Thursday 3/13- Sunday 3/16/03          This is What I Call A Nice Weekend

 

Writing stuff on my calendar really helps.  Like I wrote how Amy’s book signing was on March 6 on my calendars at work and home, along with other stuff like teaching, when Gin and Jon are back, when the IRS is at the AIT for tax help, etc.  I figure I have to put all those calendars FSE gave us to some use (2 at home, 1 at work and 1 I gave to Mom).  So I called Amy her morning of the signing and she was sooo happy I remembered.  I didn’t think I did anything great, just called, but she made me feel like I did something huge.  So I think this a very simple tip that one might think unimportant but can really brighten someone’s day.  Especially people’s birthdays, which I enter in my Palm.  Having it on repeat (every year) plus with an alarm is even better.   Just a little option on a PDA and it amazes people when you remember. 

 

Had a really productive week before Gin and Jon were back, mostly starting my taxes, realizing Yale never sent me their W-2, after asking my parents to double-check at home.  Called them and they said indeed, it was sent back because they had the wrong address for me on file.  And then…?  You decided to sit on your ass and screw me over?  Sometimes Americans do Taiwan logical things too.  I asked if they could airmail it, how long would that take?  Otherwise they could send it to my parents’, who’d then have to do my taxes for me, hinting that’d be difficult.  “Well it will get to them faster,” they said.  Woo, brilliant!  Go Ivy League office staff, a notch quicker than the rest. 

 

        So Erica and Stephanie (I just ignore the existence of the dad since I never see him, except as embodied in the electronics and superluxe apartment) now have a dog.  The tinnniest white Maltese puppy I’ve ever seen, hops around and looks like a mop but smaller, more like a spasdic white rat.  Seriously it’s quite cute, and very appropriate for Erica and Stephanie.  Its name is PP which I assume comes from the French Pepe, but pronounced in the Taiwanese way PeePee.  Yes, their cute white rat of a dog is named urine.  PP makes trying to get Steph to concentrate on the lesson, once a difficult task, now pretty much impossible, and often in mid-sentence about prepositions I’m instructed to hold PP while Steph runs to get him something.  It’s rather awkward because without the moppy fur, the whole thing is only about the size of a breakfast sausage, I can encircle my thumb and forefinger around its neck and it doesn’t flinch. 

 

Steph’s assignment that day was to write a poem for school, so we revised one that she’d written with Shawna.  It was written in script with colored drawings.  Whenever I see work she’s done with Shawna I feel a twinge of envy and wonder how Shawna does it; I picture a be-haloed Saturday Stephanie hanging onto Shawna’s every soft nice word, obediently repeating prepositions.  The poem was called “My Home” and when we were done, I was rather proud: 

“When I think of my home, I see my mommy and daddy sleeping,

While at night I am creeping.

I hear the voice of my mommy telling me to brush my teeth,

After eating all my beef. 

I smell my daddy’s smelly hair, the smell is floating in the air. 

I taste the ice cream in my home, sometimes one scoop sometimes two. 

In my home there’s lots to do.” 

 

She went crazy on MS Word typing it in fancy font in different colors and when I showed her how to insert Clip Art, she spent another lifetime doing that.  Finally after my 3 hours were almost up, Erica wanted me to help her type up an English letter to her school director requesting to move Steph to the higher class, since she wasn’t being “challenged”.  A neighbor wrote it for her and it wasn’t bad but I made more corrections.  The last sentence was dripping with insinuation:  “I have always valued the French education system and how it gives every student, regardless of race or background, an equal chance to excel and blossom.”  I asked “[Er, do you want to say this?]”  And she said adamantly yes, since she thinks Steph’s teacher is racist, Steph being the only Asian in the school and scoring off the world charts on the achievement tests but the teacher ignoring her requests to jump ahead.  Erica gave me extra ½ hour pay for it.

 

        Next night:  Livian, who I now have for two hours each Friday, leaving Sundays free since her dad opted for my cheaper option when I put him to the gun.  I realize 2 hours is quite a bit longer especially since we actually fill the whole time with lesson since she’s good and quiet and doesn’t go off like Steph. 

 

        Now armed with money to burn and had a perfect relaxing weekend.  Though it started with a tearful convo with Dave in the morning (do all my Saturdays seem to start that way?)  I met Tricia for afternoon tea at ShinKong Mitsukoshi; we went to Eslite where had iced mocha and chocolate cake and it was fun to hang with just her for once.  Gin called, had just gotten back, her dad was taking her and Jon to Keelung for seafood, “As if I haven’t seen enough of Jonathan lately!”  I said “Yea, but looks like you guys didn’t kill each other, and that was my biggest worry.”  Her dad was taking them plus some others and I figured Jon deserved it for taking care of her around China.  Got an SMS from him later that he felt guilty since we’d talked about Keelung for seafood so much and I wasn’t there.  I should’ve SMSed back, “Damn straight you should feel guilty, we wuz supposed to do that together, biotch!” 

 

After Tricia left I wandered around SKM for the first time all year and found just what I was looking for, for Mafia Jiefu’s kids—the Polaroid I-Zone camera, since they’d had so much fun looking at my digital camera pictures last week. 

 

        Mafia Jiefu’s family took me back to the Thai place near me for dinner that night which was great again—YueLiang XiaBing shrimp cakes, and this time I did NOT eat the hard stick inside the other cakes though I found out you COULD (it’s raw sugar cane), teppan beef, the cashew/pineapple fried rice, corn soup, crab, lemon pepper steamed fish, coconut curry chicken, and the assortment of rice cakes, fruit, tapioca, coconut milk and taro over ice for dessert.  During a break I opened up the camera and loaded it, showing them how to use it.  They all crowded around, enthralled, and right after I pulled out the first pic they leaned over it and watched silently and expectantly even though I said it’d take a few minutes.  They stared at the blank white sheet quieter than I’ve ever seen them, even asked to look at the plain black back; when the picture started to show, they yelled and got excited.  BiauJie was impressed and said this was a good idea.  The youngest, James, was most excited about it and asked me again how to work it and ran around taking pictures until they all yelled at him to stop wasting film.  I was glad to finally get them something they really liked and that their parents would ACCEPT.  Something other than eats or English books.  I’d tried to give them (late) Chinese New Year red envelopes last week and though the kids had held their hands out in excitement, their parents refused to let me give them and we got into a scuffle in the car over that.

 

        Sunday I worked out and met YuJung at Breeze to see Maid in Manhattan.  It’s about time I treated her to something.  Got there early and started looking at clothes downstairs.  Strange, all the sizes were 9 or 11.  The saleslady told me 9 should fit, but I said I was normally a 2.  She was confused.  When I found YuJung and I brought her and showed her; she said the sizes are different but these were still big since I was in the women’s section.  I’d point to a plain more sophisticated looking tailored dress and she said “Oh, looks very professional” and I said Americans kind of prefer that, for example we don’t really like (pointing to some frilly outfit) too much of that.  She said, “Oh, cute?”  YES.  SOME cute is good, TOO MUCH cute is bad.  I want to sit Taiwanese fashion designers down with this mantra.  In fact let’s just go over each item one by one and distinguish, “This is CUTE.  This is TOO CUTE.  This is UGLY.”  There are too many outfits I see on women here that I can only describe in one word:  Shudder.

 

        Maid in Manhattan was actually pretty funny and quite, quite cute.  Perhaps in part because Ralph Fiennes is quite, quite fienne.  J.Lo looked really stunning in the ballroom scene.  It was predictable and unrealistic from miles away, but you just had to accept that and enjoy it.

 

        After that we went back downstairs and got “sidetracked”, YuJung just wanted to take a look at her favorite brand name Oasis:  “Sexy, but sometimes TOO sexy” she says, and I end up loving almost everything—it wasn’t hoochie mama, but very elegant yet cute yet sophisticated and good quality.  And from England which explains it.  And rather expensive but not ridiculously so, for such good stuff.  The best?  The saleslady waited silently at the counter, bored, not bothering us at all.  I tried on 5 things and after much debating and calculating (all 50% off), I dropped one thing (the cheapest one) and even if I’d had all my tutoring money it wouldn’t have been enough, so I “schwa ca” (swiped card), I like that expression.  Feeling a little guilty, yet excited since I haven’t bought anything in so long, haven’t enjoyed shopping in so long, we nixed having a nice dinner and chose the cheapie basement food court to make up for it, but still got a good meal for 138NT.  It amazes me the huge elaborate hot meals down there, in stone pots and sizzling stone plates still cooking food, people everywhere precariously carrying these things to their tables, just accidents awaiting.

 

        At home did lots of cleaning and some Chinese studying.  I don’t get how I’m the only one who lives here and don’t wear my shoes in the house, yet the floor gets a layer of dirt so fast every week.  My theory is that the ceiling is subtly deteriorating and bits fall down each day.