Nag, nag, nag

Awright, awright. I'll write something! I've been getting a little nagging from friends who haven't seen anything new here in awhile. Sorry, but on top of still teaching English every day, I haven't had much excitement in my life to write about! But I can muster up a little bit now.

Best this is that this week, due to a visit from Singaporean friend, David, I got to have dinner with some of my favorite people: Natari, Charlene, Dino, Carrie, and another friend who must remain un-named for the time being. The bonus guest was Dino's son, Alex, who is here visiting from California. Nice kid, 18 years old, looks so much like his dad (despite the bleached blonde hair), and has eyelashes so long and thick that women everywhere (including Carried) were trying to figure out how to steal them. I won't be posting any photos of Alex, because I don't think it's a good idea to put the children of stars into the public eye, but here's a cute pic of David with Dino. Dino is demonstrating how he copes with frustration.

David is a huge fan of Dino's and is currently studying drumming. He was able to pick up a few tips from Dino during our evening out. He also scored a pair of Dino's drumsticks, the ones he used during the Singapore concert at the beginning of the month. As you see, Dino must have suffered a lot of frustration to leave the sticks in this condition!

After eating a little bit at Din Tai Feng, famous for their xiao long bao, we moved over to one of the whackiest restaurants I've ever seen: Indian Jurassic Park. You have to check out the photos of this place: Indian Jurassic Restaurant

It was a very noisy place, and rather smoky, but lots of fun. We had some tasty food there, including fried rice, deep-fried squid, Three Cup Chicken (三杯雞), some clams in a yummy sauce (炒海瓜子), some veggie (空心菜), and some fish. The fish was beautifully presented that I had to take a photo. If you can work your way through the Chinese at the above link, you can see some photos of other food. We of course also had beer.

I was happy to have some time to spend chatting with Dino's son. He was a little jet lagged, so he wasn't too lively, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. We share some of the same heritage, American Indian and Italian. And we've both lived in Wyoming, him in Laramie and me in Cheyenne. He's not too interested in becoming a drummer, but he might want to be an equestrian veterinarian when he grows up. He just graduated from high school, and now he's trying to figure out what he should study in college.

Anyway, that's about the only really fun thing I've done. My Korean friend, Kayun, has begun studying English with me and is coming twice a week. After class sometimes we watch movies, which is fun, especially now that I have the new Pioneer DVD player and surround-sound system. This week we watched a great Korean movie called "Welcome to Dongmakgol." A big thank-you to Cheryl for passing that one along to me. And last week I finally got to see "Old Boy," a movie I've had for over a year and a half but never watched. It was just as intense as all the reviews had said.

Let's see, what else? Well, my friend/student, Aaron, left for his year of study in the UK. His family invited me to a goodbye dinner, and the food was excellent. His mom and dad are both fantastic cooks, and I really appreciated them asking me to join the rest of the family that evening. I'm going to miss Aaron, and I hope he adapts well to life in England. At the end he said he really didn't want to go, but it was too late to change his mind.

I've started trading English lessons for Chinese ones. Ye Ying, one of the teachers who had been at CLD while I was there, is planning on going to Holland to study Chinese culture. Personally, I think that's a bit weird, going to a European country for Asian studies, but she said the school is famous for it's courses. She wants to improve her English, and my Chinese has been regressing, so we're doing a trade. It will be good for me to get back into the study habit before I start at Shi Da in December.

I'll be heading back to Singapore on October 2 for a three-day, four-night stay. I spent some time yesterday online making a list of places I want to see, and I'll mostly be alone on my journeys. But, that's how I like it! I was able to find a very inexpensive hotel (only $156US for four nights), so I won't be spending too much. However, I am a little miffed that I didn't know earlier that Wu Bai & China Blue would be in Macau for a show on 9/30, because I would have gone there instead! Dammit, they never make these announcements early enough. Also, my friend Maddy from Florida will be in Hong Kong while I'm in Singapore! Again, had she told me sooner, I would have gone back to Hong Kong so I could see her. Rats rats rats!

I've completely avoided discussing the political situation here in Taiwan, because I really do hate politics and politicians. I'll briefly say that a bunch of people who have their heads up their collective ass are currently doing a sit-in protest to try to convince the president, Chen Shui Bian, to step down. They're all riled up because of alleged corruption. I think they should read this informative editorial in the Taipei Times: Taiwan's Color-Coded View of Corruption

If I have to choose between two evils, I'll take the lesser, and Ah Bian certainly qualifies as that. No, he's not perfect, but he at least wants Taiwan to be an independent, democrat country, while the Kuomintang would rather give it back to China and lose all the freedom we have. Idiots. And I can't even begin to explain how incredibly stupid Taiwan's vice president is. Root around in the editorial archives of the Times for some interesting stuff, if you have the time.

I'm done now. I have to prepare for my afternoon class now. I'll try to be better about posting, but no promises!

Kafka on the Shore

From "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel

"That's it," Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. "But there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here."

Oshima points at the stacks with the tip of his pencil. What he means, of course, is the entire library.

"I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can't."


I picked up this book because I'd read before that this Japanese author was Wu Bai's favorite. The price was right (and that's always a deciding factor here in Taiwan, where English books are so expensive), so I figured what the heck. I am completely inept at writing book reviews, and all I'm able to say is that this book is a marvelous tale, full of awakenings and insight, and I'm so glad I bought it. Murakami's other books are now on my list.

Prior to the above-quoted passage, Oshima mentions that these sort of people are those that T. S. Eliot called hollow men. ".....people who have no imagination.......People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to." I thought of Bush when I read all of this, and his entire administration. Parasites that transform the host, indeed, hollow men who lack imagination. And like Oshima, I wish I could just laugh them off.....and I, too, am frightened.

Imagine.....

President George Bush performs John Lennon's "Imagine"
http://cal-tv.net/imaginethis.html

And if that don't make you just break down and cry, I don't know what will.

This discovery comes to you via Tim Carroll's blog, POLITICAL JUNKIES AND CONSPIRACY THEORISTS (http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-sebjzCklcqvPoFHgM9Qc6MmkC0XBS__uKrh.LUTM7OZdlA--?cq=1)

Huh, Come Again?

"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the Internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the Internet and you order your movie and guess what, you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that Internet and what happens to your own personal Internet?

I just the other day got, an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this Internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that Internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discriminate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the Internet." No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense Internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people. [...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the Internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a violation of net neutrality that hits you and me."

And who mouthed these eloquent words?

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the Senate Commerce Committee amendment which would have inserted some very basic net neutrality provisions into a moving telecommunications bill. These provisions would not have prohibited an ISP from handling VOIP faster than emails, but would have made it illegal to handle its own VOIP packets faster than a competitor's. The Committee deadlocked 11 to 11.

If you're brave enough to download the audio file (17:29 minutes long, 9.7M):
http://media.publicknowledge.org/stevens-on-nn.mp3

Lucky Lately

Back from Hong Kong, where it was simply sweltering. Ugh. Hot. Not that it's much cooler here, but a couple of degrees C can make a diff.

Last Friday was Luke's birthday (he's an old, old 29), so I spent a few hours hanging out with him, Kaori, Hiyoshi, and Long Yan. We went to a nice dim sum lunch, and then we all went over to Kaori's new place, where we met up with Kayun and Tai Xiong. It's a really nice apartment, and it has a kitchen bigger than anything I've seen in Taiwan! And what a pretty light panel in the ceiling, wow. I'm totally jealous. And here's a picture of Long Yan, Luke, and Hiyoshi kicking back on the couch.






I got to the airport nice and early on Monday. Apparently the flight wasn't very full, because I once again was upgraded to business class! The short-flight business class isn't nearly as impressive as the long haul, though. I only got one glass of champagne, no little goodie bag to take with me, no Godiva chocolate. And the meal was not as tasty, nor was it presented so beautifully. Still, the seats were big and comfy, and the service was as it always is with EVA, exceptional.

Tommy picked me up at the airport, and we listened to Metallica and Scorpions as he drove back into Hong Kong. Kinda cool to have a Chinese friend who digs the old metal music, ha. I tried to convince him to let me pay for the ride, since it's his business, but he wouldn't let me. I didn't have time on this trip to treat him to a nice meal, but next time for sure, both him and Doris.

Doris and I met up at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, first to have a great dim sum meal with her two children, who have grown so big since the last time I saw them! The food was great, although the service was lacking a bit. Poor Doris had to keep flagging down the wait staff, trying to get someone to bring us the food she'd ordered to go for her husband. Finally, everything arrived, and we left, with Doris refusing to let me pay for my share of the food. My friends are all so generous, and it's not easy paying them back for their hospitality!

The kids took off for home, where they would meet up with Dad and then proceed to a demonstration the Hong Kong folks were holding, a protest telling the Chinese government that they wanted their democracy, their right to vote for their Chief Officer. Here's a quote from the news: "Thousands of people marched in central Hong Kong to demand full democracy on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the former British colony's return to Chinese rule. Police estimate 19,000 people started the march, but the crowd grew as the demonstrators moved through the city chanting slogans and blowing whistles.
... In 2003 and 2004, half a million or more people joined the march, upset at the weak economy and the government's mismanagement of various issues. But last year after the city's unpopular leader Tung Chee-hwa resigned, the number of participants fell to around 20,000." And to think, there are certain leaders here in Taiwan who would willingly hand Taiwan back to Beijing. Uh huh, then we'd be the ones marching.

Doris and I had a nice trip to Lei Yue Mun, a little fishing village a short ferry ride from Kowloon. It was hot, but there was a good breeze blowing, so every now and then we got cooled off. Too bad we were so full from the dim sum, because there is every kind of fresh seafood you could ever want available in Lei Yue Mun. It's all swimming around in tanks outside the restaurants (and some very large shrimp were attempting an escape from their tank, but were plopped back in by the boss), and you can just pick out what you want cooked, and they'll do it. Next time, maybe.

We then took the ferry over to Hong Kong Island, and Doris took me to the Hong Kong Film Archive, where I bought a book about the Shaw Brothers films and the memoir of Chang Che, one of my favorite directors, both in English! What a great find that was. Then we headed to the shopping mall for some air conditioning and iced coffee. After that, over to Doris's place to wait for hubby and kids to return, then to her mother's home for a marvelous dinner. Wow, her mom is a great cook! Even after I was stuffed, I wanted more. Got back to my room rather late and just kicked back watching the last part of a very stupid movie called Evolution, starring David Duchovny and Dan Aykroyd. Really dumb.

I stayed at a little guest house called the Lee Garden Guest House. The room was miniscule, but very clean, and the air conditioner worked, which was the most important thing. The name of the building in which the guest house is located is quite interesting, the Fook Kiu Mansion. Same to you, buddy.

Sunday I just goofed around, went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art to see The World of the Etruscans exhibit(http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/Museum/Arts/english/exhibitions/eexhibitions_s_20060401_1.html), along with Auspicious Emblems: Chinese Cultural Treasures - 45th Anniversary Exhibition of the Min Chiu Society (http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/Museum/Arts/english/exhibitions/eexhibitions_s_20060101_1.html) Both were excellent, but the Chinese art is so much more beautiful. There was a little arts and crafts show outside the museum, but I didn't see anything I wanted to buy. Went over to Harbour City to shop at City Super, but there were so many people that I gave up. Walked around Tsim Sha Tsui until I couldn't take it anymore, went back to the room to rest, went to the jade market, then back to the room for more rest, then hit Temple Street Night Market for awhile in the evening. Went to bed early because it was too hot to keep wandering around, took off early for the airport Monday morning so I could spend time wandering the shops there, got back to my place around 6:00 p.m. DZ was happy to see me.

Back to the normal routine today, and hopefully will get over to Shi Da to sign up for classes this week.