My turn to write a recommendation

If any of my dozen-or-so readers are also in or near Taipei, allow me to put in a plug for Jake's Country Kitchen in Tien Mou. They're a breakfast-all-day place (always a big plus with me) whose breakfasts actually resemble something you could get at a roadside diner in America. (Everybody and their brother sells waffles in Taiwan, but good ones are a rarity.) Their other specialty is Mexican food, and I discovered last night that they also do that very well. They are a bit expensive, but in light of the logistics involved in getting all the necessary ingredients here, I can accept that. We were even treated to our first blast of top-40 style Christmas music, piped in on the Internet from a station in Hawaii.

I hate to admit it, but I have been getting a bit tired of the fairly limited food choices we have in Longtan lately. (I'm not alone: a colleague of mine went to London for a weekend recently - and came back raving about how wonderful the food was. In London. Isn't that sad?) A taste of home last night was most welcome!

Now what will I do with my free time?

Ten minutes ago, I mailed off my ninth and final grad school application. (I started eleven applications and considered three or four other schools seriously as well. But Michigan's draconian applications process turned me off, Harvard didn't have much going for it beyond the name in my field of interest, and I preferred to keep the number under ten anyhow.) So after two months of devoting nearly all my free time between classes to filling out online forms and trying to keep track of various paper items to send all over America and Europe, it's all over except for a few odds and ends (such as sending off GRE scores) which will take about five minutes each.
It's a relief, but also a bit frustrating to think there's nothing more I can do now except wait and hope for the best. And maybe enjoy a free afternoon now and then!
As for where I applied to, all will be shared once I find out where I get in. I don't want to jinx anything by commenting publicly before then!

Lost in Translation Part X

Even halfway around the world, there's nothing like that first Starbucks Peppermint Latte of the season! I so indulged yesterday, along with a number of colleagues both Western and local.

Since we were all speaking English, including the woman behind the counter, one of my Taiwanese fellow teachers made a casual request in English. "Please give me some sugar," she said to the clerk.

Trina was kind enough to explain to her what that phrase usually means if you say it to anyone other than a coffee salesperson.

Another theory blown to bits

Five years ago, my then-girlfriend and I had a mix tape which spent most of the summer in my car, as did the both of us. One of the songs on the tape was Joni Mitchell's "Carey." Insightful as we were, we both thought the song was about bondage because of the refrain: "Carey get out your cane/I'll put on some silk." How very racy for 1971, y'know?

I lost the tape along with Sarah, but I finally got around to buying Blue in Singapore this past summer. (How that masterpiece avoided finding its way into my collection for so long is a good question, but never mind...) Last weekend, I happened to read the lyric sheets for the first time. And she's really saying "I'll put on some silver." Grrr.

For what it's worth, here is an interesting page about the story behind the song. Apparently the Mermaid Cafe was real, but a picture is lacking.

You can STILL mess with that mouse in Orlando

Need a great way to waste a Saturday afternoon on the Internet? Have a look at this site for All Things Disney. Yeah, yeah, I know they're an evil greedy multimedia empire and ol' Walt wasn't a totally savory character. But you know all those movies you saw on TV once when you were a kid and think no one else remembers? They're all here!

I just went surfing because one of my kindy girls has a shirt with Marie from The Aristocats on it, which got me thinking about how much I loved that movie and how little I can remember about it now. (Oh yeah, and a couple of weeks ago, Trina and I rented You've Got Mail (don't bother if you haven't already), which features a snippet of "Never Smile At a Crocodile" which hasn't stopped replaying in my head since then - how could I have forgotten so completely about that song?! Oh yeah, and every now and then Trina mentions that we should try to find a video of Song of the South as long as we live in a country where it isn't banned. See what I mean? This stuff is everywhere in our lives!) Next thing I know, it's been two hours and vaguely familiar titles (remember The Cat From Outer Space?) are still jumping out at me!

It's a good thing for my credit card balance that I don't have a region 1 DVD player handy.

Singing for our supper

A funny thing often happens when I get in a taxi over here. The drivers don't usually know much English, but they always seem to have a pre-set button on their radios set to an English-language station. (I'm not sure if there's more than one of those or not, since I stick to CDs in my own apartment.) And when a white guy gets in the cab, they always put that station on. I appreciate the gesture, but that station tends to play very old, square-the-minute-they-were-released easy listening songs that so many people love to hate. They are, however, pretty easy to sing, which leads to a certain impromptu karaoke effect. I've actually gotten pretty good at Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love," which is really very cathartic to sing. (Think of all the big climaxes in the refrain - "Every day I wake up, then I start to break up," etc.)

I'd had that thought several times before last Saturday night, when Trina and I hailed a cab home from Chung Li. It was about a twenty minute ride. And the driver had a karaoke machine on his passenger seat.

He handed us back the microphones without really explaining what they were for - he probably didn't have enough English to do so, although he was able to speak a little. It was left to us to figure it out, which of course was pretty easy to do when he hit the play button on the video monitor on the dashboard. There was the classic serene clip of an anonymous but attractive woman wandering around the grounds of some vacation spot to the tune of Jacko's "You Are Not Alone," with the lyrics rolling by below.

Well, we did need to keep him happy if we wanted to get home.

The ride lasted about five songs, each one worse than the last and all of them making me wish he'd just switch to that cheesy easy listening station - heck, I'd gladly have sung along with those songs at that point. But, like so many such things, it was kind of fun. And the driver seemed to get a kick out of it too. Hey, why not humor the guy, right?

I did have it in the back of my mind that he might take an NT or two off the fare if we sang for him. He didn't, but at least we got a funny memory out of the whole thing. And with the driver's apparent taste in music, he probably didn't know that we couldn't sing anyhow.

...and in English we call it an "artery clogger"

I never really put too much stock in the idea that field trips were supposed to be educational. Sure, they were usually (though not always) to places where you could learn something. My fifth grade trip to Old Sturbridge Village is still a fine memory, for example. But mostly, we kids always just looked at it as an excuse to get out of school for a day.

Besides, last week's new vocab words were mostly different types of junk food (French fries, chocolate, soda, etc.). So I wasn't too upset about our kindy field trip to McDonalds this morning.

Nutrition sensibilities aside, it was kind of fun. Seeing behind the counter and in the kitchen took me back to my Arby's days (and once again made me grateful for that summer of '92 slinging curly fries, which was more than enough to convince me not to drop out of college after all). Even the smell was pretty similar, for better or worse. The French fry thawer was new to me, and fun to watch for a minute or two. And the kids did pick up a few of the items whose names I'd taught them in English.

And of course, the kids loved it. The eating area of this McD's is two floors (as is the case with almost all of them in Taiwan for some reason), so after each batch of kids had had the tour, we shepherded them upstairs to play on the mini indoor playground while the others had their turn in the kitchen.

When it was all over, they brought up a big tray of fries for the kids to eat. I happened to be washing my hands in the bathroom when that happened, and I came out to find all the girls munching happily while the boys sat at another table looking like they were at a funeral. My co-teacher explained that "the boys don't eat. Because they fight." In what is becoming a second nature reaction, I immediately looked around for Chris, my one boy who can always be counted on to behave himself. Before I could ask, my co-teacher figured out who I was looking for and laughed. "Chris is here. He was good." Sure enough, there he was, amidst the girls and looking pretty happy about it.

Guess who Chris reminds me of? I hope he doesn't stay shy around girls as long as I did.

I wonder if the folks at CNN know that there are McDonalds in Iowa too?