Wherever I May Roam

Yet again, there are updates to be had by everyone. I apologize for the hiatus, but the amount of output on this site stands in direct correlation with me giving a fuck, as I subscribe to the "because I say so" school of thought. Also, the fact that Chun completely neglects this blog as an alcoholic father and husband would neglect his family does not contribute to a fertile literary environment. So alas, expect more update droughts in the future.

Anyway, back to reality. As we wrestled our way through the first week of classes, the careless mindset of the summer holidays subsided; it gently and in almost unnoticeable fashion made way for the rhythm of every day life and the trifles which accompany it. I noticed this subtle change yesterday, when I decided to take a stroll off campus; the moment I stepped out of the gate, I felt a sense of relief which I hadn't felt for a long time, like grasping for air after holding your breath for a minute or so. It took me some time to identify this odd sensation, but I guess the fact that I haven't come close to something even remotely resembling a daily rhythm since May or so has had left its mark.

The classes themselves are....tough. As you may recall from an earlier entry, the amount of classes suitable for our level was not quite sufficient, so we decided to pick up some extra courses. The catch is, these are courses for the Taiwanese students, so our efforts basically resemble an infant attempting to reach the cookie jar on the kitchen table, only to find himself in the newspaper the next day displayed as a gruesome example of parental neglect. The amount of energy this takes out of you is staggering; at the end of our first week our high hopes had completely evaporated, as had our will to live. In general, finding your way in a completely different environment is more troublesome than one might expect at first glance. In a more familiar environment, people regularly work their way trough the day on auto pilot, not paying attention to the smallest of details and relying on familiar reference points (e.g. language) to deal with various situations. On the other side of the world, one lacks such steady ground under one's feet; even the most basic matters require your full attention, which is a major adjustment. As mentioned before, going through the day trying to be 100% focused on everything at the same time leaves you completely drained at the end of the day. The sad thing is, once you know the language and customs well enough, you've worked your way full circle back to the point where you're able to go through the day like a mindless drone, complaining about a lack of excitement in your life. There's a bittersweet irony to this that even I can appreciate.

But alas, I digress yet again. The past week and a half have actually been quite fruitful in terms of progress; my cohort has acquired a more or less steady source of income, though I dare not vouch for his employer; last week we experienced our first Taiwanese typhoon, which was not quite as apocalyptic as expected; also, we have more or less settled in the flow of campus life and made quite some new friends, so all in all, there is much XP to be had. Oh, and we just received confirmation from Leiden that our minor scholarship issue will be resolved, one way or the other; it's still unclear when this joyous event will actually occur, but it'll have to do for now.

I don't have much in the way of visual entertainment to offer you at the moment, unfortunately; or maybe it's just that I don't feel like sitting through uploading that bullshit right now, which I might add, is truly and utterly a fucking nuisance. Either way, the result is the same; namely, you working your way through this heap of verbal diarrhea and not being rewarded for it. But lo and behold, there actually is something I would like to share with you, something that has plagued my mind ever since I encountered it. I find it truly disturbing that a modern society would allow for such conduct to take place within its borders...


Also, and I must confess that I had previously been unfamiliar with this fact, the Taiwanese men are apparently so well hung that it is relevant enough to be a major point of attention in daily traffic.


Next time, I might introduce you to some of the NPC's we've met during our quests, and to some of the interesting places we've been. For now, I bid thee good night.

Vanity, Definitely My Favourite Sin

Words do not flow so easily from my fingers today, thus you will have to make do with this most amusing little gem from the womb of Taiwan's public transit system. I find it unbelievably hilarious to observe individuals who operate in some parallel universe where their bullshit is relevant enough for them to display it ostentatiously every opportunity they get. It took our little pageant princess about 45 minutes to realize that hideousness cannot be so easily masked by repeatedly taking the same picture from the same angle while staring into the lens with the same sheepish expression. Alas and alack, woe is me, for 't has all been in vain.

Of Lethargy and Inertia

Weariness can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.

William Shakespeare - Cymbeline

About a week and a half ago Chun and I parted ways, as the academic year at Zhengzhi kicked off last week, and I myself moved to the Qinghua campus last Wednesday. Thus, my first Chun-less Taiwan experience materialized, a strange feeling I must say, after terrorizing Taiwanese society together for so long. After leaving our White Mage behind in Holland, this finally marked the demise, albeit a temporary one, of our fellowship. I wish my cohorts godspeed, and the best of luck in all their endeavours.

A new alliance was quickly wrought out of the ashes of days long gone however, as fate has stuck Rens and myself together for the coming year or so. Although I didn't really know much about the good lad prior to our departure, we get along surprisingly well, that is to say I haven't had the urge to brutally slaughter him yet. Yet. However, fate has not been so generous in other areas. As you may recall from an earlier entry, a week before we left for Taiwan, we were informed that it was still uncertain whether or not we would receive a scholarship from Qinghua; this is due to the fact that the contract between Leiden University and Qinghua had expired back in February and to this day hasn't been renewed. Yes, that's right, the contract had expired 7 months ago and apparently none of the legendarily thick dick wads at the International Office or at the Sinology Department (I'm still not sure who's responsible for the communication with universities abroad) had noticed this minor glitch; in fact, if our liaison at Qinghua hadn't informed us about it, we probably would have learned about this issue only a week ago. Apparantly, Qinghua's accountant is drafting a new contract, because they weren't satisfied with the last one. Here's a tip, my friends, free of charge. READ. THE. FUCKING. CONTRACT. BEFORE. YOU. SIGN. IT. ASSHOLES. Anyway, we'll at least have to wait until October to see where this goes. For now, Rens and I have been looking for a job to sustain ourselves; my cohort might have hit the jackpot with a job as an English teacher, which he'll know for sure tomorrow. I have not been quite so lucky yet, and might have to consider stooping to new lows in order to secure an income. Chills run down my spine at the mere thought of such conduct...

Apart from this problem, other issues have caused turmoil in my mind like the presence of a black man would in rural Alabama. For instance, a few weeks ago our contact person in Leiden, one of our teachers, informed us that Qinghua did not offer a course that would suit our current level of Chinese, and encouraged us to "look around and see what other courses they have on offer". Although a year long stay will undoubtedly benefit our Chinese, this is completely beside the point of sending your students abroad for the sole purpose of language acquisition. At least make sure the university in question offers courses which carry some fucking relevance for your students. We eventually did find an advanced course offered by another department, so we'll see how that works for us next week when our classes start.

Generally speaking, dealing with administrative matters is not one of the merits of this university. When we arrived for instance, they hadn't arranged for our student ID and internet access; the former meant we have no access to other university facilities. Luckily, we can now at least enter the library, hence my current entry. We are currently still waiting for these quite basic matters to be arranged, and like everything here, you end up having to wait until half past the future for some goddamn results. I trust you get the general idea.

You may find these last few paragraphs to be a bitter monologue of frustration and spite, but the fact of the matter is this, my dear readers. From the moment we arrived here, we've been entangled in a bureaucratic web of indolence and sloth. The wheels of bureaucracy move agonizingly slow, sometimes even grinding to a sickening halt, and when you've laboriously made it from point A to point B, you discover that you still have a Mount Everest to climb and you're stuck at fucking base camp. The most frustrating part in my opinion is, that a lot of these issues could have been avoided through better communication between both universities, but bureaucracy and plain indifference got in the way, and that's kind of difficult to deal with when your own ass is on the line. The last few days have truly been a mind numbing exercise in anger management for me; at least I have the peace of mind and the maturity not to let the frustration get the better of me, to be able to keep my shit together and take one day at a time. And despite all of this bullshit, I'm still enjoying myself here. I just have to settle down into the low expectation tempo of campus life, and that will happen soon enough. Rens and I have agreed to grasp every bit of progress we make and celebrate it as all the races of Middle-Earth celebrated their freedom from the clutches of Sauron. So there you have it, I'm allowed to enter the fucking library now. Fuck yeah. Oh, and today I had lunch with Justin, our Korean alcohol powered friend from last year, and we discussed a possible trip to Korea this winter. More on that in future entries, or at least when something resembling a plan has crystallized.

Anyway, I do apologize for this rant and the lack of visual entertainment; next time, a more light hearted entry with lots of eye candy, of course.

Finally arrived at Chengda

After spending a week and a half at Thiery's place in Zhongli, it is time for us to move on to the real deal. No more slacking around and acting like a tourist anymore. From now and here on, there is only a 100% focus on leveling up our Mandarin skills. 

This also means that Behnam and I are going our seperate ways here in Taiwan. While I'll be studying at NCCU in Taipei, Behnam will continue his mandarin studies at Qingda. The blog entries will also vary from time to time. So in the future (if i'm in a blogging mood) you will read something about me and my pathetic attempts at learning Chinese here at Chengda. Whereas mister Sobhani will donate some of his most excellent entries from his crib in HsinChu (of course when he is not busy jerking off onto some black puss bun). 

You probably read in an earlier entry that Koon and I did not take the Mandarin placement test at the NCCU. Luckily the people at the language center did not mind about our little slipup, we were casually placed somewhere in between the mid-high level portion of the students. This monday we had our first class. What can I say about it, but just this: it sucked donkey! 

My first lesson did not went very smoothly as i would have hoped. I mean,  the last couple of months before i left for Taiwan, all i did was work work work. You could imagine that the amount of mandarin I was using back in Dutchland was extremely low and therefore my proficiency was actually of an 5 year old infant. My other classmates on the other hand are pretty good. We have this Lady (see photo) from poland who shoots her mandarin "raps" like an AK-47. Other classmates are from Thailan, Korea and America all of them are very skilled and proficient (i hate them).

I imagined that my lack of skill would occur in the Netherlands but I just hope that with some time and some adjustment everything eventually would come back.  I won't despair though, i will try to keep up with the class as much as I can and try to survive the first week. Koon on the other hand, had the advantage of 6 weeks of summer school, some dating experience with some Taiwanese women (luckily no one got hurt or pregnant) and his very broad knowledge Chinese thanks to his cantonese background. So his re-adjustment for this course was a very minor. 

Though his cantonese advantage will diminish in time as the advanced stuff will get harder and harder, his current class performance is pretty good for now. Still it's pretty hard  for him to get rid of his heavy Cantonese accent. There were occasions where he could not hide from his canto heritage. Imagine yourself having a conversation with some stranger and the first thing this person asks you is : "are you from HongKong ? Are you Cantonese or something?" I guess it pisses him off every time he hears that. But it's funny to see how local people would react on some chinese dude talking mandarin with a heavy canto accent. 

As far as i can tell, the level of my class is a steep enough to provide me enough challenge. This is good because this will prevent me from getting lazy. Furthermore our teacher (miss Ma) is surprisingly good in her teachings, not to mention also very good looking). Although quite young compared to the other teachers at the language center, her enthusiasm and wit makes the class good and fun (sheesh this is beginning to sound like an ad for Chengda).  Our lesson schedule is quite gruesome. Though we have class for 3 hours each day, the amount of homework is still staggering high. For instance the required preparation time for each lesson would take like a an hour to an hour and a half. In each lesson we go through the new material and afterwards there will be a small test. Talk about intensive! Come to think of it, this kind of teaching method would certainly never happen at Leiden University. Which let me think that i should have done this a lot sooner instead of wasting a year and a half of my time getting a scholarship. Remember this well kids. Stop wasting time taking any language lessons back at home. You wanna learn mandarin? Go to China or Taiwan!

So to put it simply, our daily schedule would  like this:  From 8 am till 11 am, we receive three hours of raw mandarin pounding. Afterwards you're free to go. In reality this means you will have to review the class material and do some serious rigorous studying. The amount of new words everyday is almost overwhelming. Looking ahead in a few weeks time, there will be some extra courses as well for language students to choose from in order to improve their language proficiency. But there are other non Chinese related classes you can take too. It all depends how much you want to do in your year here at NCCU. 

Speaking of which, NCCU is a very nice university to stay at. There are a lot of good student facilities here. For example there is a nice swimming pool and a gym besides it. A one year membership of the swimming pool and the gym only cost students about 50 euros. And did i mention that is place is nice because of the girls? Really, everyone i spoke to these couple of days congratulated me on the fine choice i made going to NCCU because this place harbors the nicest and the prettiest girls of Taiwan.  As the regular classes have not started just yet, there are already a lot of nice looking girls walking around on the campus. Koon is putting all his hopes here to find his future spouse. So let's all root for him... hahahaha 

Déjà Vu Pt. 2

A couple of days after our arrival in Taiwan we teamed up with another familiar face, Daniel, in Taibei. And just like Tailin and Linda, this guy hasn't changed a bit. Our conversations with him usually consist of sexual innuendo, beer drinking stories and other depraved, frat boy-esque topics, although he does occasionally let his guard down allowing for more mature communication. He's a good guy though, and definitely a fun person to be around.

Anyway, Tailin and Daniel had decided we should pay a visit to Maokong, which is located in the southern tip of Taibei. The plan was to take the cable car to the top of Maokong mountain, but due to a heavy thunderstorm the cable car service was put on hold for a couple of hours, which meant we had quite some time to kill. While we were fondling our scrotums, Daniel had an epiphany and requested to be educated in the Dutch language. We, out of the goodness of our hearts, of course obliged. I submit to thee, my dear readers, the fruit of this unholy alliance.



After this most satisfying exercise in linguistics, the storm had passed, the skies were clear, the cable car service was resumed, so we were finally off to Maokong. The view from the cable car was stunning; even more so because dusk was slowly but steadily creeping up on Taibei. Even though we weren't exceptionally high up in the sky, it was remarkable how many people failed to keep their shit together, as we were frequently greeted by screams of terror and despair from passing cable cars, as if each individual cable car contained a Sarah Connor watching the world burn in her dreams. Get a grip. Maintain. Enjoy the fucking view.

Maokong itself was teeming with people, mostly locals on a day trip. Despite the fact that it was quite crowded, the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxing. We had a bite to eat and Tailin prepared some fine Wulong tea for us while Daniel diligently pursued his new found passion for the Dutch language. After a couple of hours, we decided to call it a day and took the cable car back down, once again accompanied by the occasional screams of passengers in the throes of death.That night we stayed over at Daniel's place, the pinnacle of bachelor crib-ness by the way. The next day Tailin and Daniel both had to go to work, so Chun and and I indulged ourselves in our area of expertise: wandering around aimlessly through Taibei. We visited Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to take a few snapshots of the old geezer.

Having done so, we decided to go to Ximending, in order to experience the most excellent variety of shopping possibilities and the latest fashion trends.

Time flies when you're having fun, so before we knew it we were on the train back to more familiar turf, Zhongli. Before we went back to Tailin's apartment however, we made a quick detour to visit one of our favourite places in Taiwan. Best. Store. Ever.

Oh, and one last thing. For all the people out there experiencing plumbing difficulties, know this. There is a solution, a kryptonite to your internal vileness.

Chiggertown, Taiwan

A glimpse of Taibei's urban culture, courtesy of Chun and myself. Go ahead and enjoy the visual extravaganza, you crazy kids. Real updates are on the way...