So, in the news today, the small Pacific nation of Kiribati broke ties with China and established diplomatic relations with Taiwan. China's response?: "The government of Kiribati must promptly correct its wrong decision. Otherwise, it must take full responsibility for all serious consequences." Big words and sword rattling is the norm in these exchanges. Very timely, too, considering that Kiribati is one of China's space program monitoring sites and China just launched its first space shot. Hmmm.
Oh, so an update on dimples. Apparently, people believe that if you have dimples, you can drink more. Hence their name as "alcohol nests."
I went to a website the other day which described someone's trip to Taiwan. The writer attempted a one sentence description of Taiwan and came up with a beauty: "Everything in Taiwan needs a coat of paint." Simple, and so true, at least in Kaohsiung. I might modify it for Kaohsiung to read "Everything in Kaohsiung needs a good sweeping." Due to the number of factories here and the political ramifications of paying taxes to Taipei--which promptly ignores Kaohsiung, the air quality here is terrible. My little porch area is impossible to keep clean. I wash it, and within 2 days, it is covered with all sorts of particulate matter. Ugh. Supposedly, Taichung (or is it Tainan?) is worse, with a haze over the city reminiscent of L.A.
Last night I went out with some friends. It was a nice mix--a Taiwanese, a Japanese, a Korean, and me. Common language: Chinese. I realized after a while the rush of talking about Chinese language grammer IN CHINESE. Ooooh! So fun! I reached a plateau last week with my Chinese, but I think I have made some improvements, as last night I realized that we were talking about the conditions in which you would use certain grammatical constructions. How cool. Learning a language is really stimulating for the mind, even if it is doggedly difficult. Speaking of stimulating, here is the tongue twisting that sometimes takes place in Chinese. Since I have to assume that you don't know pinyin (standardized romanization), I will attempt to use my own bastardized version to describe these sounds. So, "stimulating" in Chinese sounds like "tsuh GEE." My "best friend" sounds like "juh gee" and "myself" sounds like "dzuh gee." So when you hear a native speaker--who will invariable flatten the differences--say "suh gee" you are at a loss unless you understand the context. You need sharp ears, or at least need to develop them. Whew.
Other things. I learned 1-10 in Taiwanese. Sounds something like jee, nuh, san, shee, go, la, chip, bay, gow, tsap--fortunately, all the same tone. :) Whee! And Cantonese 1-10 sounds a little like: yep, yee, sum, see, goh, lop, tsap, bat, gop, saap. And my name in Thai looks like แจ็คสัน เวอร์ณตีค. Cool, huh? I just thought I would throw that last one because my computer allows me to input Thai characters. My friend ปิยะนุช taught me my name. So, many people think Chinese is difficult to learn because there are 4 different tones to learn, as well as a neutral tone. It turns out that Thai has something like 6 and Taiwanese has 8! aiyaa! So many! Of couse, I have heard that Thai is easier to learn that Chinese. Go figure. Of course, I should reiterate here that I am not in Thailand and am not learning Thai. A lot westerners seem confused to learn that Thailand and Taiwan are not the same country. Get out your maps if you don't know the difference.
Right now the country is a little baseball mad--over the last week, Taiwan played South Korea, Japan, and China and managed to qualify for the Olympics--a feat that, surprisingly, the US team failed to do. Go Taiwan! Of course, the other highly visible sport here is basketball. Many people I know--Taiwanese, that is--are pleased that the NBA season has started. I'm following Seattle, which looks a little dodgy this year what with Ray Allen being out for 8 weeks. At least we one the first 3 games--2 of them played in Japan--with others filling in well.
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