Mistaken Identity

Yeah, yeah, I know- all white guys look the same.

My students and many people I have met in Taiwan and Korea all seem to have the same compulsion: to tell me that I look like someone else. In Korea I was consistently compared to David Beckham. Week after week we'd get new students and they all called me Beckham. I'm very flattered, but I don't see the resemblance- I'm much more handsome and toned than David Beckham. In Taiwan, it's been a mixed bag of comparisons. Maybe I've aged, but the first person I was compared to here was Richard Gere, who has to be close to 40 years older than me!! I've also been told I look like Heath Ledger, and just this last Thursday my boss saw an old picture of me with longer hair and said that I looked just like BEETHOVEN. Beethoven?!! Perhaps I need to update my style if I look that much like an 18th century composer.

Maybe the most flattering comparison I've heard is that I look like Melodie. Our boss has said this several times and she's even interrupted me in the middle of a conversation to tell me that she feels like she's looking into Mel's eyes when she talks to me. My eyes aren't shaped like little blue slits, but okay. She said that in Taiwan people believe that as couples age together they start to look more like each other and I think this is kind of cool. Cooler than looking like Richard Gere, anyway.

Just for the heck of it I submitted my picture to My Heritage, a website that compares your picture to a database of celebrity photos and guess who I look the most like? Mr. Jet Li. Maybe I've been in Asia too long.

Christine Sweaters

Our neighbor Christine is the sweetest woman. When the weather dropped here she came over with a bag of sweaters because she just wants us to be warm. Each one of these sweaters has a touch of lace, a dash of glitter, or a stylish pattern that makes them special- it would be hard to choose a favorite. So, tonight we decided to try on some choice pieces from our collection, and we even took some photos to share with you.







And a video of the winter 2009 Christine collection on the runway, featuring the fiercest models in Sinjhuang City:

I don't think there's really anything else to say. Good night!

Our Christmas In Taiwan

In the week leading up to Christmas we tried to get into the holiday spirit with our students by watching Christmas cartoons (I never ever want to see Spongebob's Christmas again- I think I watched it 4 times this week!!) and making Christmas pop-up cards. The kids all seemed pretty excited to make their cards, but the award for best holiday card goes to the one in the above picture: "Blood Of Christmas". Ho ho ho!

On Christmas Eve we went shopping for Christmas dinner foods with Christine Jr. and Nareesa's mom (AKA Mom) and brother (AKA Ryan). Luckily we were able to find everything we wanted, which was a small Christmas miracle in itself, even though we had to buy boxed potatoes because Taiwan was sold out of potatoes. We blame the foreigners. We bought some champagne and spent the rest of the night watching Home Alone and waiting for Santa to arrive.

Despite having no chimney of any sort, Santa did indeed arrive. My package from home (mailed November 16th!) hasn't arrived yet, but we did have a fun assortment of gifts to open from Mel's family. The best was some Tim Hortons coffee and a dozen Tim's coffee cups with their lids- the take away kind you would get at the store if you ordered a double double. We watched "A Garfield Christmas", made a big breakfast, brewed up a pot of coffee and pretended we were drinking the real deal.

In the afternoon we had some errands to run (in Taiwan, all the stores are conveniently open on Christmas) and Melodie decided that she would try to make some egg nog so we went searching (unsuccessfully) for nutmeg. I had to teach from 4:10-5:50 and although the school told us we could leave 10 minutes early we wound up leaving 15 minutes late. Thanks! After taking the slowest bus home I met everyone at our apartment and the Christmas cooking began! It is not easy to cook Christmas dinner when you are cooking in two different apartments with 4 gas burners, 2 microwaves and 2 of the world's smalled toaster ovens. As well, we only had a limited number of pots and pans, no non-soup spoon spoons, more chopsticks than forks and a bit of lumpy gravy drama but we still wound up with a crazy amount of food: three chickens, the aforementioned boxed potatoes, stuffing, veggies, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce, sweet and sour pork, congee, rice noodle soup and lots and lots of wine. I think the meal really exceeded everyone's expectations. After 4 months without this kind of home cooking, our expectations were admittedly low.

Stuffed and happy!

After we ate, we opened our Secret Santa presents. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of everyone's gifts but some of the presents included a Domo toy and DVD for me, a self-portrait by me for Christine Jr, and copies of Sexy Nuts magazine for both Kris and Mark.

After we opened our gifts everyone watched the awesome Domo DVD while Mel and I went to Skype call our families.

Hello families!

When we finished talking to our families we went back to Christine and Samuel's apartment and everyone was STILL watching Domo! LOL! Everyone loves Domo. After Domo, we got ready and Samuel drove us to Spark nightclub, where DJ Godfrey was hosting a Christmas party. Swoon! Unfortunately, DJ Godfrey was a popular draw that night and the line to get into the club was well over an hour long so we decided to go to another place, Room 18, instead. Christine Sr. was gutted and just went home instead of going to the next place with us. Womp womp.

Room 18 was a pretty cool place, although it was packed on Friday night. It is a nice little fire hazard in a basement and there are two rooms: a hip hop room and an electronica room. This was very convenient because when they stopped playing Lady Gaga in one room, you could go to the other room and, soon enough, you'd hear some "Poker Face".

Like I said, Room 18 was so crowded! It seemed like no matter where we stood there were people trying to push past us. We also had to wait in line at the coat check for at least half an hour to dump our coats. We had to wait a while to get drinks, so at one point Mel and I ordered 2 beers at a time and did some double fisting. As populated as the place was, we had a lot of fun and the crowd was pretty great. There was this really old guy in a sweater vest bumping and grinding like nobody's business while his wife and some other ladies climbed all over each other. It was quite the show. There were also some crazy haired foreigner ladies that spent most of the evening on stage in the hip hop room. These are girls that would be booed off the stage at home, but in Taiwan they are exotic enough to earn a place on stage. The girls tell me that one time when I went to the bathroom a crowd of guys suddenly circled them- imagine how much fun they really could have had if I wasn't there?

Our unusual Christmas ended when we finally made it home around 4am and called it a night. Even though I've been away from home for the holidays before this was still a Christmas of firsts: first time I've had Chinese food for Christmas dinner (and it was good!), first time I've worked on Christmas (booooo!), and it was the first time I've gone clubbing on Christmas. All things considered, it was a pretty fun day. Now I can't wait for New Years :)

It's (not) Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Christmas

Despite the fact that Santa is driving the bus and Christmas decorations are on display everywhere, I can't believe Christmas is in just 2 days! The decorations that I see and the Christmas music that I hear seem to be disingenuously transplanted into a country where they don't belong. Plus, many of the things that we associate with the Christmas holidays are just not applicable this year: there's no standing in line to buy last minute gifts because we mailed our gifts home a month ago, the weather has jumped back up to the low-20s so it's not even cold, and there's no long Christmas break from work (in fact, I have to work a few hours on Christmas).

Of course, I am still looking forward to the 25th- I think it's still going to be a special day... just a different kind of "special". We are having Christmas dinner for a dozen of our closest friends (AKA the only people we know in the whole country) and we'll be enjoying a mix of North American and Taiwanese cooking. We're also doing a secret Santa gift exchange, so I expect to see a few new issues of "Sexy Nuts" floating around our place in a few days, and Mel and I each have Skype dates with our families, not unlike Christmas 2006 which we spent in Korea:

Merryyyyyy Christmassssss!!!

Alleycats and Black Might

On Saturday night we went out for supper and drinks to celebrate Christine Junior's anonymously-numbered birthday. It was a frigid night so we couldn't have been happier when we got off the bus and saw several Santa Claus's randomly serving free cups of hot coffee on the street. Thank you for the warm drink, sudden Santas!

We made reservations at a restaurant called Alleycats. We'd been there before and it was a nice place. However, when we arrived at the address we realized that there are 8 Alleycats restaurants in Taipei and the place where we had reserved a table was just a wall-less outdoor patio with maybe a dozen seats total at the whole place. As tempting as eating pizza with mittens on while sitting in the freezing cold sounded, Kris called and got the reservation changed to a different Alleycats.

Yay, pizza and wine!

About halfway through our meal, Mother Nature decided to shake things up a bit with a 7.0 earthquake! Definitely the longest and shakiest earthquake I've felt so far. After the shaking ended I took a video of the lights moving over our heads... I'm sure that's perfectly safe...

The best part about Alleycats? There were REAL CATS hanging out in the restaurant. One cat slept right by our table, which allowed many opportunities for us to poke at him. I miss having a cat!

After our meal Samuel asked the band to play "Happy Birthday" for Christine so we moved to another table closer to the stage. After we sat down we noticed one of the waitresses was shaking the shit out of a little KITTEN to the beat of the music. When she saw the hearts in our eyes she brought the KITTEN over to Mel and we got to take turns holding her. Her name was Margarita and she was so purry.

Blowing out candles and wishing for a date with Godfrey.

After using the women's washroom, I rejoined my friends and we took a taxi to the Living Mall, where we were going to a club for some drinks. The Living Mall is definitely the coolest looking mall with a ball bursting out of it that I have ever visited. Unfortunately, this amazing ball-busting mall didn't have the club I'd read about online. Someone who worked there told Kris that it closed quite a while ago. Screw you, outdated internet websites!

Plan B: Mark had heard about a place called the Black Might nightclub in Ximending that he was curious to visit, so we took a quick bus ride there. This was the safest, most secure club I've ever been to because we had to go through three security checks where they used security scanners like they have at airports, they went through everyone's bags, and there must have been at least a dozen security guards just at the entrance. I was expecting to find a pretty rough place when I got into the club, but it was just your typical Taiwanese dance bar (with 90% horrible generic rap music and 10% Poker Face/Sorry Sorry).

How to build a Taiwanese dance bar:
#1- The bar should be all-you-can-drink (yay!) and it should be way more expensive for the men than the women (hissss!)
#2- There should be lots of seats but you keep kicking me and my friends out of them because they're "reserved" even though no one ever arrives to sit in them
#3- The bar staff should put on a fire/juggling act around 1am
#4- Bring out the tramps to dance on stage as soon as the juggling is finished
#5- Pull some bar stars up on stage and encourage them to strip. Make sure that you choose people who have clearly already planned to climb up on the stage and wore a leather bra accordingly.
#6- Play "Poker Face" and "Sorry Sorry"
#7- Be so smokey that our eyes burn and our clothes never lose the aroma of Marlboros

#8- Tell my friend (even though it's her birthday) that she can't sit on the stripper pole platform, even though nobody's using it and even though she just cleaned it off with her own wet nap.

Life In An Igloo

Remember on Tuesday when I went to the beach in shorts and flip flops? Well, on Wednesday a cold front hit Taiwan and temperatures dropped 10-15 degrees! We've had daytime highs of 10-13 degrees, and although that doesn't sound too cold for December, consider this: with the humidity in Taiwan the temperature feels much colder AND we have no heat in our apartment so there's nothing we can do about how cold we feel. In Canada our apartment was always kept at at least 20 degrees.

I woke up this morning and it was 14 degrees in my apartment. It felt so ICY! Why don't Taiwanese apartments have some form of heat?? I'm taking two baths a day right now and walking around with a comforter wrapped around my body... how long does winter last, again??. Okay, I'm off to buy some sweaters- have a good weekend, everybody!

The Dogs Of Sinjhuang

We're cat people, but we have a soft spot for dogs too. Sinjhuang is full of dogs- some of them are pets who live outside, but a lot of them are strays. I don't know who is sending their poor dogs to live on the street but it's not uncommon to see dogs with gashes in their fur or dogs with only three legs limping around town. One thing you never see is mean dogs. They all seem really tame and easy going and if we were staying in Taiwan forever we would try to adopt one of them. To survive on these streets the dogs have to be smart as well (to survive all the scooters!)- I've seen dogs look both ways before crossing the 6-lane road and they always wait for the walk signal light at the crosswalk. This post is a tribute to our favorite dogs in Sinjhuang.


This is Sweater Dog. We gave him that name because he's usually wearing a tight red sweater. He lives in the apartment building across the road from us and we like him a lot because he spends his days jumping at the scooters that drive by. He's on our side- he hates the scooters too!


At the end of our road there is a parking lot that we used to cut through to get to the bus stop. This dog (name: Guard Dog) lives there and usually he pays us no attention, but once he jumped at Nareesa (can't really blame him on that one) so we've stopped cutting through the parking lot. He's a little intense, but I don't think he's a bad dog- plus he's BFFs with a little black and white cat so we'll give him points for that. He used to share the parking lot with a dog that we called "Asian Dog" because he had a distinctly Asian-looking face but that dog has disappeared in recent weeks. I hope Guard Dog didn't have anything to do with his disappearance.


A lot of the stray dogs in town know that there's strength in numbers so you'll often see two or three of them traveling together. These two guys live on the sidewalk near our the Family Mart, which is a few minutes from our school. There used to be three of them that lived there, but now there's only two so we're not sure what happened to their friend. They are nice dogs but if you try to pet them or give them some food they get scared, so they obviously haven't had the best experiences with people in the past. Update: Melodie tells me that only the blonde dog has been around for the past few days- the darker dog has disappeared. She said the blonde guy looks lonely :(


This is Lucky. He's our neighbor's dog. He used to be a stray but they took him in off the street and he's been living on their roof ever since. Actually, they have taken in two other dogs as well- Happy and Shao Hong ("little yellow"). Shao Hong says hello to us from the roof everytime we get off the elevator or open our front door- he barks at every little noise. Lucky, who we actually see (and not just hear) is so cute! He dines in Christine's sisters apartment on the 4th floor so occasionally we will see Lucky walking by himself down the stairs from the roof to the 4th floor. He's a good boy who just wants to be pet all the time, and if you pet him the right way he will pee on you.

Just Because You're Going To The Beach Doesn't Mean You Shouldn't Bring A Sweater

It was a hot, sunny walk to the bus stop Tuesday morning as Nareesa and I headed to Banciao Station to catch the train to Fulong Beach. With weather like this, we knew a hot and relaxing day in the sand awaited us. The day started off with a bang, as Santa Claus himself drove the bus that took us to Banciao. Instead of a beard he was wearing a surgical mask, but this is Asia after all.


Our train didn't leave for a half hour so we grabbed lunch at the 7 Eleven (potato wedges, cheese and corn- yum!) and then got on our train. This was not an express train and it wound up taking 90 minutes to get to Fulong because it stopped at every dinky little station in the country, but at least we had plenty of time to play Skip Bo and Spit.


The station at Fulong was being renovated- looks nice, doesn't it? I saw a woman move a bag of cement out of the way so she could push her baby's stroller through the station.


Oh, I forgot to mention- while we were on the train the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped. No big deal, it's not like we were going to the beach or anything. Wait... what.. we did go to the beach and I was damn cold!!! I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. I didn't bring a sweater or anything!!! I had to wear my towel to keep warm :(


Actually, the water wasn't too cold so we did wind up jumping some waves.


The sky eventually cleared, though the sun never really came out to make it as warm as it was. Nareesa collected some sea shells and I, stilled wrapped in my towel, read my book for a few hours. We also spelled out a certain four letter word (easily mis-pronounced as "clap") in the sand and Nareesa kicked it to pieces. What a relaxing afternoon.


This temple is located right next to the beach so we took a few minutes to say hi to Buddha and smell the incense.


For supper I had planned to take Nareesa to a stirfry restaurant that Mel and I had gone to the first time we were in Fulong, but it was all chained up (Fulong was DEAD on Tuesday- possibly because it was a weekday in December...) so we got bento meals at a restaurant by the station. For around $1.25 CAD you can't go wrong with a box full or pork, rice, sausagey, bamboo, cabbage, seeweed and eggy. Nareesa kindly traded me her pork for my eggy and we both left satisfied.


Here's my tip for the day: if you are traveling overseas to teach English you can only bring so much with you because of the weight restrictions on luggage so I highly recommend stealing the blankets the airlines give you on the plane. We've used these blankets as curtains, offered them when friends sleep over, used them to lay on the beach and now they've even come in useful when I ridiculously underdressed on the subway.The train back home was much busier than the one that we took to Fulong so there was no Skip Bo-ing for us. The AC was on full blast so I wrapped myself in the China Air blanket that I stole from our flight to Taiwan and with my purple blanket and purple shorts did my best Grimace impression all the way home. Also, my flip flops starting getting really uncomfortable so I wound up walking home from the bus stop not only dressed head to toe in purple, but also with Nareesa's size 6 flower-covered ladies flip flops on my feet. Lookin' good, Keddy.

Wulai

On Sunday we went to Wulai, in the south of Taipei County, to get out of the city and see a little nature. It was sunny and 25 degrees- I love December in Taiwan! We started things off by taking the MRT to the end of the line and then taking a taxi to Wulai. There were 6 of us so we had to go in two taxis and the drive took about half an hour. When the taxi carrying myself, Mel and Jason was about halfway there we got a call saying that the other taxi had gone off in the opposite direction and it would take close to an hour before our friends would be able to meet us in Wulai! While we waited we got some street snacks (chocolate dipped mochi and a boar sausage) and had coffees on a really nice terrace until they arrived (minus one pair of Ray Bans).


We walked through the Wulai old street, which sells lots of snacks, drinks and traditional souvenirs until we got to the "Log Gart" train which would take us to the waterfall and gondola area.


On the log gart.


The main attraction of Wulai is this waterfall, which is quite a good size and empties into the nice bright blue river below. We relaxed here and enjoyed the view for a while.


Next, we took a gondola ride to the top of a mountain where there is a resort, some cafes and a few activities for the kids. The gondola was a little overpriced in my opinion ($220NT round trip), because I think there's lots to see for free at the bottom of the mountain.


View of Wulai from the top.


When we got to the top we all took a big swimming poo.


There was a nice area where you could rent paddleboats or simply enjoy the view while misunderstanding each other. Sample conversation:

Jason (points to a duck): "In the winter we eat a lot of injured duck in Taiwan. It's very delicious."

Shawn: "You eat a lot of injured duck??"

Jason: "Ginger duck."

Shawn: "That makes more sense"


When we went down to the water to take some pictures, Kris moonwalked his ass right into the lake. This was probably my favorite moment of the day :)


We went to a tea house and got some drinks (actually, Mel and I got beer because it was 1/3 the price of the tea- score!) and then we took the gondola ride back down the mountain. We started walking towards a suspension bridge that Nareesa remembered visiting in the summer, but halfway there we asked for directions and were told we weren't going the right way. Since it was going to be dark soon, we decided to head back to the log gart. At this point, a very peculiar man riding a scooter pulled over to the side of the road, introduced himself and followed us for about 15 minutes. Even though he was Chinese, he refused to talk to Kris and Jason in Chinese because he insisted that they looked Korean even though they told him they don't speak Korean. He also treated us to some English, French, Japanese and Russian conversation and even posed in a picture with us (he's the first guy on the left in the above photo). This strange gentleman who didn't understand social cues was probably my second favorite part of the day after Kris's swimming adventure.


When you go to a restaurant that's been featured on a TV show called "Bizarre Foods" you know you're going to have an interesting meal. When we arrived there the owner started recommending a bunch of dishes to Kris in Chinese and he asked if we should just order all of her recommended dishes- which included deep fried BEES and ostrich stirfry. Apparently foreigners love to try the deep fried bees. Not this foreigner!! We had some bitter melon (so bitter!), boar stir fry, banana rice (it tasted like a banana muffin- yum!) and rice cooked in bamboo instead.


For dessert we got some shaved ice with taro ice cream, kiwi and strawberries, all while I kicked everyone's ass at cards. Boo yeah!


After the taxi debacle earlier in the day, we decided to take a bus back to the MRT. We had to wait a little bit and watch the bus driver take his break before we were allowed on the bus. It was a long trip and I found myself wishing I had gotten some of those deep fried bees to snack on for the ride home......