Christmas?

1:30am I have just turned off the lights and am about to go to sleep. A small but ever-increasing buzzing sound prevents me. I think it will disappear but it continues. When I realize the sound is not a scooter passing by, I turn on the table light, fumble for my glasses and scan the off-white walls for any telltale signs of... Mosquitoes.

They have been in my room all night. I squashed a few before going to sleep, while doing my homework, but there seem to be more. I had put some citronella-scented oil on my body but apparently that does not faze this one.

Now, I can't find it anywhere. I lie back in my bed and try to sit still, using my face as bait to entice it to come closer. When I hear it, I sit up and look around. No sign.

The pattern repeats itself a few times, until I really start to fall asleep waiting for it to come back. I look at my clock. 1:50. I have the option of either a) lighting the citronella incense and smelling up my clothes and room or b) waking up tomorrow morning covered in bites. I choose to light the incense.

When I wake up the next morning, I don't want to get up. Today is Christmas after all. But for all the Christmas lights and brightly colored storefronts, for all the Christmas jingles playing at convenience stores for the past few weeks, there is no vacation called Christmas here.

Culture shock hits hardest on days like these. I try to just forget that it's a holiday but I can't.

I did go to a Christmas party after my class. A party for the campus reporters. They made me sing jingle bells and play secret Santa, and took photos of me eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. I made a mental note to no longer attend school Christmas parties.

The day was grey, and colder than yesterday. After the Christmas party I came home and tried to catch up on sleep, until I heard the buzzing sound of a mosquito which woke me up. So I got up, ate some leftovers and watched a Simpsons rerun on cable TV. Then I did my homework. As day turned to night, it started to get cold.

At least the mosquitoes are gone.

PS The photo shows a racket to kill mosquitoes which my landlord lent me. It uses a small electric shock (he has since taken it back).

Shorter days, longer nights...

Ok, after this short hiatus, I'm back. I think I have crossed another threshold here, though I'm not sure exactly what it is or when I crossed it. Or maybe the days just started getting shorter and colder. Not that they were that long to begin with. Not that they are that cold now. But something feels...different.

You know the feeling, when you start a new life somewhere and at first you have no obligations and it's like a walk in the park. You go to school and then come home, take a nap, and have the rest of the day off. Then you decide to do tai chi, to start writing for the school newspaper, to start working out and getting in shape. Then school gets harder, the newspaper asks you to correct some extra English articles, people want to do language exchanges and you don't want to be unfriendly so you say sure, why not? Stuff starts piling up. And then you say to yourself, you were here to study Chinese, remember?

OK, maybe you don't know the feeling. Maybe the life I just described is none other than yours truly's. The point is, I need to do some ménage, as they say in French. I have to clean up all the non-essential things in my life so I can focus on what I came here for- to learn Chinese.

Speaking of which, the new quarter just started, and I chose the three-hour intensive class (yeah, now I'm really going to be busy). There is a lot of homework (more than 3 hours a day). There is a lot of talking. Though it's three hours long, the class seems to go by quickly, as we cover more ground than the regular class. At the same time as being hard, it's challenging and fun.

Good night.

A bit of Chinglish to start the week with a laugh...

Is the cold weird, or is it just me?

It's been raining the past few days. And for the first time, I had to wear a LONG-SLEEVE shirt and pants today. And shoes. It feels so weird, wearing all these clothes. Or is wearing shorts on Halloween and not feeling cold weird? I can't figure it out...

I'm almost at the end of the school quarter and I have to choose a new class. I was thinking of doing the intensive course, which is three hours a day instead of two and goes faster than the regular course. Since my knowledge of Chinese characters and grammar is slightly more advanced than what we're doing now, it may not be that hard. And the intensive class has less students, so it would give me more opportunities to talk. Also, right now I'm on a scholarship, which means I can devote a lot of my energies to studying. Come May, when my scholarship runs out, I'll have to start working to support myself, and will not be able to devote as much time to my Chinese studies.

On the other hand, I'm not exactly the most diligent student, and the increased class time and homework load may be too much for me, even without working.

I think the real reason I want to do it is because I'm kind of annoyed at the fact that after studying for two years in France, my level is equivalent to someone who has been studying here for 8 months (taking into account that those are school years, it means it took the students here about half the time it took me). If I do the intensive course I can catch up to what I feel my level is supposed to be.

But what is my level 'supposed' to be? Since I'm here, and I'm not planning on going back to France anytime soon, I don't have anything to set my standards by. So does it really matter whether I take the intensive course or not?

Politics again...

This week marks the arrival of the highest-ranking official of the mainland Chinese government to visit Taiwan in the past 60 years. While many news stories are touting this as a step forward for the two governments, few are talking about the self-censorship that the Taiwanese government is encouraging.
For my journalism job I had to look through many different stories to see which one I liked the best. Here's a good one.

Why I am feeling patriotic right now

OK, most of you have never seen me being patriotic. And usually I'm not*. But today I will tell you why I am feeling patriotic right now.

Flashback to the year 2000, the first year I was able to vote. I was too lazy, didn't know, or didn't care enough to get registered in time. I had wanted to vote for Gore, but when Bush won by such a small margin, I was devastated. I know it sounds silly, but for a second I felt like it was my fault (or people like me) that Bush won. If a few more people had taken the time to register to vote, Bush may not have been elected.

I decided that from that moment on I would always do my best to try and get my vote out. No matter where I was in the world.

Back to 2008. A month before the General Election. I was just getting used to living in Taiwan, and the whole election thing completely slipped my mind. What was I supposed to do? I remembered from 2004, when I voted from Japan, that I had to request an absentee ballot . I printed out and faxed the request on the 14th of October from a Family Mart. The fax machine said that it had succesfully sent the message, but you never know.

So you can imagine I was a little nervous last Friday when I still hadn't received the ballot. Had they not gotten my fax? Or would the bureacrats in DC take way too long to get my ballot to me, causing me to miss the deadline (November 14th for overseas voters, but must be postmarked by the 4th). In that case I could still print and send an emergency ballot.

I sent an email to the group in charge of elections in DC, the Board of Elections and Ethics, asking if they had received my fax and if I needed to print and send an emergency absentee ballot. Of course, if they had not received my request for a ballot, it wouldn't have mattered. I still wouldn't be allowed to vote. On Monday, before leaving school, I checked my email. No answer.

But when I came back from class today I saw an envelope at my door. It was the absentee ballot! Not only that, but they had Fedexed it to me. How cool is that?

I am really grateful to whomever it was on the other side of the Pacific who decided that I, as a voter, needed to get the ballot on time, no matter what. Because of him or her, I can fulfill the promise I made to myself in 2000, and vote.

* The only time I can clearly remember being patriotic for the USA, besides on the 4th of July, is right after the September 11 attacks in 2001, when I put up the stars and stripes outside my window in my apartment in Washington, DC.

Drum and Bass, Working-out, Tai Chi

As I said, I'm slowly moving from the whoa-I'm-in-a-new-country stage to the I-live-here-now-what-do-I-do stage. When you reach this stage in a foreign country, I've found the best thing is to meet new people and start new activities.
Last weekend, for example, I went to my first drum and bass event here. It was small, a home-grown scene of expat DJs and MCs with a combination of local and foreign clientele. As it was an old-school Jungle night a lot of classic tracks were played, and the audience, a mix of slightly drunk waiguoren and locals bobbed up and down to the music. It reminded me of some events I have participated in, both in Japan and France. I also got to meet some of the DJs and MCs, like Soul Basic, Mixter-T, and Coffeepot.

Another new thing that I've begun is sports. People who have known me since high school and college will be surprised to find that I am now slightly overweight. OK, not overweight exactly, but I do have a small 'beer belly'. So I've decided to restart working out. On Thursday I went with Raybuo (Chinese name), a Canadian classmate of mine to the school's gym, which cost $500 NT (about EUR 10) per month.

On Monday, I started a Tai Chi class. I spent a while researching the different schools here, and found this one to be steeped in Taoist tradition, which is what I'm looking for. The name of the school translates to 'Hidden Technique,' but ironically it wasn't that hidden, as it has a website and clearly visible sign outside the school.