Friday, November 24, 2006
Banking Nonsense
Its been over three months I've been here and I must say by far the worst thing so far has been the shoddy Banking services provided. No admittedly I don't speak Chinese and this is a big one which if one thinks its a clincher I'll seed the point but that being said service was atrocious. Firstly, I must say that banking hours are nothing short of ridiculous here, in a society where 12 hour days is the norm banks ALL close at 3:30pm. That's right 3:30pm. So getting a visa bill is next to a nightmare. Thankfully I've got a great family at home that's been really helpful with making sure that the VISA corp. doesn't send one of its goon squads to repossess my meager possessions.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Short and Sweet - Stream of conciousness
Just a short update, technical difficulties have made it difficult for me to get online with my pics due to a malfunctioning camera phone who's signal keeps crapping out it may be a little time before I can embed some video in the blog or anything. Work is really becoming chillax, I'm getting a lot better at teaching, and I am actually beginning to enjoy it!
As for the living thing, I've started to do some grocery shopping of my own and after watching a lot of the food and travel network I've become anxious to flex my culinary muscles. The side bonus of my own cooking is I don't need to worry as much about the amount of oil and shit that they put in a lot of the food here, sometimes it's a real crapshoot the only thing I can honestly say was a real dissappointment so far has been a bit of starfruit juice that tasted a little like rotten apple cider.
I feel a little out of it writing this post as I look back on it I can see that my English skills are starting to grow a little stale. SPeaking broken English directions to five year olds can get fatiguing after for years of essay writing. I miss learning but I'm also a little happy to be away from the grind of paper writing and endless due dates. That being said I do have these reports to write every two weeks that last time I check clock in at around 4000 words. It's a lot of BS but still time consuming. This teaching English stuff is a lot of superficial learning. BUt then maybe language learning is mostly superficial, without the cultural context. I am happy that I'm learning a lot about chinese culture, face and Sino-Taiwanese relations. Living in the real world after 18 years of formal education has been really an eye opener. The theory is really showing itself off at times I wish I'd taken a few more business classes or economics classes in University as I can begin to see how capital shapes the dialogue of so much of our lives.
I got a little introspective there, and reading back I can see this stream of conciousness is all over the place. I'll try to produce something a little more coherent next time. This blog is more of a sketch book for my prose then anything else.
Cheers,
As for the living thing, I've started to do some grocery shopping of my own and after watching a lot of the food and travel network I've become anxious to flex my culinary muscles. The side bonus of my own cooking is I don't need to worry as much about the amount of oil and shit that they put in a lot of the food here, sometimes it's a real crapshoot the only thing I can honestly say was a real dissappointment so far has been a bit of starfruit juice that tasted a little like rotten apple cider.
I feel a little out of it writing this post as I look back on it I can see that my English skills are starting to grow a little stale. SPeaking broken English directions to five year olds can get fatiguing after for years of essay writing. I miss learning but I'm also a little happy to be away from the grind of paper writing and endless due dates. That being said I do have these reports to write every two weeks that last time I check clock in at around 4000 words. It's a lot of BS but still time consuming. This teaching English stuff is a lot of superficial learning. BUt then maybe language learning is mostly superficial, without the cultural context. I am happy that I'm learning a lot about chinese culture, face and Sino-Taiwanese relations. Living in the real world after 18 years of formal education has been really an eye opener. The theory is really showing itself off at times I wish I'd taken a few more business classes or economics classes in University as I can begin to see how capital shapes the dialogue of so much of our lives.
I got a little introspective there, and reading back I can see this stream of conciousness is all over the place. I'll try to produce something a little more coherent next time. This blog is more of a sketch book for my prose then anything else.
Cheers,
Friday, November 03, 2006
Video Blogging, Boredom and C.K.S
So I was bored and decided to post something on youtube.
Video blogging is the future!
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