Dr. Strangeland or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Taiwan

8.30.2004

What would you do?

If you go back to August 27th you will remember that I mentioned a water crisis in my county in Taiwan.

As of this afternoon I had water, but no water pressure. This meant that showering was letting a slow trickle of water fall onto my body while I vigorously scrubbed off the soap.

Tonight after work I came home to discover that there was no more water. Louise and I headed out to a grocery store to see if they had any water. They didn't have any 5 litre bottles left but for 5 bucks I was able to get a case of bottled water. So I bought two cases and returned home.

This water is multipurpose:
- Flushing poo
- Showering
- Cooking
- Drinking

The plan was to use a facecloth and sponge-bathe myself, but then on the way home I was struck with a rare moment of ingenuity. I figured out how to make a shower using a hammer and nail. These are two pictures of my new shower.


Impromptu shower 1


Impromptu shower 2


They say that the crisis will last another 5 days. I hope it doesn't last longer cause it's getting a little crazy. Hotels are charging like 25 dollars an hour (triple the usual rate) 'cause they know people want to go so that they can shower. And swimming pools have doubled their price to let people go in to use the changeroom showers. I'll update you as the water shortage goes on.

8.28.2004

Some signs . . . of what I don't know.

Here are some signs I've seen around Taiwan in my time here. There's plenty more out there to ponder and scratch your head at. These are simply the start. As more come in; more will be posted.


It's almost as good as a 7, but due to some problems they were demoted one point.


At this shop it's not really a question of quality, is it?


I don't know what this bar has planned for the night, but you can count me out.


For some strange reason it really is fascinating.

8.27.2004

A Virus, A Typhoon, A Lot of Free Time, A Water Crisis, & A Lost House

or: How I've spent the last three days.

I don't really know where to start, since the last three days have been full of events. I guess chronologically is the best way to do it.

Let's see. I told you guys about packing my sickness on the weekend. Well, that is where this fair tale picks up again.

Monday night I started having eye pain. I got home and my eyes were killing me. You know that pain where it hurts to move your eyes in any direction? That's what I had. Plus it felt like someone was banging on my head like a chimpanzee. So I took my temperature. 38.5 again! Arrggghhh. So I went to bed with an icepack on my head and fell asleep with a bit of a struggle.

Cutting back to Sunday night. I had another headache and couldn't fall asleep. It was so bad that I actually watched all of Men In Black II. Yes my dear readers it was - that - bad.

So Monday night I was in pain, but I was able to fall asleep without too much of a struggle. One nice thing about this was that a Typhoon was coming to Taiwan and Tuesday was declared a day off. This meant that if I couldn't get a good sleep on Monday night, I would have all day Tuesday to recuperate.

On Monday night the landlord for the new apartment called and asked if we could meet here Tuesday morning to sign the lease and take possesion.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a downpour and high winds. So she called and said that we could meet on Wednesday. No worries.

With a day off and nothing to do and nowhere to go, Louise and I watched TV and cooked lunch and vegged for the day. Tuesday night we watched the news and 50 First Dates. Then, after the movie I had another visit from the headache fairy. What a killer this one was. I went to bed with ice on my head again. A friend called me at 11:30 to say that the power in her house was out. I just said "I have a headache. I'll call you later."

After a few hours I was feeling better and Louise was hungry. So we walked to the corner of our apartment complex and got some food from the convenience store. Amazingly ours was the only apartment complex with power in the whole area. Everywhere else was black.

This typhoon was a doozy. The footage on the news was of pure devastation. Flooding and mudslides and rock falls. Quite the disaster. My area of Taiwan was fairly well off though. The wind was probably the worst thing for us. There are metal gates on the top of my apartment (I live on the top floor) and they were banging open and shut all night.

That nigt it was announced that Wednesday would also be a Typhoon Day. And Wednesday morning the landlord called and said that we should meet Thursday because of the weather.

So Wednesday was just another day at home doing things to kill the time. Louise had to go to work at 4:00. So I spent some time alone and then hung out with Adrian a bit.

Wednesday night was a delluge of bad news. First: Louise called my current landlord to tell her we were moving and to talk about settling a few utility bills. But before Louise could tell her that we were moving, she told Louise she wasn't going to sell our apartment. WHAT!? That's right. She told us in June that she wanted to sell this place and that's why there was so much energy put into finding a nice new apartment. But now our sole motivation for moving was gone. What do we do? Do we double our rent and move into a much smalled apartment? Or stay where we are for a low low rent? Well the decision was obvious.

We will stay in the cheaper, but bigger, apartment. This has created quite a few projects in the house. I don't want to live in an "OK" place for the next year. So, Louise, Adrian and I will be creating some new decoration ideas and paintjobs to make this a much more comfortable house. And my friend Theo is going to come and help me out with some electrical problem. All-in-all it should take a couple months of working on weekends, but it should be a great house by the end.

Two more pieces of news - hang in there.

Also, on Wednesday night, I found out that my computer had a virus. The Bloodhound Virus. Not as cool as the gang. Adrian had this one a while ago and it's a doozy. It cut his internet connection. My internet was fine, but I couldn't turn off my computer. It would just keep restarting. I didn't know what the solution to this virus was so I went for my Dad's solution. I moved my important documents onto my external harddrive and formatted everything and reinstalled windows.

Now I have a clean and fast computer once again. And to keep it that way I will have to make a big sacrifice. I will no longer use Kazaa to download any programs. So that means I may never see the end of The Amazing Race 5.

Another pieceof negative news is that, thanks to the typhoon there is too much dirt and silt and sediment in the water in the reservoir. They estimate it will take 2 weeks to rectify the situation. So that means that the county I live in could be without water for two weeks. Imagine the funk that will be in the air if this is the case. One thing that may save us is that most buildings have water tanks on their roofs (rooves) to collect rainwater. Meaning, if it keeps raining, we'll still have water. The bad thing is, it hasn't rained in two days and the water in my building's tank seems to be nearly depleted and the forcast calls for sunny skies.

Should be an interesting 14 days.

8.22.2004

Living Room's Packed

Well I spent the afternoon home putting all my stuff into boxes and I got my living room done. Tomorrow is the bedroom and on Tuesday is the kitchen and then Wednesday I will go to do a quick onceover cleaning and then Thursday will be moving day (I hope).

The fever is all gone now. I had some pain yesterday, but today I am only a little sore at the bottom of my back. It was a rough go on Friday night, but I only seem to really be affected by this stuff for 24 hours so it's all clear now.

I don't really have too much to report. My summer classes will be ending on Tuesday. Part of me will be relieved and part of me will miss them. And then Yu Da (the high school) will start the next week I think. So hopefully I can be fully set up in my new apartment by then. And when I finally get my new address and phone number I will e.mail to you guys so you can get ahold of me.

In case you are wondering about what happened to me at work on Friday, I'll explain. I went to work at 1:30 feeling absolutely fine. I had classes:

1:30 - 3:30
4:00 - 6:00
6:30 - 8:00
8:10 - 9:40

I guess that's a bit of a lie. When I left my house my knees were a little sore. But since knee pain has been a constant in my life since grade seven, I think nothing of it these days. Then as my 4 o'clock class started I began to feel a little off. And as the class progressed I just got worse and worse. I was in agony. My back was throbbing. My arms hurt and my knees were screaming in horror. And the worst part of the class was that I had to give the poor students oral tests. By the time the tests started I had a headache so bad I couldn't stop rubbing my temples. After the tests I still had 15 minutes of class to kill and didn't know what to do then, or how I was going to teach until 9:40 without passing out. Thankfully some sort of higher power heard my prayers. At 5:50 the power in the building died.

I sent my class home and went downstairs to wait to see if the power would return. Fortunately for me it didn't. There were a few times that the lights flickered on and off, but my prayers remained heard and the lights never came on again. So at 6:30 I was able to head home and recover.

Now the truly miraculous thing about this story is that we were the only building on the whole street without power. I'm talking about 20 stores in total and only ours had no power. Someone up there must really like me for that to happen.

8.21.2004


A map of Taiwan Adrian found online. Check out the condensed population on the West coast. You have to click on the pic to see the whole thing.

8.20.2004

Hot Blooded

I'm hot blooded, check it and see. I've got a fever of 101.3.

Seriously.

Today was brutal. I started getting worse and worse as the afternoon went on. I didn't know how I was going to make it through my night classes. Thankfully the power went out in the building and classes were cancelled.

But I am tired and will give you an update another day.

Cheers

8.17.2004

Some Pictures

Now that I know how to post pictures on my site, I will be adding a bevvy of visual stimulation for you to gander at and enjoy.

For now the following are pictures from Canada. Enjoy.


Columbia Ice Field.


Still life with Straw.


Calgary skyline.


Downtowan Calgary at Dusk.


The smoke from the Rocky Mountain forest fires '03.


My street at midnight.


Downtown Calgary.


The prairie's end.


Banff Springs Hotel.


Edmonton's sky.


Parliament buildings in Edmonton.


Northern Lights in Edmonton.


Lake Louise.


Emerald Lake


The natural bridge in Banff.

Do I Have a House?

The answer to this question is . . . YES!

If you are a regular viewer of this blog then you may notice that my announcements about my new apartment have been deleted and cut out of past posts. That is because this morning I thought that I would not be living there as I had hoped. I went to see the place twice and Louise and I both loved it. But when we called the lady today she told us that she found someone else who would take it. GRRRRR I was pissed off and upset. But, hey shit happens for a reason. So maybe we will find an even better place. So que sera sera.

So I went to work, resigned to the fact that the hunt for a new place has to start again. I taught my first class and met Louise outside to get my lunch from her. She had some great news. Turns out that the people who took the apartment out form under us only wanted it for 6 months and the landlady couldn't accept that. So she called Louise and offered it to us. We will be going there tomorrow to sign the lease and iron out the details. I am so happy to know that I don't have to keep looking. I'll be taking some pictures tomorrow that I'll post some time soon.

To give you a rough idea it is 17 ping. If you are at all like me, you have no idea what a ping is. Let me show you:

1 ping = 15.8 square cubit
35.5 square foot
3.305 square meter
3,304,999,999,999,999,976,568,544,840,024,336,600,
144,688,944,224.305e+48 square yoctometer

so

17 ping = 268.786803 square cubit
604.7 square foot
56.185 square meter
56,185,000,000,000,016,384,768,728,584,456,864,
728,064,824,552,856.618500000000001e+49 square yoctometer

Hope that gives you an idea of its size. I personally don't know if you can. To help a bit, it is equal to six of my family's tent. So if you've seen that, multiply it by 6.

I am hoping to move and be settled before the first weekend in September, but I don't know what will happen. I'll let you know after we talk to the lady tomorrow.

Take care.

8.16.2004

How They Find Me - pt 2

Ok so this one isn't nearly as bizarre as the Russian google result but it is interesting. Apparently someone had the same spelling teacher as me:

If you type hoetl in Taipei into yahoo.com's search engine, I will be the number one result. Result 1

It's kinda cool to know that dislexic people all over the world may stumble onto my site one day or another.

Off topic but I need to know: Who is Bubba?

8.14.2004

Quick and Dirty Update

OK, I have been back in Taiwan for almost a whole month now. I seriously can't believe it though. Time has flown by surprisingly fast.

I have been working like a donkey since I got back. I arrived in Taiwan on July 19th at 6am. I started working on the 19th at 1:30am. I have been pulling in 43 hours a week since getting back. But starting next week it will drop down to 35 hours. DAMN! I'm tired. Right now is David's busiest time of the year, so I have classes all day every day. It's summer classes so they will end on August 24th and then starting in September it will be the usual schedule . . . I hope.

Since coming back to Taiwan I haven't had much of a chance to do much travelling. By the time Sunday comes around I am usually too tired, or it is too hot, to go anywhere.

One nice discovery made today was that it is easy to get to costco by bus. People told us so manytimes that Costco is difficult to get to and not worth going without a car. But Adrian and I went there today and got some nice treats that we can't find in our regular grocery stores. My favorite part of the experience was the fact that they have the same hot dogs for sale outside the cash registers. The only thing missing was a nice cool can of Simply Soda. Alas, they didn't have any. But, they did have Kirkland Signature meats. So if I get a hankering for burgers, I know where to go.

Well, I've had a long long day and am off to bed, but before I go I have to mention George W Bush's newest bumbling of the English language. I don't know the exact quote, but it goes along these lines:

Our enemies are dilligent; so are we.
Our enemies never stop trying to find new ways to hurt America; neither do we.

Laughed my ass off when I heard it, cause, damn if he didn't just summarize his last four years in office right there.

8.13.2004

How They Find Me - pt 1

Welcome to a new and hopefully regular section of my Blog. Thanks to the little webcounter at the bottom of my page I am able to see how visitors access my site. Be it bookmarked, typed in, linked to, or search reaulted. Well I have decided to pay tribute to the various search results that I have turned up in. I have had a few strange ones in the past but I just thought of listing them today. Here are today's three odd ones. Some of them are worth clicking on just to see the odd reults I end up getting sorted into. I take no responsibilty for any page you go to from the results. Enjoy! The connections these search engines make are to put it nicely . . . strange.

This is from a search for “swimcap gag” on google Russia. I ended up on the bottom of the first page. Result 1

MSN Search for “Levi store in Bangkok” Result 2

Search for “been a taiwanese canadian culture space” on yahoo.com Result 3

I will also be trying my best to do a weekly update. Lately there has been a lot to say that has been waiting to see these pages. So, now that I know how to post to my site I will be post pics through the week and each weekend will update. I will probably stop sending e.mail notifications so it's up to you to check in.

8.12.2004

"The" Photos


These are the photos from the earlier post about being able to touch my own arm and lick my own elbow. I hope this works.


And pic # 2


 
Read my Guestbook!
Sign my Guestbook!
Sign my book NOW