Allow me to make a short post today.

Every Wednesday I have Speech and Debate Class and then Pottery and Aesthetics afterwards. The latter is in Chinese so I usually can't participate in the class. Did have a question today though, and I was a bit surprised as I was handed this thing as reward. For asking a question. Wauw.

Actually I did notice on our first class that the teacher would hand out these as a reward to students with questions, but I was assuming that it would only be to get people to listen to something very important.

He's still giving out little gifts though. The teachers is a quite respected artist here so his works aren't worthless. Beautiful aren't they?

Taiwanese students don't really ask questions in classes. At all. You really have to have some extraordinary situation to get them to ask just a few questions, and even though this teacher is giving away gifts for every question he gets from the students, there's not many to come for.
I think this is partly caused by the high schools not really expecting questions from the students and because everyone is under so much pressure from their parents about having to be number one student, so they don't dare ask a question that might show some weakness. Poor teachers.

Honestly. High Schools, at least, are crap here. I can say that with some high degree of certainty because it's just so easy to see. (Besides, I went to a vocational high school myself. One that is rumoured to be somewhat worse than other schools in Taipei. It was a vocational one. I feel sorry for my previous classmates. They are good kids.)

It's probably some sort of cultural problem. People are just used to the high schools being crappy and learning people not to think, so they just accept it the way it is. Of course that makes for a lot of frustration amongst teachers in other education institutions. Especially the foreign teachers that I've met. But I guess it's the way it is all over Asia. I hear that Taiwan should be somewhat better than so many other Asian countries.

Anyway. I'll see this little trophy as a nice souvenir. ("Earned" free stuff just feels so much better than anything else won't you agree?)
I don't know what's more impressing about it: The packing or the content. Anyhow, this quite made my day I'd say.

On Chihlee College, I have pottery and aesthetics class every Wednesday. I'm taking the class because it will be an opportunity for me to listen to more Chinese and at the same time work a little with my hands, which will make it possible for me to participate and possibly have a little more fun even though I can't understand much of what the teacher says.

This wednesday was a little different. In the morning, as in every wednesday morning I had a speech and debate class (in english) with charismatic Tom Harper, who is an Irish new yorker and therefore celebrating Saint Patricks Day. After that, had to hurry and swallow some lunch as a bus was waiting to bring students to Yingge where our teacher lives and produces art for the president, national palace museum and whatnot.

Today I had English Debate as my first class in school. Just like last week. People are quite good at English around Chihlee, and it's not only the college students. I also met a student from Chihlees high school department with a pretty good grip on English. I guess people are more focused on international trade and such at that place. It's great.

After that first class, I went with classmates to eat as I've been doing since day 2 on the school. No canteen is inside, so students will go raid the aroundlying area every day at lunchbreak. It's a bit of a phenomenom there. Just near the school, there's a heightened abundance of stores that mostly flock around fashion districts. And of course, unnaturally many restaurants and food-stands. Went to eat veggie food again.

No pictures of the store, but it's pretty popular and rather crowded. Need to go there early if one wants to finish up and get back to school before classes start as it takes a long time to prepare peoples meals during the rushy hour that lunchbreak is.
That thing above is my finished noodle dish with monkey head mushroom, tofu and awesome amounts of capsaicinoids.

It got bloody bad cold again. 為什麼?! It was just like Danish summer last week and then winds changed. Stupid Taiwanese weather.

Am sorry about that. I go to school and talk a lot with people there, so there's not much time or new subjects for my blog at the moment. (Actually, there's loads of subjects waiting to be written about, but that'll require me to use some more time in front of the pc obviously. Besides, I want to get into programming browser games again. It seems like I have been contributing nothing to the tech game since I got here, and I've also got a number of other ideas for more simple games that need to get out. So far I have only sketches of code.

Anyway. Some weeks ago, methinks. ? - I went to take some pictures around Xinpu. That's still inside Banqiao, so I can walk there in a few minutes. My school is in that direction too, so now I actually frequent it. It's a lot more interesting than this little blue corner where I'm currently at.

Didn't finish the sequel to the Wulai trip just yet. It's a lot to cover, and I haven't a lot of time. I still need to get to some of the other stuff such as mountain climbing and stuffs, but I guess I can just write quickly what I did today.

7am - going to school, getting a few minutes late but gets ignored by the military there as they probably don't know (or dare) how to explain in english, that I they're unhappy about my lack of hardcore discipline.
Then: Sit in the class for two hours staring at a math teacher talking chinese, then going to a website-design class to draw stuff for a drawing competition by the MRT Amdministration. (I guess that's website design in some Taiwanese logic as you have to find the rules for the competition on the internet.) And I am not exactly good at using a chinese version adobe illustrator on a chinese version MAC. (Ever only found out how paint works on my Windows, that's my graphics experience.)

Okay, that's a standard school day for me now more or less, the more interesting part comes here:

Wow, what's that? About 1pm I was sitting at Starbucks eating danish candy.

While talking danish with some Irish looking beard man. His name is Ciarán Knakkegaard McLoughlin and he currently lives in Taoyuan.

Well, you should be able to tell the outline of our day in the title. Sadly, he's not in Taipei City too much as there's a bit long to there for him and also because he goes to Taiwanese school all day. Apparently he has a problem with people telling him he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio too, which is even more ridiculous than telling me, as you should be able to figure from his picture above.

Actually I just knew Gundam was some robot stuff before we bumped into this place just outside Taipei Main Station. Now I also know that Gundam is based off of some old anime series and immensely popular. Maybe even bigger than those warhammer figures you can paint by yourselve I'd say. They're quite cool, and honestly, I wouldn't mind having one standing in a glass box in my room. I doubt that it's inexpensive though, both money and timewise.

But what's Mikuru doing here? Took a break from that dominant god somewhere in the future without us knowing?

Gundam Base Taipei, eh? Well, now you can find it yourself with some Google skills I guess. I have to be carefull about going there again though. Already got a serious addiction to that arcade game Jubeat. If I start to look out for figures like this, it might very well hurt my pocket a bit more than just a few percent of my expenses.

So well.. Didn't take so many pictures except for a lot of the figures there (we were just there shortly, went to buy shoes and chinese versions of the lucky star manga and other japanese stuff. (Yeah, I might not write a lot about it, but I do mostly do taiwanese stuff around here.) By the way, I also peed in a urinal with an advertisement LCD screen ontop today. Wicked.

It's cooler now. And isolation is not really good around these parts, but I'm ok. It's not THAT cool, just somewhere down about 13 degreees celcius outside when it's really extreme.