Global Roaming Blog... Kind Of

DECEMBEr 2002

Back Down Under

Well, the life in Taiwan is all over and I’m back downunder (in Australia) for good. From the high-density exotic lifestyle of Taipei I have been propelled into a suburban sprawl with an almost overwhelming quantity of space, sunshine, drinkable tap water and wealth. Whatever bad opinion I may have previously held on suburban life has been tempered by my time existing in an Asian concrete jungle. To be graced with so many gardens, so much fresh air and so many shopping malls seems like a kind of paradise - at least for now.

Many times in the past I thought I had left Melbourne in perpetuity and yet here I am, right back where I started - in the very house where I first took up residence upon this earth, 41 years ago. (Vijaya and I are staying with my parents). Perhaps I am the victim of some kind of magnetism whereby one can never truly escape our physical, social and cultural roots. Or maybe this is just a pit stop in a new, albiet slower and less adventurous cycle of nomadic life.

Looking around, the neighborhood is quite different to even ten years ago. The local shopping centre had been very much diminished by nearby mega-malls, but has found new life as an abode for white-collar workers and restauranteurs. The primary school across the road has become much more multi-cultural and Chinese grandmothers walk their off-spring to the school gate in the morning and deliver lunch boxes at midday. Many houses of my vintage are being levelled and their quarter acre blocks utilised for not one, but two houses. This activity may be an attempt by town planners to stop the city sprawling too much, but more likely has been brought about by owners cashing in on a property bubble that has seen values increasing at 20% annually. Which is fine for them, but for prospective first home buyers it means getting your own pad has become a difficult, if not impossible proposition.

Computer Literacy Project

The jagriti was the epicentre of a recently completed computer literacy project that involved fitting out a 40 foot shipping container as a classroom with 20 workstations. I say epicentre as the jagriti looked like it had been hit by a cyclone with building materials, cabling, office equipment and computers scattered in some kind of orderly dharmic disorder. Vijaya and I came in at the tail-end of the project and helped pack this fortified tin box for its trip from an industrial suburb of Melbourne to a High School in Port Moresby. As there was no boxes to pack the monitors in, we wrapped them individually in donated clothing leaving each like a work of Christo sculpture.

June 2002

House Hunting, Taipei

I begin this with World Cup Soccer metaphor:

Goal!

We have battled through the full ninety minutes and scored a (livable) apartment in extra time.

It was a lot of leg work and at times despair, but finally we got the ball in the net. As so often happens on the football pitch, a stroke of good luck brought success.

Maybe we even deserved it… especially after having to suffer the miserable procession of two dozen or so deformities we encountered in our house-hunting. Houses with kitchens tacked on as apathetic after-thoughts. Houses with kitchens, but no room for a fridge (or two people). Houses with bedrooms with no windows or bedrooms too small to furnish properly. Dirty, grimy houses. Houses in various states of disrepair. Houses with wacky, improvised floor plans. Houses overloaded with ratty kitsch décor. Houses sin hot water. Houses with so much traffic noise that several rooms are uninhabitable. But now the game has been won… at least until the next eviction notice.

In signing the lease for the new abode, not only have we moved up a floor but we have moved from the second world and into the first. We find ourselves in a residence freshly painted and renov. in immac. cond. All mod.cons. 2 bdrms. One could almost be in Dulwich Hill or Elwood. And, it was truly a rarity to find a landlord who actually cared about the place he rented. Due to the paucity of available accommodation in Taipei, the vast majority of landlords consider it their god-given right to serve up cold pizza… or worse.

We are now settled into our new apartment in a respectable manner and are beginning enjoy its endowments. Move No.16 (since the paternal home) has now been completed – the only evidence of any nomadism being the huge pile of discarded boxes on the verandah. Alas, how one manages to acquire the stuff of life. A mere two years ago, I arrived in Taiwan a merry traveler with suitcase and backpack. Now it took two hired hands, two weeks of packing and unpacking and two 3.5 tonne trucks to get myself on the road again. Good heavens! I even noticed a box of bric-a-brac being lobbed over the tailgate and into the removal van.

The Removalists

Our removalist duo were a highly specialized breed: something akin to a cross between a hippo, a forklift and an acrobat. The game plan was to carry things on their backs – including balancing large items on the backs of their necks - rather than the front-en-loader method I was expecting. Each time I turned to look, some large item such as a fridge or TV would be disappearing down the stairs balanced precariously in some seemingly ridiculous position. Plus, there was the fact that they had to descend four flights of stairs and ascend five flights to make the feat even more remarkable… at least in my eyes. But for them, I guess it was just another sweaty day’s work.

The landlord lives two floors below us. They are a nice retired couple and come from a region of China near where Amy’s family comes from, so they hit it off immediately. Due to a lack of Chinese, I didn’t do much hitting-off, but Amy told me later that they have four grown-up children and that they own half the building (5 apartments in all). Uncle Yeh, as we are permitted to call him, started off in Taiwan just after the war as a teenager working in a soy sauce factory and never looked back. Now he even has a remote-controlled bed, which his wife proudly demonstrated.

But, back to our abode. It has terrazzo flooring throughout- a hypnotic chequer board of white and ruby, There is a roof deck directly above us – painted whiter than white – whiter than any Greek village - in order to keep the heat down. What else? Yes the apartment has a verandah… and quite a big one at that. However, its a little bit low slung, so watch your nut! But there is potential to have cups of tea and look out over the surrounding concrete jungle – observing the various endemic species going about their hunting and gathering.

Local Neighborhood

There is no shortage of neighbors. High rises in all directions all but obscure the nearby mountains. However, just around the corner there is one pleasant surprise: a pocket-sized park, not unlike a Zocalo or town square found in the old towns of Latin America. Although only 100m by 100m, it is crammed full of amenities such as roller-blade rink, pond, palm trees, tai-chi pad for the old folks’ morning exercises and a playground… just enough of a green lung to maintain sanity.

Fringing this recreational oasis is a lively collection of market stalls- enough exotic culture to rate a mention in a Lonely Planet’ guide. One guy even set up shop kerbside, with an atrociously smoky brazier offering BBQ chicken. A little further down the street is the ‘Old Socks Smelly Tofu stand.’

Another neighbor, virtually at the doorstep, is a military base… and its hard not to notice the goings on. One could even dial a 1800 number and sell intelligence to the mainland Chinese as events unfolded in real time. For instance: “three privates are on dishwashing detail – cleaning a wok big enough to feed 50 commandos.”

From our vantage point we can even see them doing their morning roll call, exercises and hear them bellowing very martial sounding song in the evenings. In addition, the other weekend I noticed two recruits going AWOL, clambering out a window and into the adjacent alley. Some more intelligence: morale is obviously low. But the base does have a supermarket (with merchandise available at a substantial discount), which Amy can use thanks to her father being a military man.

Iron Rice Bowl

Talking of perks, I recently had some substitute teaching at a brand new elementary school. It was huge and sparsely populated with students, fantastically endowed with facilities and post-modern architectural styling. I asked one of the teachers about this and she told me it was a special school, purpose built for the children of Taiwan diplomats recently returned from postings overseas. Perks (example 2): We also know of a few ex-military men who retired in their forties and are receiving pensions which seemed ridiculously large. Having such a benevolent employer is referred to here as having an ‘Iron Rice Bowl’ or guaranteed sustenance.

April 2002

Teaching English

It’s Sunday and I am more or less recovered from a stint of kindergarten teaching done on Thursday and Friday, last week. Saturday was a wipe-out. It was really hard work as the children were very young – from 3 to 6 years old and had were quite easily distracted by their curiosity and their complete lack of any rationality. Often it took me five minutes to just get them to sit down. One of the students was also called Ian and I caused a delirium of giggles when I introduced myself as teacher Ian. Took their simple little minds about five minutes to get over that one.

Then there was the mass brawl. Four of the boys started fighting over a spinning top and were made to stand in the corner while the others went down stairs for assembly and prize giving. And who do you think won prizes for good behavior– the little offenders in solitary upstairs. The MC on stage said ‘Joseph can’t be with us tonight…’

One amazing thing that did happen was that I told some stories to the children about leprechauns and St. Patrick in a very simple format. And they were mesmerized, believing every word as indisputable fact even though I embellished the stories with a fair amount of the supernatural. Such simple stories, told more or less off the top of your head and in a dramatic manner really did prove to be a way to communicate with their world.

Got a little bit of extra work teaching English to the staff of a technology company (7pm-9pm one evening a week.) They are my first group class of adults that I have done. The structure is quite informal and the biggest difficulty as with any class, is the disparity in abilities. Some of the students were finding it pretty heavy going so I might have to dumb it down a bit. Teaching adults is good because you can converse more or less as you would in daily life (my elementary kids are also at a high level) – but you dread the day when some smarty pants might ask a difficult grammatical question.

Last week was their examination and all students passed, bar one. Two did very well. There was also an oral test where they had to read a story then answer questions about it. I have a bit more paperwork this week and have to file very detailed reports on each student. It was a pretty good experience teaching them – one is not too hamstrung by an over-bearing or boring curriculum. Rather, the onus is on you, the teacher to plan the classes in a way that will engage young minds. Failure to do so can lead to a severe breakdown in civil disorder.

Hopefully my performance was good enough for them to want to take me back for the second half of the year. Actually, Headstart is one of the more ‘education’ (rather than $$$$) oriented schools in Taiwan. Staff are trained and experienced teachers (rather than fly-by-nite backpackers) and there are regular training sessions, so it was a good work environment for a novice like me.

January 2002

Chinese New Year

For the New Year’s vacation, we went down south to Tainan, to Amy’s Mum’s house, where family members gathered to see out the last evening of the Year of the Snake. Falling asleep to the sound of a mah-jong game rattling on into the night, the very moment of the changeover was lost to unconsciousness. Apparently, I didn’t miss much though, as the locals don’t really make a big thing of it. There is no ‘10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ However there is plenty of new years greetings exchanged and special foods such as salted water melon seeds and bright red boxed gift sets containing various goodies. Amy’s mum distributed (sometimes forcibly) chains of homemade sausages to friends and relatives from her stockpile, maturing on coat hangers in the laundry. Shopping bags of monopoly money were also burnt to give a bit of extra credit to those residing in heaven.

Just prior to Chinese New Year, Amy’s work had their end of year party. Held on the fifth floor of a function center with I don’t know how many levels of functions going on simultaneously, it was part live show, feast, bingo night and prize presentation. The prizes came thick and fast throughout the duration of the whole evening, handed out by a jovial game show host. The stage looked like the loading dock of a Walmart warehouse as phones, heaters, cameras, TVs, stereo systems and even cash were issued to the lucky winners. I came to the conclusion that the Chinese are the most unashamedly materialistic people in the world.

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