Before I can tell you, our Western friends and family, about how and why I ended up in a giant walk-in refrigerator at 1:00 am tonight digging through mountains of garbage bags and sifting through cat litter, you need to know some basics about garbage collection in Taipei.

If that hook is just too good for you to pass up, click the truck.

 

We just had an earthquake… literally 30 seconds ago. I’m at the school and I could see the Christmas ornaments on the tree swinging, but only two of the four of us in the room could feel it.

Weird!

Update:

It was 6.2, the red star is the epicenter. We’re in the north in Taipei county. Earthquake #5 for this year.
 

Bowing to peer pressure (everybody’s doing it), we bring you our first 12 of 12: 12 pictures from our life on the 12th of the month. Click Neil to show/hide the day’s photos.

 
 Edited to add: Here’s the growing list of others who did 12 of 12 today.

We experienced our first Taiwan earthquake… at least, the first one that one of us noticed.

Around 8:30 last night we were sitting on the couch and Jessica asked, “Do you feel something shaking?” I didn’t, but I was so dizzy and stuffed up that I didn’t really feel anything anyway. Later that night Steve asked over gmail, “hey, did you feel the earthquake there?” I didn’t know what he was talking about until he sent me a link to a CNN report:

Tuesday’s quake was felt throughout Taiwan. It swayed buildings and knocked objects off the shelves in the capital, Taipei, in the northern part of the island.

Then Jessica looked up Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau and sure enough, a 6.7 at 8:26pm!

It was the second anniversary of the big tsunami, which was also Chairman Mao’s birthday.

Some of our friends here felt it, too. I guess it’s not all that uncommon.

We got some photos from home of their first SNOW. It just so happened that I took some photos here on those same days. You could say there’s a slight contrast. Click here for the gallery. And here’s one from each from here and there. Click the pictures for a bigger view.

A breakfast cart on the way to work around 8:50am beside a tree that somehow doesn’t seem to mind the asphalt too much. I’m glad they appreciate trees and green stuff here, at least in our neighbourhood. This tree shades these ladies from the November sun. I thought it was interesting the way the roots come up through the road. I suppose there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

The night before a snowstorm closed roads in greater Vancouver and canceled school. Aaaahhhh…

More pictures from Here & There.

Christmas is coming; we hereby officially claim the first Christmas-related post of 2006.

“Holy Santa, Batman!”
We’re visiting the Museum of World Religions tomorrow, a famous museum in Yonghe for the promotion of Buddhism pluralism mutual respect and acceptance among religions. Check out the website; it’s really flashy. The real action is on the Chinese version, but there’s still a big English site.

The museum’s website profiles the major world religions by mythology, ritual, pilgrimage, history, and figure. Personally, I think it’s too artificial to apply the same grid to every religion because it forces them all into an artificial shape that will be more or less appropriate depending on the religion. But it’ll be interesting to learn about Eastern religions from people that practice them, and hear their perspective of Christianity, the ‘Western’ religion.

Speaking of which, go here and select “Religions” (on the left) : “Christianity” (top right) : and “Mythology” (in the middle). Christian mythology – I was expecting maybe something on the Genesis creation accounts, the Exodus, or maybe the Incarnation, Resurrection, or Judgment Day. What do we get instead? Go see for yourself, or

I’m not questioning their intelligence, but I would like to ask, “What the heck kind of message is Western culture communicating???” And if you’re going to do historical research on Santa, there should at least be something about Saint Nicholas.

Chinese Firefox plugin
This is great – I just found it. When you mouseover any Chinese characters, like the ones in our sidebars, it instantly gives a translation. And there’s a bunch of other features I haven’t tried yet. All you have to do is go here and install the plugin. Then right click on a page and select “Toggle Chinesepera_kun.”

But you have to be using Firefox, which has been giving me a faster, ad-free internet for months now.

Four of our students were in a city-wide English speech contest today for Grade 6 and under. That’s not so exciting, except that it had a sort of Disney-style, underdog-cheering, Hollywood ending. We’re really proud of our students Chester, Claire, Thomas, and Cody!

Our kids are public school kids. The public schools don’t bother sending many students to the contest because they know they can’t compete with the elite private bilingual schools in English. The private schools prepare for months for this contest – winning has big marketing potential. Our kids? They started drawing idea webs two weeks ago and practiced speaking for a couple days. Jessica and I added zero content. We helped them organize their ideas into “beginning, middle, ending” and make idea webs so they’d have enough content to draw from. And we recorded mp3s of us reading their speeches for them to practice with (one girl slept with Jessica’s on repeat all night long). All the speeches were titled, “My School Life.”

One of our kids, Thomas, went first. He was tiny, 7 years old, petrified, and other than the customary bow didn’t move the whole time. After him, the prep school kids started going. They didn’t even bother with the microphone but just belted their speech/performance. Their teachers were giving them cues from the audience for their over-the-top, canned, choreographed gestures. It was painful, like watching cheesy commercials for their school, scripts that were so flowery and overwrought that it was obvious the kids didn’t write (or choreograph) them. One kid actually said that his school’s great program “helps me become self-actualized.” Self-actualized? Are you kidding me? He’s 10! And on top of all that, every single speech had the same super expressive, positive, “we LOVE school AND learning and our GREEEEAT TEACHERS!” where every possible word had a poses or gesture or prop. It was a total gong show.

But these kids were good. It was obvious that they’d given it their best effort for weeks. They had everything perfectly memorized, every facial expression, voice inflection, gesture, everything was there, and they showed no fear. Our kids were mostly too scared to remember everything, had no choreography and hadn’t thought of props, and Jessica and I had edited out the extra big words that their parents had put in the first drafts (no 7-year-old EFL kid is honestly using “correlated”). We weren’t expecting any of our kids to place in the top six as we waited for the judges to say their piece and give the final scores.

6th place was a three-way tie between the least fake-sounding of the private school kids. 5th was Chester! We could see that the teachers from the private schools were surprised… but so was Chester’s mom. 4th place was a private school girl who really did a good job. 3rd place was Thomas, the littlest of all – the crowd audibly gasped and the people around him cheered. And by now the private school teachers were visibly upset. 2nd place was Chester’s sister Claire! Their mom was floored. And first place was Cody! Cody, who didn’t even want to do it but his parents dragged him to PEI and sat there at the desk prodding him while I helped him with his idea-web. His whole speech started with, “I go to school every day because if I don’t, the police will cart me off the jail” and included a part about a kid puking (we opted to ‘let the kids express their own thoughts’ ;) ). We couldn’t believe it! The private school kids cried. Their teachers were furious and started discussing conspiracy theories. Our boss had us get out of their ASAP because he didn’t want any of their wrath directed at PEI… we’re a small start up and those schools are big players in the English learning scene. But he’s ecstatic that our kids won.

Apparently the judges appreciated the honesty. In their general feedback (before the marks) they compared the private school speeches to a particularly cheesy series of English buxiban commercials, among other criticisms. We were so glad to see that our kids’ honest efforts were rewarded.

The one bright spot among the 30 speeches was this one kid, about 11, who easily had the thickest accent in the contest. I guess he figured he had no chance of winning so he decided to have fun with it. He opened his speech with a rap, told a story about dressing up like a hula dancer (and did the dance for us with a pink scarf on), and then put on swim shorts over his pants and told a story about swimming to fast and his shorts came off (while pulling the shorts down) and his friend commenting on his bum. He didn’t win anything, but he had my vote.

UPDATE: I stole and edited Claire’s and Chester’s from their school’s website.

Right now there’s a funeral/memorial/what they do when someone dies in Taiwan going on a couple doors down from our apartment complex on the route to work. These things go for 49 days; this one’s been going for about 10.

The front of a business has been turned into a memorial site with chairs and tables spread from the door to the street. Inside has a table with offerings (food, wine, incense) on it. On the walls are photos of the deceased and pictures of (I’m assuming) the ancestors, with lots of flowers and lotus decorations made from folded spirit money. Outside on the sidewalk around the tables and chairs are big flower arrangements, large specially decorated packages of gifts (like beer and pop) and a big metal holding bin for burning large amounts of spirit money. When we walk through it at 12pm on the way to work, relatives are there eating and talking. When we walk back through it at 9pm, people are also there, eating and talking.

We asked our practicum advisor for information during our last practicum debriefing meeting. Turned up some interesting (and unexpected) details, some of which I’ve bolded. ***These are just tidbits from our notes – the terminology isn’t accurate and it’s not a general representation of Taiwanese funeral rites. We often only learn about things bits and pieces at a time, through experiences like this. Somewhere in our pile of reading I know there is a whole big explanation of funeral customs – but this isn’t it. Still, some interesting stuff.

[Discussion Notes]
Jessica asks about the ongoing funeral/memorial near our apartment, about last night when they were wearing KKK-looking white hoods. White hoods: worn by relatives of the dead. Special ceremony is performed every 7 days for 49 days. Doesn’t know why 49 days (7 7′s?). By the end of 49 days they will perform a ceremony that transports the dead to the place “sort of like heaven.” Fundamental differences: Taiwanese believe people have three souls: one stays with the shrine, one goes for reincarnation, one goes to “heaven.” The body stays there for 49 days: behind the wall of the memorial there is a big freezer with the body in it (if they can afford it they don’t go for cremation).

They want to consider the fung shui of the tomb, and after 5/10 years (unsure how many) or so they check the tomb to check the bones (if there is flesh attached it means there is something unfinished… more ritual/ceremony/sacrifices are required).

Probably offensive not to burn the incense to the dead, although Christian pastors would tell you not to burn the incense. He says this is not the right place to claim your own religious distinction; it’s rude not to burn the incense.

Purposes of the funeral: show respect, and also it’s the final act of your life, everyone has to be there to go through the final stage of the person’s life to lead them to “the West.” It’s a necessary act – step to take – or else the person would be uninitiated (unable to reincarnate, go to the West, or rest in peace, they would be a wandering ghost).

About 90% of the population does this kind of ritual we’re talking about. South and North may have details that are different. When these times come, the service providers have the whole systems worked out.

Is it Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian? They probably wouldn’t even know.

There’s a way to communicate with the god or the spirits – casting new moon shaped lots (jiao1 bei1) on the ground in the temple – the results of their throw tell them what they need to know.

Christian funerals seem disrespectful. Less days waiting, you don’t hear people bawling at the Christian funerals. Who decided what Christian funerals are supposed to be like? Missionaries? Local pastors? He doesn’t know. There is some wiggle room. Death and funerals is a generally avoided topic.

Departed (recent Hollywood movie) based on a Hong Kong movie (English title: Infernal Affairs) that has this very Buddhist message re: suffering and death (Chinese title actually refers to the worst part of hell, but as a metaphor for the life we experience and its suffering): death is a relief from suffering if you’ve cultivated yourself.

I don’t see any big nose foreigners. Do you see any big nose foreigners?

No, there hasn’t been an outbreak of bird flu or SARS. But today we were sick with bad coughs and colds, and in Taiwan when you’re sick you wear a mask as a courtesy to everyone else. You don’t want people coughing and sneezing in crowded subways cars or all over their students in class. It’s not uncommon for people to wear masks while working, playing piano in church, driving, or just about anything. We don’t really notice them anymore when friends or co-workers wear them. I wasn’t sure how people would react with foreigners wearing masks, since I assume most foreigners don’t. But my students didn’t even seem to notice, and I was looking for a reaction from them.

Tomorrow morning we’re having one of our regularly scheduled practicum meetings, and Mingdaw has decided to combine it with a trip to a really big wet market that apparently has something distinguishing about it. It’ll sure be nice to get out!
 

The folks in Texas want a video asap, so I’ve gotta figure out how to do video. Recently realized we have editing software that came with the camera. Also figured out YouTube today. So the video stuff around here is all re-done; videos aren’t unedited anymore and you don’t have to download them. Just click the box.
Of the dozens of sword dancers we see every morning, these guys weren’t the flashiest, but this is a typical daily sight in our neighbourhood. That one older guy seems about 3 seconds behind though.

There’s new stuff on the video page, including some Chou-chou, and we have a YouTube channel. I’m still learning with the editing… I reduced the video quality too much on these ones but it was my first try. The next ones will be better, and they should be coming soon since we’re supposed to be sending something to Texas asap.