Monday 10/7/02
Lunch was
just Ginger and me, and I
suggested the ShiDa girls’
dorm basement cafeteria that Gary and Kate told me was the best deal for lots
of good food. We spent a good time
looking for it but picked out the word “girl” on a building, so we found it in
the basement and it was huge, with tons of tables, and self-serve style. You paid one woman at a table in the
middle of the floor but easily could have sat down at a far table without her
noticing. Mine was 26NT, a real
bargain for rice, veggie, tofu and meat.
I also got a milk tea for 15NT.
I was pretty happy with the food though Ginger seemed less so (she paid
46NT, we don’t know why). The
woman had randomly yelled out prices upon glancing at your food and we wondered
if there was any rhyme or reason.
I had to
go to the police station to and try to get my money back, since I’d found my
ARC card on
Saturday deep in the pocket of my black jeans; it’d been there since I wore
them to Mega19. I’d tried calling
the station during morning break but their line was busy. I
got there and the Information guy recognized me and gasped to see that I’d
found it, then beckoned his supervisor, the woman who Juling and I have argued
with multiple times now, and of course she said they couldn’t return my money,
it was already sent “overseas”, whatever that meant, and though I pleaded
multiple times, she said they couldn’t do anything. So I’ll have an extra ARC then. I was PO’ed but I knew it’s all my own fault, for putting it
carelessy in that pocket to begin with, and for not looking hard enough and
checking that pocket.
At work I
finally finished editing that PhD girl’s paper, which was like pulling teeth. I looked up plane tickets for
February-May. I realized my Brown
reunion might be as early as May 23 since Memorial Day/Commencement is May 26
so I’d actually have to leave sort of mid-May. Felt a bit sad to leave that early, yet excited to be
thinking of going home in a way.
But I could already sense the stress that would come with going
home—needing to find a place, a job…
YuJung
asked for my help in writing the right answers to a practice TOEFL online exam
since she’s taking it soon, and I looked at the first few questions. There was a photo of 2 people talking,
like a bad 1970s video shot, and in a voiceover they had a conversation in very
layperson’s English: “Hey Joanne,
one of my students is thinking of quitting. I know you mentioned you wanted to take up piano lessons, so
I thought I’d tell you that you could have the 10 o’clock slot if you
wanted. Whaddya think?” Joanne: “Gee, maybe you misunderstood me, Al. I’m actually not that serious about
playing piano.” The question
followed: “What is the woman
saying? A) She wants to teach piano. B) She does not like piano. C) She does not
want to take lessons. D) She is angry at Al.” It was harder (and cheesier) than I’d imagined the TOEFL to
be. They spoke pretty quickly, not
in the slow, clear way you’d speak to someone from another country. I knew if I spoke that way to YuJung
she wouldn’t get me, and if she spoke in Chinese that way to me, I’d be totally
lost.
AiYi had
called at 7AM to tell me she’d give me another blanket even though I’m still
pretty hot in my apartment. When I got home, the
doorman gave me 2 letters to sign for.
One was a fancy invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs inviting
me to the CKS memorial reception for Double Tenth Day, via the FSE. My nametag inside read “Dr. Grace
Wang.” Nice! The other was a DSL CD and packet which
I couldn’t read. I literally just
stepped in the door when the phone rang and mafia JieFu called, said he’d be
here in 2 minutes to give me the blanket from AiYi. I went down in one minute and he was there, unfolding the
blanket. I wondered if he’d been
waiting at the curb looking for me?
Scary. He also gave me a
box of tea and a tea maker, swearing he had tons of them at home even though I
said no, and another new blanket in a bag since he thought the one AiYi gave me
had an odor. I said “[No no, don’t need new one]”, but he said
just keep it here for now. I went
up and saw the price tag…5960NT!
Faint.
Called
Stella and we got to talking about the required garbage bags here and she says
you’re supposed to separate things and they pick up certain garbage on certain
days, listing that glass bottles were today, plastic another, regular on
Tuesdays and
Thursdays. I was bewildered, not
knowing any of this. I just throw
the stuff in the dumpster room down the hall and let the maintenance people
deal with it from there. She said
the garbage guys watch her and Christina throw out their stuff, and once threw the straws from
the plastic drink cups back at Christina, yelling this was only for
plastic. She yelled back that duh,
the straws were plastic too.
Tuesday 10/8/02
Our
class goes off on tangents way too much.
Often they’re insitigated by the teacher, who seems to know a lot about
sexual and slangy phrases and terms; either she’s trying to show us she’s cool
or just has a gutter brain. For instance, by a few weeks into the class we knew
how to write male stripper, gigilo, and multiple phrases to mean when a woman
gets pregnant before getting married.
“Eat tofu” in Chinese is just slang for flirting with a girl, though I
can’t get past the fact it sounds like it could mean something else. Flirting with a young woman is eating “soft
tofu” and an old crony, “hard tofu.”
A useful thing she taught us is that “Chau Fan,” which just means fried
rice, is also slang for having sex.
So she warned us not to go around carelessly saying “I like Chau Fan.”
Other
times we go off ourselves since we’re almost all native English speakers and
majority American. Today’s class
convo was about shaving. Daisy
asked Eric where he shaves and said she wishes her bf would shave his balls,
since it’s good for sex. I told
the teacher to hurry and continue the lesson, trying not to listen to them, but
she said she wasn’t sure if they were finished talking. Was she really trying to be polite, or
just taking mental notes on what they were saying?
Other stuff: In
cooking class we learned curry turnovers.
At work ChiYuan gave me a CD mix of rock music since he saw I was
listening to the two cheesy pop CDs I bought recently and seemed to disapprove. I had gotten email that someone in FSE
referred me for a side job doing an internet videorecording for English
instruction, cool.
After
class I finally went to BNHI to get my HepB shot #2. YuJung had told me BNHI was the closest and fastest clinic
for me. At the window the
receptionist woman gave me a form to fill out
all in Chinese and had no English version, but I
looked and was actually able to fill most
of it out, just referring to my name card for writing my
address. I had a long wait so I went
to McD’s in an attempt to relieve some homesickness but it was gross
again. It’s like something keeps
drawing me back, and I try to convince myself it will be better than last time,
but it never is. And it didn’t
relieve any homesickness, because the words on the coke cup and fries bag and
placemat were still Chinese, still unintelligible to me. I wished they could just have ONE
place, one enclosed bubble in Taipei that was totally like America, with English
on all the McD’s menus and packaging, and everyone around you speaking English,
and street signs in English and non-Asian people walking around, even just
holograms would do. And we could
go there whenever we needed a homesickness fix.
I noticed
a nearby girl studying English and I asked her if she needed an English tutor,
hoping to put my name cards to some good business use, but she giggled and said
she was using her book, in other words No.
I returned
to BNHI where I almost missed my number.
They looked at my yellow international travel record and said they don’t
think they have this particular med, smirked at my bad Chinese and as they
waited they chatted and asked about my background and what is my research about. “Um, [the National Health Insurance.]” They laughed in surprise, “[Oh, that’s
us!]” They were much nicer
suddenly.
They
started filling out my info and asked how old I was, 15? I thought I heard wrong and said 26 and
they said No, aren’t you 15? I
said “[What? How can I be
15?]” They said, “[Did you fill
out this form?]” and showed where I wrote my birthday, “6/28/76”. I said “[Yes, I was born 1976.]” They laughed and said “[This is Chinese
year. If you are born in 1976, you
were born Chinese year 65.]” I
rolled my eyes and said “[Sorry, I’m not used to Chinese year.]” They had printed out a whole sheet of
stickers with the wrong year so they had to send it back.
They found
they were out of the shot I needed and to come back tomorrow. As consolation one of the nurses gave
me a brochure to the National History Museum and told me to go when I had
time.
Wednesday 10/9/02
Daisy’s
new crazy move was showing everyone her nipple ring, everyone saw but I looked
away. Bets are on as to whether
she’ll show her other pierced part next, but that one will be considerably harder
to whip out.
I
spent 2 ½ hours at BNHI to finally get the hep B shot, it was the pits. I slept as I waited, sitting
upright. When it was my turn they
looked confused at my chart and it almost seemed like they wouldn’t have it
again. I would’ve thrown a bloody
murderous fit if so. Thus got to
work at 4 and stayed late. We
didn’t have school tomorrow because of the National Independence Day holiday
(“Double Tenth Day”) so Ginger called to see if I wanted to see the movie
Simone and I said ok, we’d just do that and nothing late.
We walked
to Breeze when I realized I forgot the free movie tickets that mafia JieFu gave
me to use here, Doh! I decided
we’d use them another time. We ate
at Bellini before the show.
Everyone has talked it up, but the pizza was small and ok, not much
cheese, and the dessert (chocolate cake) was eh too. The movie was better than we expected, and just as it was
starting Stella SMS’ed me to ask us to Room 18. We couldn’t reach her after the movie, and after deciding
back and forth what to do, we each went home to “get ready,” but of course both
got tired and stayed in.