Phone Photos 1

I take a lot of photos on my cell phone (Sony Ericsson K550i) when I'm out and about and I don't have my "real" camera on me. I just finally got around to pairing the phone's Bluetooth with my laptop, so now I've got a whole folder full of pictures spanning the last year and a half. Some are funny things that I've seen and had to shoot, others are things on signs or computer screens that I took a photo of in order to remember it when a pen wasn't handy. I'll start to post the best or most unusual up a few at a time.

I just took this one a couple hours ago. This is Hotel One in Taichung, and it's a few blocks away from my house. As you can see, it's a nasty day today.

I see a lot of strange things while driving my scooter around. This woman owns a Husky, a dog that has no business in hot, humid Taiwan, and she shuttles it around on a tiny scooter.

This man has a lot of meat. He needs to move it across town. He does not have a car, he has a filthy scooter.

Fuck. Me too.

More later.

Good Weather, Good Mood.

It's been nice here for the last week or so, and I've been trying to get outdoors more. Nick and I bought a little barbecue grill on Saturday and grilled some brats. No photos other than this one, since I was having too much fun, but I'm sure we'll do it again.



It's supposed to be nice for the rest of the week and into the weekend, a few showers aside. Good weather has the amazing power to affect people's moods, and bring them out of their homes and into the streets and parks. It's nice to go out walking and come across kids playing or old people smiling at you from a bench.

Next up on my list of things to do outdoors is to get up into the mountains for a hike.

Take that, Hawaii.

Couches

Nick and I got some new couches this weekend. "New" is not exatly right, as these couches were bought from a neighbor, a Canadian fellow who lives across the street from me. They're big, they're black, they're pleather. They are not new. Plenty of cracks and holes (haw) and a bit of dirt, but a lot better than the stiff, lopsided hulk we had until last week.

That thing was a pain to get out of the house. It involved lots of lifting, moderate to severe cursing, removing the hinges of our screen door, and two tall, sweaty foreigners squeezing a piece of furniture down four flights of dark steps.

Well, we got that damn thing out of there, and now we have two comforable (and surprisingly light) replacements that didn't cost but a few dollars.

We left a note saying "please take me" in English and Chinese on the old couch and chair and put them out on the street. They sat there for a few days as merely ornaments for the alrady beautiful building we live in. And then, yesterday they were mysteriously gone.

Also,I got Dad's Sling Box up and running on my TV. Now, via an internet connevted PC, I can control and watch cable TV from at&t cable in Cleveland. It's just for typhoon days, I swear.

Taichung

I haven't updated in quite some time, but here it is.

I had a wonderful visit back to Ohio in August. I got to see my family, and some friends too. It felt very good to be back home. It made me realize that I really did put my life in Ohio on hold while I commenced my life in Taiwan. I hadn't thought of those two things as being separate before, but they are in a sense.

All of the people, places, and things that made up my life pre-Taiwan have changed. Upon returning, I had no trouble identifying all of these things and people and places as being part of my life, but they were different, changed. My brothers are older, my house looks different, there are new restaurants in my neighborhood, Bud Light now comes in lime flavor.

I've put all of these things on the backburner again, however, and returned to Taiwan. I'll be starting a new job next week, teaching kindergarten at Marshall School in Taichung. Taichung, a city of about a million, is located about 2 hours south of Taipei, on the middle of Taiwan's western coast.

I feel excited about this new job. I'll miss my old students and coworkers (and to a lesser extent, the town of Linko,) but I was due for a change of scenery.

My roommate, Nick, and I rented an apartment on the 4th and 5th floors of an older building on the city's near west side. We live in an area with a fair amounts of expats from England, South Africa, and North America. We live within a couple blocks of a canal, a department store, two parks, two temples, and dozens of small shops and restaurants.

My girlfriend, Ariel, lives about five minutes walking from me, and she'll be working nearby too. So it's an all around good deal for me. I'm pretty excited about the next year of my life, and I'll definitely try my best to document all of my noteworthy thoughts here.