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.

State of Emergency

Kindergarten was certainly an interesting time. I suppose I really don't even remember much from my kindergarten years and even my new class of four and five year old kids isn't really jogging much memory. I imagine, if I haven't changed too much, that I was most likely just as much a pain in the ass in my kindy years as I think I might be now. But the more I search for some long purged memories of the beginnings of my lifelong pursuit of knowledge the more I start to feel embarrassed because I see how random and inexplicable kindergartner's actions can be.

Let's start with Katrina. Katrina is a nice girl who is only five years old and already has a prettiness about her that will surely get her attention throughout her life. (I have come to suspect that her mother may even give her slight applications of makeup before she comes to class. This could be the reason for her habitual tardiness.) Katrina doesn't have that "go get 'em" attitude that is shocking to see in some of the other young overachievers in the class. Katrina prefers the pursuit of boys. Where others in the class crave knowledge or desire to have every moment of every class be set to some sort of jumpy Disneyesque song and dance; Katrina simply wants all the attention from the boys who hardly know how to pull their pants up past their bare little asses after peeing without falling over, let alone how to respond to the flippant behavior of a tiny member of the opposite sex, of whom they also don't quite understand. Nothing excites Katrina more than being hugged or receiving interest from her fellow male classmates.

Today Katrina asked me if she could go to the bathroom to which I curtly replied, "no, we are having class!" (I think the strict Asian educational standards are subtly becoming a part of my general teaching philosophy.)Katrina was fine until about a minute later when I saw her head bouncing around past the shelves separating the seating areas of the classroom. I stopped class again to ask "Katrina, what are you doing?" Katrina's answer was nothing verbal but simply the action of slowly and cautiously raising her arm to reveal a pair of recently doo doo stained panties. My reaction would most likely be categorized as profound and utter horror. Katrina thought that as the teacher I might want her newly manufactured A-bomb but she was quite ill-informed as I wanted nothing to do with her little "death present." Of course none of the little children saw anything wrong with Katrina walking around wearing nothing below her waist, and it was only I who was growing pale and terrified as this horrendous nightmare was quickly becoming more of a reality.

As these stories often go, my Chinese teacher, and helper of all things dirty, was absent when I needed her the most. I tried to calm my nerves and think of a rational and sensible solution to this disgustingly strange predicament but I couldn't collect my thoughts and Katrina was creeping ever closer to me with that little stick of dynamite clasped in her cold clammy hands. So, when no other idea sprung to mind, I ran out of the classroom and closed the door behind me leaving 14 kindergartners and a 15th half dressed time bomb alone in a classroom together.

I peeked in through the window as if I was watching a failed bomb tech unit fight to be let out before the misfiring explosive went off with them inside. I checked the outside of the class and couldn't see anyone who might like to tackle this horrific responsibility for me. I started to picture all of the things that would have to happen between myself and Katrina in order to get her "class ready" again and the image made me so weak in the knees I almost fell over. To think of the strange angles and positions and the mortifying questions I would have to ask made me wish that I could jump off the roof and relieve myself of these doody duties.

I was finally able to calm down and I went next door to my co-worker's class. He was sitting in a nice happy little circle with his students reviewing the week's phonics lesson and all his kids appeared to be attentive and intrigued. I quickly interrupted the mood with my stuttering, "Kakakakakatrina just crapped her pants and is wawawawawalking around half naked in the classroom!" Everyone in the class began with a most unhelpful and hysteric laughter brought on by their "supportive" teacher.

To my luck his Chinese teacher was still in the class and informed me that my teacher had gone downstairs to do some paper work. Well I needed a different kind of paper work done and it involved using that paper in dark ways that still make me shutter. I repeated my indelicately formed sentence that should never have been used in front of a group of young minds whose every English action is derived from the inspiration and examples of their teachers. The Chinese teacher immediately snapped into "let's clean up the shit mode" and was ready to help.

We entered the city of New Chernobyl aka my classroom, myself a couple of feet behind my savior of dirty deeds, and the students had now discovered their freedom and were going a little bit past bat shit crazy all over the classroom. Whatever kind of order I may have had earlier with the children was like Katrina's soiled panties: destroyed and completely irreplaceable.

The teacher escorted the young Katrina out of the classroom and I was left to a most disagreeable smell and an even more obnoxious group of rowdy children who I now feared had just as volatile bowls as their classmate and former nice pants owner. For the rest of the day I was sending children out at even the slightest uncomfortable movement that I detected might lead to their pant legs becoming a slide to a river more dangerous than the Amazon and Nile combined. One student even confusedly replied, "but teacher Andrew, I don't need to go potty" as I sent him to the bathroom for a gesture he made of squeezing his little pecker in what I thought was an effort to "plug the pipes."

I was indeed helped by more experienced and thus more irritated personnel and the day started to resume a relatively comfortable tone again. I restored some aspect of calm to the class but was forced to initiate a coloring activity because all hope was lost at learning anything comparatively important.

However suddenly, while pacing around the classroom trying to think of new and unique compliments to put smiles on each individuals face, I tripped over what I thought was a chair leg.

Oh no, it was a real leg.

It was Katrina's leg.

It was Katrina, whose sickness had evolved from crap in the pants to throwing up in the recyclables waist basket as the rest of the students happily colored a Cinderella scene. (We are learning about our favorite fairy tales in this unit. This is not my favorite fairy tale.) Katrina was apparently quite sick and yet displayed some sort of amazing skill that enabled her to separate her physical from her mental. I hadn't noticed that she was puking because she had been kidding around and laughing with one of the boys in the class in between purges. Katrina was managing to be flirtatious while vomiting in her panties free and new shorts attire.

I asked Katrina if she was OK, shocked at the circumstances I couldn't begin to comprehend, and she gave a confused look and cutely responded, "I OK. Why?"

Before I could prepare a comment or bounce off such a hilariously content response Katrina slammed the top of the waist basket down, put a smile on her face, and hopped in line to go to lunch as if nothing had happened.

Now imagine the times when perhaps you were feeling sick from the top end or the bottom end. Visualize the agony and discomfort that you felt as if the sickness would never end and would only become increasingly worse as seconds in your miserable life ticked by. Picture that the only comfort was perhaps the idea of someone hitting you over the head with an object heavy enough to send you away from your utterly wretched condition forever. Try to envision having that sickness through both ends in front of all your friends and your educator and you might be able to understand what it was like in Katrina's shoes this day.

And how did she she act through all this? It was as if she was just going about her boring tasks finding them not agonizing but rather a slight disruption to her coquettish wanderings with the boys of the class. I don't know where Katrina will go in her life or what she will become, but if I am in any way an effective teacher and get her to understand and enjoy English the whole rest of the world will find out.

Taking it Easy

Don't get me wrong, being a world traveler is certainly an exciting gig but it does have its' difficulties. The primary hardship about this leisurely existence is how easy it is to be lazy about everything. Being in a foreign country means that you have to either go out of your way to constantly try and experiment with new things, or simply find your comfort level and then ride out the good life.

I like to think that I have tried some new things and been in some weird and awkward situations while having lived these past six months on a small island, located just 100 miles west of the coast of China, known as Taiwan. I have learned some Chinese in the form of language and I have met some Chinese people and become friends with them as well. I have eaten exotic foods such as BBQ chicken ass and pork intestines stuffed with spleen which I will most likely never even look at again. I can even say that I have made a life for myself as I hold a steady and profitable job and have a good group of friends while living in my own place and frequenting several establishments that house a staff and similar group of "regulars" who remember me and elatedly welcome my daily "drop ins."

But at the core of all that there exists a very relaxed and tranquil aspect of my life that boarders on blatant slothfulness. One example would be how, for the past two weeks, I have been working simply from 9 am to 1130 am everyday. That time is spent with my kindergarten class who love every idea I create for class whether it be dancing and singing the same song five times in a row or talking about how we feel each day and how the weather is outside. Around 45 minutes of the time I spend in class is either watching the students eat and asking "is the food yummy?" or inventing new games to teach them the basic art of socializing and enjoying one another.

As you can imagine a day like this does not exactly leave one fatigued, and with the early hours of class I am able to utilize the whole day in any way I please. This, I find, is better for me than just having the day off of work because in that arises the basic battle of motivating myself to even go outside when I have six movies channels just feet from my bedroom. By already having showered, dressed, left my home, and energized to the excitement of playing with little four year old children I am quite ready to embark on an adventurous day.

Now as I say this I want you to think of what you might do on a day like such as this one. Be sure to remember that this is not one day either but rather two whole weeks. That creates the first struggle I encounter each day. I begin to plan my many activities and am soon overwhelmed by all the potential things I could do and how it would be easier to just do them tomorrow or the next day. Thinking too hard like this can get tiring so I usually pick a place to go and calm my excitable blood for a moment.

I do a lot of theorizing in the park. Sometimes, on a really productive day, I might even go sit on a bench and write down the things I might like to do and see and finish for the day or the week. Often times, however, I pick the "Huckleberry" option of finding a shaded tree to relax and dream under. I like to role up my pants and pop off my shoes and lay down in the grass to take a break from my "on the go" lifestyle. I got so comfortable the other day that after sleeping under a particularly nice tree for about two hours I realized that I had found my bed under a great load of sap and needles which made the sticky transfer from the earth to my brand new pants. If I hadn't looked like an misplaced hobo for my irregular napping habits I was most certainly exposed when the locals were able to view my "rustic" backside. I thought, I could find this situation stressful and embarrassing, or I could find a new tree and take more care to create a nice bed for myself.

Today I wanted to finish reading a book, call the bank in the US, call the bank in France, go to the bank in Taiwan, call about student loans, finish my lesson plans for class, buy groceries, do my laundry, clean my room, and I think even a few more things. While I didn't get to all these things I was impressed with my idea to convert from my hot and humid jeans to a nice free pair of shorts. It did require me to go all the way home but I thought since the weather was so pleasant, a breezy 73, I would make that much needed transformation.

I turned on my computer with the intention of calling one of these many banks today but thought I might check the essentials like facebook and gmail first. The mission that had initially drawn my attention to using the World Wide Web was lost and I found myself browsing through long lost friend's profiles while mentally guffawing at their limited musical favorites. To justify my Internet ventures I read a quick useless tidbit on Wikipedia and then realized that my lap could no longer take the heat of my computer and so, once again, I was in need of a siesta.

This time I left my shoes at home and strolled across the street, book in hand, to the local park. I borrowed one of the chairs from another "regular" like myself and took to reading in the sun. I made it through perhaps ten pages before I caught my neck snapping as I had fallen asleep, mouth wide open, in front of plain view of the other visitors and neighbors in the park. I chose a perfect time in which to arise as a violinist had found a delightful spot in which to practice the soothing songs of Beethoven (I have no idea really.) So I resumed my reading and listened as the musician and the sun reminded me of how much nicer doing nothing is than doing something.

Now maybe it would be splendid to go home to the jobless USA where I could ponder and stress at discovering my vocation in life only to accept work as a gas station attendant to at least help pay the rent my roommates (or parents) would most likely assign me, but I think this life here also has its' benefits. I may not get many things done or work very hard outside of my job, and I may not own anything except a few clothes and books, and I may not be a lot of things, but in my little world here I enjoy every moment in the way that I want and it suits me to be a relaxed, and perhaps a little bit lazy, world traveler.