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Published: October 11th 2007
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The Submarine
Our lodgings ares small--fine for one but too crowded for two, but it's no big deal because we aren't home that much anyway. I remember a “Far Side” Cartoon, from some years ago, depicting a Neanderthal man holding an enormous club the size of a Douglas Fir log and saying to his friend, “Let’s hope we never have to use it.”
The same concept applies to first aid, but Lao-puo and I had to use ours the other day. A fellow spilled off his motorbike near our digs, seconds before we arrived at the accident scene. His young son on the back was unhurt, but you didn’t have to be a sawbones or a paramedic to tell at a glance that the dad had broken his leg. Being somewhat analytical in a crisis, I remembered a martial arts friend of mine telling me some years ago that it only takes 7 psi to break a human bone. Or was it 70? In any case, I’m not about to drop-kick anybody to find out—however sorely my students might tempt me from time to time. Enough. There is nothing humerus about broken arms and legs.
Someone had already called an ambulance, and I thought it prudent to make the guy stay still--for fear of a spinal injury. We couldn’t even lift his bike up,
Someone's Pet Pig...
was in a restaurant where we recently had dinner. The red nail polish on each hoof blew me away. because the other leg would have moved and changed the position of his spinal cord. It was a good precaution: when the paramedics arrived they braced his neck before lifting the bike. It must have hurt like damnation, having a motorcycle across a broken leg, but I figured that pain for a while would be better than no feeling indefinitely. My heart sank when I saw liquid dripping in the vicinity of his gas tank, but it was just the soup he had just bought for his family’s lunch. The man was breathing OK, and not bleeding, so there wasn’t a lot to do. I held his head still and reassured him as best I could—in my impeccable Mandarin. Yeah right. “Hao-le. Mei guan chi. Hao hao hao. Damen dao-le”. It’s the tone of voice that matters, not the words.
In the meantime, Lao-puo made sure the fellow’s wife had been called and then comforted the son. The poor kid was as cool as cucumber for a few minutes, and then started sobbing like his heart was broken. He didn’t appear to be hurt, but he went with his dad in the ambulance and I expect someone at Buddhist
Tenant Parking
I don't like having our motorbikes out in the rain all the time. Tzu Chi Hospital would have looked him over. An onlooker was so impressed by Lao-puo’s kindness to the little guy that she followed us home on her own machine, gave us a bag of grapefruit and her phone number, and invited Suzanne to be her friend.
That was our karma for the day, but (like most people) I’m probably quite severely in arrears with my daily good deed.
It’s now Monday morning, and I remember how I felt in previous years at this stage of our year away. It’s now a lot closer to the end of the school year than to the beginning, with all of the pensiveness that this stage of the game has heretofore brought out. Not this time—I don’t have to go back if I don’t want to! For the first golden time in my adult life I can please myself--without regard to employers or anyone else. Lao-puo loves it here—she’s the strongest student in her level two Mandarin class at BTZU and she’s increasingly able to read and write.
I often wonder about the hardships caused to young teachers at home, with declining enrollment causing lost opportunities if not actual layoffs. In
Up the Street...
...towards Buddhist Tzu Chi University. fact, a teacher in one elementary school back home was a Cyclops, and lost his job because he was down to only one pupil.
Instead of taking other jobs, or working as substitutes hoping to get on steady, many new teachers would be much better off to come over here. For the right person, being a foreign English teacher is the best job in the world. For the wrong person, it can be lonely and frustrating and downright infuriating. I remember one fellow (whose conversations consisted of constant criticism of this place) prefacing every negative comment with “why don’t they just…”—by which he meant that people should quit being Chinese in their own home environment and act in a way that was more familiar to His Majesty.
Many teachers find it difficult to return to Canada, and some end up back over here. That’s what has happened to us. Some even get “marooned on Formosa.”
I was very pleased to find out for sure today (Thursday) that the Hualien County Board of Education has approved the funding for me to stay at Guangfu JHS for another year. The Ministry of Education, to save its life, cannot get enough foreign teachers over here. For some reason, teachers are not required to pay income tax in Taiwan, but unless Canadians can qualify for non-resident status they will have to pay Canadian income tax. At first we considered that to be an outrage, but it’s fair enough when we think about it.
I’ve never seen anyone work as hard at a course than Lao-puo doing her Chinese. We try to converse as much as possible in Mandarin, so it’s lucky for me that I’m the strong silent type. She can read and write better than anyone else in her class.
In the meantime, I expressed an interest at school in learning a little bit of Ami. That’s the local aboriginal language, of which there are dozens in Taiwan. A delegation of students meets me after class with a ‘word of the day”. I’ll be speaking fluent Ami at this rate—if I stay in Guangfu for the next three hundred years or so. I have also asked for permission to audit the kids’ Ami class during school hours.
Guangfu JHS teachers have been going to the local elementary schools (all four of them) to prepare the grade sixers for junior high next year. I’ll go along, because very few of the kids have ever spoken to a foreigner before, and probably seldom even seen one. This is the boondocks around here, no error.
There should be a word in English to describe something that sounds terrible until it is explained, but if there is such a word then I don’t know it. California hoe: a gardening implement for weeding vegetables in Santa Monica. Pussy stretcher: a device for transporting injured felines. Baby chopper: a huge motorcycle with a tiny engine.
While Lao-puo was studying the other day, I was loafing around the neighbourhood. I ended up at a motorbike dealer looking over a baby chopper. It is a huge expensive hassle to get a motorcycle larger than 150 cc, so you can buy big heavy bikes with little engines. It’s for show, I suppose. You should have seen the baby chopper that was for sale—it looked like a 750 cc, with high handlebars, fake dual exhaust, big thick tires--and a 150 cc motor. I started it up, and wondered where the funny little whining sound was coming from. Concluding that I would look ridiculous on such a machine, I continued looking. The guy was selling a lovely 500 cc Kymco (Honda clone) scooter, for a mere NTD 265,000. That’s really only $9400 or so (tax and insurance in)—a honking deal compared to Canadian prices--but we don’t do enough highway riding over here to justify the expense. We would be better off to rent a car, or put my bike on the train if we are going any distance.
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