Hello on Saturday I went to see the Bodyworlds exhibition in Taipei with some fello huayu zhongxinners. It was weird and gross but acceptable. What freaked me out was the creepy German doctor who always wears this creepy black hat, whether he's being photographed with tennis players or shoving a corpse through a high-tech bandsaw and quickly throwing the slices into molten plastic. What p/ssed me off was the fact that there were only about three women's bodies, and none of them were playing sport like all the rest of them. I don't mean to sound like a paranoid feminist here, but when these plasticised human cadavers are being excavated 3000 years from now and kids are doing their school projects on the Ancient Westerners, we don't want them to think that all women did was have babies, do we?

In other news, Texas Boy threw up all over FM on Friday. I remembered how obnoxious he had been so I laughed but then I felt bad for him. I mean, I threw up at FM a few weeks ago but I know how to be discreet when I'm off my face.

Mystery of the Dismantled Scooter

In freakier news, the outer casing of my scooter was methodically dismantled with the aid of a screw driver some time after 2am Saturday after I got home and before 7am when I woke up and felt compelled to go and check on it. Lately I have been reverse parking because I find it easier to do, and because it makes it easier to find too, because no one else does it. So I walked up to where my scooter should be, and there's this skeleton of a scooter standing there looking cold and naked in the rain, crying "look what they've done to me, liz, look what they've done!" The first thing that occurred to me was that the engine was gone. I put the key in the ignition and everything started up normally. On the ground were the bolts and screws. Lying on top of the next few scooters along, were the plastic parts that go on the outside. Everything seemed to be there. I immediately turned on my racist defenses, rang Lily who came down to help me put it back together, and for one hour could not shut up about how Westerners are never this vindictive and twisted, although Lily said it happened in France all the time. I didn't care, all I wanted to do was blame the adjectival country and its people. So we speculated the possibilities. Had I offended someone lately? Xiao Pi has been playing games lately but I don't know if he has mental problems and the tendency to hang out at four in the morning with a screwdriver in the car park. The guys reckoned a part has to be missing from it - why else would they undo it like that? I drove it down to the main gate without any problems though, but I'll get it checked out anyway. Lily reckoned it was just a bunch of drunks who picked on my scooter because it was reverse parked. But later she said it had to be someone I knew, because they did no harm to the scooter, just caused me alot of trouble. What a way to make someone paranoid as hell - who could I have offended? What did I do? What did I say? Is someone trying to kill me? Hehe ;-)




**************


Now, I know it seems like all I talk about is my scooter, but really, it is my pride and joy and there's nothing I love more than my beautiful scooter. Its purchase meant that I spent the whole of May broke and hounded by the office for my tuition fees, and I can't remember the last time I actually walked up to Dong Bie. Life is grand with a scooter.   ¶ 16:11 0 Comments

  The Taiwan Uni group with whom I went to south-west China is going to Tientsin via Beijing in July. Now after the last trip I hated all of them but this trip has suddenly become ever so tempting. I was looking for some numbers among the Chinese characters I didn't know, and the biggest was 10 000 so it may be the case that its only five hundred big ones this time. Lily sounds interested too and I can almost see myself giving in and going. It may be interesting. There's something about going to Green Island with a delegation from the Persian Gulf economical circle or something but don't quote me on that because although my Chinese has improved since January I still look for the English translations :-)


  ¶ 19:21 0 Comments

  Culture Shock II: The Second Wave
Reckless Complaining and Angry Bitching

I had a bit of a scooter tiff yesterday. My brakes decided not to work, or I just decided to die rather than squeeze them hard enough. So I kind of drove into the back left corner of this car, and while I was busy stressing over the damage my scooter was doing to the car I did a bit of a tipping-over routine where my right big toe nail bent in half backwards and my knee got all scratched and bloody. The princess that I am insisted on seeing a doctor to get it all cleaned up so that it wouldn't get infected which is more likely to happen here with all the dirty air, and besides the pain in my toe was nasty.

At the hospital I was sitting there getting a band-aid put on my knee like I had fallen over at kindy or something and as usual a crowd of nosy foreigner-fans gathered at the door way to watch The Foreigner get some disinfectant cream swabbed over her Foreign toe. Then godammit I started crying just because I was hung over, irritable and generally just traumatised thanks to my dodgy brakes and I was judged a "xiao pengyou" by the Injured-Foreigner Fan-Club. Racism is contagious here. Let me make a politically incorrect sweeping generalisation about the Chinese - I have found them far more

You missed it! I deleted it ten minutes later.

Today I popped into a couple of schools to offer my services as a subsitute teacher and well frankly, telling them that I am Australian is the same as walking into a modeling agency with a donut stuffed in your mouth. You can see the "NO" spread over their faces faster than you can say "American accent." Why do they want an American accent anyway? Its so sad and pathetic really. Its an insult to the English. Growl, etc. Its not PMS either.

In other news, sorry Mum, but apparently I'm verging on alcoholism, toeing the line etc. A concerned friend approached me about it. What am I supposed to do if I can't drink?   ¶ 18:02 0 Comments

  Ask Gretel

Dear Gretel,
Help! I've befriended a psycho. She's a little on the passive-aggressive side and she gives strange explanations for the strange things she does. While I was totally excited, she got upset when I bought a scooter because to her it meant I wouldn't rely on her anymore, but the thing is, I never did. She said the worst day of her life was when her hamster died ten years ago, and she's never gotten over it. I think its unhealthy for me to spend any more time with her due to the way she thinks and behaves but I don't know what to do. She never showers or washes her clothes and its unpleasant to be near her. She told me the others had been organising a surprise party for me, apparently because she wanted me to get my hopes up. But the thing is, I never asked or indicated that I needed to get my hopes up. I hadn't thought twice about my birthday celebrations, only that I wanted to go out and drink like I normally do every weekend. I told her I thought it was a bit strange that she would do that, and her explanations shifted between denying that she played a cruel joke on me and apologising for doing it and saying it was about "her", not "me". I had no idea what she was talking about but the point is she messed me up on my birthday and I felt completely unsettled for the rest of the weekend. She is also quite nosy about people she doesn't talk to and I often wonder why she wants to know the exact day and time that so and so broke up with so and so, why so and so didn't come out on Friday etc, when she does not socialise with any of these people nor goes out on the weekends herself. She is obsessed with the dynamics of the group at school but claims she is seperate from everyone else and does not care. She deliberately pushes questions that make me feel uneasy and while at first I thought I had found someone I could really talk to, I now feel that she prefers to create problems and make me feel like I have them when in fact there is nothing wrong. We used to talk about kids and how important it is to protect them from the things that can happen to them during childhood. She said she had a huge secret about what happened to her, so bad that I could never imagine what it was, and so bad that she couldn't tell me. So I said fair enough, I probably don't want to know, and didn't ask her. But she said she had decided to tell me, so I listened. This big event in her life, which was supposed to have messed her up forever, was the death of her hamster when she was a teenager. There I was thinking she had murdered someone and gone to jail or something so serious that she could never tell anyone. I have known she is a bit odd for a while but now that it has directly affected my comfort and wellbeing I think I need to distance myself from her. But how? She has noone else here in Paraguay and I hate being dishonest and making up lies to avoid being around her.

Unsettled,
Billy


  ¶ 23:58 0 Comments

  Customs stole my dowager empress coin from the mail. Man I walked around Li Jiang searching through buckets of old coins for two hours for that coin, trying to pronounce Ci Xi with the correct tones for all the shop keepers etc. Well it turns out its a cultural relic and I was supposed to apply for permission to "import" it into Australia (rather than carry it in my suitcase when I come home). China is totally against letting them leave the country even though any foreigner can buy one so I don't know what will happen to it, customs will probably send it back to China with sincere apologies where some official that doesn't give a sh/t will pass it on to his poor peasant cousin who will then sell it again for half a cent to a foreigner at his road-side stall in eastern Yunnan. P/ssed off!   ¶ 02:14 0 Comments

  I went to Ali Mountain yesterday and watched the sun rise over the horizon at 5.25 this morning. This required a 3 o'clock wakeup but it was 90% worth it. You will never guess who I went with. I just wanted to go to Ali Shan so I said yes.

The people are heaps nice. I handed this lady twenty five kuai for a mango and she gave me forty kuai change. I was buying a papaya and the guy started handing us all these free papayas. Then we were sitting outside a tea stand when he brought over plates and plates of cut-up papaya for us. On the train back through the mountains this arvo, I saw a blue truck full of papayas driving along the road parallel to the tracks approaching one of the mid-route stops. I checked the driver to see if it was the same truck and it ended up being the same Mr Papaya from last night. We did the whole waving what a coincidence thing. I was surprised he could actually spot us in the train from the road. THEN after the train had stopped he appeared outside my window with a bag of papayas motioning for me to come to the door and take them off him. He had stopped his truck, grabbed some papayas, ran into the station and onto the platform without a ticket, found where we were sitting, and offered us some more, all within the five minutes needed to drop off passengers and pick up new ones. The people at Ali Shan are eerily kind people. The souvenir shop people were handing us free stuff too. Miss M said it was because Mr Papaya thought we were 'cute' i.e. hot, I believe because this is the only reasoning she is capable of producing. I decided we had stumbled upon a bunch of kind people with a romantic spirit, sigh... so different to every other average person around here.

In other news, I threw down the towel, or threw it out, or threw it in or whatever at the music club after a dorky bitch-face said I was lousy for the last time. I sought post-traumatic stress counselling from various students of the language centre and they advised me that I couldn't blame these dickwads for failing to contemplate that some foreigners can speak Chinese. Yeah but that doesn't make them any nicer people. I cancelled my lessons from Cute Piano Teacher aswell although he didn't deserve it. But I think he really needs that $8 per hour coz he called to ask if I wanted lessons again. I said yes so I'm going back tomorrow to let him explain how to position my hands properly.

  ¶ 22:23 0 Comments

  Hello its Sunday arvo here in Taichung and the weather is fine. OK in Saturday a bunch of us went on a mini road trip to Mala Bay water park. Oh my goodness it was my first time to a water park and it was maaaaaaad. We didn't know the way back and ended up on the high-speed freeway where scooters aren't allowed. There's no lane for scooters so we drove along that mini-lane that isn't really a lane on the side of the road. Anyway we were driving along when one of us chickened out and turned around so all of us followed except two. We made it back to the ol' Thai restaurant and ate ate ate we were so hungry. Man we ran up those stairs to the water slides about 50 times like we were all 10 again the only difference being that the guys had nice arms and the girls had flab. I was truly exhausted for the first time in ages and I didn't even feel like going out but that's not like me so I went out anyway.

So much went on last night. We started out at the Londoner again and ended up at the Sound Garden and Pig Pen again. Oooh so much went on. Carolyn and I discovered the Texan exchange student is an adjectival rude and obnoxious loser, but the thing is, he isn't a loser. He walked into the sound garden and the first thing he did was look at me and say, "you wore that top last week." Everyone was stunned. Carolyn went on to talk about how we women like to dress etc and then he went on to say he couldn't understand anything that bleeds for seven days without dying. What the hell? He came to meet us just to insult us, that was kinda weird. So he was declared an adjectival-head.

What else. Oh I begged the Italian guy to find me a job that wasn't english teaching and once again he implied that if I don't screw him then he has nothing to offer me. Yuk, go away. Then a friendly Taiwanese girl that hangs out at the pig pen alot warned me that he was a bad man etc and I'm like yeah I already know.

There was other stuff but its all details.

Today I played frisbee in the park. There is a bunch of people that play ultimate frisbee which is like frisbee football. They even call it a disc instead of a frisbee. So anyway when I realised I could not throw a frisbee I sat on the sidelines like a wuss and drank my chocolate milk tea and chatted with the people who were also not into it. Its nice there though and I would go back just to feel the grass under my feet again which never happens here and study etc. And ask people how to get a good job too!!!

And yeah so anyway I came back at five this morning and I don't know what my roommates snorted this morning but at around midday they started slamming the door every five minutes until I was too awake to fall asleep again. I mean I know they are deprived of loud music every weekend morning while I lie around till one but still. Its crappy music anyway and they are better off without it.   ¶ 20:16 0 Comments

  Look, I wrote a poem, deeply meaningful about living in Taiwan, etc.

Walking down the street
In warm and sweaty modesty
My mother told me to comply with the culture
So I bought a scooter


How to Write a "Haiku" Poem

by Bruce Lansky

Haiku poetry is a very short, centuries-old form of Japanese poetry that is an intriguing change of pace from the kind of rhythmic, rhyming poetry you're used to reading. Haiku is like a photo that captures the essence of what's happening, often connecting two seemingly unrelated things.

http://www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclass/Haiku.html
sorry i'm not up with the whole links thing

**********************************************************

In other literary news, Ned Kelly used to replace the word 'f/cking' with 'adjectival'. From now on, I will do the same. "Make me famous you snobby b/tch, I mean look at me, I'm an adjectival star for god's sake."

**********************************************************

Also, the diet's over. Last night I drove down to the Londoner to post my substitute teaching ad on the notice board and ended up ordering a meat pie and chips with just the right amount of gravy.

Also, the Americans thought it preposterous to call a serviette a serviette rather than a napkin. Um excuse me, which of our languages is closest to the original English? And when I said "ok I'll put it in my diary" I was instructed to say "note book" or "calendar" as if I was being CORRECTED. This was from the same friend who wears a t-shirt with a glittery American flag on it. At least Ned Kelly has the decency to say 'adjectival' instead of the F-word.

Also, today's like the 13th already, which means its like one week till I turn 20, already. I haven't written my classic novel of subtlety, class, and romance yet. One week. I'll write a short one that I can finish quickly. Its going to be a self-help book that breaks through the mold of all the other self-help books. Its going to be about finding happiness in your life and following your dreams. But with a twist!!! Its going to be a post-modernist book, which means I cannot write it.







  ¶ 18:07 0 Comments

  Make sure youse all visit Ingunn's blog...   ¶ 15:54 0 Comments

  Hey Ingunn I tried translating part of your blog. This is how it turned out:

I veit snuggle up to I is not completely snuggle up to stand myself into 臘ess vegna bloggi. while is there not only j獺kv疆tt. hef then visibly enough snuggle up to do! Weekend var erfi簸. mikil work and OK snuggle up to do. while there whom top brass her var snuggle up to I f矇kk snuggle up to serve 7 people of Taiwan river laugardagskv繹ldi簸. I var - b繳inn snuggle up to wait wrought-up after them - allir weekly accordingly myself gloat well-nigh snuggle up to get lastly turn to snuggle up to prove Chinese m穩na. Tonight var superb and I f矇kk snuggle up to talk river Chinese allan t穩mann temporal meanwhile they t籀ku form and g獺fu myself visiting card whom is very mikilv疆gt into Taiwan. I var before putrid yesterday after weekend thus I ordain snuggle up to spot myself into walkabout with Dagn羸ju niece , accustom k穩ktum into rain cats and dogs whom is into 臘renslunum and sub- thus atop mountain. above Votaberg! I var totally - b繳inn into l疆runum after ;fn). while there ought only snuggle up to be j獺kv疆tt. there whom after walkabout var ;fn) : F籀rum river selfoss snuggle up to retrieve Dedicate Runic inscription F籀rum into Pizzu do with ��la river Lava. g籀簸 kaup pizza with him. yes pay lip service to myself! F籀rum to ��mmu and Afa. whom voru vivacious. leitu簸um with spectacles and floret as though thus often theretofore ;) F籀r rathe snuggle up to sleep. while waken speedily back away hr繹kklast accordingly Weekend Runic inscription hraut thus aloft! F籀rum into b疆inn to calculus whom var vivacious. while I not thus vivacious later. F籀rum river Subway. opening not eat subwayinn. everything calculus snuggle up to teach. F籀rum snuggle up to try amplifier into t籀nast繹簸inni. f矇kk snuggle up to try p穩an籀i簸. l矇t myself dream. F籀r snuggle up to examine maisonette m穩na. whom none b羸r into now! F籀r with Dedicate into conservatoire. F籀r to S疆unnar whom var upset at home. F籀rum aft Selfoss. F籀rum to 繹mmu and afa his Dedicate

All I can say is that you really like snuggling!  ¶ 20:24 0 Comments

  Dinner was good fun. My roommate drank her first cocktail which brings the official tally of Chinese girls whom I have managed to corrupt up to Two. And they're keen to go out dancing which is interesting news.

On Thursday I took the bus to Taipei. The movies on the bus were sh/tty and I was disappointed because sad enough as it is, one of the reasons I love going to Taipei is because I can sit in a reclining sofa for three hours and watch movies. My whole scholarship was in my wallet and off I took it for a tiring afternoon in 101. Mission: Get a trendy looking outfit to show up in at the snobby casting agency in Shi Lin the next day. Mmm Esprit your clothes fit and you know it... so you jack up the prices.

So anyway apparently these companies are desperate for foreigners to audition for commercials, and the pay is about the same as teaching English etc so off I nervously went to meet this lady in Shi Lin, a beautiful neighbourhood in Taipei. Taipei's Mosman. I walked in, in my trendy little new outfit, and that strut they taught us at the dodgy deportment course held inside a shopping centre which I took in Year 9, and what do I find but a couple of bitches at reception who start laughing at me as soon as I walk in the door. THEY asked ME to come! F(_)ck that, I thought to myself. The photographer lady liked me though, she said I was zhen de bu cuo. The other lady explained all this stuff about contracts and visas, none of which I can now remember, but what she wanted to say was "If you want us to get a working visa for you we're going to take a larger cut." And all I wanted to say was "Make me famous you snobby b/tch, I mean look at me, I'm a f(_)cking star for god's sake." The mood died down after she measured my waist and I was struck by a sudden realisation that yes, no matter how deep and meaningful I find Robbie William's song "No Regrets", I would in fact regret eating all those delectable dumplings dipped in the perfect combination of chili, soy sauce, and vinegar, followed by spicy pork soup for dinner and a trip to the bakery, about three times per week.

I put my Gucci sunnies back on and walked out reminding myself that I had known it would go exactly like that. Noone will ever be as snobby as that bunch of yuppies at the pottery class in Glebe (that was a mistake). Then I looked for the Science museum where they're showing that German guy's collection of plastic dead bodies, or something. If you ask the Chinese for directions, they would rather give you wrong directions than say they don't know. So I ended up back in Shi Lin, the stop for the PALACE MUSEUM, then decided I was too tired and went home.

On Friday night we had dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant where the food was great. Then off to FM where I got massively drunk and had to leave my scooter parked there instead and get a taxi. Hmmm what's that smell? I think I smell a defeated purpose of buying a scooter somewhere. Carolyn called the Texan exchange student and he came just to meet us. He had chicks all over him though. We decided it was because he said his dad was in the oil business.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of Qili telling me the bus was leaving in four minutes. Bus? Oh, the field trip. I was still drunk, and my body was void of pyjamas, but I had to dash before I had time to apologise to my roommates. It was a lame field trip but nice to get into the beautiful mountains. Afterwards I picked up my scooter which was still there, thank god, and had dinner at this western deli I had been hanging out to go to for ages. They've got Cambell's Chunky!!! That was a blast from the living in Australia past.  ¶ 21:59 0 Comments

  Tonight I am having dinner with Jessie and our mutual friend, of all people, my roommate. She told every Indonesian student on campus including the Indonesians at the Language Centre that I was racist because I said she looked more Chinese than Indonesian after she told me she was Chinese, not Indonesian... culminating in the Director of the language centre telling me to avoid stereotypes. But she also happens to be the friendliest of my roommates.

Today I napped for three hours and woke up to realise I had left my wallet on the basin in the bathroom, before the cleaning team came in at lunchtime. Wow, I never realised how many things were in that wallet. eg my residence visa, my scooter registration ;-), student ID, bank cards, and all the rest. One of the cleaning chicks is bringing it to me after she finishes class. Why didn't she just hand it in to the downstairs ladies? Maybe she needed something for show and tell. "This wallet belongs to a Foreigner. Here we have a visa with her photo on it, her ATM cards, and her student card, all of which are no doubt quite important to her. In fact, I bet she's looking for it as we speak. Foreigners tend to come from foreign and barbaric lands that are not a part of our world. This particular foreigner appears to be from Australia, a land lacking in culture and refinement. The are kangaroos in Australia. As you can see here in the photo, she has dirty skin which may indicate mixed blood" (Qili's new friend said last night that I looked like I had "mixed blood", but I don't go running off telling the world she's racist, do I? She was a nice girl, most people are, and if you don't think something is politically incorrect, then its not politically incorrect, is it?) (I can't imagine what would happen if I complained to the teachers every time I heard a racist comment. Racism is part of this culture, it would be like complaining about how the English drink tea in the morning. This is the land of unbridled racism where the passion for learning English does not neccessarily indicate a passionate appreciation of Western culture.) I think I'm going through a second wave of culture shock/seeing things the way they are.

My marks are getting progressively worse although I 'm still learning the same amount of work. Yesterday we had a test which I had forgotten about coz I was cruisin' round Taichung on my new scooter ;-) and reluctantly turned up anyway for my daily dose of all the usual people who have class the same time as I do. So I ended up remembering more than I thought I would but I still got 74%. Man that's a slide of ten percent from last time. I'm the opposite of impressed. Li Laoshi marks hard anyway and she knows I'm a bum now. I didn't do the homework, I was too lazy. We had to go to a bank, walk up to the counter, pass them a paper bag, and force them to fill it up with in 45 seconds at gunpoint. Oh wait, that wasn't it. We had to go to a bank, walk up to the counter, and have a superficial conversation with the teller about account options using all our new words like huo qi chu xu cun kuan hu. That is the word for savings account.   ¶ 18:04 0 Comments

  I bought a scooter!!

I bought a scooter! Whoo hoo, freedom, work, money...! Its still pretty new and it purrrrs and it zooms up hills. They kept trying to make me pick one of the old crappy ones (all the same price) and they even put an old rusty number plate on the newish one and told me the engine was especially old. Well, the engine is especially new, and I, for the first time, did not get as ripped off as I usually do in Taiwan. I finally walked away from a negotiation in victory. Wow, what a feeling. Good timing, too, coz the weather is getting too hot to walk anywhere.

Also, Chen Tai Tai has given me a $500 discount on my fees for no particular reason. She gave me but a wink as she passed me the bill and I saw no need to do anything except acknowledge it and walk out, no questions asked. Chen Tai Tai has really turned around. Soanyway it means my scooter was payed for in whole by the wonderful economy of Taiwan. Thanks, Taiwan, I love you. Will be charging thirty bucks an hour to teach your kids English later this week.   ¶ 21:45 0 Comments