Sharon, our ESP office manager and perhaps the nicest boss anyone could ask for. (And I'm not just saying that because she might read this....^_-)
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
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
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
This is the foyer of the Neihu District branch of the KoJen English Cram School chain that I was doing some substitute classes in. The man in the blue shirt is Chris, the head foreign teacher of this branch from England and a really honestly good human being. He's soft spoken, but very determined in what he does, and just radiates goodwill towards those around him. It really reflects in the office culture of the branch, which is very laid back and relaxed and almost "West Coast" in it's feeling and style. Not that they're slackers, everything gets done properly and carefully, but it's not a high pressure environment at all. I have to say I really enjoy working at this school, and still teach a writing class there on weekends.
Monday, October 31, 2005
The NeiHu Kojen Branch, in order to encourage a spirited atmosphere, has a short party and prize draws on the nights when all the adult classes for the late summer/fall session reach their conclusion. Each teacher takes time out from their busy schedule to draw a name or two, and of course Rob got into the spirit of things! (Not managing, however, to drawn any names from his own class...)
So, here's the lucky five students who came to the last class ane were lucky enough to have their picture taken with Rob. They are (from left to right) Scott (an engineer), James (med student), Rob (handsome teacher), Janet (University student and future resident of Germany), Betty (office worker), and Ruby (future Lawyer).
So, about 6 weeks from the posting of this picture, my class at Well-Tech, a furniture import-export company, ended. It was one of my very first classes, teaching 7 giggly and perpetually late office ladies every Saturday morning. Well, six months later we were down to three students, the others having been fired, and so the class came to an end. Although I didn't like getting up and journeying an hour on Saturday morning to get there, I did enjoy chatting with the girls and will miss them. For our last class Joan (pronounced Joanne, pictured here) and Ivy (next pic) took me on my first motocycle ride to a riverside resort area called Bi-Tan in Southern Taipei.
Bi-Tan was pretty much dead thanks to a storm that had just rolled by, but like troopers the girls still showed me around the area and we walked along the closed boardwalk. Behind Ivy here you can see a tea house which looks like it would have a very beautiful view of the boardwalk behind the camera. (Sorry, it wasn't my camera so no shots of the boardwalk side.)
Among other places, Ivy and Joan were kind enough to take me into the cluster of buildings you can see over my shoulder. There they showed me a temple with a gold monk, literally. It seems this man was so revered that when he died they mummified him, and then covered him in gold to literally turn him into a statue of himself! Taiwan is always full of surprises!
Monday, August 29, 2005
Update!
Well, there have been a few changes since I last updated my Blog.
In the last few weeks, my classes at Green Seasons Biotech, American Pacific Lines Shipping and NuSkin Cosmetics all finished. (You can see the NuSkin pictures below.) As a result of that, my number of hours per week of teaching dropped like a rock, especially considering that there doesn't seem to be a lot of companies calling us at the moment. (Just a lull I guess...)
So, I accepted teaching jobs at local KoJen cram schools to fill the income gap. As long as they're adults and (at least) teens, I don't care too much, I just didn't want to teach young children again.
As a result of this, I acquired 3 new classes, one of which will start this upcoming Saturday.
The first class I took on is at a branch school nearer to my home than most. Located at the NeiHu Branch of KoJen, it's a conversation class for advanced teens and adults who want to improve their already considerable skill with English. Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday nights, I teach for 3 hours at a time. Of course, I'm actually at the school for 5 1/2 hours at a time because I show up 1 1/2 hours early for each session so the head teacher Ainsley can prep me and tell me the lesson plan. He's a very skilled teacher, and has the whole thing down to a science, so I don't mind teaching from his lesson plans as I'm learning new techniques for working with more advanced conversation students.
The NeiHu branch (NeiHu is the name of the suburb of Taipei where I happen to live, but my home office is in another district) of KoJen is actually a pretty darn nice place. The building is new, the people are friendly and good natured (they gave me quite the welcome when I first showed up, even though I'm only a part-timer there) and miracle of miracles, I'm not the only Londoner there!
The first thing that happened when I told people I was from London (Canada) was they told me their resident wiseguy Tim was also from London. Quite surprised and happy, I wandered over to introduce myself and told me how happy I was to meet another Londoner here. He gave me a bemused smile and told me that in fact in his experience, there are as many Londoners running around Taipei as there are people from Toronto. I guess since I don't spend much time in the foreign teacher circles I was unaware that London ships out quite a few of it's educated youth to become ESL teachers here in Taiwan. He's still the only one I've met, but now I won't be so surprised if I run into more. (I wonder if I'll meet anyone I know? Will wonders never cease?)
My other new class is at my home branch school in Gong-Guan district, and it's a writing class for intermediate level students who want to improve their writing skills. For that class I'm coached by Nigel, my school's head teacher, although he's much less hands-on than Ainsely, giving me the handouts and the written plan with just a quick "here's what you should do" rather than Ainsely's highly detailed plans. Of course, the writing class is also much less complicated, since the focus is giving them sentence patterns based on certain ideas and having them run through them. They spend most of the class sitting at the desks writing, although I like to slip in as much conversation activities as I can to balance things out. (Often ones borrowed from my NeiHu classes.)
Of note about that class are two young women, although not in the way you might expect. Both of them are quite unique, one (Anny)is extremely short (about 130cm would be my guess) and the other (Ivanna) extremely tall 187cm (I'm 183, for comparison). Both of them are really nice women, but Anny is quieter than a churchmouse (and cute as one too, being 16) and Ivanna is indeed larger than life. Funny how their heights reflect their personalities in a lot of ways. I actually took Ivanna aside and asked her how she felt being so tall in Taiwan, where most people are about 155cm tall. She said when she was growing up (she's in her 20's) it used to bother her a lot, but after she spent a year studying English at a University in the United States, she came to realize it wasn't so bad to be tall. Attagirl! I still feel a little bad for her, though, as the other students gawk at her a bit, but hopefully they will stop soon.
Rob
In the last few weeks, my classes at Green Seasons Biotech, American Pacific Lines Shipping and NuSkin Cosmetics all finished. (You can see the NuSkin pictures below.) As a result of that, my number of hours per week of teaching dropped like a rock, especially considering that there doesn't seem to be a lot of companies calling us at the moment. (Just a lull I guess...)
So, I accepted teaching jobs at local KoJen cram schools to fill the income gap. As long as they're adults and (at least) teens, I don't care too much, I just didn't want to teach young children again.
As a result of this, I acquired 3 new classes, one of which will start this upcoming Saturday.
The first class I took on is at a branch school nearer to my home than most. Located at the NeiHu Branch of KoJen, it's a conversation class for advanced teens and adults who want to improve their already considerable skill with English. Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday nights, I teach for 3 hours at a time. Of course, I'm actually at the school for 5 1/2 hours at a time because I show up 1 1/2 hours early for each session so the head teacher Ainsley can prep me and tell me the lesson plan. He's a very skilled teacher, and has the whole thing down to a science, so I don't mind teaching from his lesson plans as I'm learning new techniques for working with more advanced conversation students.
The NeiHu branch (NeiHu is the name of the suburb of Taipei where I happen to live, but my home office is in another district) of KoJen is actually a pretty darn nice place. The building is new, the people are friendly and good natured (they gave me quite the welcome when I first showed up, even though I'm only a part-timer there) and miracle of miracles, I'm not the only Londoner there!
The first thing that happened when I told people I was from London (Canada) was they told me their resident wiseguy Tim was also from London. Quite surprised and happy, I wandered over to introduce myself and told me how happy I was to meet another Londoner here. He gave me a bemused smile and told me that in fact in his experience, there are as many Londoners running around Taipei as there are people from Toronto. I guess since I don't spend much time in the foreign teacher circles I was unaware that London ships out quite a few of it's educated youth to become ESL teachers here in Taiwan. He's still the only one I've met, but now I won't be so surprised if I run into more. (I wonder if I'll meet anyone I know? Will wonders never cease?)
My other new class is at my home branch school in Gong-Guan district, and it's a writing class for intermediate level students who want to improve their writing skills. For that class I'm coached by Nigel, my school's head teacher, although he's much less hands-on than Ainsely, giving me the handouts and the written plan with just a quick "here's what you should do" rather than Ainsely's highly detailed plans. Of course, the writing class is also much less complicated, since the focus is giving them sentence patterns based on certain ideas and having them run through them. They spend most of the class sitting at the desks writing, although I like to slip in as much conversation activities as I can to balance things out. (Often ones borrowed from my NeiHu classes.)
Of note about that class are two young women, although not in the way you might expect. Both of them are quite unique, one (Anny)is extremely short (about 130cm would be my guess) and the other (Ivanna) extremely tall 187cm (I'm 183, for comparison). Both of them are really nice women, but Anny is quieter than a churchmouse (and cute as one too, being 16) and Ivanna is indeed larger than life. Funny how their heights reflect their personalities in a lot of ways. I actually took Ivanna aside and asked her how she felt being so tall in Taiwan, where most people are about 155cm tall. She said when she was growing up (she's in her 20's) it used to bother her a lot, but after she spent a year studying English at a University in the United States, she came to realize it wasn't so bad to be tall. Attagirl! I still feel a little bad for her, though, as the other students gawk at her a bit, but hopefully they will stop soon.
Rob
Birthday Time
Today was Connie's Mother's Birthday, so yesterday she, Connie, Connie's Cousin, His Wife, his son Han-Han and I all went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant called imaginatively enough: "Pasta". The food wasn't bad, but the service was very slow for everyone except me, I guess the girls there liked me (or maybe that's why the chef kept winking at me from the kitchen window...Kidding!) because I was the only one who got timely food.
After the exhaustive process of feeding ourselves and Han-Han, we went back to Connie's cousin's beautiful appartment and had a small party with fruit and honeydew melon (which is apparently quite expensive here for whatever reason). We watched the second half of Legally Blonde II (it was on TV, on their giant expensive liquid crystal TV...) and chatted, then her cousin drove us home for the night. A fun relaxing time.
Here's a few pictures!
Rob
After the exhaustive process of feeding ourselves and Han-Han, we went back to Connie's cousin's beautiful appartment and had a small party with fruit and honeydew melon (which is apparently quite expensive here for whatever reason). We watched the second half of Legally Blonde II (it was on TV, on their giant expensive liquid crystal TV...) and chatted, then her cousin drove us home for the night. A fun relaxing time.
Here's a few pictures!
Rob
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Multilingual Week Continues...
So, after my lunchtime class, I headed down to the nearby bus stop to catch a bus to meet Connie.
As I walked up to the bus stop I noticed there was a Taiwanese woman there checking out the bus routes, 40 something but with pigtails that made her look like someone trying to be younger than she was. I didn't think much of it and flopped down on the bench to await my bus.
Several times the woman wandered past me, occasionally offering glances at me, but since locals do that sometimes (must be my stylish clothes) I didn't pay much attention to her.
Then suddenly she comes back and walks up to me.
"Can y'help me?" She says with a strong American accent that I couldn't quite place.
It turned out she'd been in Taiwan two days to visit her cousin and managed to get lost, speaking on the bare minimum of Mandarin. She was from New York (which explained the accent) and needed to find her way back to the subway lines.
Not a problem. I, having now been here 6 months, quickly gave her the instructions she needed to get back to the subway line and I also told her to have her cousin give her a card with his home address written on it in Chinese so that she could just show it to a cab driver and get whisked home if the need arrived. (Travel advice that's saved me many the time.) After putting her on a bus headed in the right direction I went back to waiting for my own bus and musing that you really do never know what will happen next in Taipei...
As I walked up to the bus stop I noticed there was a Taiwanese woman there checking out the bus routes, 40 something but with pigtails that made her look like someone trying to be younger than she was. I didn't think much of it and flopped down on the bench to await my bus.
Several times the woman wandered past me, occasionally offering glances at me, but since locals do that sometimes (must be my stylish clothes) I didn't pay much attention to her.
Then suddenly she comes back and walks up to me.
"Can y'help me?" She says with a strong American accent that I couldn't quite place.
It turned out she'd been in Taiwan two days to visit her cousin and managed to get lost, speaking on the bare minimum of Mandarin. She was from New York (which explained the accent) and needed to find her way back to the subway lines.
Not a problem. I, having now been here 6 months, quickly gave her the instructions she needed to get back to the subway line and I also told her to have her cousin give her a card with his home address written on it in Chinese so that she could just show it to a cab driver and get whisked home if the need arrived. (Travel advice that's saved me many the time.) After putting her on a bus headed in the right direction I went back to waiting for my own bus and musing that you really do never know what will happen next in Taipei...
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Livin in a multilingual world...
So, the stop before my MRT stop on Tuesday nights is next to a mildly famous Night Market here in Taipei and it's normal for my train to gain more than few people from that stop as people head to Taipei main station. But, as I sat reading my copy of Midshipman Hornblower tonight on the train and we hit that stop I was broken from my reading by an abnormally large group of people getting onto my car.
"Whoa, must be party night." I thought myself and went back to my reading as the doors closed and we continued on our way.
But, no sooner had we started to move than I realized that I wasn't hearing Chinese being spoken around me, but French! Looking up in surprise, I peered through the standing crowd looking for the usual foreigners, only to find there weren't any, the French was coming from the Chinese-looking people around me.
I couldn't help it, I smiled, and then quietly laughed a bit as I returned to my book, deciding that probably I was surrounded by a bunch of University students practicing their French on their way home. But, no sooner had I looked down than I became aware of a shadow over me, and looked up to find myself face to face with a twentysomething Chinese girl leaning in to look down at the book I was reading to check the language.
"Anglais," I told her, smiling. Oddly enough, Hornblower is actually filled with French, so it's a language that I have been exposed to recently, just not hearing or speaking it.
"Where are you from?" She asked me in French, but I knew what she said without thinking.
"Je suis Canadian," I replied, remembering from High School to pronounce the "d" as a "j".
Of course, this got me a long stream of French in response that poor Rob had no hope of understanding. So much for being continental!
"Je n'parle pas francais." I said apologetically, using my last bit of French.
"But, you're speaking it now!" They answered me in French.
"I only speak a little bit!" I said, dropping to English.
"Oh," said the girl, also switching to English. "Are you from Quebec?"
"No, Ontario."
That got me puzzled looks.
"Next to Quebec," I added to still puzzled looks. (Maybe the maps in France just show Canada as being 90% Quebec or something...)
To make a long story short, they asked me if I was a traveller, and I told them I'm a resident, and then asked them where they came from. It turns out I was quite wrong, I was in the middle of a group of international students from France! (And Tunesia.) The girl I was speaking to turned out to be from Paris, and it seems they were foreign born Chinese here to learn their ancestral tongue.
Unfortunately the next stop was my own, so I had to wish them goodbye and good luck.
Then, after I got home I wandered down the hall to the laundry room to check if I could do my laundry, and as I started to return I suddenly heard the sound of spoken English echoing down the corridor. Considering there are 4 Taiwanese on my floor and none of them has really shown any English ability, I was quite surprised. Following the sound I found myself in front of the door of a young woman I suspected might be a flight attendant.
But, this again was a bit of a shock. You see when people memorize vocabulary, they use a pattern where they say the foreign word first, and then say the word in their own language. As an ESL teacher and language student, I know this pattern very well. Well, the shock came from the fact that she was reciting the foreign word first, and then following it with nearly unaccented English! On top of that, the foreign words were Japanese, not Mandarin! She was memorizing Japanese and translating it to English as her known language!
Stop the culture shock train, I want to get off!
Rob
"Whoa, must be party night." I thought myself and went back to my reading as the doors closed and we continued on our way.
But, no sooner had we started to move than I realized that I wasn't hearing Chinese being spoken around me, but French! Looking up in surprise, I peered through the standing crowd looking for the usual foreigners, only to find there weren't any, the French was coming from the Chinese-looking people around me.
I couldn't help it, I smiled, and then quietly laughed a bit as I returned to my book, deciding that probably I was surrounded by a bunch of University students practicing their French on their way home. But, no sooner had I looked down than I became aware of a shadow over me, and looked up to find myself face to face with a twentysomething Chinese girl leaning in to look down at the book I was reading to check the language.
"Anglais," I told her, smiling. Oddly enough, Hornblower is actually filled with French, so it's a language that I have been exposed to recently, just not hearing or speaking it.
"Where are you from?" She asked me in French, but I knew what she said without thinking.
"Je suis Canadian," I replied, remembering from High School to pronounce the "d" as a "j".
Of course, this got me a long stream of French in response that poor Rob had no hope of understanding. So much for being continental!
"Je n'parle pas francais." I said apologetically, using my last bit of French.
"But, you're speaking it now!" They answered me in French.
"I only speak a little bit!" I said, dropping to English.
"Oh," said the girl, also switching to English. "Are you from Quebec?"
"No, Ontario."
That got me puzzled looks.
"Next to Quebec," I added to still puzzled looks. (Maybe the maps in France just show Canada as being 90% Quebec or something...)
To make a long story short, they asked me if I was a traveller, and I told them I'm a resident, and then asked them where they came from. It turns out I was quite wrong, I was in the middle of a group of international students from France! (And Tunesia.) The girl I was speaking to turned out to be from Paris, and it seems they were foreign born Chinese here to learn their ancestral tongue.
Unfortunately the next stop was my own, so I had to wish them goodbye and good luck.
Then, after I got home I wandered down the hall to the laundry room to check if I could do my laundry, and as I started to return I suddenly heard the sound of spoken English echoing down the corridor. Considering there are 4 Taiwanese on my floor and none of them has really shown any English ability, I was quite surprised. Following the sound I found myself in front of the door of a young woman I suspected might be a flight attendant.
But, this again was a bit of a shock. You see when people memorize vocabulary, they use a pattern where they say the foreign word first, and then say the word in their own language. As an ESL teacher and language student, I know this pattern very well. Well, the shock came from the fact that she was reciting the foreign word first, and then following it with nearly unaccented English! On top of that, the foreign words were Japanese, not Mandarin! She was memorizing Japanese and translating it to English as her known language!
Stop the culture shock train, I want to get off!
Rob
Sunday, July 03, 2005
War of the Worlds Review
So,
As you can guess from the subject, I saw Spielburg's latest venture with media darling and scientologist Tom Cruise, so here's my quickie review:
The special effects are amazing, I have never truely seen giant robots look that realistic and lifelike on the big screen. If the rumoured Evangelion movie looks like that (and I can't shake the feeling that EVA did influence the way the tripods are presented, although I can't say exactly why...) then I am going to be one happy camper. Visually, the movie is top knotch, if a little cold and distant...actually, a lot cold and distant.
Which brings me to the bad stuff!
First off, Chad was soooo right! Every selfless act in the movie is committed by a black guy, and every selfish and horrible act is committed by a white guy while other ethncities stand around and watch. The most stunning example of this comes near the end when a black soldier goes out of his way to help Cruise's character and all I could think of was...So why didn't you help the guy who the aliens mulched BEFORE Cruise? Or the guy before that? What made you suddenly become a hero when it became Cruise's turn? (One could argue that Cruise had a daughter with him, but I'm not sure that's a plus...as I'll comment on below...)
Second, Cruise and his two kids are the most unlikable trio I have seen in movies in a long long time, not only is their "acting" boring, bad and lifeless, but the characters are just honestly not interesting or likeable in any way. Cruise's character is a selfish, willful and quite stupid man who is perfectly willing to sacrfice anything and anyone to make sure he and his kids survive. (You know the scene in the previews where Cruise is waving his hands and yelling to army troops "There's nobody alive in that direction!" As though he's trying to save them? When you see the full version you'll see he's yelling that to his son who wants to join the troops and is slightly off camera. Screw the troops, he doesn't care that they're going off to their deaths!) The son is just boring and sulks through the whole movie in his attempt to "get back at his father for abandoning him" (divorce) as though they're off on a road trip and that's important right now! And the daughter...well...let me tell you Dakota Fanning can scream, I know this because even Connie (who is a big Dakota fan) was wishing little Dakota would just shut up 2/3rds of the way through this movie. (I was wishing that the aliens would vape her long before that.) She literally spends the whole movie doing nothing but screaming or staring at the camera with her big blue eyes...I hope they didn't pay her to act, cause she wasn't doing it!
Lastly, despite the need to stick with the original ending of the story (all here should know what I'm talking about, and I won't spoil it if you don't), they STILL have to change it so that both Cruise and American Soldiers (America referenced in the movie as "the greatest power mankind has ever known") kick some alien butt before they go down. (Well, the soldiers just beat on dead aliens...way to go guys!) Unlike the George Pal 1950's version, there is no sense of building to a climax or dramatic menace, just the aliens up and...stop when they run out of special effects money or something...I don't know...I hear I'm not the only one unimpressed by the ending.
So, to sum up, looks great, but is basically politicaly correct flag waving nonsense with really bad characters and mediocre writing. The George Pal 1950's version still kicks it's butt where it counts, despite the 50's acting and changes they made to the story.
Rob
As you can guess from the subject, I saw Spielburg's latest venture with media darling and scientologist Tom Cruise, so here's my quickie review:
The special effects are amazing, I have never truely seen giant robots look that realistic and lifelike on the big screen. If the rumoured Evangelion movie looks like that (and I can't shake the feeling that EVA did influence the way the tripods are presented, although I can't say exactly why...) then I am going to be one happy camper. Visually, the movie is top knotch, if a little cold and distant...actually, a lot cold and distant.
Which brings me to the bad stuff!
First off, Chad was soooo right! Every selfless act in the movie is committed by a black guy, and every selfish and horrible act is committed by a white guy while other ethncities stand around and watch. The most stunning example of this comes near the end when a black soldier goes out of his way to help Cruise's character and all I could think of was...So why didn't you help the guy who the aliens mulched BEFORE Cruise? Or the guy before that? What made you suddenly become a hero when it became Cruise's turn? (One could argue that Cruise had a daughter with him, but I'm not sure that's a plus...as I'll comment on below...)
Second, Cruise and his two kids are the most unlikable trio I have seen in movies in a long long time, not only is their "acting" boring, bad and lifeless, but the characters are just honestly not interesting or likeable in any way. Cruise's character is a selfish, willful and quite stupid man who is perfectly willing to sacrfice anything and anyone to make sure he and his kids survive. (You know the scene in the previews where Cruise is waving his hands and yelling to army troops "There's nobody alive in that direction!" As though he's trying to save them? When you see the full version you'll see he's yelling that to his son who wants to join the troops and is slightly off camera. Screw the troops, he doesn't care that they're going off to their deaths!) The son is just boring and sulks through the whole movie in his attempt to "get back at his father for abandoning him" (divorce) as though they're off on a road trip and that's important right now! And the daughter...well...let me tell you Dakota Fanning can scream, I know this because even Connie (who is a big Dakota fan) was wishing little Dakota would just shut up 2/3rds of the way through this movie. (I was wishing that the aliens would vape her long before that.) She literally spends the whole movie doing nothing but screaming or staring at the camera with her big blue eyes...I hope they didn't pay her to act, cause she wasn't doing it!
Lastly, despite the need to stick with the original ending of the story (all here should know what I'm talking about, and I won't spoil it if you don't), they STILL have to change it so that both Cruise and American Soldiers (America referenced in the movie as "the greatest power mankind has ever known") kick some alien butt before they go down. (Well, the soldiers just beat on dead aliens...way to go guys!) Unlike the George Pal 1950's version, there is no sense of building to a climax or dramatic menace, just the aliens up and...stop when they run out of special effects money or something...I don't know...I hear I'm not the only one unimpressed by the ending.
So, to sum up, looks great, but is basically politicaly correct flag waving nonsense with really bad characters and mediocre writing. The George Pal 1950's version still kicks it's butt where it counts, despite the 50's acting and changes they made to the story.
Rob
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Reading Habits
It's funny, really. When I spend time in Canada, my reading habits tend to be focused almost exclusively on Asia, when I read books at all. But, when I'm in Asia, I read voraciously, and a large part of what I read is related to North America and Europe! I think it has something to do with connecting with the society I no longer feel a part of, alone here, I am reaching for a piece of home and I get it through the written word.
Actually, I consider it one of the happy side effects of living here, I do enjoy reading and regret that I don't do more of it when I am at home in Canada. I read mostly non-fiction, but I do try to catch up on books I have been curious about for a long time or know are classics but have never touched. Especially in my current job, I have to travel about the city and wait a lot, and this affords me a lot of extra time with nothing special to do. For a while I was reading the newspaper, the Taipei Times is an excellent English language newspaper (one of 3 English language papers in Taiwan), but I got bored of always doing that so I started to make trips to the bookstore instead. I find it takes me a week or so to polish off a novel, maybe less if I get so into it I spend all my free time reading it. (Good books suck you in, what can I say?)
Recently I've had an interest in the Napoleonic era of Europe (don't ask why, I have no clue) so when I went into the Page One (the biggest bookstore in Taipei) and found a copy of Horatio Hornblower sitting on the shelf I knew it was what I wanted to read. Set in the Napoleonic Era, Hornblower is the story of how a young seaman goes from Midshipman to Admiral in the British Navy. C.S. Forrester wrote 11 Hornblower novels, and apparently they're considered major classics of British fiction. I remember reading once that Gene Roddenbery based some of the character of Captain Kirk off Horatio Hornblower, which I guess I will understand more when I reach the point Horatio is a Captain. Right now, he's still a Midshipman, and I have to say the first book is a really good read that I can say I recommend wholeheartedly.
One interesting comment I read today was:
"Hornblower was of the type that would continue to observe and to learn on his deathbed."
When I read this, I thought to myself, that's not just Hornblower, that's me! It's interesting how a good book can actually teach you about yourself. Time abroad isn't just a time of learning about the outer world, but the inner one as well.
Actually, I consider it one of the happy side effects of living here, I do enjoy reading and regret that I don't do more of it when I am at home in Canada. I read mostly non-fiction, but I do try to catch up on books I have been curious about for a long time or know are classics but have never touched. Especially in my current job, I have to travel about the city and wait a lot, and this affords me a lot of extra time with nothing special to do. For a while I was reading the newspaper, the Taipei Times is an excellent English language newspaper (one of 3 English language papers in Taiwan), but I got bored of always doing that so I started to make trips to the bookstore instead. I find it takes me a week or so to polish off a novel, maybe less if I get so into it I spend all my free time reading it. (Good books suck you in, what can I say?)
Recently I've had an interest in the Napoleonic era of Europe (don't ask why, I have no clue) so when I went into the Page One (the biggest bookstore in Taipei) and found a copy of Horatio Hornblower sitting on the shelf I knew it was what I wanted to read. Set in the Napoleonic Era, Hornblower is the story of how a young seaman goes from Midshipman to Admiral in the British Navy. C.S. Forrester wrote 11 Hornblower novels, and apparently they're considered major classics of British fiction. I remember reading once that Gene Roddenbery based some of the character of Captain Kirk off Horatio Hornblower, which I guess I will understand more when I reach the point Horatio is a Captain. Right now, he's still a Midshipman, and I have to say the first book is a really good read that I can say I recommend wholeheartedly.
One interesting comment I read today was:
"Hornblower was of the type that would continue to observe and to learn on his deathbed."
When I read this, I thought to myself, that's not just Hornblower, that's me! It's interesting how a good book can actually teach you about yourself. Time abroad isn't just a time of learning about the outer world, but the inner one as well.
The Mystery of the Well Dressed Woman...
Well, continuing my research into where all those well dressed women that populate the streets of Taipei in the absence of men come from, I consulted with a new all female class that I just started to teach. I decided that since they seem to be the people I'm talking about, I should just ask them. To a degree, they were as perplexed as I was as I laid out the situation, and one of them stepped up to bat to point out to her classmates that I was indeed right, there was a disproportionate number of women in the streets of downtown Taipei during the working hours. But, as a group they came up with an answer, which was that what I'm seeing is the result of Taipei being such a huge city. With millions of people living in Taipei and her suburbs, and with the Asian female focus on fashion, what I am seeing they decided was an influx of women shoppers from the suburbs. There aren't malls in Taipei like there are in Canada, people here come downtown to shop in fashionable stores, and so while their significant others and family members worked they are here making their shopping trips. Because of the sheer number of people living around Taipei, it only takes a very small part of the female population making the trip to fill the streets on a daily basis.
Your average woman is indeed working or involved with her family like any other place, we concluded, but others are enjoying their extra time shopping. The men, it seems, just have no reason to leave their air conditioned homes and offices to come downtown.
Rob
Your average woman is indeed working or involved with her family like any other place, we concluded, but others are enjoying their extra time shopping. The men, it seems, just have no reason to leave their air conditioned homes and offices to come downtown.
Rob
Far from home...
It's interesting how things affect you when you're living far away from home in a foreign land, your habits change, your point of view changes, and some things that aren't so important when you're at home suddenly become very meaningful. Probably this is part of adapting to life in an alien environment, but it doesn't help when you wake up to things like a news article about a shooting in your hometown. Of course what happened in London was shocking, but to me it was moreso by the very fact it was in London, and I am far away, so everything that happens there seems somehow magnified from my perspective.
Actually, that shooting may be connected to me in more ways than just it happening in London, because I noted that the people involved were all immigrants. I've noticed that when crimes like this happen it often seems to be immigrants that are involved, whether in Canada, the US or England. I don't think this is because there is anything wrong with the immigrants, per se (although obviously something was wrong with this man), but I do have to wonder if the stress of living in a foreign country might not have something to do with events like this. People who never leave their home countries will never understand the subtle stress and pressure that you are under all the time when you live abroad. You are not at home, you are adrift in an environment you can neither control nor understand (interestingly enough, one article about this case I read notes that the parents only barely spoke English after 15 years in Canada) and you cling to whatever you can find.
If I have to guess, in this horrible case I would suspect the mother had a boyfriend (with another lonely dispossessed soul) while her husband trucker was away, and decided to break it off with him for the sake of her family. The boyfriend lost it, and this is the result. Given that the mother was very likely stuck raising the kids alone for long periods of time in a foreign environment where the loneliness can be crushing, I can sympathize with her. She probably started the relationship out of desperate loneliness with her husband away all the time and no other Polish speaking adults around her, and things got out of control.
A sad story that repeats again and again...One which could probably be cured if there was more community support and outreach for immigrants trying to struggle with a new life in a new land. Sure, they chose that life, but oftentimes they got more than they bargained for.
Rob
Actually, that shooting may be connected to me in more ways than just it happening in London, because I noted that the people involved were all immigrants. I've noticed that when crimes like this happen it often seems to be immigrants that are involved, whether in Canada, the US or England. I don't think this is because there is anything wrong with the immigrants, per se (although obviously something was wrong with this man), but I do have to wonder if the stress of living in a foreign country might not have something to do with events like this. People who never leave their home countries will never understand the subtle stress and pressure that you are under all the time when you live abroad. You are not at home, you are adrift in an environment you can neither control nor understand (interestingly enough, one article about this case I read notes that the parents only barely spoke English after 15 years in Canada) and you cling to whatever you can find.
If I have to guess, in this horrible case I would suspect the mother had a boyfriend (with another lonely dispossessed soul) while her husband trucker was away, and decided to break it off with him for the sake of her family. The boyfriend lost it, and this is the result. Given that the mother was very likely stuck raising the kids alone for long periods of time in a foreign environment where the loneliness can be crushing, I can sympathize with her. She probably started the relationship out of desperate loneliness with her husband away all the time and no other Polish speaking adults around her, and things got out of control.
A sad story that repeats again and again...One which could probably be cured if there was more community support and outreach for immigrants trying to struggle with a new life in a new land. Sure, they chose that life, but oftentimes they got more than they bargained for.
Rob
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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
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
A question of gender...
When I first got here, I noticed something. As I walked out on the streets of Taipei during the day going from company to company, it seemed that I was always surrounded by women. Women on the street, women on the bus, women in the cafes...and I started to wonder to myself the obvious question: Where are all the men?
Not that I was complaining of course, women here in Taipei like any of the major cities of the world are well groomed, well dressed, and generally of above average levels of appearance. Walking in downtown Taipei at certain times is a little like walking in a living fashion show, and as a heterosexual male I can hardly complain about being surrounded by beautiful and well dressed women!
But, back to the question at hand...Where were all the men?
So, I started to ask around among my students and the people I knew here. And, perhaps not surprisingly the answer is got was "working". The men were in the office buildings which surround me working away while the women...what? Shopped?
At first, I was pretty amused by this, the women shop and the men work, how classically old fashioned! Of course, many women work too (most of my corporate students are in fact female) and then there's those who are mothers and homemakers (not my students, of course, but various other women around me) who flit in and out from their homes during the day.
But, as I took a bus through the high-fashion district today on my way to the McCafe I currently sit writing it, I started to rethink things. Was there really anything to be amused about? These legions of women (many of them in their 20's and 30's) who seem to spend all their time shopping and chatting...who was paying for this coffee? Who was paying for these clothes? Neither of those things are cheap here in Taipei, and someone has to be paying the bills. My students (male and female) are working themselves to the bone doing overtime, so it's obviously not them as they're busy working all day.
So, where is this money coming from?
Well, obviously some of them are still living at home, so their parents supply the cash. And, part-time work will explain some of them as well, with them wandering the streets in the afternoons as they work in the evenings or on weekends. But, as has been pointed out to me recently, wages here are pitiful, and raises are few and far in between. Lord knows the credit cards here in Taipei spend a lot of time being maxed, but unlike our credit cards, theirs must be paid back at faster rates or they will accure high levels of interest.
So, I came back to the answer to question I had been asking.
"Where are all the men? Working hard so the women can buy clothes, makeup and drink coffee all day."
Suddenly it doesn't seem so funny anymore. Is this a symbiotic relationship? (As I first surmised.) Or is this a parasitic relationship? I honestly don't know the answer to this question. Maybe this is my North American "men and women are equal" thinking kicking in, the idea that both partners should be equal in earning their keep. Here in Asia, the thinking seems to have been "a woman's job is being a wife, mother, and beauty for her husband" and that thinking it still part of their culture. It's changing, but when I look out on the streets of Taipei I have to wonder sometimes, how much has it really changed?
I have to say that growing up in a very socially confused time in North American culture I used to marvel at a culture where men and women had clear social roles like Japan, Korea or Taiwan. Men and women are different animals, we naturally are better at certain things, and the idea of us being "the same" to me is a modern politically correct fallicy. We're equal, but we're not the same by any means. Biologically, psychologically...we're different from each other and that's something we need to accept. I always thought "old world" culture was more realistic about this, and I saw the gender differences of the sexes here as representing that.
But now...Now I begin to wonder. Maybe the more egalitarian North American ways really are more fair. Here women seem to be exploiting men (not as a whole, of course, but it does seem rather common) with the men following the traditional roles and the women using the free time modern life gives them to...consume? play?
Is this fair to say? I'm not sure. I'm really just thinking aloud at the moment. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture. Maybe I'm seeing women enjoying their freedom during the time before they marry and get trapped at home because there's not enough daycare to go around. But, then again, once they hit school age here, children pretty much spend 24-7 studying at public schools and afterschool tutoring schools. Also, Taiwan apparently has one of the lowest birthrates in the world right now, so apparently these women aren't getting pregnant and having kids after all.
Husbands, boyfriends and families are paying for their lifestyles...But what are all these women really contributing back to their familes and society? Or are they just excess people enjoying life in an affluent society? That's the new question I'm trying to find the answer for...
Rob
Not that I was complaining of course, women here in Taipei like any of the major cities of the world are well groomed, well dressed, and generally of above average levels of appearance. Walking in downtown Taipei at certain times is a little like walking in a living fashion show, and as a heterosexual male I can hardly complain about being surrounded by beautiful and well dressed women!
But, back to the question at hand...Where were all the men?
So, I started to ask around among my students and the people I knew here. And, perhaps not surprisingly the answer is got was "working". The men were in the office buildings which surround me working away while the women...what? Shopped?
At first, I was pretty amused by this, the women shop and the men work, how classically old fashioned! Of course, many women work too (most of my corporate students are in fact female) and then there's those who are mothers and homemakers (not my students, of course, but various other women around me) who flit in and out from their homes during the day.
But, as I took a bus through the high-fashion district today on my way to the McCafe I currently sit writing it, I started to rethink things. Was there really anything to be amused about? These legions of women (many of them in their 20's and 30's) who seem to spend all their time shopping and chatting...who was paying for this coffee? Who was paying for these clothes? Neither of those things are cheap here in Taipei, and someone has to be paying the bills. My students (male and female) are working themselves to the bone doing overtime, so it's obviously not them as they're busy working all day.
So, where is this money coming from?
Well, obviously some of them are still living at home, so their parents supply the cash. And, part-time work will explain some of them as well, with them wandering the streets in the afternoons as they work in the evenings or on weekends. But, as has been pointed out to me recently, wages here are pitiful, and raises are few and far in between. Lord knows the credit cards here in Taipei spend a lot of time being maxed, but unlike our credit cards, theirs must be paid back at faster rates or they will accure high levels of interest.
So, I came back to the answer to question I had been asking.
"Where are all the men? Working hard so the women can buy clothes, makeup and drink coffee all day."
Suddenly it doesn't seem so funny anymore. Is this a symbiotic relationship? (As I first surmised.) Or is this a parasitic relationship? I honestly don't know the answer to this question. Maybe this is my North American "men and women are equal" thinking kicking in, the idea that both partners should be equal in earning their keep. Here in Asia, the thinking seems to have been "a woman's job is being a wife, mother, and beauty for her husband" and that thinking it still part of their culture. It's changing, but when I look out on the streets of Taipei I have to wonder sometimes, how much has it really changed?
I have to say that growing up in a very socially confused time in North American culture I used to marvel at a culture where men and women had clear social roles like Japan, Korea or Taiwan. Men and women are different animals, we naturally are better at certain things, and the idea of us being "the same" to me is a modern politically correct fallicy. We're equal, but we're not the same by any means. Biologically, psychologically...we're different from each other and that's something we need to accept. I always thought "old world" culture was more realistic about this, and I saw the gender differences of the sexes here as representing that.
But now...Now I begin to wonder. Maybe the more egalitarian North American ways really are more fair. Here women seem to be exploiting men (not as a whole, of course, but it does seem rather common) with the men following the traditional roles and the women using the free time modern life gives them to...consume? play?
Is this fair to say? I'm not sure. I'm really just thinking aloud at the moment. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture. Maybe I'm seeing women enjoying their freedom during the time before they marry and get trapped at home because there's not enough daycare to go around. But, then again, once they hit school age here, children pretty much spend 24-7 studying at public schools and afterschool tutoring schools. Also, Taiwan apparently has one of the lowest birthrates in the world right now, so apparently these women aren't getting pregnant and having kids after all.
Husbands, boyfriends and families are paying for their lifestyles...But what are all these women really contributing back to their familes and society? Or are they just excess people enjoying life in an affluent society? That's the new question I'm trying to find the answer for...
Rob
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