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Published: April 11th 2008
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I'm in a sort of video mood this week so please have a look at the video of Ling-ling (the foundling bulldog) that I recently added to Chapter 25. To view the videos in this blog entry, just click on the little arrow above my text.
For the current chapter, I added a very short clip about our Monday morning assemblies--the style of which might seem quite military to a lot of western readers. It's also a good chance to see how incredibly beautiful the scenery is around here.
The next clip is the REAL Republic of China national anthem, played as two students hold the flag up. You never hear the national anthem outside Taiwan, for fear of offending the mainlanders. The song you hear (as the flag is being raised) is used as the anthem of "Chinese Taipei". I despise that name. It's like we Canadians being forced to call our country "American Ottawa". It's actually a lovely song about the natural beauty (of China!) and encouragement for the people. The kids stand at attention and salute--with minimal use of a cattle prod to maintain good order and discipline.
That's a joke, by the way--corporal punishment is forbidden in schools in Taiwan. It's just as well. The minute you lose your temper with a kid, you lose. Besides, what do you do if you smack a kid and the behaviour doesn’t change? My rule is that I never scold a student while I'm angry. I have a little conference table in the back of the classroom that I call "Siberia". My co-teacher explained the word, and whenever I "crime" a kid (usually it's a boy) he sits there practicing penmanship for the rest of the period. Girls are more inclined to just sulk and huff, and act as if they don't understand why the Gods waste oxygen on me--but they comply.
The final video is a street scene near Gonguan MRT Station in Taipei--big, crowded, noisy, polluted, exotic, cosmopolitan, wonderful Taipei. I look awful in my pictures now! The trouble is that bloody motorbike--I fire it up to cross the street instead of getting exercise (I’m getting really Taiwanese in that regard) and my cheeseburger depot is coming back. I’ve only eaten one burger in the last six months, and I watch my calories like crazy. For all the good it seems to do!
Tomb Sweeping Day (Chinese “Easter” more or less) made for a great long weekend. We got the nice new electric train from Hualien to Taipei. My usual morning train is a few nose-to-tail E&N jobs, but the new one is a honker! We were doing at least 120 the whole way, as smooth as silk. The only downside was a little kid in the seat in front of us snacking on dried fish flakes, the stench of which would wake the dead.
We stayed with our friends Kim and Stephanie, and went to the tea plantations in the hills south of Taipei. So did everyone else in the city, it seemed. On Saturday night we did what a lot of people do here—we went out shopping and eating. I read in church (from the Bible in the pulpit—I don’t mean that I enjoyed a novel during the sermon). Kim preaches in a way that really motivates you to pay attention.
It has suddenly become HOT again. Even at 0530, I don't need a jacket on my motorbike anymore. The bad news is a cockroach hatching. Maybe Lao-puo is a bit Buddhist now--she doesn't like to kill them. She gets me to do it instead.
Our big news is, of course, that Renée will be here in two weeks. The poor soul will be done in after flying Kingston-Toronto, then Vancouver-Taipei, with an 0540 arrival). We will go to Taipei the day before, and drive her home. It’s a pity she will miss the view—it will be dark when she overflies the Queen Charlottes, Alaska, and Japan, but at least she will be able to sleep on the plane. She’s taking Air Canada (to get the cheap "feeder flights" to Toronto and Vancouver), but Air Canada partners with EVA Airlines for the overseas part.
Even though our car has air conditioning, we will still get an early start before the heat of the day starts—and before the road gets too busy. Hualien to Su-Ao is a winding road along the cliffs—and lane markers are a sort of general guideline in Taiwan as opposed to the definite boundaries that they are in Canada.
Speaking of the car, I could just spit! It would have cost USD 3500 to ship the car home—far more than its value. That’s not even counting whatever taxes and nonsense the federal and provincial governments will hose us for. It is a well-equipped (everything works) older Camry that runs like a homebound tea clipper, and we have to get rid of it.
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