Not pleasant weather, at all...

The weather forecast keeps calling for temperatures in the mid to high 20sC each day but somehow it doesn't feel like we're getting them. The temperature at night is now in the teens, sometimes the low teens, and with the dampness and the wind it is chilling and unpleasant. Add to that the fact that buildings here are not heated and it means that the tropical paradise scenario is neither alive nor well here. I'm going to have to get an electric heater and some warmer clothes.

At this point, less than two months remain in the first half of the school year. There are few holidays - we'll get the day off on December 25 and that's it from September 1 to January 18. So, we're beginning to get tired now.

I bought my ticket for Seoul last night and intend to spend a week there in January. Now, Seoul in January is not exactly Paradise and in other years I'd have regarded such a decision as totally lunatic but there are many people in Korea that I'd like to visit. After 11 years there, I have people there who are near and dear to me.

This video is the Feng Shia Night Market in Taichung... a very pleasant place to go!

Group Writing

My students are doing a group writing exercise.

Thursday November 5, 2009. 5:34 p.m. A "tremblor" (small earthquake) rocked the room. I had a mug of tea on my desk and it sloshed right onto the desktop. Funny feeling when the room begins to move from side to side... lasted about 40 seconds - just long enough for me to wonder if I should leave the building and take a walk. That's the second one in two months. This is earthquake territory.

When I first thought about it, I thought it was about five seconds in duration but when I got to school, people told me that the official record was forty seconds - my, how time flies when you're having fun... and I wasn't. I really did wonder whether everything was coming to an end within the next few seconds. It had a magnitude of 5.7 or close to that. Major quakes are more than 7. I'm told that the last major quake was about 7.3 and killed 2000 or so people - the upside is that the building I live in survived that quake just fine.l

Earthquake today...

This has been the second earthquake day in two months for me here. Two "tremblors" today... the first at 5:34 pm and the second at 7:34 pm. I'll be lucky to have a good sleep tonight! The building was rocking, my tea spilled over onto my desk and my computer monitor jumped into the air right above the desktop surface. I really wondered if I should go outside and watch the action from a different perspective for a short time.

Here in Taiwan, we sit on the most dangerous level of earthquake zones, have major typhoon seasons and a six-month rainy season. What more could one ask for? If one thing doesn't get you, another one will.

Sunday November 1, 2009.

There's a tropical storm that's just passed through the Philippines south of here and it's brought us a couple of days of heavy wind, gusts of 40-50 mph, and this will likely be followed by a cool day tomorrow. It was cool today and people were wearing jackets and sweaters - temperatures in the low twenties seem frosty here in Taiwan. Extremes of temperature are unexpected. Extremes of everything else seem quite ordinary. Six months of the year spent in the rainy season seems normal. A month or so of typhoons in storm season seems normal. Earthquakes are just things that happen... normal. But temperatures of 22C bring out the autumn clothes.

The wind outside is howling...

I rode into Taichung today or at least to the outskirts where I strolled along "Art Street" as it's called by my friends. Lots of little shops with some very nice stuff. A friend of mine bought a handcrafted cigar box made of nice wood for about $8 (US). Now he's wondering about how he's going to fill it - the likelihood is that he won't. Then we ate in a family-run Vietnamese restaurant that wouldn't win any awards for decor but produced a wonderful meal. And, surprise, there wasn't a single noodle in the bowl!

The ride was a little dicey at times because of the wind. A couple of times I felt myself being pushed sideways by gusts of wind... not a pleasant feeling when one is riding an underpowered motor scooter in the company of what seems like thousands of others who are all jostling for position.

The scooter looks as if it might be one of the best purchases I ever made. School is just too far to walk and public transportation there is non-existent, so I broke my vow to never again have a motor vehicle and purchased an old Yamaha 90cc scooter that must be more than ten years old for about $150 (US). It has run perfectly for more than two months now and shows signs of continuing to do so. I initially didn't much like the look of it and christened it "The Pig" but have in time revisited that and now think of it more as "Miss Piggy". And if it continues to perform as it has I'll try to propose it for the New Year's Honours List and perhaps begin to refer to it as "Dame Piggy". My weekly transportation costs amount to approximately $5 (US) and I can never remember paying that little.

Monday (tomorrow) afternoon, I have my Basic French class and they are scheduled for a test. So, a large part of Saturday was spent on that. These tests will become easier when I have my format more established and I intend to keep repeating questions since the questions mirror the class work. The week went quickly and the weekend even more quickly.

So it was Halloween for them - true, it was a day early and during the day rather than the evening... but that was okay. They certainly did get into the spirit of the thing and none more so than the Taiwanese teachers, so that mellowed my grumpy mood about having to wear a hot, rubber mask that I could barely see through. After the outdoor judging of the costumes, they all came in and we had games set up for them in the classrooms.

It was a hot day. The temperature was at least 30 in the shade and we were in the sun, like Hamlet... too much in the sun.




I got an email from one of the university debaters at Wenzao College in Kaohsiung telling me that she and two other students are going to Beijing for the North East Asia Open Debating Tournament in late November. They'll be the sole Taiwanese team - English-language debating is still in its infancy here - and most of the other teams will be from Mainland China, Japan and Korea. I met the Taiwanese debaters in Seoul this year at the All-Asians tournament and was quite impressed with them. I can't go to this tournament but I'll be watching the results carefully and wishing them well.

Autumn comes to Taiwan

The overnight temperatures in Ching Shui are now as low as 21C while the daytime highs are a comfortable 30C - that used to sound hot to me but now it's just comfortable! Needless to say, there are no leaves changing color and this will be the first year in my life that I've not seen that. And I'm happy about that. I'm like many Canadians whose main goal in life is to be free of winter.

I went into Taichung this evening for supper at an Indian (really Pakistani) restaurant with one of the other teachers and it was great to sit at an outside table and watch the world go by as I ate my supper. Such civilized behavior...

This Friday, the English department has decided to bring Halloween to the students. Somehow, the Chinese have lived without Halloween for thousands of years but it has been decided that we shall enlighten them - and that means I have to purchase some sort of costume. I suggested that I masquerade as a teacher, but that just elicited pained looks... they didn't like my suggestion. When I suggested that I costume myself as a nudist, the looks were even more pained. It's now Tuesday and I have until Friday to come up with some sort of thing that looks like a costume and I have no ideas at all.