Thanks Crazy Lady

In recent news, I was given a potato last week. I entered my school early last Thursday to find an interesting woman sitting at the front desk speaking with our school manager. As soon as I walked through the door, the large lady whipped around and my unsuspecting ocular organs met her crazy eyes. She was a hefty set woman, with wild, black curly hair, an obtrusive pince nez resting on her protruding snozzle, and a long heavy winter jacket dangling down to her vericose vein laden, panty hose concealed (although clearly not well enough) stubby legs.

As soon as she saw me, an idea struck her head. She turned around and took a small, crumpled bag and came to me right away! She started speaking Chinese with a fiery flare before she realized I was not familiar with her dialect. I turned to my manager sympathetically, but she only shook her head and did her best to stifle a laugh. She opened the bag and took out a warm, fresh sweet potato. She handed it to me and said, in broken English, "Good, Good." I looked at the potato and said, "Mmmmm, looks delicious. I'm just going to take it with me into the other room now and eat it there. You don't have to follow me..." Oh, but she did.

Down the hall, she called out, "Good, Good!"

And I responded, "Yes, it looks good. I will eat it in here."

"GOOD, GOOD!"

I placed the potato on a napkin in the teachers room and pretended to start eating it. I usually make it a point not to eat food from strangers. Especially crazy strangers. And this stranger now came into the teachers room and whispered sensually, "Good, good."

We stared at each other with nothing to say- two souls lost in different languages. I again said, "looks good," and she then bowed and left the room.

In a few moments, I went back out to the front desk to ask my manager who this woman was. She started laughing and said, "I have no idea." That's it, I wasn't going to eat that potato at this rate. I returned to the teachers room, with the potato resting softly next to me, and got to work.

About an hour later, I went back out to the main lobby and had a near fatal heart attack when the woman was back! She was sitting quietly on the couch staring intently at me. It scared me so I went back into the teachers room and did not return. However, this fearless potato warrior followed me back to the teachers room with a different inflection to her voice and asked, "good, good?"

I told her that the potato was "good" and I thanked her very much for it. It wasn't until after I told her it was good that I realized the potato was still resting on my desk in plain view. I tried to position myself between the starched gourd from hell and this maniac. Luckily, she didn't say anything more and was off.

Turns out, she was waiting for another teacher to give the remaining potatoes to and a few tubes of medicinal hand cream. She waited over two hours for the teacher to arrive, allowing just enough time for me to get caught in the crossfire and become sufficiently freaked out.

Until my next great potato caper, from your weirded out, door locked insomniac of the pacific, Michael.

Dis-orient-ed

Last night I had a dream- a very strange dream. Because I prefer not going into detail (more specifically, about the karaoke singing Amish relatives of Tyler Youngblood at a Halloween party- yes, strange, I know, so I will not expand on this point any further...), I will instead give you a brief overview of the dream.

I dreamed that I had returned early from Taiwan. I was amongst friends and family at a welcome home party. All was going well and I was more than delighted to see everyone. However, as the party went along, I started missing Taiwan more and more. I missed the foods, I missed the classes, and most importantly, I missed the people. Instantly, I became very upset with myself that I left Taiwan early! I left the party in a rage and hailed the first taxi cab to come in sight.

I hopped into the back of the cab and said, "Heping/ Fuxing" which is the intersection on which my apartment is located. The cabbie then proceeded to drive around Boston for the next hour or so searching for the intersection of "Heping/ Fuxing". Obviously, he did not find it.

I woke up from the dream in a state of panic! "Where am I?" I thought to myself. Slowly I came to realize that I was still here in Taiwan and it had all been a dream. I cannot explain to you the sense of relief I felt for waking up here in Taiwan. This was a truly reaffirming dream to have- to wake up and be delighted I was in a foreign country. It reminded me of how happy I am to be here and how lucky I am to have this opportunity to live and work in a country on the other side of the world.

In waking life, things are going quite well. I am settling into my working routine, but in Taiwan there is never a real routine! For instance, last week our refrigerator died. We asked the landlord (the Kramer of our Taiwanese apartment) to send a repair man to fix our refrigerator. Her solution was to send an aging British woman named Angela to see our fridge. It seems like she has a "friend" for everything. Well, the granny arrived to our apartment and looked at the fridge. She put some tape over the door and said, "Don't worry, it will heal itself."

We looked at her and said, "Ummm, this is an appliance. It is broken. Appliances will not heal themselves." She said to trust her, and we did. And as a reward for our trust, we got a lot of spoiled food. The landlady then said she would buy a new fridge but that would increase our rent by $500 a month (or $15 U.S.). We didn't like the sound of that, so we told her we would be going to a store to buy our own fridge and then sell it when we leave.

There is a great second hand appliance market in Taipei where you can get great appliances for cheap money. My roommate and I went to the market and purchased a new fridge and Television for $6,000, or about $180 U.S. An improvement over the $500 a month increase in rent which would have come out to $5,000 EACH PERSON by the time the lease was over!

The new fridge is here, and I tell it everyday how much I love it, so it will never break on me! Until next time, my faithful readers, from your cold beer drinking, fresh food eating, nightmare freaking, bargain seeking haggler of the orient, Michael.

A Super Typhoon

While most of you are snuggled warm in your New England homes, enjoying the autumn foliage, Taiwan was blasted this weekend by a Category 5 Super Typhoon. With sustained winds of 115 mph and gusts at over 250 mph, a radius dwarfing the entire country, deadly landslides serving as the inevitable consequences, and 50 inches of rain in some parts of the city, this beast wrought havoc and disaster to this tiny island. And with the eye passing right over Taipei, I saw the worst of it. Sorry to say, it isn't over yet.

Click here to see a video of the Super Typhoon Krosa that has so far left at least four dead in Taipei. Courtesy of BBC Online.

I Like it Hot! Hot! Hot!

A most charming evening was had last night by all in atten- dance. Meeting up at Taipei Main Station, a group of my closest friends took the red line, caught a bus transfer, and hiked it up the mountainside of Yangminshan in the evening. Yangminshan is known for many things- breathtaking views, clean air, vigorous mountain trails, and most importantly (and incidentally, the purpose of our trip that evening) the hot springs.

We went to Hot Spring Lane where many bubbling baths were awaiting our future plans for relaxation. After comparing a few of the spas, we decided on a nice little place nestled into the side of a hill. Originally, the owner thought we wanted the public springs, which were nice. Only one thing- you had to be naked. Being the conservative Bostonian that I am, this option wasn't entirely appealing, so when we toured the public springs and there were plenty of Taiwanese au natural, I voted for the private baths where bathing suits could be (and would be) worn. Also, the publics were separated male/female, and we were a mixed group that wanted to be together.

We rented out two rooms adjacent to one another and let the hot springs flow at full force. Rich in iron and other healing minerals, there was nothing more soothing than a calming soak in the mountains' lava boiled water sources. Pruned fingers aside, the positive effects were calming and all around delightful. Every last toxin in me was sweat out within minutes.

Unbeknownst to me, all those toxins were about to reenter my body before I would even step out of the resort.

When the majority of us had finished up, dried off, and dressed, we returned outside to the lobby where there was a bar. The man who welcomed us was singing some interesting Taiwanese tunes. But more importantly, in front of him were twelve conspicuously placed pints of Taiwan beer. "That's strange," I thought to myself. "I wonder what those are for."

As we were about to leave, I saw the singer turn to our group and start speaking Chinese. Not knowing what he was saying, I turned to one of my Taiwanese friends for a translation. "He's saying those are for a beer drinking contest. Guess what Michael, you're playing!" That was an interesting turn of events.

But behold, the events grew more interesting as straws were laid out in front of the glasses. Now my friend was saying, "You have to drink three pints of beer with the straw." A straw. Right. OK. Three more Taiwanese men approached the table making it a stiff competition of four. I had to represent America on this one, all by myself. The race was off. One other gent and I made it through our first two beers well before anyone else, so we took a short break to allow the others to catch up. Once the final person caught up, we went for the last beer. Gulping, sucking, and swallowing, that pint of beer was mixing with the other two pints just consumed in a matter of a few seconds. I glanced over at my competition- he was ahead of me. I thought to myself, how could he go that fast? Well, the answer is, he couldn't. About half way through the drink all the beer that he took in decided it wanted to go back out, spewing all over the floor and on my foot. It didn't matter, as this gave me the edge I needed to clinch the title of Champion.

As a prize, I won a bottle of rice wine, four free tickets to use the spa, and a three hundred dollar gift certificate to use at the restaurant. I think this could be a nice date sometime!

Well, as you can imagine- at the the spa I became very dehydrated so those three beers had a pretty swift and significant effect. It was a fantastic ride home, and for dinner we went to the Taiwan Beer Bar for some more frosty refreshments and traditional Taiwanese chow.

I am aware that most of my posts, recently, have been about mass consumption of alcohol. I do not endorse this kind of abuse at all. But it was my cousin Stevie, who was here in a Taiwan not too long ago, that warned me I had to bring my drinking cap along. Well, I have since learned that the Taiwanese themselves don't drink much, but man do they love to buy drinks for other people. Especially foreigners like me. Gambe! (Or, as we say, "Bottoms up!")

So with that, I say farewell from your detoxified, intoxicated, aquatic master of the mountainous hot springs, Michael.