Updating!

Hey all! (If anyone is still checking this blog after not updating in so long!)

Contrary to rumours, I am still very much alive! Not that I can fault a local bug for lack of trying, as I spent the last two weeks sick with one of the worst colds of my life! I am feeling much better now, however, and trying to get back in the swing of things with a healthier diet and lifestyle this time. As I commented to someone recently, I think we foreigners get sick more often than local people in any given country do because we're not immune to as many of the local bugs.

In any case, things at work and my life in general are fine. I'm currently working 17 hours a week and that should be bumping up to 20 in three weeks when I start teaching a new writing course to college and university students at my home branch school on Friday nights. Of those 17 hours, things currently break down something like this:

3 hours a week teaching conversation at NuSkin, which is the local version of Mary Kay Cosmetics or AVON.

5 hours a week teaching business writing at American Pacific Lines shipping company.

2 hours a week teaching business English at the Tomen Corporation, the Taiwanese branch office of a Japanese chemical manufacturing company.

5 hours a week teaching conversation and writing at the Green Seasons Biotechnical Company, a chemical and food testing company. (One of the most advanced in Taiwan.)

2 hours a week teaching conversation at Welltech, which is a furniture and home furnishings supplier and dristributor. (Yes, they even sell Garden Elves!)

This takes up my lunchtimes and evenings from Monday to Friday, with Welltech taking up my Saturday mornings. The rest of the time I sleep, travel, eat, watch videos I download from the internet and recently spend huge amounts of time reading. Actually, I have found that I read far more here than I do in Canada, and about quite a variety of subjects. Maybe it's the isolation factor (although I am making more local friends recently with other foreign English teachers) but I find I crave knowledge when I'm living in foreign countries. Yesterday alone I found myself researching the history of Martial Arts, but not Asian, European. Europe actually had quite the Martial Arts tradition is seems (despite how Hollywood shows clumbsy guys with swords) that pretty much disappeared once the gun became a practical weapon of war. Now we've only got sport forms of Fencing, but once upon a time there was quite a variety of schools of personal combat and technique for armed and unarmed combat. Facinating stuff. As a side effect I'm going to start reading more about rennaisance Italy and Spain, and even found the most fascinating article on Scottish Martial Arts Schools....

Anyways. I better go, the people behind the counter here are giving me dirty looks for hogging the computer. I have papers to mark and dinner to eat. My best to all of you, and I will update when I update!

Later!
Rob