Give Him a Hint #1 (10/16/2007)

Ok, so I just sent off my first edited academic paper this morning. It was technically very dense and I was worried that I hadn't done a good job or that I had taken too long. I got an e-mail back this afternoon saying that author was very happy. I've volunteered to do five for free (not per person) to help build my reputation. I reconfirmed that for the author, but I also gave him a quote of what I would charge. I worked for an hour and half and I would charge 1500 NT. He was satisfied and seemed interested in repeat business. But in order to pay with his grant he would need me to produce an invoice. Give me a hint, folks. What's the best way to do that? E-mail: jacob.m.gerber@gmail.com

...in which he finds out his puppy dog is a scaredy-cat.

Any time that I spend with Bagels now, my goal is to wear her out. I feel guilty later if she is gunned up and I’m trying to work or relax. If I don’t respond to her nudging and pleading she’ll stalk about listlessly. After a bit, she’ll flop down and give me these bored looks just like I get from the older students. From my students or from my dog, it’s depressing. To fight back against that on the canine front I’ve started taking Bagels on longer walks whenever I can. Tonight I finished classes early and it was especially nice out so I figured we could walk someplace new.

There are a few limiting factors for where we can walk. To the north, we are immediately cut off by highway 3 and an elevated freeway. Then I try to stick to less busy streets. I avoid Main Street and Market Street. Also, I can’t risk walking past my old school. There’s still some bad blood…spattered in the halls. Ok, honestly, it looks like the social version of a ritualized killing gone horribly wrong. So I avoid my old school. Also, if I go too far in any one direction I get out of town and the traffic gets too fast and too dangerous. All those constraints combined I still have some options, but I generally head in a southeasterly direction.

And so we headed out that way tonight. It really was a lovely night. The sun was low and the air was cool. There was a slight breeze and things smelled a bit crisper than they have. I found those hints of autumn comforting. My route took me near my current school and then we turned down a new road. It was small but not cramped. We walked past a parked car and found a street dog crouched there, jet black. I generally let Bagels approach them is she wants, she is a social dog; I always watch close. I heard the street dog start to growl low and let Bagels know that they weren’t going to be friends. I gave Bagels a short tug and we headed off. It was getting on to dusk at this point.

We headed up past the top of Market Street towards a residential area next to the floodway. This was all new territory for both of us. As we passed the parking garage I noticed a bulky female dog following behind us. Bagels would turn around and look at her and she would stop. Bagels would sniff something and we would move on and thirty feet behind, she would sniff it too. She gave me the feeling we were on her turf. I think Bagels still just wanted to be her friend. We kept walking up the road the hugged the floodway.

We passed a Daoist temple and we entered a residential section with brick wall on our left and pipe railing on our right. The bulky dog was still following us, but she never barked or made any sound at all. We got up to a drive with a beautiful car and paused for a moment before continuing. We weren’t ten feet off when the following dog came up and made it clear that we had just trespassed at her home. She came back with two spry young pups. They never seemed angry or aggressive, just apprehensive. I thought the puppies might like to play with Bagels, but one ran back with the mother and the other wouldn’t come to close. Then, in the yard next door something big started to woof and bark and stir up a storm. It was pulling and it was pulling hard. I know the meanest dog is one on a chain, but this dog even intimidated me a bit. I looked down and I saw Bagels had her tail low and she was glancing around nervously. She couldn’t tell where to look and she was stepping in a disorganized fashion. She was really scared.

I tried to take control and reassure her. I gave her some easy commands. She followed them and I tried to reassure her. It had no effect. She was spooked and she wouldn’t lighten up until we were back in familiar territory. I conceded and we headed back the way we came. Past the temple, past the garage, past the school. We were back in her comfort zone. She was herself again. We kept on toward home and I picked up some noodles to eat for dinner. A bit later I let her play with the younger puppy next door. Bagels loves that because the puppy is less than a third of her size, she wins every time. That finally tired her out. She’s been sleeping for hours.

…in which he sees the doctor.

If you have a proper noun that ends in ‘s’ because it is normally a plural noun and you need to make it possessive, does it end with the apostrophe or the ‘s’? It’s a good thing that I’m an English teacher, right? I am as much an English teacher as Michael Jordan was a baseball player. We’re only talking about the minor leagues.

Bagels and I are both doing fairly well. I’ve spent a good chunk of the past twenty-four hours just trying to tire her out. She sleeps part of the day when I’m gone and she can be restless at night after I’ve gone to bed. I take her for long walks and I play with her in the courtyard in front of our apartment. It has a metal gate I can close so she doesn’t run into the street and water faucet for when she gets thirsty. She’s been a little too thirsty today. She went in the house twice in a span of thirty minutes. She doesn’t normally do that. I think her body went off kilter when I gave her a new chew snack last night. It was a composite, apparently composed of something dogs like very much. But it wasn’t nearly hard enough and once she got her back teeth around it she crushed it into its red fleck components and licked them up. The bone-shaped snack was large; it was like an extra meal for her. Playing all day seems to have worked, she’s asleep right now.

I’ve been a little under the weather. I’ve had a rough chest cough for about two weeks. Laura tells me both she and Sarah had it on and off for the first six months. She thinks it’s the air pollution. I’d believe it; it’s a rare day when you can’t see the air hanging about. It wasn’t like this back in ShiLin, my part of Taipei. It makes me think about other areas of the island. I could get away from this smog and this cough if I had a job on the east coast. Between the small population and oceans air currents, they just don’t have a problem with air pollution. But I’ve gotten my first paycheck here and it is pretty healthy. Next month’s will be quite a bit bigger still. Also, I’ve made some friends in the town here. I’m taking calligraphy lessons from one father and another friend just had a baby.

My cough has gotten a little better, but not before it got worse. I woke up on Thursday feeling awful. All my muscles ached, my head was congested and I didn’t want to get out of bed. I couldn’t expect to get better just lying in bed so I went in to school at the normal time. I made it through the morning session and Laura escorted me to the doctor just before lunch. The visit was easy. They took some quick information and then I saw the doctor. He spoke fairly good English and I told him what was wrong. A look here, a listen there, and a shot of penicillin and I was ready to check out. I received three days worth of pills (15 pills/day) and the whole visit cost me 350 NT (just over $10) and less than twenty minutes. If that seems like a lot of pills, don’t worry, all but one (the antibiotic) are over-the-counter strength. I didn’t receive my government health card until the next day, so that first visit came out of pocket. I’m still amazed at how cheap and easy it was.

I do have to go back tomorrow though. That’s one quirk in their system here. Because it’s nationalized healthcare and because the doctor get money every time he sees me, he’ll only give me three days worth of pills each visit. Three days of antibiotics is not a full course. Still, I’m glad to put up with that minor hassle considering how much better I’ve felt yesterday and today.

Thursday was the hardest day in this short ordeal. I felt really lousy but I had classes until 8:30 that night. Worse still, the evening classes were in ChuSan which is twenty some minutes away. I tried to get someone else to take them but no luck. I just had to buck up. And I did. On my scooter ride home I couldn’t help but feel satisfied that I had made it through the day.

...in which he braves a typhoon.

Typhoon Krosa struck today and it's been the strongest of the season around here. There were stronger storms that struck the island more directly, but the mountains really protected us. This time the winds snuck in from the north unblocked and undiminished. It's Saturday and I had two classes this morning, though I called to check beforehand. Walking to the school, it was blustery and bit troublesome, but I didn't get too wet. This afternoon it started coming down much harder and a late closing order came in from the county government.

Despite the storm, I've taken Bagels out a couple of times. It turns out she is averse to going in inclement weather. She enjoyed playing around in it a bit, but then some really strong gusts hit. They can really disorient you; I nearly fell over. The wind has been strong enough at times to make the building sway. It's slightly unsettling, but you get used to it. When I was downstairs, I was doubly impressed by how hard the wind can get whipping around the pair of tall buildings.

In terms of difficulty, there hasn't been too much. The power cut out for a few minutes at school this morning, and again when I was napping this afternoon. After our brief walks, Bagels is soaked. Instead of using a towel, I play with her in front of a fan. She has a rope toy she likes to tug on and I just rub her fur. After about five minutes she's pretty dry. It helps keep the wet-dog smell at bay.

In non-typhoon news, I had a family over for tea last night. I teach one of their sons at the Kindergarten here. That's how I met the mother and she invited me to go on a family outing up into the mountains. I had a great time. During the trip we came across a woman practicing calligraphy. I asked if I could try it and she said yes. I didn't do very well, but the father of this family tried to and he was quite good. He offered to teach me and I eagerly accepted. He's given me the basic supplies I need to practice at home. I go to his house every Wednesday evening after classes to take lessons. He's a civil engineer and a really nice guy.

Having the family over for tea didn't go entirely as planned. I had actually only expected the mother and father to come, but I guess the parents wanted the boys exposed to a native speaker. That became a bit of a problem in two ways. First, one of the boys was a bit afraid of Bagels. They really didn't know what to do with her. I showed them that she was a nice dog. "Just pet her softly like this." To start, I kept Bagels in the big front room (no furniture) and I brought the family into the back room (love seats and coffee tables) for tea. Before too long, the boys got bored. They crept to the door and cracked it open to peak at the dog. They repeated this a number of times before I told them they were driving her mad.

Other incidents from the night include the older boy (six years old) falling backwards and knocking his head against the edge of the coffee table. When I originally invited them for tea, I had really hoped to avoid making anyone cry, but that went right out the window. He was ok in a few minutes, but I'm sure there was a lump when he woke up this morning. Another result of the boredom, the boys climbed all over everything in the room. At one point or another they were on top of (sometimes standing) every object in the room. Both loveseats, the coffee table, and the end table got the kiddie treatment deluxe. No damage was done, but it certainly surprised me. To boot, I let the tea steep far too long and it wasn't very good. Oh yeah, and Bagels had her second and third accidents in the house. The first of the night was before I left to walk the family over and the second was just a few minutes later after I had left to go get them. I still haven't figured how she pulled off that productive a trick, but it did make the night more difficult. That being said, right now she's sleeping at my feet and I love her more than ever.

On the plus side, we all came out of the evening alive and we got to enjoy some nice conversation. Maybe I'll stick to having tea at other people's houses rather than inviting them here if I can avoid it. I like playing with the kids and trying to get them to show off their English. If the parents speak English I like talking to them. Or I can pull out a bit of my Chinese. But having guests here was more difficult than I expected. I'm doing well, and I'll invite everyone to leave comments or send me an e-mail-


-Jacob

...in which he goes to the beach.

Moon Festival was last Tuesday. It's a national holiday here and everyone gets the day off. Because it was on a Tuesday, we got Monday off as well. But it was made up for by National Pretend It's Monday Day this past Saturday. But this story is about the trip we took with our four-day long weekend. The "our" refers to the foreign teachers of Ming Jian, all four of us. We also had one more foreigner, Tami, from a small city 20 km down the road. The five of us went to the south end of the Island to a beach town called Kenting.

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A little about each of the players:

Myself - Tall, dark, and handsome - unsure of the difference between being ironic, sarcastic, and sardonic, but enjoys overusing all three attitudes just the same.

Laura - Tall, friendly, and positive - really loves animals. People too, but really loves animals.

Sarah - Average size, thoughtful, and likes surfing - She likes cats and Laura. She likes Laura just enough to put up with the crazy animal oriented lifestyle that they share.

Michael - Loves his mother, loves his black lab - The dog, Marvin, is fully trained to sic when ordered. Thankfully he is back in Canada, though Mike misses him very much.

Tami - Short, blond, Canadian - Fun-loving, but misses Canada very much and looks forward to returning there in December.

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Because everyone on the island was going the same place at the same time, we left our little town at 2:15 in the morning. We had a short shuttle ride to a nearby (20-30 min) train station. Our gear pretty much filled up the van. At that point I thought that the others had dramatically over-packed. That became debatable during our wet weekend when the others had more clean/nice/dry things to wear than I did. After a three hour train ride to Kaohsiung, a two hour bus ride, and a two minute cab ride to our campsite, we arrived. It was about 8:00 in the morning. We had both tents up within a half an hour. We thought ourselves quite the heroes when it started to rain ten minutes later. That pride disappeared when we saw our rain fly was stuck to the tent. For anyone who doesn't know about tents and camping, a rain fly only keeps the rainwater out of your tent so long as they are separated by a layer of air; half an inch is enough. Michael and I spent a long time looking at it and we concluded that it was a crap tent with no way to successfully pull the rain fly tight, away from the tent. It took some real doing but Michael came up with this goofy jury-rig using the four post of our camping platform that worked great for the whole weekend. His lesson from this was "be prepared." Mine was "camp with your own gear." It really never stopped raining, but between the five of us, we really never stopped having a good time.

A lot of our time was spent relaxing having food, coffee, or beer. We went to a lovely Italian restaurant the first night where Laura and I were able to get pizzas without cheese. Of course, I don't eat cheese because I'm lactose intolerant (no matter how much my mother might insist otherwise). But Laura recently stopped eating cheese when I told her about a Get Fuzzy comic which discussed rennet. She is a committed vegetarian verging on vegan. The waiter's face scrunched and he checked the order with us a few times, but the pizzas came out without cheese and they were excellent. We all had a great meal there and we walked away with some extra pizza for a late night snack. That proved fortuitous after we found a nice bar just off the main street. We strung a few beers out over a few hours. But it was Saturday night and we'd all been awake since we got up for work Friday morning.
The late hour started to take it's toll.



Some were drowsy, some were happy, and some were a bit touched.

















The next day we went for a scooter ride with no particular direction. We saw a crowd of people pulling off the road and we followed to see what the interest was. They were walking out to a beautiful green cliff top. Again we followed, but as we approached the edge we could see a storm coming in off the Pacific. The wind was strong and the opening rain stung our faces. Everyone else turned back for their vehicles. In our party, we figured it was one wet or another. It had rained since we arrived, so we weren't deterred. Our perseverance was well rewarded. The storm ran out of rain quickly, but the wind kept up. We stood on the edge of the cliff feeling the stiff wind doubled rushing up the cliff. It was an amazing experience, we were able to lean into the wind right on the edge. We were out there for a long while all on our own. We took some pictures, but when everyone else realized the rain wasn't coming down they started back towards the cliff and we headed back to our scooters.

Later that day, Sarah and I went to the beach to give surfing a try. We both had a good go of it to begin with. The instructors were helpful and friendly. The conditions were decidedly less so. There were two areas we could try. One had smaller waves on top of a coral reef. The other had bigger waves on top of sand. It turns out that you really can't learn in big waves. After I got a rough gash on the bottom of my foot I wasn't to keen on continuing. I didn't make it all the way up that day, but I'd be willing to try surfing again under the right conditions. Sarah loved it and rode several good ones that first day. She and Laura went back to next day for another good session. That night we went to a club. We had a great time and I really enjoyed the live band that came on half way through the night. After the club shut down late, our group fell apart. We found out the next morning that one person, who shall remain nameless, lost their pants and wallet in the ocean after we left the club. That means it was a good night, right?

Monday night was our last in Kenting. We were all tired of being wet and dirty from all the mud around our camp. It never did stop raining. We gave in and asked if there was a room available. They said we were in luck, there was one. We could get it for 4000 NT. That's about $133. Laura gave them 3000 NT and we went to see it. It was beautiful. We all took hot comfortable showers. and we left clothes out to dry. The beds were amazing and AC made things very comfortable. After cleaning up we went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant. I had a vegetable curry that was just great. Sleeping in a bed that night made for a happy ending to a happy trip.

...in which he gets a dog.

Hello Everyone,

First, I'd like to thank Grandma Lauree and Tom (that's Tom Casavant for the outsiders) for contacting me. I know I've been neglectful and I hope to change that here. This is actually an old blog that I started a few years back and now I've refurbished it to tell everyone about Taiwan. I'm going to post regularly about what's going on and I'll add in stories here and there to fill you guys in on some of the odd things that have happened thus far.

Right now I'm doing very well. I have a job teaching English and I split my time between very young students (3-4 years old) and slightly older students (8-14 years old). The weather right now is fairly warm, but the past few weeks have been cooler and more pleasant than most of the summer. I live in a nicely sized apartment, but it isn't expensive. That's because I live in a small town in the center of the island. In the big cities in the East, a place like this would go for nearly ten times as much as it does here. The town I'm in is called Ming Jian. It's fairly small and there's a lot of agriculture around. Lots of tea fields, banana groves, and some more exotic produce like dragon fruit and lychee fruit. The area is pretty, the mountains are just off in the distance. I take scooter rides through amazing scenery on the weekends.

I just adopted a dog yesterday, her name is bagels. She looks like a golden retriever/lab mix. She loves to play and she seems to like me nearly as much as I like her. Her behavior is surprisingly disciplined. She hasn't gone in the house, always waiting until we walk outside. She hasn't chewed anything or bothered the neighbors by barking. They say she's even scooter trained, but I haven't tried taking her for a ride yet. I'm worried she'll get bored and restless while I'm away at work, so I'll welcome advice on how to keep her entertained. We didn't get home until ten last night. I gave her a bath and she slept by my bedside.

Afternoon classes start in just a few minutes, so I have to be on my way. Thanks for checking in on me-

-Jacob