad luck that she tried it on the one western guy she’d ever met who actually had friends from Kyoto. It was amusing, though. Another guest was a cool British chef guy, who cooked all kinds of tasty stuff for the party. He actually has a work visa sponsoring him to work as a chef. I’ll bet that was tough.

Most interesting of all is that I got to meet Brian Mathes. He’s been studying at the language school at Zhèngdà this year, and it turns out he and one of my best friends from college, Ryuta, became good friends there. Unfortunately Ryuta’s already graduated from CU with a Chinese major, left Taiwan and gotten a job in Osaka. I really, really regret not keeping in touch with more of my Japanese friends from college. Here’s a pic of Kazuto and Ryuta hanging out in my dorm room five years ago:

It sounds like life as a language student is pretty good at Zhèngdà. Brian said that he started on the CIEE program, which charges something like $5000USD per quarter. He was put in the exact same classes as people who sign up directly through the school, and they only paid about $700USD per quarter. Being the bright guy that he is, he switched out of CIEE at his first opportunity. From what Brian and others have told me, Zhèngdà has small classes classes and offers better instruction than Shīdà or Táidà (except for ICLP).

Today was a day that only comes once every few years. I was so absent minded that I managed to make Martin seem like some sort of organization and efficiency guru. Considering the lady who runs the local zăo cān diàn by the MRT said, “啊, 馬丁! 那個很糊塗的那個老外.認識!” when I asked if she’d met him, it’s saying a lot.

Martin’s been low on fridge space and I had an extra one here, so he and Rika came up to my place to pick it up. Being the clever guy that I was, I neglected to check my long unused fridge. Instead, I cleaned up my apartment so as not to offend Rika’s Japanese sensibilities too badly. When they showed up, their cab driver was waiting downstairs and they were in a bit of a hurry. In an impressive and manly display of strength, I reached across the TV sitting in front of it, and lifted the fridge up and over it… dumping nasty water that had been shut inside for months all over myself. With little choice, I grabbed a towel to mop up the floor as quickly as possible, handed the fridge off to Martin, washed off my feet and lower legs, changed clothes really quickly, put on my sandals and backpack, grabbed my shoes and socks and ran out the door. I figured I could just let my feet dry in the cab on the way into Táibĕi.

After getting into the city, we had to carry the fridge across the street and up seven floors of stairs. Rika pointed out that I’d forgotten my shoes in the cab. Doh! Well, it was about time to buy some new shoes anyway, so we headed up to Shilin night-market. It’s so huge that it’s also open during the day, and it’s got the only store I know of that sells a decent selection of shoes in my size. I got a pretty good pair for only $1500台幣, not too bad. Next on our agenda was Costco. There, nothing too disastrous happened and we got some great food! It’s been a year since I went and I love that place! I got all kinds of stuff you can’t buy in the town where I live, like rugged whole-wheat bread, a block of pepper-jack cheese, etc…

We got back to Martin’s place, unpacked all the stuff and then I had to take off, since had plans to meet up with Daniel at the train station at 8:00. Martin kindly lent me an umbrella, and I was off! It was pretty tight, but I managed to get there by 8:01. Daniel wasn’t there yet, so I just hung out in front of the California Fitness center and waited… until I remembered that our plans were for 9:00, not 8:15. Sigh… it’s just been one of those days. There was a neat mall behind the gym, so I figured I ought to seize the chance to check it out.

Since there aren’t any malls in the town where I live, it was pretty nice to browse around. Daniel showed up around 8:45, so the wait wasn’t too bad. We decided on seafood and drinks and so we headed into the MRT and were off! But, I forgot the umbrella Martin lent me. Geez I’m glad it was a Sunday.

I’ve decided to re-organize the links on my blog a bit. I’ve moved Michael Turton’s site into a new category for political blogs. He’s an American who has lived in Taiwan for a long time and has very strong opinions about the political scene here. He’s staunchly anti-KMT. He also does great round-ups of all happenings in Taiwan blogs each week. Joining him in the political blog category is his counter-point, Battlepanda. She’s a Taiwanese woman who lived in America for a long time and has strong opinions about the political scene there. She’s staunchly anti-Republican. Rounding out the political blog category is Darin, who blogs mostly about Japanese politics.

I’ve moved Daniel’s Suitcasing to the general links section, and added The Register, which is one of my favourite news sources. Finally, I’ve added video editing whiz and satirist extraordinaire, Tian.