Happy Halloween!

Since it's been so long since I updated, reports of my demise have started to circulate among the net community that views this board. To counter these unfounded rumours I have decided to update this blog! (Feel free to cheer. ^_^)

So, last Saturday I attended a Halloween party thrown by a co-worker and his fellow foreigners room-mate which was quite the success. I apologize that I don't have any pictures from it (yet, some were taken by others and lord knows if they might filter back to me.) but I can proudly report that Rob represented Ontario well by winning his first ever bobbing for apples competition in front of 25 or so people. It was great fun, and good times were had by all!

More generally, I'm more busy now than I have been since I came to Taiwan all those 10 or so months ago. I currently teach at 10 different locations, 6 days a week, and am running all over the city like a chicken with my head cut off. Just to give you a rundown, my week currently looks like this:

Monday: Teaching a mixed level Lunch class at Edom Software company (local firm) and Night class teaching the senior executives at Abbot Taiwan, a local division of one of the world's largest medical equipment companies. Edom is very close, Abbot is on the other end of the city in an area called Yong He.

Tuesday: Lunch class at Tomen Taiwan (the Japanese branch of a Japanese chemical company I have taught at since I started at KoJen) and Evening Class is teaching another class in YongHe, at a company that makes LED components and light sensors called Edison.

Wednesday: Lunch class at Edom again, and Night Class at a local Law Firm teaching the senior partners.

Thursday: Back to Tomen at lunch and back to Edison at night.

Friday: Early afternoon class with the general manager of Geant here in Taipei, Geant is a French grocery superstore company not unlike Price Club. They're building a new megastore near my home, and so I meet him at a Starbucks nearby my home to help him practice his English. In the evenings on Friday I teach a bunch of University and High School students writing for a couple hours at the GongGuan KoJen branch, a great bunch of kids and probably my favorite class of the week.

Saturday: Saturday mornings I get picked up at my home by the general manager (who by co-incidence is my neighbour a few buildings over) of Rotary Taiwan, a medical equipment engineering company and take to their office for a morning class to teach their crew of engineers, managers and marketers English. Their English is terrible, but their spirits are good. The opposite is my afternoon writing class of teenaged students at the NeiHu KoJen branch, they don't want to be there and it ends up being me drilling them on writing in English for 3.5 hours on Saturday afternoon. While there's a few good kids in the class, I can't wait until it ends.

And Sundays are movie days with Connie, who I can only see on Sundays because of our busy schedules. Something I'm not at all happy about, I might add.

Right now the rest of the week tends to be taken up by me reading, preparing, marking and watching what little anime I can squeeze in. I'm also working my way through The Count of Monte Christo, by Alexandre Dumas. I have to say it's one of the best books I've read in my life, and I'm glad I finally took the time to read it, regardless of how big it is!

Until next time! Best all!
Rob