Getting Oriented

On Monday morning, James and I got breakfast, then he showed me the way to the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University, where I'll be spending much of my time for the next several months. James attended the program a couple of years ago, so he showed me what bus to take, the building my classes will be in, etc. I had to register and take a placement test, and James helped me find the office and waited on me to do my business. Even though the proper registration period was the week before, there were still dozens of students registering on Monday.

I think the program is going to be exciting. Waiting in line and taking the test, I was surrounded by students from all races and countries, speaking lots of languages. They don't necessarily speak English, so it should force us all to rely on Chinese. Some of the students there were really young though. Plenty are my age or older, but I peeked at several others' registration sheets and was surprised to see 1989 and 1990 birthdates. I guess I'm getting old! :-)

I saw some latino people that I recognized from the flight over. Small world, I guess. Actually, there were a lot of latino students there. Because China claims Taiwan as a province, and Taiwan claims to be an idependent nation (it is!), foreign nations must maintain diplomatic relations with either China (PRC) or Taiwan (ROC). Naturally, most go with China, as it has more economic, political and military power. In order to strengthen its claim to sovereignity, it is important for Taiwan to maintain ties with as many foreign nations as possible. So it buys them. Yeah, Taiwan gives a lot of economic relief/aid/support to a lot of tiny and/or third world countries, and in exchange, those countries recognize Taiwan instead of China. I don't necessarily think that's ideal, but with China bullying Taiwan in every way possible, the island has to do what it can to survive. So, in a way, this means a lot of students from places like Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Dominican Republic, because they get scholarships to study here in exchange for their governments' loyalties.

I go back on Friday for an orientation, and then I'll schedule my classes, which should begin on Monday.

Later that day, I rode around on a scooter with Denny, looking for rental signs and getting acquainted with the area around here. James' area is actually in a really nice location for me. I'm planning to find a place with Luke, who will arrive tomorrow. He's attending NTU, and I'm attending NTNU, but they are close to each other, James' apartment is near both. I didn't see much, but it's kind of hard to do just riding around. We had lunch, and I enlisted Denny some more to help me search on a Chinese language site for apartment rentals. I've been lucky because my friends have been very helpful. I bookmarked a lot of ads, and I plan to run them by Luke when he arrives. Then we can make some calls and check places out in person.

Yesterday I was working on my resume, browsing job and apartment ads online, and I got really sleepy in the afternoon. I laid down at 3 for a short nap, and didn't wake up until 9. So that mixed me up. I guess it'll take longer to de-lag than I thought. As a result, I was awake until 4 am. However, I did a bang-up job on my resume. I got up at 8 this morning and started slinging it out in emails to schools with jobs posted online. I've already started getting replies, but I want to hold off a while until I apply to all the jobs I'm interested in, then narrow the responses I get according to the hours, pay and location.

Last night, after I woke up, I walked downstairs and half a block to the 7-Eleven to buy a drink. If you read my blog, you do realize by now that there's a 7-Eleven within two blocks of 90% of homes here, right? Well, I was a little sleepy and dazed, and guess who wandered up?

Yeah, this little guy walked right up to the drink cooler and started nuzzling his maw against the bottom edge. I'm not sure why... Maybe he was cooling down from the heat, or maybe he was scratching his crusty eyes. It looked really weird, and then another dog joined him! I looked around, and clearly I was the only one in the store who thought it remotely weird that these dogs without collars can wander in and out of the store. I couldn't get a clear shot, but at least you can see there were in fact two of them.

Back in Taipei

Monday, August 27, 2007.

7:40 am.

I'm in Taipei, sitting in James' apartment. James is an American friend I met through Viktor last year, and he's been kind enough to offer me his extra bedroom for a few days until I find a place of my own.

Luke is due to arrive on Thursday, I believe, and he and I plan to find a place together. We are attending Chinese programs at different universities, but they are only about a 20 minute walk apart. We're hoping to find something in walking range of both places. It turns out that James' neighborhood would be an okay choice, but it's a bit farther from my campus. I'll have a better idea about all this after I hit the streets and walk around a little today and tomorrow.

James attended the same program I'm enrolled in, the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University, so he's going to show me the way over there this morning and help me register for classes.

Getting here was long and exhausting, but without incident. I stayed up nearly all night Thursday night, packing at the last minute for my Friday morning flight and sleeping only one hour. Naturally, this made it a struggle to stay awake later in the day, but I had no real problems. Mom and I left the house at about 4:30am, I checked in for my 8:10 flight about two hours early, and as there was time, the attendant switched me to an earlier flight. Ultimately, this just meant a longer wait at the L.A. airport for my final flight to Taipei. I flew on American Airlines from Indianapolis to Dallas and then on to L.A. I'm not a fan of American Airlines, as they (over)charge for everything-- headphones, snacks, meals, drinks. I flew on China Airlines from L.A. to Taipei. It was my first time on that airline, and it was pretty good. The meals and service were good and they have a great entertainment setup, much like Singapore Airlines. Each passenger has a screen in the seatback in front and a controller stowed in the armrest. This is used to select from a ton of on-demand content-- movies, television, music and video games. I watched a few movies: Disturbia, Next, Hot Fuzz, and Pathfinder. Disturbia was good, if formulaic; the rest were entertaining at best. I slept a few hoursMy only complaint about the flight was the lack of leg room. The seats seemed about three or four inches closer than in other airlines. I guess the majority of passengers are Taiwanese, and well, they're generally shorter than western people, so I guess that makes sense.

I took a bus into the city and James met me at the bus stop. I slept a fairly well, and I think I'll beat the jet lag quickly by getting fresh air and sunlight walking around today.

I found out my cell phone is not working. It just gave me a message to call the service center, and when I did, they informed me that my SIM card is tied to my ARC (green card), which is expired. If I fax them my new ARC card, they'll reactivate my SIM card. That's a pretty busted system if you ask me. It's a pre-paid phone, so I don't see why they need to lock me out. It's not like there's a contract or bill I'm going to bail out on. I don't have an ARC card now, just a visitor visa, so I dunno what I'll do. The service sucked anyway, so I may just get a different phone, but I didn't want to lose my old number. We'll see.

James and I are going to get breakfast now and head over to do my registration.

Come Fly the Fiery Skies | GRE

I'm shipping out early Saturday morning. I can't believe the summer has gone so quickly.
I hope my flight goes well. I'm flying on China Airlines. You may have seen THIS(!) China Airlines flight from Monday:

Yeah, scary! Actually nobody was even seriously hurt. The plane had just landed in Okinawa from Taipei when the fire started, and everyone escaped. I did a little reading, and this was a 737. Apparently some US airlines have had problems with a certain 737 configuration like the one from Monday's incident. I also read that the airline pulled its 737s for inspection. But rest assured, I'm flying on a 747-- I checked-- and shouldn't be effected at all. On the humorous side, I also read that the president of the airline flew to Okinawa, where he met a large group of tourists who escaped the fire. He apologized personally, then proceeded to hand out sweaty wads of cash, to the tune of an equivalent $260US each, as compensation for the incinerated luggage. So Taiwan. No word as to whether the currency was NT or yen.
Really though, because I know this will worry my mother, it's going to be fine. Flying is, of course, safer than driving. Particularly when you're traveling to an island.
Okay, in really good news, I took the GRE today. For those unawares, that's the Graduate Record Examination, which is sort of an SAT or ACT for graduate schools. That is, it's a standardized test a prospective student has to take in order to get a score which is sent along with his or her applications to a university program. Schools use the scores to compare applicants and decide who they'll take. So, a better score potentially means admission to a better school or program and better chances at landing scholarships, fellowships, assistantships and other financial treats.
So, since this was my summer of unemployment, I'd made it my one goal to study for the GRE and take it before leaving the country again. That way, if I'm ready, I can apply for graduate schools when it's time to do so, like December-February for admission in fall 2008. Well, I bought a study guide in mid-July, and quite naturally, left it in a corner for a couple weeks. But actually, I've been rather proud of myself, because, pssst-- I don't have great study habits, but all month, especially the last two weeks, I've been studying myself silly. This meant studying the list of common GRE vocab words in the book by making flashcards. By the way, the book is called Cracking the GRE by Princeton Review, and I'd highly recommend it. The vocab list turned out to be quite helpful. There were some parts of the verbal section that used words from the list, which had I not studied, I would never have known. I also spent a lot of time studying from the math section, which is in fact simpler content than the math on the SAT. Even so, d! Give me a break! I'm not much of a math person, and it took some work to brush up on some simple geometry and algebra. I took a couple of the sample tests that are provided online with the purchase of the book, and judging by my scores on those, I was pretty much ready for a spanking this morning. I still felt like I simply didn't prepare enough.
I went to the testing center at U of L at 9 this morning. That was rather intense. First, they made me sign in by way of reading a long passage on a clipboard about how I'm really the person registered for the test, I'm not going to remove any material from the testing area, I'm not gonna pass information, etc etc, and then copy said passage on the blank lines. In cursive! Are you kidding me? I haven't written cursive since 5th grade and barely remember how. Who uses cursive today? (Sorry if you do.) After about 15 minutes, I'd scrawled the 10 lines or so and signed it. So they took me to a sort of office/booking station, where I answered a few questions, presented my ID, had my photo taken (!) and emptied everything from my pockets into a locker. Then we tiptoed into the testing room, which is a sort of computer lab filled with cameras and microphones to monitor your every breath. There were other people there, taking various other tests, but it was nice and quiet. I sat at my designated stall and began the test. I guess it took about 3.5 hours, because I left around 12:45. You start with two writing sections. In the first one you write to either support or oppose the one line statement in a random prompt. And I could tell you what was the statement, but then I'd have my scores revoked and probably be blacklisted from ever taking the test again, and thus, ever entering graduate school. This section is 45 minutes. Then there's a 30 minute writing section, where you sort of do the same thing, only you critique a longer "argument." I felt like I did a good job on both of those. Then there's a short break, and you have to tackle a 30 minute, 30 question verbal section and a 45 minute, 28 question math section. (Gosh, I could write my own study guide to this now.) It's a "computer adaptive test." The math and verbal are each based on 800 points, so the computer starts you at 500 points and gives you an average question. If you get it right, it raises your score a little and gives you a harder question. If you get it wrong, it tweaks your score down a little and gives you an easier question. By the end of the section, it should have zeroed in on an appropriate score. At one point, on the math section, I swear I got a question that was something like... (dang, I just realized I really can't say it. They put the fear in you about taking this seriously. I don't doubt for an instant that they have little bots out crawling the web for any reference to the GRE or info about its content...) But anyway, the question was really easy. Really easy. So naturally, I had to think, "Crap! I guess I missed the last one!"
After those parts, they randomly force some test takers to do an experimental section-- that's how they vet out new material for future tests. It's not graded, and so people don't just click through it, the top scorers can be entered to win like $250 or the equivalent in future standardized testing sessions. Great prize, right? Just kidding, but you can win the cash. So I took that section and finally the moment of truth. I clicked to my scores, and sort of squinted through my fingers. I really felt like I'd done a mediocre job. Huh? I couldn't believe it. I'd actually done pretty well! So now, mission accomplished. I don't have to take the GRE again, I think. And I can head back to Taiwan for a while, where I plan to study myself stupid. More about that later. Good night!

Berryman and the Bridge

In my inconceivable boredom, I've been reading more than usual lately. I had the urge to read some John Berryman last week. The Minneapolis bridge collapse yesterday seemed a bit of a coincidence, given that Berryman jumped to his death from a Minneapolis bridge over the Mississippi some 30 years ago.

I latched onto this one:

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

I'm especially fond of "wag." Ha.