I thought I’d seen everything in Taiwan’s English cram school market. Recently, I’ve had an experience that shows how naive I (still) am. I can’t really get into any details online, but here’s the gist: A school owner offered to sell her school’s students.
A school’s financial valuation
In general, when an English [...]

Sometimes Mr. Market really is insane. That’s not hyperbole. I mean it.
Imagine that a company has two classes of stock, which are each worth an identical portion of a the company and its profits. The only difference is that the B shares carry more voting weight than the A shares. Now [...]

Last spring, I wrote about an “awesome blog” I’d found. The writer, John B., was an American who had just moved from Hangzhou to Shanghai. He wrote about language learning, cultural observations, and a number of other topics. In particular, he had written an inspiring post about his goal of learning five [...]

Soon after I moved back into the city this fall, Simon pointed out the “drunken” mosquitoes at the new school. Basically, the place is full of them, but they’re all sluggish and kind of confused looking. In my first month there, I even caught one trying to drink from my sock.
My new apartment [...]

Who could come up with something as whack as red bean flavored Kit Kats? Apparently, not the Taiwanese. No, no… the convenience stores have to import this stuff for us. Thank goodness for Japan.
Red Bean Kit Kat Hosted on Zooomr
I bought them out of morbid curiosity, but get this- they were good!

Last night, after learning that my favorite department store offers photos, I went in to have my ARC pictures taken. It must be the seventh or eighth time I’ve done so, and before it’s always been about the same. I sit down, some guy takes my picture, I come back an hour later [...]

Brendan recently found a really interesting story titled Software does judge’s job in China [AFP via Yahoo! News].

BEIJING (AFP) - Judges are not usually at risk of losing their jobs to modern technology but that may be changing in China, where new software is handing down sentences automatically.
The Zichuan District Court in east China’s Shandong [...]

I like my landlady. However, there’s a very fine line that divides charmingly batty from batshit-insane, and she’s pushing it. Her off-handed comments about how dryers are unsanitary and how it’s better to leave your clothes out on a line until they dry are weird to me, but not that unusual for Taiwan. [...]