WTF

Welcome to Turtle Fur

Since I will no longer be living in Taiwan I feel that it's time to change my blogging perspective. As I start my educational career anew I will be starting a new blog. And will hopefully be updating it with more regularity. Hope to see you there.

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End of an era

Postcard, originally uploaded by Fat Mike.

As my time in Taiwan comes to an end, so too must Dr. Strangeland. Though my posting has become less and less frequent it is time to officially call an end to my tales of love, laughter, sadness, fear, anger, and fun in the beautiful island of Formosa.

I came to Taiwan 5 years ago. At that time I could barely find it on a map. I had no idea what I was getting into. There have been ups and downs. Thankfully more ups than downs.

In the past five years I have had a plethora of experiences. Here are some of my favorites:

- Driving my scooter around Northern Taiwan. It was supposed to be a 5 hour day of driving. Turned into 10.5. It was a hell of a drive and included two near-death experiences.

- Witnessing my friend of 30 someodd years admit that he had just shit his pants because the food we'd eaten the night before was too spicy.

- Meeting Louise.

- Teaching the words head and fishing, among otheres, in the same week. Assigning students to write one sentence for each word. Getting a student's homework that said.
"I like fishing."
"I like head."

- Visiting so many cities it's hard to list them all.

- Eating snake.

- After teaching a class of 3-4 year olds week after week, I walked in to hear them say a sentence perfectly in English.

- Teaching a topic on how weather affects our mood the article pointed out that a lack of sunlight can reduce libido. One of my adult students then pointed out that if a woman has a high libido she can use a dildo to solve her problem.

- Going to see fields of sunflowers out near the West coast.

- Playing with Louise's niece Yen-Yen.

- Oddly, my first and worst accident. It was an eyeopener.

- Finally finding my feet as a teacher and realizing that I have the ability, confidence and courage in order to teach any topic to any class.

- Each new Chinese word learned and used effectively.

Taiwan has been a growing experience and has been nothing short of a perfect life changing experience. I have no regrets of my coming here, or the amount of time that I spent here. Taiwan has become a second home to me and I will always look forward to coming back.

To help you understand the relationship I have with this country, I want to think of the last catchy pop song you heard on the radio. You hear it, you don't mind it. In fact you can't get it out of your head. Now, at first you hear the song and don't want to admit that you like it. You may actually tell people that you hate it. But listen to it enough - in bars, stores, cars.... wherever - and you will come to find yourself humming it under your breath as you do the dishes.

Taiwan does this to foreigners. You come here and the culture shock hits you like a wet leather glove. You don't like the food. You can't understand the language. You can barely tolerate the heat. You don't really know how to teach your classes. In the first few weeks you will seriously consider heading home at the next available moment. But, if you stick it out you will find that, just like the song, Taiwan gets to you. It gets in your mind and in your heart and one day you find yourself loving life here and rolling with the cultural punches. Things that used to fade you no longer shock you.

As I leave Taiwan I look back and know that I am leaving a part of myself, but I am also taking apart of it's culture with me. I hope that both of us are better for my time here.

Goodbye Taiwan, I love you.

Happy Canada D'Eh

  

Finally (4th times the charm)

Prairie Chicken on University of Calgary campus, originally uploaded by dnorman.

Program Applied To For FALL 2006

FACULTY : EDUCATION
BED IN SECONDARY EDUCATION
MAJOR : LANGUAGE ARTS EDUCATION
DESIGNATION : (MASTER OF TEACHING PROGRAM)

YEAR OF PROGRAM: OTHER

Admission Decision: WE ARE PLEASED TO ADVISE THAT YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED FORMAL ADMISSION TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY. REGISTRATION MATERIALS AND OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION HAVE BEEN FORWARDED.

René LeBlanc

Taiwan's East Coast, originally uploaded by Fat Mike.

My grandfather passed away today. He was ninety-four years old. I can't be in the country for his funeral, but I did get to see him one more time before I came back to Asia. His death does not come as a shock to me. At that age I think that most people are ready for it. I know that I was. And yet as I sit and think about my grandfather and the times I remember spending with him, I can’t help but feel that I hardly knew him.

I grew up in Calgary and my grandparents lived in Edmonton and Canmore. Though Canmore is a quick drive from my city I never did find much time to make it out there to visit them. What memories I do have of my grandfather are peripheral to the activity that was taking place all around him.

I have memories of holiday gatherings at my grandparents’ house. And I have even more memories of my grandfather being present at various weddings, anniversaries and funerals. In all of my memories I know he was at these events, and yet I can barely remember him solidly and totally.

My memories of my grandfather come to me in waves of color.

Blue – The color of these t-shirts he wore and that I wanted to wear as well so that I could be like him.

Gold – The color of my grandparents’ living room in my memory and more significantly the chair my grandfather stoically occupied at all family gatherings.

Brown & Pink – My grandparents have this painting of a young girl carrying a spoon in a pink (and possibly muddy dress). I always think of this painting when I think of my grandparents. It holds memories of weekends spent at their place and of nights sitting and watching TV with them.

Grey – My grandfather used to feed these ducks that always visited a stream near his trailer in Canmore. He had a bucket of feed and he would go out and scatter some food for the ducks. The grey is the color of the gravel he scattered the seed on and the color of the water as it rushed by.

Teal – The color of his car. My grandfather continued to drive well into his old age. Their were a few iffy moments where I’d hold a door handle in fear, but the fact that he was still driving just showed his tenacity and spirit that he maintained until the time of his passing.

Yellow – This is the color of the walls (as I remember them) of the unit in the hospital where my grandfather lived out his remaining years. It may not be a pleasant memory, but it is still one more moment I could share with my grandfather.

This is the way I remember my grandfather. This is not to say that I don’t remember the way he looked as I grew up, but when I think back to the times I was around him I get an overwhelming sense of color. There are many more colors that will always bring a flash of a memory of him, but these colors mean the most to me.

When I grew up my grandfather was always the patriarchal figure that I learned to respect and fear. He had a stern face, and kind eyes. He was the leader of his house, but he never was too busy to lend a kind ear to anyone wanting to talk to him. And this is something that I wish I’d done more of. Because of my fear of my grandfather’s presence I don’t think I spent much time talking with him and sharing my life with him. Even as I knew his time was getting shorter I still found it hard to open up and share myself with this man I knew to be important in my life.

Five years ago, before I came to Taiwan for the first time. I was told to go and see my grandfather for what might have been the last time. It wasn’t easy to talk to him as we’d never really talked before, but I did it because I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to say goodbye to someone (I’d missed that chance with my great-uncle and I never want that feeling again). I came to Taiwan and spent a year and when I went back to Canada, he was still alive and kicking.

I went back to Canmore to visit him again. My mom took my grandmother to the dentist and my grandfather and I were alone to talk for two hours. It was a difficult time for me. I had never really been exposed to the effects old age has on a person’s mind and it drained and saddened me to talk to my grandfather for two hours and only answer the five different questions he kept posing to me. Despite this feeling of gloom it was still nice to have sat and spent time with him.

I came to Asia for another year.

My next vacation in Canada my visit to my grandfather was not as easy on me. By this time my grandfather was living in the hospice care at the hospital. It was hard on me to see the environment that he lived in and even harder to make sense of the fact that the person in front of me was still my grandfather despite what may be happening in his mind. That summer I thought would be my last time to see him.

The summer of 2005 I couldn’t take it. I was back in Canada and again was told to visit my grandfather. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to sit and talk to him and think (again) that this was the last time I would ever get the chance to see him. I’d made my goodbyes in my mind and heart 3 times before that. I couldn’t imagine going to see him and trying to convince myself that everything is going to be ok.

I came back to Taiwan and sometimes wondered if I was going to regret this decision. But fortunately I was given another chance. In December 2006 it was my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday and my grandfather left the hospital to come join the family in our celebration. I was given another chance to talk to him. I talked to my grandfather and hoped that he knew who I was, but I couldn’t be sure if the glimmer in his eye was recognition of just his hope that I wouldn’t realize he didn’t know who I was.

That party was the last time I saw my grandfather alive and I am thankful to have been given that moment.

With my grandfather’s passing I know that he lived a full and successful life. He has a huge family of loving and caring people to carry on his name and he will always be in my memory.

Kelsey's Homerwork (finally)

Chinese Lanterns 2, originally uploaded by Fat Mike.

Querky cultural differences between Taiwan and Canada.

I have actually been sitting at my computer to find some cultural differences that would come off as quirky and not racist on my part. I don't want to write a post that sounds like a bunch of intolerant ramblings of an uneducated buffoon. But I can't promise it won't, so here goes.

It's hard to point out cultural dissimilarities between Canadian culture and Taiwanese culture because to compare we first have to find a similarity to base ourselves. And since Taiwanese culture is so different I don't even know where to begin.

There are tonnes of major differences, but smaller less apreciable ones as well. Note that these our based solely on my observances and may be different from others' perceptions.

One of the biggest differences I find in the people of this country is their animation. Not the cartoons on TV but in the animation of their bodies as they talk and think and laugh with their friends. When I teach at my High School I always find it interesting to ask the students difficult questions. I sit back and await their response and watch a contortion of their face that I would almost call acrobatic. I try thinking back to my friends and coworkers in Canada and I can't recall anyone I've ever encountered scrunching up their face as they thought of an answer to a question. Yet, in Taiwan I have seen students distort their faces so much as they think they become almost unrecognizable.

Facial agility isn't the only area where the Taiwanese seem more animated than my Canadian compatriots. They seem to be overanimated and also over-reactionary to humor. In Canada if I am sitting around with my friends and someone tells a humorous, though not totally hilarious, story, we will laugh, smile, possibly cry if it's funny enough, but that's it.

In my classes with my adult students they will do all of this, but they will also throw their bodies into it. I have had students appear frighteningly close to falling out of their chairs as they laugh and convulse in levity.

Other differences would have to be their adherence to folk medicine and traditional beliefs much more than we do. In the west we have our folk remedies and traditions, but we don't swear by them. In Taiwan they have a much stronger belief in these things.

One of the oddest differences is in their recommendations to sick people. In Canada we swear by orange juice and ginger ale. But we know that these only cure certain ailments. In Taiwan they have this miracle drug. An elixir of bewildering proportions.


Warm water!


That's right. Louise gets mad at me when I make fun of it, but seriously, no matter what's wrong with you, someone, somewhere will tell you: You should drink more warm water. I've had headaches, athlete's foot, stomach cramps, mystery abdominal pains, coughs, sneezes, sore throats, eye pain, fatigue, and diarhhea(sp?). And they have all elicited the statement from either a friend, student or co-worker: You should drink more warm water.

Kyle's Homework Assignment

Explain your position on whether Causal-Theoretical Functionalism is a realistic perspective for addressing the issue of Qualia (aka "The Hard Problem").

Or, just rant about Canada's performance at the Olympics.




When I first saw Kyle's questions I was going to tackle the first one since I hadn't really been paying attention to the Winter Olympics this year. But, after looking at some websites and the above headline on yahoo.ca, I have to wonder why anyone would want to rant about our performance.

I mean for total medals we were 3rd. And for total gold medals we were 5th. In my mind that's pretty good. We've had much worse standings in past Olympics. See standings here.

Maybe everyone's upset that the men's hockey team didn't get gold. Well, I've always had a problem with professional players joining Olympic teams. I always thought that the Olympics should be for amateur athletes. So if they didn't win I'm not to heart broken. They can go back to the NHL and continue losing there.

So, I will fail this question cause I'm not gonna rant about an Olympic performance that is the best in our Nation's history. Instead, I'm gonna tell all the people who had a problem with our medal count and achievements to take a look at the broader picture and wake up. How can you be upset with third overall in total medals? Honestly!?

And, no I don't think that causal-theoretical functionalism is a realistic perspective for addressing the issue of qualia because we have to take masochism into consideration. If a sense of pain can be defined by electrical impulses and signals and then those definitions read by another person and they are to be able to understand what the sense "feels" like, then how do we know that the person reading about the pain isn't a masochist. They will "feel" the pain differently if it actually happens to them. But if they are simply shown the "feelings" of a non-masochistic person they may not receive the same pleasure. So therefore qualia is not something that can be simply translated and shown to another person for them to be able to fully understand the sensation.

Johari Window

My friend Kelsey had this on her blog and I thought that it was pretty cool. Click here and choose words that you feel best describe me.

Homework Assignments

Well, it's 4 am and I can't seem to sleep. So I decided that maybe it was time that I sat down and wrote something on this oft-ignored blog of mine. The trouble is that I still don't know what I want to write about. Then it came to me. Reader requests.

That's right. I'm asking those of you who read my blog to give me topics. It can be anything. Just give me a comment with what you want me to write about and I will post a response within 7 days. If I do not respond to your assignment within the alloted time I will make a donation towards a charity of my choice. To make my site all that much more appealing to look at I will also try to include a photograoh to match my writing. (thus increasing the difficulty of and interest in my responses).

I hope to hear from you all soon.