Getting Domesticated

Well here I am. I have managed to survive a bit more than a month in the US of A. For a while I really thought that I wasn't going to make it. After months of exotic travel and years of bizarre living conditions, becoming a full blooded "American" seemed a bit too terrifying to truly accept. Now, however, as the stomach is once again calming to the food, my job search is (hopefully) nearing a result, and my life in Denver shall soon be realized; I feel like I'm going to make it.

But before I decided to devote my bloggues to the wonders of suburban-all-American-style-livin', allow me to tell you about some of the things that really scared the shit outta me upon entering this immensely strange place.

FOOD- Whooooooooaaaaaaa now that was quite the adjustment. It could be that I was drinking too much tap and river water in Central America or (which I think is more likely) I could have just been too overwhelmed by the crazy diet they have here.

The first day back in the States I was visiting friends in Chicago. My friend JP took me to a famous heavy metal style hamburger joint where you eat 30 pound burgers while Pantera rages from the speakers and kung fu movies play endlessly on the omnipresent flat screens. Only in America. After we dined on the half-heifer heart attack cakes we left to go for a bit of tux shopping for my friend's upcoming wedding. Along the way, I felt like my stomach was bursting and that I literally had no vacancy for all the toxins boiling away in my belly. I asked my friend for a fruit shake as I was accustomed to drinking light mango shakes on the beaches of all my little hot spots. He of course brought me a cornucopia of 8 fruits crammed into a brick of a smoothie. I drank it to what I thought was delight until about ten minutes after.



Driving along the streets of Chi-Town, as the locals secretly call it, I started to feel a bit of both queasy and nauseous. I ask my friend, "are we close to your house?"
"About fifteen minutes. Are you al.."
"Dude I just want to....uh...maybe lay down or drink some water or take a nap I think." I interrupted awkwardly.
We continued along the street until my friend spoke, "I'm just waiting for you to POP!"

Well that did it. I burst. I yelled for him to pull over and chucked the car's weight in vomit out of his slightly open door. The puke went about 80% all over the bus stop and 20% on the passenger side door of my friends 2 week old Volvo. It was amazing. I could feel, first, the cold, mildly refreshing smoothie followed by the warm Heavy metal burger, all the way up to the oven roasted pear shooting out my nose like a spit wad. Quite a relief in all.

I puked like this about once a day after eating for the first two weeks. I even puked up the filet mignon and sea bass at the aforementioned wedding. OOPS!

DOG PARKS- Another thing that really scared the shit out of me at first was going to the dog park or DP as my parents called it. I was frightened by the realization that people's pets could actually have better personalities than themselves.



You enter into the park on any random day and it is full of people watching their dogs fight, sniff, and hump with utter delight. The dogs go and have fun and while a bunch of random people walk around waiting for you to make eye contact or yell at your dog that is playing with their dog.

"Oh they play so well together, don't they?" The random old lady will ask.
"Yep, sure do," says me, the guy who doesn't really know why he is here and just wants his dog to crap so he can leave.
"I've seen these two playing a lot. The other dogs tend to be so dominate and aggressive, don't you think?" She smiles.
"Yep, sure do," I really don't know why we are talking about this.
"Your dog's name is Sophie isn't it? That's my dog's name too." I neglect to tell this woman that, like all of our family dogs, this dog has been named after a famous Hooker. It's just something we do. However, we spare the knowledge for some.

Eventually after we talk about how many tennis balls there are in the park and how small some other dog is and how much "yucky slobber" another one has, I say "nice to meet you" and walk over to another quadrant of the park. I say nice to meet you and yet we never actually met. We are actually socializing servants for our pets. We talk about our pet's personalities, names and funny quirks without ever actually talking to each other. It would be like if you just started talking about a tree to someone just because you were both standing next to it. It makes me feel uncomfortable.

You also have those buttholes who go the to "pick up chicks." I would too, but this park is filled with regular North Face wearing Colorado family people. One old fart once showed up while I was with my mother and thought he might try a little cougar hunting. He looked right at her and said "Excuse me, what do we we do here? I never been to one of these before. You see my girlfriend left me with the dog and moved off to New York and now I don't know what to do." After he said that I knew that there was something that pissed me off more about this man other than the fact that he had his sweatpants tucked into his socks.

I immediately wanted to yell, "Oh you don't know the complex science of a dog park sir? Well let me inform you. You see we all bring our dogs here, have sex with them and then let them run around in circles for about 30 minutes. Everyone else has been here a while so that's why all the sexin' is all over. Go ahead, I mean your girlie left you anyways so this will be refreshing."

Come on man. Your opening line is going to be how you don't know how to take your dog's leash off and then the closer is that, despite your impeccable style, you have just failed in your relationship and got stuck with the chick's pet while she went off to make millions in NYC? I just don't understand people. My mom of course enjoyed his pathetic effort and he did figure out how to take his dog's leash off. Good boy!

COLD WEATHER- I don't really have much to say about this except that sometimes it gets cold as nuts out here. Last week it snowed almost 12 inches in two days. That is a lot of snow for October. It's much colder than a tropical island. Much colder.



So while there are many other things like these that could be classified as "culture shock," I have gained the confidence to move on and become a part of this community. I think the days will be good and as long as I admit that there are pants in socks morons everywhere in life, I think I'll survive. I will be domesticated.

The Guatemalan HULK!

It is true. My enthusiasm for the bloggueing did diminish with the commencement of my journeys. This entire time i thought taking some more trips would reinvigorate me to take a seat in yet another crappy back breaking "internet cafe" chair to throw out some new and exciting stories for all those concerned in what it is i do.

I guess, on this particular trip, i became so involved in the moment that i hardly had enough time to react to the day to day happenings, which made it even more difficult to actually sit down and record some jaded and "humor" injected reimagination of them. But the trip has been very good and I can say that the only reason why I haven't been bloggueing is because I have been filling every moment with real life bloggueing or...living. So now, on the day before my final departure to a very confusing existence in the US, I will tell you of some of my adventures only in the hopes that the stories will further peak your interests and thus make you more inclined to find a way in which to visit me and hear them from my mouth in their purest form.

Guatemala - Advice for going to Antigua, Guatemal: If you want to go with some friends that is fine. If your two friends happen to be best friends who are themselves El Salvadorians and thus free to roam and "create any type of rukus they please" in neighboring Guatemala, remember that they have their own nationalities and your's does not permit you to go and act the same way as they do.

Antigua is a drinking man's place. Well technically all of central america is like that. The whole world is. Ok let's start over. Antigua is the clostest place to San salvador where you can find an ancient city thus "culture" and hordes of excitable gringa girls who have come to guatemala on their parents credit card to do a three week spanish course which they forget each night as the get plastered off tequilla shots and cheap beer poured into old styrofoam cups making it possible to booze in the streets.

We went there because the dudes were ready to shock all the girls, as they always do, by looking super latin (we're talking a kilo each of hair gell per cabeza) and yet speaking English like a mother toungue. It's wonderful to watch the girls as they stutter through their basic HOLA, Como estas? to then recieve the eloquent reply "I'm quite well thank you."

We were having some luck here and there, but no one was really "feelin' it." We continued to peruse the bars in the hopes that some girls might find our well pressed polo shirts a bit more appealing than those of the other 300 horndogs walking the cobblestone streets of this old central American capital, but we had no luck.

Finally, I have managed to allow my bad luck to simply be bad luck and not an excuse to get outrageously intoxicated...or maybe I just got lucky with this night. Our good friend, however, was not able to separate his emotion from the bottle and this is where the plot thickens.

This young man who we shall call....Juan Carlos, to both protect his identity and be slightly offensive, is no small dude. Imagine if a VW Beetle came to life and sprouted limbs and this would be an accurate discription of the ex-body builder who can crush litre beers faster than you can take a pee. In the beginning of the night Juan Carlos informed us that he usually put away around 30 beers in the period of one drinking night and he was getting very close to our believing every word to which he had earlier spoken.

After drinking what seemed like a child sized pool worth of beer JC was doing pretty well for himself and was showing that extra umf of confidence only realized through the use of the old "social lubricant." But then we got the time honored after party invite and there was simply no hope. (You see, in Guatemala all the bars close at 1am making it hard to do much late night partying. In recent years it has become a bit of a cult phenomenon to throw "after parties" to continue the bar feeling after hours. However, these after parties are usually someone's effort to open their own bar and illegally sell liquor to the select few bar folk that they choose to invite. The police do not like this practice.)

So we went to this after party and someone bought us a bottle of vodka and we started mixing it with orange juice. I know, brilliant! Alberto and I got the idea, that after parties are for mingling and not creating bad vibes in an already tense environment of law breaking partiers. Our friend JC however, got haaaaaaaammmmmered. Finished the bottle. Fell around. Made mean faces. Now looked like a drunk VW Beetle swirving around a small poorly lit bar. Oh yeah, disastrous.

The night ended without problems until big man JC saw us collect the girls emails (oh yeah, we are like so gonna email long distance syle until marriage get's into the convo) and he went off his rocker. Walking around the streets just screaming in any language that popped into his head first. 265 pounds of El Salvadorian raised meat rolling around the streets on a full on sexually frustrated rampage. He was yelling and pulling his hair, and banging on people's closed doors and even came up to me and bit me saying "i want flesh." It...was...fucking...crazy!!!

We tried our best to console him and figure out what to do, but before we could even get our footing right to brace the giant walking T-bone steak, I saw the blue sparking caps of the Guatemalan police force. Oh yes, Guatemala, one of the most currupt governments in all the lands, where the police do whatever they feel needs to be done in order that they recieve dinero. (Don't worry this isn't another I pooped my pants story, but it was close.)

I began to freak and wonder how I had even ended up with these two 19 year old bozos who were doing exactly the same things i was doing for four more years after the age of 19. I paniked and tried one last efort to stop JC when I was blinded by the two police jeeps that followed from both ends of the street to then reveal 8 more soldiers brandishing real live machine guns. HOLY SHIIIIITTTT!!!! (Don't worry, if I was shot i wouldn't be able to write this...or would I?)

So with guns drawn and police everywhere, who do they turn to for responsibility? El Gringo..ME!

Thank god I speak spanish

Officer- what is going on here?
Me- too much to drink sir. we were just trying to get our friend home
officer- do you know how late it is?
me- muy late
Officer- yeah, so why is your friend walking around banging on doors?

(JC is now walking around shaking hands and taking pictures with the police officers and asking to hold one of their machine guns.)

me- he has had way too much to drink sir and we have just been trying to get him back to our hotel.
Officer- what are you scared of you friend?

At this very moment we both look at JC and he lets out a giant scream before ripping his shirt off to expose a bigger chest than any two cops combined.

Me- sir, he is the fucking HULK!

At this both myself and the officers had one of those moments that only happen in outrageous movies; we slowly rose together in a giant eruption of group laughter.

We somehow made great pals of the cops and they even elected to throw us all into the back of the police pickup truck and drive us back to the hotel.

4am 4star hotel

Our three car police escort arrrived to a bit of fanfare as you might imagine. All the late night auditors came out to see us rolling a giant half-passed whale out of a police car and I'm sure at least one had a hernea. As we rolled down the halls waking every resident with the moans of old sexually frustrated JC, the manager was asking us our names and nationalities and many other questions.

He did that to ban us from ever staying in that hotel. We left the next day, sad at having had no luck with the girls, but happy nonetheless to have made a good story.

A Day in Honduras

I know, it´s true, I´ve let you all down by not keeping up with my blogguing since I´ve been traveling these past 2 months. But I´m ready to stop all that and write you all something, but since i have to use this mexican key pad, ill be refraining from using capital letters because the button is in a different place that my pinky simply cannot reach. i hope you can understand

So here i sit in a small smelly orangish brown cubible in a place called choluteca, honduras. But let me tell you first about how i got here in the internet cafe owned by the brother who´s sister is currently housing me.

FRONTERA FRONTERA FRONTERA. these were the words of the young man hanging out of the old yellow school bus as we raced down the two lane highway on the eastern edge of el salvador. we were moving to the frontera, or border, and there was no turning back. every 30 seconds the bus would halt to a rolling stop to pick up new border jumpers or to drop off others who were simply tired of the blaring reggaeton music that blasted through the fuzzy creaking speakers of the long retired school bus.

the landscape was incredible and every new turn of the bus would reveal some new type of geographical layout. on the right side one could glare at the cows grazzing through long green hills sprinkled with healthy sprouting trees. then you could look on the other side of the bus past the sleeping locals to see giant mountainous valleys with a orange sky painted by the descending sun.

just as the sun was at its hottest the bus stopped and the last sign for el salvador was duly greeting as it read ¨bienvenidos a honduras.¨ I jumped off the bus and was the first to greet my fellow immigration officers. as I sat in the interview chair i felt like a true explorer crossing from one ancient land to another. after a good conversation with one officer about the educational standards in the US the checks were made and a door was opened to reveal a long solitary bridge in front of me.

I put my best foot forward and made the great walk from one country to another. it was amazing walking across that bridge and glancing down at the people bathing in the river. from one side el salvadorians were washing their clothes while conversing with their bathing honduran amigos on the other side. even the look of the country seemed to change as i walked across the bridge. it only took me one minute to walk to the land i once visited only 5 years ago.

And now the story gets interesting as i step into honduras.

questions and more questions. I ask so many questions in these places because 1. i want to use my spanish 2 i have no idea where im going and 3 everyone else seems to be just as lost and therefore i have to weed out the doofs who simply point in the direction away from them when i ask how to get to another city.

after asking three people i finally found yet another rickety school bus with a hand made sign flowing accross the windshield that indicated it would take me to choluteca.

now, you might ask, why the hell was i going to choluteca? well i can´t really tell you why. I´ve done a fair amount of traveling in my life and it always seemed to have a purpose whether it was to see some museum or visit some old town or something else.

before this tip i was able to save up more money than i have ever had for a trip. and yet my objective here has been to spend hardly any money and to get around with the locals. and in the past week ive done that. ive stayed way below my 20 dollar a day budget and i´ve been floating wherever people i meet take me. why for instance i was in antigua guatemala just two days ago and now i´m two countries over.

So back to the hottest bus i´ve ever been in ever. the sweat was literaly pouring down my face as i sat waiting for either the driver to get some air flowing through the cab or for the sun to cook the skin off everyone´s bodies. i would have waited outside of the bus if i hadn´t been afraid of having all my belongings stolen.

the bus finally left and we rolled away peacefully until a very fat man came aboard. he was slow to find the seat next to me and could hardly fit in the child sized bus.

for the next fifteen minutes i was mesmerized to watch this landwhale jam out to the music while eating some sort of meat and potato goolash that he produced out of a thin plastic bag with his grit covered hands. i was half mesmerized by his nasty eating habits and half dying for a bite since i hadn´t eaten anything all day.

After the man finished, he did what all people in these situations seem to end up doing...he offered his finger lickin´ hand in the clasic gesture of ¨let´s be friends and get to know each other.¨ so i then met walter and we talked only for a little while about our lives until he got onto, what seemed like his favorite subject, sex. so, at 8 pm, with an empty stomach and a sore ass from 8 hours riding on 4 busses, i talked to an old fat honduran man about his different sexual exploits. most entertaining!

i was set to stay with a recent aquaintence i had met in san jose, el salvador and the man was most interested in helping me to get in contact with her. when we arrived we walked around the dirty dark streets of choluteca asking random people for their cell phones. we finally got a hold of my ¨friend¨ but the woman´s phone was messed up and my friend couldn´t hear my voice.

so when after all this trouble what did i do in this foreign town in this foreign city? i piled into a the shittiest cab in the world with all these new people and we drove off. well actually the driver first had to plug in a battery for the car and we were all instructed to hold the doors tight since they no longer closed. and then we were off.

we drove around everywhere with simply a piece of paper with my friend´s name and phone number. we went to a gas station and asked if anyone had heard of her and what would you know, the man was sort of friends with her and told us where her neighborhood was. at this point i felt like this little ¨adventure¨ was bridging from an invite to me and two fat dudes stalking a poor girl down. I didn´t really know what to do.

We went into the neighborhood despite my many offers to simply go to a hotel and then the men started walking around asking people on the street where this girl lived. we did this for about an hour, always rejumping the car and holding the car doors closed. it was very uncomfortable.

when we finally arrived at this girls house and her mother opened the door i realized that i probably now knew the two fat guys in the taxi better than the people who´s house we had stalked down. now the tables were turned and everyone started to ask me questions like are these your friends? is this the girl? and from the other side, what are you doing here? can i....help you? of course i was doing a bang up job of shittily explaining in my broken spanish that i had no idea what i was doing and that i really just wanted to go to a hotel where i could stick my head under a pillow and die of confusion and embarrassment.

but instead i went into these people´s house where i then tried to explain myself and how stupid i felt for hunting down some people whom i simply met in passing and was probably never supposed to see again.

so what happened after all that? ....well.....the dudes just wanted to rip me off for the cab, which they did, and the family wanted to forgive my ignorance, which they did. i was served a big late dinner, my first meal of the day, and given a room in their house. so how about that, i survived my day in honduras.

Oh the Philippines!!!!

I started recording this blog almost exactly a year ago when I was leaving France and heading to Thailand. I had a great time for a month bouncing around different islands on Thailand and in Malaysia. After that it was a very interesting year spent in Taiwan where I learned only basic words in Chinese and thus had very limited conversations with all of the adoring non-English Chinese speaking girls I met. In all it has been a pretty interesting and fun year.

And now after all those adventures I decided take a quick, easy and cheap flight to the Philippines. I'll admit that when I was mentally preparing myself for this trip I just figured that it would be kind of the same experience as Thailand. However, after several days of the most intense traveling imaginable surrounding one of the coolest island destinations you could dream of, I think that this is a pretty uniquely special place.

The best part is that the trip isn't even over. I don't think I am ever going to be able to go back to short little 5 day vacations after I've had so many long and exciting ones like these.

I guess the things that make this country so great are that everyone treats you like a local. There aren't many gawky eyed glances as you walk through crowed street side markets with your giant backpack and blond hair. Even when visiting such small local spots like the closet sized shoe repairman you can easily explain to him in English what you need and how much you'd like to pay for it. The food here is cheap and they give you smaller portions so that you leave feeling satisfied but never stuffed. The beaches are white and the sand feels like flour from an unmade cake. The culture is mixed with it's previous rulers, the Spanish, so there are many similarities in the language and in the way of life. And then there are the girls. Any girl you see on the street, on the bus, walking in the mall, or laying on the beach will smile at you, wave, and even talk or dance. It is awesome. It is to the point that when you glance back at a girl you pass on the street, chances are that she is already checking you out herself. Where else on Earth can you find a place like that?

On that gushing note let me do what I do best and fill you in on some shitty and miserable experiences that I have had so far on this trip that will basically run fluent until the middle of October. While almost everything has been great on the trip the main shittiness has been centralized around our days of travel. And actually I can't even even explain to you yet what has happened because I still haven't slept after a 20 hour trip that only covered 350 KMs. Do the math. Maybe I'll fill you in tomorrow.

The important thing is that this place is cool and I sort of want to live here.

Ayyy yaaaa!

Ay ya. Ay yo. These are two of the most powerful and potent words in the Chinese language. Do I know what they mean? Vaguely. I mean not really exactly, but I do know how and when to use them. There are all sorts of times throughout one's Taiwanese days and nights that the words Ay ya and Ay yo can be blurted out. Let's start with some brief but necessary definitions.

Ay ya/yo - this is a word based on two different Chinese characters and while it is only one actual word, the accent can change giving it two different connotations.

The ay ya form is something that you yell and elongate (ex. Ayyyyy yaaaaa) when you see something gross or disturbing. An example would be if you were sitting on a bus bench waiting for.......that's right, the bus, and you saw an old man sitting next to you. Let's say this man is ancient and has on a large jacket and gloves even though it is going to be around 95 degrees outside today. The man slips off one of his gloves revealing a sweaty hand and before you know what he is going to do, he crams his wrinkled dew covered index finger into his hairy cavernous nostril and begins to pick away. AYYYYYY YAAAAAA! Yelling this would indicate you displeasure and disgust at this raw and animalistic action.

Now the ay yo form is a bit different. You say ay yo quickly and without pause. It is used to indicate irritation and is a general verbal representation of your growing anger and frustration at a situation or person. An example when you might use this would be if you were a seven year old girl and the little pain in the ass sitting next to you, who is always hyper and never pays attention, grabbed your favorite Hello Kitty eraser that you don't want to get smudged and started erasing his shit homework until his paper ripped. Ay yo! you could proclaim!

This word is so incredible and it can be used in all sorts of other situations:

You are already late for school and you step in a heaping pile of dog shit. Not only is it fresh and warm but you just wasted your best smile of the day on the dude walking his freshly lightened pooch who just passed you. Ayyy yaaaa, for the poop, and then Ayyy yo for the fact that it is poop and it is on your shoe.

You're swimming in the ocean and you do one of the best underwater handstands you've ever accomplished and when you come up no one is looking. Just as your about to scream Ay yo a giant phantom wave crashes into your face injecting your nose with enough saline solution to kill a horse. As you come back up finally you scream...Ay yo!

You're sitting on a small and uncomfortable chair grading papers for a bunch of 4 year olds who have formed a psychotic and hectic "line" behind you. You're about to compliment the boy who finally figured out to make that curve on his lower case g when he sneezes snot all over your face from about 6 inches away. Whichever comes first will work. Oh oh ay yo, or Jesus Christ! Ay yaaaa!

You wake up early to get ready for a long and hard (those words don't sound good together) day of work and all you want to do is make it a silent morning. As you walk into the shower you look down at your naked legs and BAM! There's a giant hand print sized spider creeping up the shower wall heading straight towards you, no doubt hoping to devour your face. You scream like a girl and don't have time to say ay ya and simply grab the spurting shower head. The spider is climbing even as the water hits it and you don't know what to do because your only defense is the lukewarm water and your weak, frightened and naked body. After a minute of thrashing and screaming the spider falls to the drain where you crush it with your roommates shampoo bottle. Once its smashed carcass is kerplunking down the drain you can exhale and say Ay yo!

Perhaps the best time to use ay ya and ay yo can occur when you are in a bar. A crowed bar on a free beer night at that. You are having a good time even though there is a line for everything including a seat. You dance to your favorite song and then chug your free beer with your pals and it hits: OUCH MY STOMACH!!! You rush for the bathroom and wait for what seems like forever for a stall to open up. Ay yo! The guy who has just vomited 8 shots of homemade rice wine (Ay yaaaaa!) stumbles out and the shitshack is all yours. You take a look and sadly realize that it's a squatter. Ay yo! This squatter is a hole in the ground and your objective is to crouch so low that your quads will often feel the effects of the workout the next morning when you wake up. Ay yo! You take the first plunge and oh no, you got the angle wrong on the squatter. You have relieved yourself and none of it made it into the twinky shaped hole. Ay ya you whisper so that no one knows its you. You clean up and scram out yelling as you walk out the door, "some asshole shit on the floor... Ay yaaaaa!"

Ay yaaa and Ay yo are a time honored form of Chinese language. From Taiwan's great illustrious founders to its new and modern inhabitants, the term ay ya/yo has helped many to put a branded name on an otherwise regrettable situation. It is in the great Chinese tradition that I hand this down to you, oh faithful reader. May you go forth and relish in your right to yell Ay yaaaa or Ay yo when the situation merits it. For without Ay ya and Ay yo, our lives are truly meaningless.

Blinded by the White!!!

I'm going to splice in random photos of Taiwan while I write this bloggue. Hope you don't mind.


Blinded by the white is a saying that we have here in Taiwan. It is a take on the classic tune titled Blinded by the Light and our new meaning works out to correlate quite well with the original song. I, of course, am talking about white people. Not just any old white person, but the white people from all over the world who choose Taiwan, and more specifically Taipei, to be their new place of exile.


The term blinded by the white is most true on two levels. The first level is the reaction that the rest of the population (ie. Taiwanese people) have when they spot a blatantly different looking vanilla face. Almost anyone, despite his or her inability to pick up any other Chinese, will understand the commonly whispered and not uncommonly shouted "Why go ren." (This of course is the phonetic spelling of the Chinese term for foreigner.) The most common person to use this when you're standing in line for food or simply checking the mail is a child. In the same way that everyone burps and farts without regard for those around them, so too do they allow their children to point and stare and shout at the crazy blond-haired blue-eyed demons lurking around them.

This of course, is the light side of the blinded by the white factor. That is more of a sun in your eyes by the white experience. The next group are those who become physically impaired by our vary existence. There are others, who simply stop dead in their tracks at the mere sight or reference of a white person. Often times, while strolling down the street people will stumble, mouth agape, as if I were spouting a unicorn horn and farting bubbles. They are truly blinded by my mere presence and are incapable of resuming any normal activity until I pass or depart. This makes being table neighbors a difficult process for some Taiwanese children who can barely make time to watch the fork going into their eye as they gaze wondrously at the strange alien enjoying the hot and spicy chicken next to them.

Now of course, there are many Taiwanese who think nothing different of the white person. They pass by them on the street like any other member of the human race. Many will say hello to you and you feel like your snappy "hey" really brightens their day. So many of the Taiwanese are very thoughtful and love the idea of foreigners enjoying their wonderful home.

So from now on let's leave the Taiwanese out of it and focus on craziest and weirdest minority on the planet: the whites of Taiwan.

Frankly, most of the other white people here just scare the living shit outta me. The blinded by the white term is really the most relevant for the white people because there are sometimes so few that the mere site of one makes you feel like you are characters in a World of Warcraft game who must dodge the monsters to finally discover the mystical cave with all the missing gold.(Or something to the extent of that nerd crap.) Honestly though, I would rather fight to the death with the majority of the crackers I see on the street than meet them and talk to them. Aren't I optimistic?

You see there are really only about three types of white people in this country. (Keep in mind that there are some darker skinned peoples here as well but they have even different problems. Like the photo screening process that most schools have in order to select the candidate with the most "ivory" coloring. Seriously.) The first group would be people like myself. I admit, I am no perfect man, nor do I embody the essence of a true ex-pat traveler who soaks up every bit of culture thrown at him, but I can at least hold a conversation with all types of different people and, like the others in this category, I can still function like a normal person having a normal life in perhaps a slightly abnormal place.



You also have the second type who are really the more admirable white people. These are the folks who have come here and decided to make this island their home. They have perhaps learned Chinese, made lots of Taiwanese friends, gone out (successfully) with Taiwanese girls or guys, and they have managed to find order in this place. They can live and prosper as they would any where else. I like these people.

And then you have the third group. This is the group I would like to discuss for the remaining part of this bloggue. The third group is a bunch of people, and by that I almost always mean white males, who come to Taiwan as a form of escape. Yes that's right, these guys were so fucked up and lame and weird and bizarre in their own countries that they have been forced to exile themselves literally onto an island in the middle of nowhere. (Taiwan is actually geographically located at the epicenter of international Asian commerce, bringing in techniques and cultures from north eastern Asian nations as well as south east Asian cultures, but for these dudes, they just couldn't fit in anywhere else.)

The most common features of this third group are a pale and pasty skin, most likely due to reclusive and overall antisocial behavior, bad posture, strange walks, and terrible clothing. These guys are the dorks with which the dorks of our own nations would not even accept. I mean these guys are blindingly goofy, whether its the see-through white shirts combined with man boobs, or the guarded and creeptastic glances they will give you on the metro when they realize that they weren't able to escape every single white person on the planet. One girl I met characterized this group of nut jobs simply as "drips."


The problem is that we white folk are the minority and like all minorities around the world, "we gotta stick togethah." Combine that with the fact that almost every white person here is an English teacher, and you are bound to meet some "drips" in a training meeting or at a teacher's convention or on the street.

These "drips" can often be deceiving at first, allowing you to consider that they are normal travel fancying buffs like yourself. They may even drink some beer and hang at some bars and go to the same restaurants that serve the same western food you miss so much, and you may see each other at the museums and around your neighborhood, and in the parks....oh wait they do do those things and you really can't avoid them. They go to your dance parties and stumble and contort, they do the head nod to you without notice to the latte cream forming a mustache across their face, they wave in the metro exposing yellow pits stains, and they just sort of go to all the same places as you. You see I too am one of these random white pool pocket playing kind of guys.....Ha gotcha! I'm actually cool as shit and these dudes really are crazy lame creeper dick bags! We just happen to do the same stuff.

Oh that felt good. Please don't think me high and mighty. I suppose what I should have done was to put the cool people who actually make their life here as the first group thus allowing them to be the top of the wacko white minority pyramid. They are the true ex-patriots. But I mean, my level of people at least do what they can to try the foods and go to the Taiwanese places. Some of us put great effort into learning Chinese and almost all of us are social and kind to our hosts; the Taiwanese. These other guys though make basic social behavior look as awkward and impossible as trying to lick your own elbow.

So when you travel the streets of Taiwan it is OK to feel blinded by the white when it happens. The wild part is that you really are in that different of a place and you aren't around many other people like you. That is what adventure is all about and that is how you learn to be able to communicate and to enjoy the company of others. You see, a weirdo from the third group wouldn't be able to say that kind of wisdom because he would be too busy playing his eight thousandth game of hearts on the computer.

TAIWAN IS WEIRD!!!!! I'm out

Acting Made Complicated: Part Two

It has been a long time. I have been working a lot and I get so fatigued by the end of the day that I am unable to sit down and jot some news thoughts and embellished stories for my immense readership. But now is the time for me to invite you, oh faithful reader, to read about the second half of our acting debut. (PS If you want to read the first part of the day, simply scroll down the page.)

The day was still fresh at noon on this lovely Saturday and I was becoming more and more disinterested in continuing our adventure as actors as the weather seemed much more inviting than spending time with the random film crew and some chicks who had already proven to be "not our type." Nevertheless, we chose to take the leap of faith and changed locations across town where the second half of this infomercial would be filmed.

After a long and cramped car ride filled with rude and mocking remarks about our less than average director/driver we arrived at the second site. The building was down a more than dirty alley and it felt like we were entering the most painful and horrifying part of our gang initiation as we ascended up the cracked and rusty steel elevator. When the elevator doors opened our anticipation of relief quickly disintegrated at the site of this putrid employee "lounge" that lay before us.

Seeing as we were the stars I thought it only appropriate that Graeme and I take seats on the one couch dying in the corner of the depressingly decorated hall. I plopped down on the couch thinking that I had finally arrived to some well earned comforts when my leg knocked into a sloppy sounding bucket at the foot of the couch. One look at the puke filled waist basket was all I needed to initiate the thoughts of regret and irritation of knowing that I had no way of leaving this place. I did, however, feel at ease to know that I now knew the locations of all the fire exits as well as the puking section of the building.

I moved the portable outhouse behind the couch and watched as the others filled in quietly apparently undaunted by the grim prison yard we would be restricted to for the next couple of hours.

After a sit on the couch and a brief admission to Graeme that we weren't in the most excellent situation the staff arrived with two giant bags full of boxes of Chinese food. The over eager French speaking Taiwanese man was excited to have us sit with him to discuss, in both Chinese and French, life as a traveler, opera singer, and patron of the weekend entertainment jobs.

As was chewed briefly on our barely edible food boxes Graeme and I took great pride at our abilities to hold one conversation using the combined abilities of French, Chinese, and English. The girls at our table could only sit, watch, and listen to bits and pieces of our sporadic dialogue. This set the scene for the next event. The three stars had met and certainly did enjoy each other, so we were now ready to make 'em weep as they say in the bidness.


The soviets had gone (bowing their heads in embarrassment I may add) to brew a new poison while kissing and chanting prostitute inspired Russian poetry to each other, and it was our turn to show the crew who the actors really were.

Picture this. We find the crew in a thinly lit and moody board meeting. The board is Graeme, myself, Opera man, Guy with twenty pins sprinkled throughout his suit coat, random white girl with lab coat, and "told to say nothing hot Asian secretary lady." Our motivation is to keep serious faces but be relaxed as we discuss this fantastic Chinese sex medicine. We were the elite team that is to lead this great presentation about whatever the hell we were selling.

The audience/low level employees were instructed to do more of the same, nodding heads in pretend agreement, smiling in accord to made up ideas, and clapping out of satisfaction to the random things that each actor could produce. The scene was set and.....ACTION!

My first spot gave me the chance to really go for a different range of monologue. With the lights shining and a Chinese book in front of me I began my speech to all of my hard working employees. "Well we can see from last quarter's numbers that Graeme has been spending a large amount of the company's dollar on a range of different kinds of prostitutes." I got some smiles and nods from my attentive audience and continued running my finger down the page moving on to the rest of the information. "From the looks of these numbers there is no contest that Graeme seems to have a very serious sex addiction that must be handled. He is spending so much money and having so much sex that it really has become a concern. In the next quarter we would like to really address this problem and (pointing to my 'employees') I trust that you will help share this responsibility in getting him off of the vagina." I was received very well by my staff who thought whatever the hell I had said must have been very good and interesting. I then pointed to my "associate" Graeme who now knew that the game was on.

"Well everyone, we have some interesting numbers on the board." Graeme had been instructed to use the power point page as the basis for his fake speech and with his thin black tie and his borrowed suit coat, he was the model of success. "We can see that this graph here clearly states what a giant homosexual Andrew is. I mean the graph goes all the way to 84% which indicates that four fifths of you in this room believe Andrew to be a giant fudge packer." At this he cleverly, like the great improvising actors before him, pointed and smiled at the staff leaning on his every word.

"So while I may be a sex addict," he continued, "we can see that Andrew has a much more profound secret to admit because the whole room here believes him to be a giant gay!" The claps were loud and everyone could see that the crew was feeding off of our powerful acting ability. I think a guy in the front may have even winked at me.


Graeme and I continued to battle for the most random statements each time we spoke. I tried a bit about different things you could put in a soup and how they were all very delicious and healthy, and Graeme gave a kind shout out to the man in the crowd who had loaned him his 3XL jacket that made him look like Tom Hanks in Big. We enjoyed the experience and at the end we were complimented for our body language and sincere facial expressions on camera. Oscars here we come!

We went on to do more scenes that were dumb and hard to understand and will only be laughable when I receive the video and post it on youtube for everyone to enjoy. However, it was the last scene of the day that made the whole 9 hour adventure worth the effort.

At this point we had been contrasting from dark corners to bright spotlights so much that I think we were beginning to get a little delirious. We were now getting carried away with the recognition that no one understood what we said in English, so we felt free to curse and make humorous remarks about whatever we felt like. It may not have been the most noble thing to do but we certainly found it to be enjoyable and entertaining.

Now I must say that while we were rather flamboyant and free with our speech by now, we hadn't been making fun of anyone or doing anything cruel or disrespectful. (Except for the things we said to the director, but that is just a working hazard for him. I seriously think he was saying "Fucking Actors" in his head the whole time. Or maybe he was saying it aloud in Chinese. I don't know.) So like I said, we had been nice and friendly and we had gotten to know most everyone there and they were all nice and friendly and we were having a good time.

But then came the New Dude. A man they had been saving for this last important scene. A man who was nicely dressed and who was getting his face powdered on the set. He seemed the ultimate professional.

The scene was New Dude, white girl with lab coat, (now in my delirium) super hot Asian secretary, and the two CEOs: Graeme and myself, Doofus McGumphrey. It seemed like the scene was going to be quick and easy and we would be outta there in no time.

The first cut began and everyone seemed cool and relaxed as we scanned through giant Chinese books pretending to talk about the ancient lore and usage of Chinese sex medicines. Moments after the the big hot lights came on and the classic RORRING! (rolling) was called New Dude began to sweat like he was at a wool convention in the Sahara. It was hard to even listen to him speak as his hand visibly shook with the giant book in his hand. He was shaking so bad that the camera was probably seeing both sides of the books as if he were trying to spin it.


He made it about halfway through the scene until he was startled when the window shade fell down and blasted us all with the rays of the midday sun. This was then the beginning of the coexisting moments of New Dude totally loosing all control of himself and Graeme and I doing the same but in a more impossibly insensitive way.

Disclaimer: Now I'm not trying to be a dick here but this dude must have had tourettes or something. That of course is no big deal but combine that with an absolutely crazy dominating fear of being on camera and you add white gasoline to the already raging fire that is the two boneheads' laughter. So maybe we are dicks or maybe acting just isn't the right profession for this guy. That is all I'm saying.

In our next scene New Guy was hard to handle. We were sitting across from him and every time he would try to hand the book to us his eyes would bounce up and down and his mouth would go from frown to smile frown to smile frownsmile frownsmile frowile AHHHHH!!!!

I was the first to loose it. I couldn't help it and I know it is bad but the day had already been one of the weirdest experiences of my life and this dude with pin ball facial movements and a shakiness that would make an ice swimmer look steady made me crack.

Graeme and I were still committed to our art as well, so we wanted to have some fun ourselves. We were sharing the same couch as before and every time the man would hand over the book I would try to make my commentary using a gay accent. While I was doing this Graeme would point to the book and talk about different employees who really had to read this and that and how he wanted to buy 4 million units that day or else someone would be fired. On my other side the secretary was taking fake notes which I noticed to be Hello Kitty drawings. Everyone was going completely crazy in front of this camera and yet all it will look like in the end is a group of totally random people talking about Chinese medicine. How could anyone have kept it together?

Suddenly, it was all too much and Graeme burst out in a laughter best described as uncontrollable and contagious. I was doing the spitting laughter where I tried, unsuccessfully, to hold it in and all the while the white girl kept acting away without the slightest attention to her couch mate (New dude) who was about to explode right in front of all of us.

I think the moment when we really lost it was when the cameramen noticed what was going on and started laughing along with us. We made it through a last cut with Graeme and I visibly giggling on camera and then the staff burst out into a torrent of unfathomable laughter. Graeme of course didn't see most of this because he was in the bathroom almost about to puke because he was laughing so hard.

So we almost lost composure from laughter all thanks to one man: The New dude. However, great actors like Graeme and myself can always be trusted to keep composure in a scene.

The real shocker is, guess who was the one good and kind person who saw through this man's uncontrollable nervousness? Yes, that's right, the hot ass secretary. In fact the only hot girl there that day, was madly in love with the New Dude and in the end he showed us all up by being the actor who got to score with the hot chick on set.

So while we didn't get the girl who did a passionate portrayal of a sex starved Harvard educated secretary, we did get to be considered the main actors on set. We will even get credited in the final cut and I got paid again to come in three days later and film the final monologue where, acting like a physics professor, I spoke sincerely about different ways to grow, cultivate, and harvest weed. Ain't life sweet in Taiwan?

Acting Made Complicated: Part One

Well since I know that I hate jogging and that even if I do drag my ass out tonight it will most likely never happen again, I will go ahead and relate to my four readers(Dunkle, My dad, my sister, and Chris Dandurand) another funny and unique happening in this otherwise normal existence that I lead out here in Asia.

The week was finishing as most do. It was Thursday night and I was sitting at home on my computer wasting one last evening before the impending weekend could bring all types of activities to make my wasting seem a bit more meaningful or at least eventful.

I received a quick instant message via Internet chat from a friend who indicated that a friend of his had a friend who's friends were in some form of the "entertainment" business here in Taipei and they were in need of "western" (white) actors to fill up some negative space in their upcoming commercial. I was initially interested in the opportunity as I found the pay rather lucrative considering the minimal amount of work and the chance to get some much needed camera time, but after a quick "it could run from 4 to 8 hours" remark I realized that this would interfere with my lazy Saturday, so I declined and felt if nothing else, relieved disappointment.

However, the next day I talked to another friend of that first friend who said that he would also be interested in trying out some acting if only we could do it together thus allowing for the opportunity to either 1. have a total blast or 2. have a terrible and miserable time, but less so when suffering with another.

We signed on and it was decided that our acting careers would commence on Saturday, April 11, 2009.

We showed up late to some sort of university here in Taipei to discover that the higher paying parts had already been given to two guys who, at first we believed to be the "talent," but just stolen the parts because of their prompt arrival. We took some seats in the back of a dark and half-full auditorium where as the only white guys surrounded by other Taiwanese men and women dressed in similar suit and business attire.

The group had obviously been waiting for us, as we were about an hour late, because the second our asses hit the chairs the lights went out and the cameras flashed on and "action...rolling!" was called out in a Chinese accent too funny to describe in any form of typing whatsoever.

It was then that the hilarity and atrociousness of the day really kicked in. Now it may help to give you a little more information about what we understood going into this experience. The first thing we knew was that everything said during the filming would be dubbed over in Chinese later. We were instructed to say whatever we wanted to this fake audience as long as we moved our mouths and made lots of "business related" body gestures.

The first guy stood up and was dressed in a fashionable well-fitting suit and smiled into the crowd with a confidence that made me understand why he had won the part rather than my less than disheveled self. Oh but how appearances do deceive.

A PowerPoint slide show began on stage and the outwardly comfortable white guy was told to use his laser pointer, fantastic smile, and good looks to pretend to give an informative presentation to this made up group of "clients" as the giant camera rolled in front of him filming his every move.

My friend Graeme and I's weak attempt to remain polite and quiet was botched the second this guy opened his broken Russian mouth to reveal a speech off the top of his head about some picture of a guy being his ex-boss, the joys of drinking vodka, some girl who may or may not have been his ex girlfriend, and many picture descriptions put simply with the words, "I don't know what is it."

Now after seeing the slide show two times I could tell that the product in this commercial was obviously some kind of ancient Chinese herb that through time and medical breakthroughs had become more mainstream and was now being made into a common over the counter drug to help a person's kidney. It was easy to derive this simple message, but take after take with these blabbering Russian's only forced them to drift further into obscurity as their attempts to jsut say anything to the camera became more and more impossible and they drifted further away from what the commercial might have actually been about.

Then came Ex-KGB agent number two's "presentation."

The second Russian's presentation had Graeme and I in tears. Keep in mind that Graeme and I and the two other westerners there were the only people who understood what these guys were talking about as they were filmed in front of an audience for a commercial that will be on television within the next week.

(An old painting of a man in traditional Chinese dress comes on screen and next to him there lies a plate with what looks to be several kinds of dried herbs and plants.)In comes Russian retardboy drawing circles around the man's crouch over and over with his laser pointer.

"Hello....ok well....this man is some man....I don't know who is he but he is very big man in Taiwan or China I don't know. He has this bowl here and we can see that it is the medicine or maybe it is a poison. You see at our company we have learn to make both the medicine and of the poison and many people do not know which to use."

(You might to know that everyone else suggested he simply tell a story like the Three Little Pigs just to make his mouth move and to keep himself talking. No one said that he should invent his own bizarre product and then make a presentation about it using slides devoted to another product of which he knew nothing about. Also remember that the only thing this guy could see was a giant TV camera, an auditorium full of straight faced or sleeping Asian people, and two white guys now carelessly laughing and rolling at him as he butchered the English language in his wild and rapidly descending speech.)

"Many peoples take of the medicine for their loved ones when they are sick, but you always give sick people medicine and then they just get more sick and take more money. Our product is a very nice poison that you can use to save your money. Wouldn't it be great if you could just poison your family if they were sick so that you didn't have to give many medicines?" The uncomprehending crowd is still nodding their heads in agreement to the Blah blah blahs that they are unable to interpret.

"We say that you buy our product (please try to imagine Borat saying all of this and you'll know how we felt) and have the poison for you."

And then he really got carried away with his last stunning monologue.

"You see with our poison you can give it to anyone. You can kill your mother or you can kill you father. Go and use our poison to kill your children and to kill you aunt or you uncles. It will kill everyone and then you will not have to use any medicines. Dis poison is very good...." and then he apparently caught on to what he had just been saying for the past couple of hours.

From here he went on to, first speak Russian to his friend, and then to quote a long and complicated Russian poem about a word that kept recurring throughout: "prostituta." This poor guy was seriously giving one of the most psychotic and messed up business proposals many will ever hear. He was doing this into a live camera, in front of a bunch of random foreigners, in the light of a Chinese power point, in a three piece suit that looked to be about three sizes too large as it sagged all over his body.

I mean you just can't make that shit up!

His farewell monologue had him looking sweaty and obviously uncomfortable as even his friend was now unable to support him. He said a little more about his mythical poison that I hope he never actually creates and then went to even more desperate measures. As his anxiety increased so did his difficulty with creating whole English phrases.

"So now I don't really know what to do or to say. Can someone please help me? I...I....I no know. I...do you have any questions for me or what could I do I mean, well you could say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.....(yep he started counting he was that desperate) oh I mean I just don't know. Please someone help me I cannot.... oh help.... what do I say..............well you see we have a great poison and only the rich people can have the poison." He was back on a role again. "Our poison is da best poison and so only the rich will be able to have our poison because then they can poison the poor peoples. So we will give to all the riches and of the poison.." and then we was silenced and a great weight was lifted from his body and heaved onto those of the five other English speakers who now had to spend the last moments avoiding the creepy poison salesman who's sickeningly weird subconscious had just revealed itself in the form of the worst verbal diarrhea to hit our ears.

After three hours of switching camera angles and doing different takes with different lighting and even taking bathroom breaks this guy had continued to stand up and return to the same speech about some sort of crazy fucked up poison that he thought would make this glib and dark world more manageable. We could not believe how uncomfortable and yet hilarious this situation had become, and it was only 1130am.

Several times, the guy would finish his terrifying speech about killing people and we would all give him a standing ovation which I imagine, once in commercial form, will look simply like people cheering on this amazingly groundbreaking kidney medicine spokesman as he is dubbed in Chinese. No viewer will ever know that the "visiting business man" in the advertisement was actually speaking in his sterile and horrifying Russian accent about his passion for creating a product that could help him, and all the other kill crazy people of the world, brutally poison and kill all the members of their family.

Let me tell you, I have never witnessed anything as amazingly awesome as that guy making such a huge ass out of himself. When he made the remark about killing one's kids a girl from Massachusetts, who probably goes to church every Sunday, actually jumped out of her seat. There were about 50 people in the whole room and only 5 of them actually understood what this guy was rambling about.

After the psycho killer left to go find some family member to poison it was our turn to step up to the plate and show our acting skills.

I was cast to do the pretend post-interview. I would, through my body language and hand motions, pretend to explain in an informal way our excitement and giddiness about this new kidney product (or poison.) I had about five cameras around me and it looked like a fake little press conference where I was the leading CEO type figure whom everyone wanted to interview.

I began by telling all of the Taiwanese gentlemen how excited I was about eating sandwiches and that I especially liked ham and cheese sandwiches. I knew I could say anything, so this was the topic I picked. I talked about the size of sandwiches that I enjoyed and we even did a wonderfully fake laugh when I said I hate when the pickle slides out the back of the sandwich and lands on your shoe. I even threw in a little thing about how I like to put that Russian guy's poison on sandwiches and feed them to my whole family on beautiful summer mornings. I got a lot of smiles and "oh yes yes" from my audience. No one had the slightest clue what the hell I was talking about and I was about about 10 to 15 years younger than all of them and yet they were still all keenly pretending to listen to my sandwich rant as if I were the celebrity CEO of this mythical medical company. I was also getting paid about three times more than them because my minority status here means that it is harder to find people like me to do these things.

Once again, you just can't make this shit up.

So that about sums up the first half of our descent into the Taiwanese entertainment industry. After the fake interview about sandwiches and a talent agent offering us membership with their agency (which we accepted haha) we packed up to get ready for our next shooting location. This next shoot would simply involve Graeme and I, another white girl, our agent, twenty randomly selected Taiwanese people, the wild haired visionary of a director who screamed at us in Chinese until our agent made basic translations for us, and a fat Chinese opera singer who's life as an European opera star had helped him to become fluent in French and fascinated by every type of exotic woman of the world. Our afternoon with these people was incredibly strange and exciting and ended with us crying so hard of laughter on camera that Graeme actually had to leave the room to be able to breath. We also ended up being on camera for every single scene.

So please do read on next time if you dare!

Free time makes you feel what?

Free time. Ohh free time is nice. A little free time is great when you are caught up in work and the rush of life. Sometimes you get more than just a little free time and that is great too. You might call this a vacation or a holiday and you might find that you enjoy it a lot because you have so much free time that you are temporarily released from your otherwise stressful, or in the least repetitive, duties to enjoy a bit of the sweeter things in life. There is also that middle amount of free time. It is time that you have free but is never that far away from more work but and merely allows you enough time to complain about what you could be doing in exactly the time that that middle time allows you.

I have middle amounts of free time and it is hard to use them wisely and efficiently. To many, the amount of free time that I am allotted in a day would be rather pleasant and would enable one to do a myriad of fun and profitable things. I however, have accustomed myself to a pattern of creating things to do and then spending, or wasting, my time planning them out in great mathematical detail until the time is up and I must resume my work or whatever thing I would call not free time that interrupts the free time that I am lucky to have but waste.

Everyday I arrive at work at around 8:35 am and I am allowed to enjoy a little free time until class begins at 9. This will often be the most productive time in my day when one considers the many other moments of free time that I will be given throughout the day.

During these 25 minutes I will often try to plan my upcoming lessons. This typically involves making photocopies to provide for maximum busy work. Photocopies are amazing because the beautifully pleasant children can do a silly ABC activity on a sheet of paper and then when they finish I can make the suggestion, "Oh wow! Great job! Can you draw teacher a picture on the back?" This helps to fill a lot of time.

Other times I will prepare by reading through the teacher's manual and search through different methods and activities that suit my style. My style is one of extreme relaxation and an easy going attitude in the class and the early morning stupor doesn't aide in reverting from it. I still manage to prepare fun and interesting activities that require little work from me other than an occasional "NO SPEAKING CHINESE!" threat or the classic, "WHY DID YOU DO THAT? YOU BOTH SAY YOU ARE SORRY AND GO DRINK SOME WATER." (Whenever trouble is brewing I throw out the "go drink some water" comment and everything is saved by the children's mouthwatering desire for a little free time themselves.)

However, most other mornings I will neglect to do this photocopying and that lesson planning to go slouch in the tiny 4 year old chairs like a giant with my ass hanging over the sides to drift into a sort of hypnotic state where my face resembles that of a drugged out groupie's as he watches a Pink Floyd laser show in a planetarium. I zone out until the heart attack inducing baby music about sharing and saying thank you BLARES through the speakers. This is a new policy directed at all the teachers who's similar morning rituals has caused them to be so late every morning that such drastic methods seem to be the only solution.

My day continues on until I am given the longest break of the day between 11:30am to 1:30pm. There are surely many people who could find ways to do great and amazing things with this kind of free time but my colleagues and I choose to spend the two hours in our own way.

All the singing and dancing and yelling and sneezes in the face get one more than a bit exhausted and famished. I, along with my colleagues, WE, will usually dine with the children on whatever slop is served that day. I hadn't believed the worst about the food until I realized that it was cooked along with the breakfast at 8am and then left in several steal pots until it was brought into our classrooms at a deliciously steam less room temperature. However, it still isn't that nasty and when you are trying to be the cheapest mofo this side of Manila, free lunch is a great deal.

I will usually eat and make funny faces with my half chewed mouth, thus bringing my students to an unruly laughter most unsuitable in the eyes of the more stern and anal Chinese teachers, for about twenty minutes and then it is downstairs for socializing hour with the ill-tempered coworkers.

Now keep in mind we are all good friends and spend most of our real out-of-work free time together as well, but during this time we love to talk shit about people, complain of things in general and even go onto each others facebook sites to tell amusing stories involving "this girl who seemed beautiful at the time" and that guy who's movie list is "piss poor" and the other dude who's ass "I totally kicked!" We enjoy ourselves until someone gets those heavy eyes that either mean 1. the kindy food was rotten and we are all going to start dropping off or 2. it is time for the sleep club.

On those days that we don't do a mariachi dance while waiting for our turn on the one and only employee toilet we will adjourn to the large and spacious gym to take naps on the gymnastics mats. This usually gets me through the day. Even though the gym is quite large everyone tends to lay his or her mat three feet (one metre) away from the others and we all experience that comfortable warmth as we sleep and dream of work and lives far more challenging or legitimate than our own.

This bit of free time usually ends when, in an unsettling panic, we manage to sleep through the incorrectly set cell phone alarm and run about the school spottily grading old tests and quickly skimming through random homework assignments.

After the second class there is just one more hour of free time where I am able to drift into mindlessness as I wait for my last and most energetic class. If I'm not caught talking to someone on the top floor or grading more tests as my Chinese teacher gnarls at me while telling the children in Chinese what a clumsy and unprepared doofus I am, I will return to the low level computers that provide no leg room and the same small chair that fits any normal person's ass like a baseball bat.

I struggle to find booty comfort in the tiny and oddly grooved seat and I will attempt to read various newspapers and internet postings all the while wishing I could not have this middle free time that is not short enough to feel quick and not long enough to feel relaxing.

But we must remember that we don't get jobs for the free time that they promise and usually take away. We take jobs for the love of the work and the hope that it will lead to bigger and better jobs and also for the pay check that helps pay for that nice cushy chair which alleviates the pain accumulated from the "work" chair.

So in the hope that I might find better and more profitable things to do with my middle free time I ask for your, yes you oh weary and ghostly present reader, opinion and thoughts. Do tell or rather inform me and our other readers as to what you do with your little free time, middle free time, or long free time. Let us hear your stories be they long or short. Use some of your free time to tell me what you do in the rest of that free time. In the desire to change what you do you may start by taking the time to tell me what you do. How about it? Let's read....

Dinosaurs Rule!!!

You know Micheal Jackson or The Beatles really can't even contend with the long lasting popularity of dinosaurs. Even most of the ancient art of Greece has been overshadowed by the later products of the Roman period. There have been many great civilizations that have come and gone and their moment in the sun was surely replaced by something new and more impressive. But dinosaurs.... no way.... they still have a lasting effect that is incredible. Many immense and impressive animals have tried their best to equate with the coolness and beauty of the big lizards but nothing has ever come close. Dinosaurs were here 65 million years ago and each generation of children still picks up the idea that dinosaurs were and are the only deity ever needed for the human race. No human has ever been able to say anything other than, "Dinosaurs were here 65 million years ago." No 64s and there probably won't be any to say that they were here 66 million years ago. They are just so cool and it is beyond comprehension why more movies and books and clothing and furniture aren't made in direct support of these majestic and enigmatic creatures from a time and world that will never be forgotten.

It is also astonishing how the dinosaur population became so adapted and omnipresent only to just stop being here. One minute they were all hanging out eating meat and plants and doing dino stuff and then they were gone.

There are plenty of theories and beliefs as to why these animals had to leave but none really explain why they had to quit on such a high note. The feeling of dread that many had when Jimmy Hendrix died after a measly three rocking years in the limelight is one iota of how most children feel about dinosaurs existence. "Why did they have to die so young?" the children might say. "Why does something so cool have to be so far away from me?" These are a few of the stirring questions many boys ranging from 8-12 inadvertently ask each day.

My period of obsession and "I will die for anything related to dinosaurs or linked to them" emotional status was a wonderful time but indeed short. I was fantastically excited about all the different colors and personalities of dinosaurs. Still some of the largest words in my vocabulary stem from my early "research" into the world of these herbivores and carnivores. Names like Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex brought a feeling of elation that could only be compared to an opera lover's first experience in the audience of Candide. To hear those syllables bounce so wonderfully off my tongue made me shudder with delight and hope that my dreams would be invaded by my scaly skinned friends' immense and mind-blowing presences.

I had dinosaurs wherever I was. There were lunch boxes, bed sheets, stuffed animals, t-shirts, pajamas, and an entire library filled with books detailed with those pictures of a full sized dinosaur standing next to the tiny silhouette of me, a minuscule and therefore unimportant human being. I would have been honored to have ridden atop the mighty cranium of an Andesaurus delgadoi. I was truly in love with all things dinosaurs and yet, just like the creatures themselves, I had no idea that they would soon be coming to an alarmingly quick and violent end in my life.

I began to see myself getting carried away with this fixation when I was able to throw out names like Micropachycephalosaurus as easily as one might use a monosyllabic "mom" or "cake." I started to become exhausted with the role that dinosaurs were playing in my life. I was only 9 and already my day consisted entirely around my "Dino Schedule." It was up to rise, take off stegosaurus pjs, out of dino bed, into the bathroom to brush with my triceratops toothbrush, off to school with the dino imprinted clothes where I would drift through class doodling little velociraptors when the teacher's eyes weren't fixed on me, and then back home to play with dinosaurs, read about them and do everything according to my large and cold blooded amigos.

I was becoming sick as one does at the end stages of an addiction. I didn't know how to get over this craving for my dinosaurs. At my age, serious treatment didn't cross my mind and I knew that the only true way to get ride of these creatures was to blitzkrieg them from my very soul myself. So the day came when I went to another place in my psyche and officially stated, "fuck dinosaurs." When my parents arrived home that afternoon they found my bedsheets and stuffed animals sliced to pieces and like their real life ancestors, they were obliterated from this planet. I was finally free of the creatures and had had to sacrifice my sanity (if only for a brief moment) in order to cure myself of them. I believe that to have been the only way.

When something becomes so completely awesome one must go cold turkey and just erase it from one's being.

Now that I have grown and recovered from that aching childhood illness I am mystified in the way that all the children of this new generation have acquired the same gene that will simply not permit them to not like dinosaurs. Luckily the gene appears to be on the Y chromosome as the girls do not seem to be nearly as affected by the allure of these green and brown beasts.

When I asked my four year old students how they felt today as I do everyday they replied as they do everyday: "I feel like a dinosaur, ROARRRRRR!!! Today was toy day and while the girls brought in the newer dolls and things that may not have existed during their parents generation, all the boys brought in things involving their best friends the Dino dudes. One boy with dino dolls, one with dino cards, one with a book of dinosaurs, and one boy who had forgotten his dinosaurs but was happy to show us the T-rex smiling on his t-shirt. They love the dinosaurs to an even more outrageous extent than I myself did.

When we take breaks in the class the students are permitted to draw pictures of anything they want. Every boy will always draw his favorite hunter from the cretaceous period. They will compare drawings with each other and will even have pretend fights using only the flaccid pieces of paper with which I have so kindly procured for them. The boys are dinosaur fiends and find a slight moment of solace each day with a brief and less interesting conversation about beetles only to jump right back to the subject of which dinosaur ate more meat and which one had the longer tongue for more effective roaring.

It is all quite captivating and yet I remember my crash and burn when dinosaurs became extinct for me and I fear that this moment will be even more severe for these children. I am beginning to lose my trust in these creatures because they only seem to be around for a small experience and then they break your heart by splitting all together without even offering to pay for half the check. We shall see what happens with these ignorant boys but I hope that as an ex dinojunkie myself I will be able to guide these young lads to a safe and speedy recovery when the day comes that they too must eradicate dinosaurs from their very souls.

My apartment

We had to pick something fast because by the time my good pal Dunkle arrived to Taiwan I had been staying in a dirty and loud locker room-style hostel with 13 other dudes who made "social retardation" seem like a gift compared to what they possessed. I had to make that crap palace my home for nine terrifying days where I was alone on this foreign planet simply struggling to find new and interesting ways to feed myself by making grunting noises and raising various fingers combined with a general rubbing of the belly to indicate my condition. I really didn't like having to live in the hostel and so upon Dunkle's much awaited arrival I was very eager to find some other place of residence with more comforts than just the five seconds of every minute when I received a cool gust of air from the room's only fan providing a most unsatisfying relief from the otherwise rain forest atmosphere of the hot and crowded room.

That first day Dunkle and I looked at 7 places all of which seemed ok to him and fabulous to me. I mean I was the one who had been living in a mental institution on the 13th floor of a building so old and decrepit that it swayed in the wind. We finally settled on what we thought was a quaint, conveniently located and inexpensive apartment located just a block off from the uber sheik Minchuan Shi Lu road. Well how lucky for us.

So please allow me to give you a little tour of our anti pussy pad.

We have now been living here for 7 months and while one might imagine that the delightful conditions of this beautiful little bachelor pad have improved and given it a "lived in" feel, it is quite the opposite. Each new day brings more neglect and disregard of all things proper and clean to this apartment which, if it were a child, would have already gotten us arrested on extreme misconduct and negligence charges.

As you walk to our apartment you will be blasted with the foreshadowing of our doom castle by the pungent odors of other people's trash and something that mostly resembles shit and a dead animal's baby. The smell can often become so strong that your walk to the door quickens to a jog in the hopes that through the door you will find solace from the horrid and dirty smells encircling the little back alley.

Your last bit of dignity can be used to give a nice wave and "Nee how" to the local barber who every day greets all those passing by while cursing them under his breath because he knows that they got their hair cut from "those bastards down the street" instead of him.

The walk up the steps would make more sense as a descent as you are basically going to some form of hell anyway. The key turns and the door loudly opens and you have made it into our squat heap.

Now if Dunkle's door is closed to his room that means that the rest of the apartment is almost completely dark as his room yields the only source of natural light in the apartment. I thought it rather unique that all the bedrooms had windows that looked into the other rooms but I now see how they were meant as a distraction from the fact that there are no real fucking windows in the whole dank and abysmal apartment!

If your shoes are wet do not worry as our lax dress policy around the house does not require our infrequent visitors to have any more respect for this place than we do. Sometimes we will invite the small courtesy of allowing someone to wipe his or her feet on the rug from the neighbors house but if we are in haste we invite those to simply drag whatever type of mess right into our dumpster of a home.

As you walk down the small and cramped hallway you pass into the wonderfully decorated living room that still only contains a couch and a TV. If you feel so inclined you are more than welcome to have a seat on the stiff and ugly colored sofa but do make sure to brush off whatever rubbish, be it food or Dunkle's toenails, from the seat as you sit down. You might feel the need to push some other kind of trash or general rubbish away from you but you will most likely be distracted by whatever various bug has decided to invade our house for the week. If you do happen to swat and kill a bug by smacking it against the wall please feel free to just leave the sticky carcass glued to the white wall so that we can avoid cleaning it up until it turns into another thing to bitch about in this eye soar of an apartment that's eye is really more of a butt hole.

As you glance around the null apartment you will notice a complete absence of inspiration combined with the type of carelessness you never really thought existed until this moment. You may even cry.

On rare occasions a patron visitor might have need to use the bathroom. This is usually rare as we hardly ever have any food or drink to offer that might provoke the need for one to use a facility. Nonetheless, there are often those who have consumed something out in the real world before entering into this uncomfortably awkward dungeon and we invite them to purge it out in our little WC.

The source of the freeloading insects is usually in the bathroom as they enjoy bathing on the top part of the toilet who's lid broke a mere two months ago and has been kept that way I imagine to remind us that every single thing we have is complete and utter shit and worthless. The bathroom brings to mind that photo one might have seen from the case files of some sociopathic murderer's outhouse. There are old tubes of tooth paste that have established colonies growing across them. (I think they may even be at war with the colonies from the old can of shaving cream.) When in the bathroom try to keep clean as our inattention to ever buying that second bottle of soap 5 months ago has lead to a bottle filled with water and shaken so many times that the plastic seems like it is beginning to wear through.

On the rare occasion that one of us has decided to buy some food, ei- pasta and cheap Ragu knock off sauce, you might make your way into the kitchen. Despite the fact that no one ever actually cooks there it seems rather dirty and has a generally devirginizing sleaziness to it.

While cooking be sure to give our pots a good scrubbing with the almost empty dish soap as the previous user has most likely not done an efficient job. The convenient idea of buying the cheapest cook ware became inconvenient right after its purchase. Since then the pots have taken on the same malignant appearance of the chamber pots used by thousands of soldiers in World War II. The nice thing is that with our pots you have no need to worry about the nonexistence of our spice cabinet because all the residue from the previous dinner-for-one-loser will most likely have broken off into whatever pitiful meal you are preparing at that moment.

Feeling sleepy? Why come into my room and have a rest. I can't promise you'll be sleeping on a cloud but as long as everyone else is completely still and the TV is off you might be able to have a small amount of quiet and privacy. Otherwise the once charming "window to the living room" in my room will be sure to grant all light and noise access to the tiny closet of a bedroom.

As you glance at my bed you may notice that the sheets seem a bit nonsheetlike. That is due to the fact that I never actually bought sheets except some pink ones with flowers that I gave away for obvious heterosexual alpha-male reasons. My sleeping supplies are actually just the stretchy thing and an old blanket I bought half priced from a street vendor. If you cocoon yourself just right with the small tissue sized blanket you may be able to get some sort of feeling of warmth and comfort. Of course there is really no need for extra warmth in an unairconditioned and humid room like mine.

That should last right up until you start to notice that you are actually laying on a marble slab that simply looks like a mattress. The stiffness of the mattress could only be comparable to perhaps laying down in the street. And maybe that is sounding like a better idea right about now.

You'll be happy to know that I do have a pillow. It is unattractively green with pictures of cows all over it and it feels a little like if someone stuffed five of those brittle airplane pillows into a potato sack and then slapped the imagine of some bovine adaptation of a animal on it.

Once you take the time to angrily murder a few more mosquitoes that have taken residence in your room like a couple of European Gypsies you can probably get ready to sleep. You can put your things in my closet which is easy to access since the door fell off a couple of months ago. Be sure to spray yourself one more time with Off before heading to bed and then it is off to sleepland where even the dream of a monster chasing you barefoot through streets filled with chomping crabs will feel like the ultimate adventure compared to the conscious knowledge that you actually live in this dismal piece of old cheese that someone made into an apartment.

When you wake up the next morning, the best idea is to just forget even asking if there is any cereal or orange juice and get the hell outside where once out of range of the poop alley you can attempt to have a real life where you have a real job and friends. If you dress yourself nicely enough no one will actually discover that you come from a squalid disease house that makes some parts of Africa seem like a spa in the south of France.

I have lived and stayed in many places in my life and I am sure to stay in many more, (as I naturally plan not to make this apartment my permanent residence) but this little spot truly put the canker sore on the top of the suck ass cake. I could move somewhere else or try to improve these conditions on my own but I could also just keep counting down the days when I will go out and resume my travels where I will stay in places that require me to flush the toilet with a ladle of water set on the side of the bowl. I guess my happiness here spawns from somewhere else than the place where I live or the places I will stay in the future.