3:45 pm
Speech class
Department of Chinese Language and Culture
Sometimes, when the afternoon rolls around and we’re already tired from burning the midnight oil, there’s just no way to stay awake. As evidenced here.
Oct 292009
One trait that Taiwanese people seem to desire a lot is convenience. When I tell people I live near Guting MRT station but my university is near Jiantan MRT station they’ll tell me how horrible that is because “it’s not very convenient.” I explain that it’s because Emily goes to a university near Guting. In reality though the distance is still only about 20 minutes by scooter when it’s not rush-hour which, to me, is still pretty good.
The desire for convenience by her residents gives Taipei some wonderful features. Lets take me and Emily for example. Our house is right in the middle of the city. We are three blocks from the MRT: Taipei’s ‘subway.’ On our block we have multiple convenience stores, bus stops, our preferred scooter shop, a dry-cleaners, not too mention a bicycle store which has proven to be very useful as the air in my tires is always running low. Three blocks away are electronic stores, a grocery, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and a lot, lot more. 5 blocks away you hit Emily’s school and two more past that brings you to the Shida Night Market and some of the best restaurants in the city! I haven’t even mentioned that we are just a few blocks from several parks including the River Park system that goes on for miles following Taipei’s various riverbanks.
You know how in American cities you have to drive out to the suburbs to go to Wal-Mart or Home Depot or any of those big box stores? Here in Taipei we are about 10 minutes by scooter from Carrefour (a French version of Wal-Mart), 20 minutes from B&Q (basically Home Depot with a different name), and while we have never gone 20 minutes would also bring us to Costco.
One of the uniquenesses of Taipei is how small, geographically speaking, it is. It’s actually one of the most densely populated places on earth in terms of per-square-inch with a population of 8 million (I think). While dense population does present some down-sides I really like how “convenient” my city is!
The time seems to be passing very fast! I look at the date and feel like its three weeks past where it should be.
On Wednesday I’ll have my first midterm of this semester in Management class. The teacher sucks. I hate to complain but she doesn’t speak English very well, is teaching but seems to have no interest in doing so, and basically for class just reads powerpoint slides for three hours once a week. On top of that her idea of a midterm is have us memorize the powerpoint slides and then regurgitate them back onto the midterm word for word……..yuck yuck yuck. Oh and the midterm is 30% of the final grade. Okay enough of that.
Today Emily and I had the pleasure of Sunday lunch with our good friends Sandy & Laura. Two of Megan’s, my sister, really good friends who by their sheer coolness and the power of association with my sister are now some of the best friends Emily and I have as well. It was great to see them again and catch up.
Now, after getting back home Emily and I are both busy studying. I am memorizing for the Management midterm, reading in my mythology textbook, and working on a speech outline for an informative speech on the US mortgage crisis to give in speech class. Emily has a mountain of homework as well and so here we are in our nice little home off of Heping Rd., sipping coffee, with the hum of our window box air conditioner going in the background craming knowledge into our heads.
Friday I helped put on a Welcome to Freshman/Halloween Party at MCU for International College freshman. It was fun to be helping to try and build a more community like atmosphere at school. Sometimes being an older student I don’t have much interest in ‘school spirit’ activities but I enjoyed myself. Emily came and we performed a rendition of the song Last Kiss by Pearl Jam with my guitar as part of the performance time. I also ended up being the emcee for the event so needless to say we were very involved. Saturday, the next day, all of us party organizers got together and just hung out for a little bit to actually enjoy some time ourselves. It was nice! Emily and I had them meet at our house and then we walked down to the Shida night market and had dinner at a restaurant we like called Evans’, a burger place. Its sort of cool how I have all my classes with the same group of people. We are all bonding and getting pretty tight.
On that note I’ll tell you about the Taiwan high school phenomenon. Taiwanese have very strong ties to high school classmates because in high school you are always with the same people in every class for every year. Very much like what I have now in college. Many Taiwanese form friendships with their high school classmates that last lifetimes. If I ask someone what they did over the weekend or where they went on a recent vacation they will often tell me they went to visit high school classmates regardless of their age or walk of life. Even Taiwanese in their golden years go and exercise with high school classmates or go shopping etc. Its really quite special and unique. Very different from America, wouldn’t you say, where half the kids wish high school never would have ended and half can’t wait to forget it ever happened.
In other news I made my first video with our new camcorder and posted it on Youtube. I didn’t put it up here in our movie section because it doesn’t really apply but if you want to check it out go here http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=183c2_won40. I’m hoping to start making some more videos about life here to add to your virtual experience but as you can see it hasn’t happened yet and its already almost November.
Speaking of November I’d like to give a shoutout to two very special women whom we love so so much. Megan, my sister, and Kathy, my mom, were both born on November 1st, different years, and I would like to wish them both a very happy birthday!
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