Tax Office Blues

Forget your visions of a luxurious and exotic life here. People have to visit the tax office here too, and such was my lot yesterday afternoon.

Not surprisingly, the building holds the same hoards of broken-looking people wandering in and out of it's doors, and the same blue-fluorescent lighting buzzing and popping away the days of the pasty Taiwanese accountants' lives.

The big blue sign marked "Alien Taxes 2F" directed me to the second floor. There were two available service desks, no space for a queue, so I just sort of camped out. On the far left, an American was angrily sorting his taxes out with a put-upon Taiwanese woman. He has apparently been here for 13 years and has never required x form, but this year he needs it. Oops. He was being quite an asshole, even by American standards, let alone the non-confrontationalness of Taiwanese culture. He wouldn't be going anywhere for a long while.

To his right, there was another foreigner figuring out her taxes and how to get her refund from last year. This one didn't look like it would take too long. But at the second desk, there was a group of four men. Busily sorting through enormous stacks of tax forms, stapling the masses together and putting them with passports. They had a dufflebag filled with Thailand passports. Filled. It reminded me someone of pulling stacks of cash from a bank heist out of a bag, while they sorted them in stacks onto the table. I've never seen so many passports in one place. Working with this group of men, who clearly would be there for the next several hours, was one lone woman calculating all the forms to check for errors. Amazing.

Luckily, at one point I made eye contact with one of the workers, asking if I was next. She told me just a moment. This was lucky, because due to the lack of queue-space and Taiwanese cultural standards for line-ups (which mostly consist of stand wherever your body will fit and it you see a gap, even at the front, fill it--this irks most new foreigners with big personal space bubbles) a woman popped to the front and tried to shove her papers to the clerk before anyone else could, even though she was clearly the last to arrive. In her eyes, we all must have just been dicking around at the tax office that day. As you do. This same worker ignored her and motioned to me that I was next, redeeming my faith in the Taiwanese line-up system.

So, all in all, it only took an hour to get my taxes filed and nobody was hurt...Although that worker helping the American guy might want to watch for bombs. Taxes can make people crazy!

Ambulance Courtesy Part I

Life continues to be strange in Taiwan. The ambulances, compact for parking availabilty, cruise through town looking like vaguely supped-up minivans. Amazingly, (and the reasons for which I must research, hence the part 1) the traffic doesn't part when the ambulances attempt to zip by. Often, the ambulances drive in the scooter lane or in the gutter while the cars drive slightly faster or ignore the sirens all together. I can't quite figure it out. I keep having visions of a sad looking doctor delivering the news to a shaken family: "I'm sorry. Your grandfather died in traffic."

Kindy Eats

Sometimes I wonder at the differences between the Taiwanese children and American children. Pickiness when it comes to food seems to be a major theme to child-rearing in the States, and yet I have hardly encountered it here. There is one girl in my class who will only accept the smallest pieces of vegetables and meat, and then take ages to finish. She is clearly the exception to the rule. Most other children will accept whatever is given them (no matter the cultural origin--headcheese being a noted exception), still, of course, taking ages to finish.

This difference struck me today at lunch. The children were served rice with pork and mushrooms (mushrooms being a favorite of the Taiwanese kids, and distinctly *not* a favorite of American children), stewed greens of some ilk (dark green and floating in a salty sauce, hardly appealing to American kids), "simmered squid" (which I'm pretty sure would set some kids to crying, but was wonderfully prepared, not too chewy), and finally, seaweed soup. Some of the Western English teachers wouldn't even touch the food. I can hardly imagine what would happen if it showed up in a lunchroom in the mid-west. Rioting, probably. It was however a delicious meal, even if western kids would find it disgusting. After all, childhood palates are rarely developped beyond the sophistication of the PB & J...and I like the idea of grossing kids out. :)

Lost Weekend

I was roped into it. I couldn't say no. But at least I got paid for it. I sat through 30 kids reading the same four essays over and over for a few hours on Saturday. It was boring as hell, but at least the kids won prizes.

Sadly, it then felt as if the rest of the weekend was only one day long. Now it's Monday. Where did Sunday go?

Scooter Cargo

Coming from the States, and the mid-west at that, I've seen plenty of pick-up trucks hauling assloads of things: couches, mattresses, innumerable boxes and whatnot. Here, most of the population drives scooters and yet I see the same thing.

I've heard rumors of limits on what you can carry on your scooter, but I've never seen them enforced. I've seen men with huge propane tanks straped to either side of the scooter, families of four (or more) crammed into a seat, and possibily the best (and most disturbing) was a man with a baby in one hand and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I never saw him ash...

Yesterday, I saw a woman with a futon mattress folded in front of her, pushing her hips off the back of the scooter. I'm not actually sure she was even on the seat at all. Maybe she has incredible upper-body strength, but I'm not sure how she did it. And today, I saw a woman with a full-size dog on the seat behind her, precariously perched yet looking rather calm. Must be a hybrid of mountain goat and black lab.

Amazing.

Star Sighting

Hold on to your hats, kids, because this weekend in Taipei I had some star sightings! Ok, actually only one star, and she was Taiwanese so you probably have *no* idea who the hell she is, but here goes!

I saw the "ugly" member of S.H.E. , Taiwanese super pop group! This is the Taiwanese equivalent of seeing Justin Timberlake at your favorite bar! Actually, she isn't ugly. She is the 'cute one', as Lea insists on calling her, but for the rest of Taiwan, she is played off as the ugly one. Taiwan frowns on the "tomboy" and basically anyone who isn't high-femme 90-100% of the time. But my friends and I have all decided that she is the most interesting one to look at. She's the only one we could pick out of a line up. I mean, super cute girly girls are a dime a dozen over here, so anything different is worth paying attention to.

Sadly, most of my friends I was visiting in Taipei had no idea who she was and couldn't muster the excitement I felt at having seen her, but loads of folks were pumped when I told them at kindy this morning. After I texted everyone I knew in Taiwan to let them know, I started getting stories back from teachers who told their kids, and how the news disrupted class for an hour.

Blind Touch

Taiwan has a pretty low unemployment rate. This is because nearly all tasks are assigned to random low-level, low-paid workers in order to give everyone something to do. This results in women wearing mint green Jackie O. style dresses, complete with gloves and hats running elevators in department stores and men in polyester uniforms standing next to the garbage cans in the food court waiting to clear tables (why throw away your own garbage when someone can do it for you?). A while back, when shopping with some Taiwanese folks, I was sternly reminded not to throw away my own garbage, lest I put someone out of a job. Interestingly enough, it's difficult to override 20-odd years of western food court ettiquette.

And there is of course my favorite job: the blind masseuse. Even jobs are found for the blind, with random massage booths set up over the city. Ranging in price anywhere from 300-800 NT a visit, you can cozy up in a semi-private booth/chair in the middle of a busy street, train station, or night market and have a blind man or woman rub your weary back/neck. This service is mainly limited to Taipei, but I'm sure there are plenty of blind folks in Taichung looking to capitalize on the blind massage craze. (I don't think it's actually a craze, but it feels like it should be...)

The Heat is On

The pre-monsoon season is over and the heat is here! It's still ridiculously humid (and will be until I leave), and the sun is high! Weather highs are in the 80's and you can feel it. Lord knows I love to stand around sweating for no reason other than it's hot outside. Luckily, it's only May. The real heat, they say, doesn't arrive until June and hangs on until October.

3 months left today and counting...

Adios Childhood

Kindergarten has been good for life-changing epiphanies. Among them is the vision I have of my childhood sinking farther and farther away into the ether. "Sammi, don't play with your food." "Pay attention!" "Hold that bowl with two hands!" "Put away your toys!" I don't even have children but the words I never thought I'd say are streaming out of my mouth with increasing regularity.

I'm both the gatekeeper and the keymaster to fun and punishment. I have so much control only because the children don't know that I have no real control over them at all.

I've walked through the looking glass...

Field Trip

The Cats and I took our first field trip together yesterday. They have a monthly field trip, but through the luck of pneumonia and my vacation home, I had missed them all until yesterday.

During the first part of the day, I reminded them that it was Wednesday and as we had discussed we would be going to the grocery store. Yes, I'll say it again, the grocery store. We went there to look at the fruits and veggies we've been learning the names of. The Cats were all quite excited and talked about the bus endlessly. I even got the kids to eat their snacks in nearly five minutes (a feat given they take 45 minutes to eat a tiny bowl of rice).

They held hands and the old folks stared at us as we bumbled through the store using such wonderful English phrases as "What is this?" and "Do you like X?"

The best part was the elementary school flashbacks as we piled into the bus. I spontaneously burst into song. It was as if "The Wheels on the Bus" had been hiding in a tiny part of my soul waiting to burst forth if the appropriate moment ever showed itself.

I'm still adjusting to the whole authority role thing, and yet in certain moments it seems to come so easily...

Suitor #1

I went on date number two with a guy I'm not very interested in, simply for the company. My dating life has become so ridiculous as to provide excellent material for a book of some kind.

Often, there are those moments when you really shut off. Maybe you're a little interested, but the other person says or does something that puts all possibility of dating out of your mind. These moments were usually the thrust of most Seinfeld episodes, and I think the show must have adversely affected my ability to date normally. In any case, one of the moments happened on Sunday morning.

Stephan and I went (well, not so much went as darted through the rain) to breakfast with Lea and as we were talking, I noticed Stephan had an unidentifiable chunk of food on his hand (Really it could have been anything. The Taiwanese dig organ meat). Before I could say anything, and as if he noticed me looking at his hand, he nervously ran this same hand through his hair. His hand came back clean and suddenly I was finished. It was that quick. I also thought about how something Lea had mentioned about toenails in his bed...All in all it was yet another calamitous entry in the book of love.

Pre-Monsoon Season

Last week, when at noon, minutes before the kindergarten teachers poured out the doors into the spring sunshine, the sky opened up and buckets, buckets of rain fell for a good twenty minutes. Finally, it slowed to a drizzle that lasted for a week.

I found out later that we are in "pre-monsoon season" or "plum rain." For a week or so, it should rain nearly non-stop, but with kinds of rain I have never seen. When the drizzle becomes a proper rain, huge, heavy drops of rain pour down. It usually only lasts a half hour or less, but is nevertheless an amazing amount of rain: the empty swimming pool at the apartment was half full after two days of rain. I walked a half a block to a tea shop, got caught in the rain and came back looking like I had fallen into said pool.

Yesterday afternoon however, the clouds cracked and the sun came out for the first time in a week and a half. Keep your fingers crossed that the worst of it is over...until typhoon season begins anyway...

Conversation (Class) Stopper

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I teach older students, and while they spent the first 7 months staring at me like I was some kind of freakish, yet boring, disaster occuring before them, they have recently warmed up to me quite a bit. They talk in class, willingly, which is helpful considering it's a conversation class. One kid even asked if he could call himself "Steak," a decision I fully supported. I dig cool nicknames (a penchant that led to my own unfortunate nickname: Cobra).

Currently, we are discussing international food and we've been bonding over mutual disgust of headcheese. While matching "exotic" foods to their international locations, I asked if they liked the Asian foods, like fugu (the blowfish that nearly killed Homer that one time). Later I asked them to tell me the names of the countries in Chinese, when suddenly one of my students asked me, "Teacher, does America like Taiwan or China?"

To this my eloquent and studied reply was, "Shit."

I tried to recover with a "I really don't know. It depends on the day." But really, how to explain that our tentative allegiance to Taiwan will evaporate as soon as economic benefits of backing China outweigh those of Taiwan, and that day seems to be fast approaching? Plus, this same kid five minutes before asked me what a rat was, so the vocabulary for a discussion of this depth wasn't readily available.

I'm curious what he'll ask next week...

Settling

So I've been back for almost a week now. The good vacation buzz is starting to wear off, and I'm getting readjusted to the pace here: fast.

I had a great welcome back to Taiwan: my first morning back to work, I woke up late. After a week of sitting untouched the scooter was reluctant to start, forcing me to borrow my roommate's. Luckily, it was raining pretty heavily, so I didn't have to worry about all the sunshine getting in my eyes on the way to work. I pulled out my poncho, but it was pretty badly ripped from the last time I used it and oops, in my excitement to go on vacation I had forgotten to replace it. So, when I rolled up to kindergarten, damp and jetlagged 40 minutes later, I was greeted by the kids who were as cute as ever. And since they hadn't seen me in nearly two weeks, they had forgotten all about how I work, so they had a good time testing my limits. Ah, the brains of 4 year olds. But it only took about two days to really get over the jetlag and then I was back in the swing of things. To help me feel at home and settled in again, I caught a nice little cold. I mean wow, it had been three weeks since I had pneumonia, I was overdue for some sort of sickness!

Ah, it's good to be back! Only4 more months...