Lanteran Festival - The End of Lunar New Year

Year of the Pig Celebrated in Taipei! The lights are beautiful and remind of Christmas, of course.
I'm glad I learned to adjust the shutter speed on my camera - it only took about 9 months to learn...duh.

These lights will be lit until March 10. However, on March 4 they will light the biggest lantern - a big pig lantern to celebrate the end of Lunar New Year and the Year of the Pig.

These are photos the “Lantern Tunnel” lighting up Ren-Ai Road. It is lit up from Taipei City Hall to the Chang Kai -Shek Memorial Hall.
Oink oink...
I plan to return after March 5 to see the big event!
Here's a little discription from the Taipei City Government web site about the event. http://english.taipei.gov.tw/TCG/index.jsp?categid=36&recordid=9597

The Main Lantern Section of the Festival will be located in the main square of Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. The theme “Sphere” will echo the lucky “roundness” of the pig, and it will create a “circle” encompassing traditional festival celebrations. The friendly and healthy mascot on a globe will symbolize the importance of Taipei to the world.

Ghung Tsi Ghung Tsi

What's with the cages?

A friend asks, "What's with the caged dogs?" Here in Taiwan, for the most part, you are very unfortunate to be born a dog, cat, chicken etc. Most animals are treated as things. The dogs that are on the loose are very tough. I have old three legged dogs with scars getting around okay. I have seen dogs hit by trucks run away into the woods. I really feel for the dogs in the cages though. Sometimes I'll pet puppies in a cage and they love it. They are starved for attention. It's hard to walk away.

Not all dogs or cats are treated this way. My family here has a poodle, Polo, who is on the other end of the spectrum. He is an old blind spoiled dog who is fed some snacks from the table, top of the line dog food, goes on scooter rides to the park so he can do his morning routine and gets baths and his teeth brushed.

There are many dogs and cats here like that. Now chickens, that's another story.

Long Life and a Cage

"At least your cage is bigger than mine!"

"But I have a leash on too. I am really stuck!"

"Help me!" said the Myna Bird to the dog. "How, how can I help?" said the dog to the Myna. "Everyone is in their own cage, own cage, own cage..." said the Myna.

Let's see, can you figure out the name of these cigarettes?

More New Year Photos

Bicycle Ride

The bicycle riding is really helping my knee and opening up a new world in Changhua. Two days ago I went into Baguashan Mountain area. Here are a few photos.

Happy Lunar\Chinese New Year\Gongshi Gongshi

My wife, Annie or Li-Wen, (I love her so much!) is checking the feast before the family comes over. My contribution to the New Year feast was Domino's Pizza - Hawaiian Pizza. All the food is first taken to the family alter on the forth floor of the parents' house and shared with the ancestors. One reason I chose pizza is that my brother George liked it a lot. So why not share it with all the ancestors?

It was a great feast with the family after a long day of "cleaning." There were 17 of us for dinner. Most of the food was purchased from an aunt's restaurant. Red envelops appeared and disappeared...

Chinese New Year - Lunar New Year

Here the Da Pan Da or Big Pan Big store boasts their new, clean sign. They have everything in there.

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year - also known as Lunar New Year. Lunar as in Moon.

Here in Taiwan everyone is busy cleaning, preparing food and getting those RED ENVELOPES stuffed. I am no exception. Today I stuffed many envelopes. There is a protocol to how much you give though. Here's what I did. $20,000 each to mother and father in-law. $1200 to all the nephews and nieces. $200 to brother and sister in-laws, and $22,000 to my wife.

Oh these are New Taiwan Dollars which means you can divide them by 30 to get the US equivalent.

It's like a big recycling of money throughout the family.

More on Lunar New Year over the next few days.

Cram School Students

From left is Maggie, Billy, Joseph, Sam and Allen
From left is Ester, Jack Billy, Sam and 1\2 of David. Of course these are their English names. I don't know their real names.

Here are a few pictures of my cram school students. We had our last class yesterday. Now I am REALLY on winter break and tomorrow starts Lunar New Year. I used YOU TUBE a lot in this class. It's a great resource and very interesting.

Valentines Day and Poisoned Roses

"POISONED ROSE: Valentine's Day flowers may be beautiful to the eye, but many growers rely more and more on chemical pesticides that leave dangerous residues "

This is a headline in the Tiapei Times February 13th, 2007 on-line edition. I used to buy roses as a Valentines Day gift and some jewlery. I loved the roses though. They good ones smelled so nice - but maybe not.

This year, Annie and I have decided to open a special bank account and each deposit a monthly amount to go towards buying a house or land in Taidong. We'll also go for a walk and have a nice dinner. Pretty much a normal day except for the account.

Cram School Teaching

For the past couple of days my life has been teaching at a "cram" school and cleaning house. Not bad. The teaching at Annie's "My Sunshine Station" cram school is nice because the class is small - only 8 students - and because the students English is pretty good. Taiwanese send their kids to cram schools after regular school, weekends and when regular school is out on break like now. Kids here have a life of school, school and school.

These kids are 6-9 graders and most of them want to learn. Today I gave them a lesson about characters, setting and plot. I then had them blindly choose the particular setting charactors and plots for their own story. For example, one group of girls had the moon as a setting, charactor is bus driver and plot is a battle. They wrote a nice story about the bus driver and his girlfriend and her old boyfriend.

Two of the boy groups wrote stories about gays...what is that about? I don't really know. I do know that the six grade boys at the other school that I teach at also write a lot stuff with gays in them.

I teach them two more times. Each class is 9:30-12:00. Today I also used UTube in the lesson. UTube is great! Since it's also Lunar New Year coming up, I showed them a film of holiday greetings from the UTube world. You know, I noticed that everyone on that video is White. There were no Asians or Blacks. UTube is a great resource though. Makes me want to get a video camera.

Last night, I also got to watch Deadwood last night for the first time in about a year. What a great show.

Sunday Morning

The manapua woman cooking jeam baos....yum... our breakfast.
Mr. Dong asks "Lianka?" Or two to go? It is sad. They will close their business forever February 16, 2007.
The orchid trees look great in the winter. Are they blooming in Hawaii too?


This morning Annie or Li-Wen and I or Asuyia, took a bike ride. This is my second day or riding a bike and my knee seems to love it. I limp less and don't want or need to use the cane - it's great! Before going we got our breakfast next door from the manapua or bao man and woman. I love the jeam baos - the fried ones with bamboo and cabbage in the center, and the lido baos - not fried but with slightly sweet mashed green bean in the center.

Later we went to B&Q to pick up stuff for the house. It's approaching Chinese or Lunar New Year and everyone cleans their houses, cars, scooters or whatever. Big money in cleaning products at this time of year. Being in the B&Q reminded be of the Home Depot in Hilo...



We bought a thing to clean the walls, a NASA material pillow, a rack for the bathroom and a bathroom mat. We brought it all home on the scooter. Scooters are amazing.

Name the Ass****

Douglas Feith (Number three war man in the US after Bush and Cheney - oh yea - Rumsfeld.) They are authors of the story, "How we lied and messed up the world and the US and killed and maimed thousands of people doing it."

Beside President Bush and Vice President Cheney, this is one of the major persons who convinced a naive country to invade Iraq. I wonder how he sleeps? He knew that he was manipulating all the intelligence to encourage an invasion of Iraq. Yet, he did it. Why? I think someone should look into his financial and political holdings. Amazing that a jerk like this could cause such an incredible blunder for a once great and respected country. Him and his president and administration have ruined the US for decades. They must have made a lot of money off of the deal, don't you think?

A Nice Saturday

Here is Annie and Pa Mei on are way to Taichung. We are excited about our window shopping through the "electronic" area and "Lunar New Year" area.

Pa Mei on the ride in Taichung. This is the Lunar New Year or Real New Year market. I was getting a massage from a blind person shortly after this photo. Look in the back ground and you'll see a sign that has a 100 on it. It cost 100 NTD for 10 minutes. I had 20 minutes from Number 12. She was good.

I think Pa Mei is tired after our window shopping...I feel like daddy and it's a nice feeling. But I know when we get home her real parents will take her. Both a little sad and a lot happy about that.

The bicycle riding is proving to be good for my knee. The muscles around the knee build up and support the knee.
Below is my "crew" making sure the bike ride goes okay.

It's Saturday and this was my second beginning of Winter Break. I'm back in Changhua and had a really nice good day. It started out with a bicycle ride on a new bike, continued with a train trip to Taichung, a large city about 30 minutes by train from here, and ended, so far, with dinner and a drink with the family.

It was really nice to hang out with Annie and our niece Pa Mei or Mei Mei (younger sister) as she is called.

I'm going through some culture shock again. Sometimes I just want to go home. Most of the time I don't want to leave. I have felt some of the anger that the culture shock articles describe but so far I catch it early and recognize it. The anger is about "Why do they have to do it this way?" or "HUH!" It seems that just recognizing it diffuses it. I hope so. I'd hat to think I was letting it build up inside and then you'd read about me in the CNN world news....just kidding, I hope.

Donna quits then returns

Above are my co-workers. Donna is the woman on the left in the jeans and short hair. We are at the school appreciation lunch at the end of the semester before winter break and before the "terrible" meeting that I wrote about in a previous blog.

Well Donna, my boss resigned for a few days and then was convinced by the principal to come back to the crazy school. Here is her resignation letter. I really don't think she'll stick around for long. Perhaps she's waiting for her Lunar New Year bonus - if the school gives us one - that is. I will stay until my contract is pau. That is June 30. So, it is winter break now and I'm back in Changhua with my wife, Annie. It's pretty nice. The temperature high temperature is about 29 degrees C or that is about 84 degrees F. So nice.

Dear Principal Chin, 親愛的秦校長:
It is with a heavy heart that I must tender my resignation to Zhongshan Elementary School. 我懷著沉重無比的心情向您遞交這一封辭職信，辭去我在私立中山小學外語部的職位。
Last June you asked me what I could do to make the English program better, and I offered a number of solutions. I was excited about the opportunity to bring new yet proven methods of teaching English as a Second Language to Zhongshan but I have found support for myself as a teacher and administrator diminish as the year has progressed. 記得，去年夏天您詢問我要如何改進中山的英語課程，我提供了一些建議。當初我擔任外語部主任這職位時，我懷著興奮的心情，積極的投入於重新規劃中山英語課程的工作。我當初很高興能有這個機會，將最新的卻被證明有效的英語教學方法，介紹給中山小學。但是隨著時間的過去，學校對我以及課程改革的支持逐漸淡去。
The meeting of January 29th, chaired by yourself, Director Ruby Wu, and Director Margaret Chen, was extremely hurtful to not only myself but to all our English teachers, and should not have been allowed to proceed in such a destructive manner. 一月二十九日由您以及吳主任(Ruby Wu)、陳主任(Margaret Chen)主持的會議，對於我以及所有英語老師都造成很大的傷害。這種具破壞性、損害教師以及外語部尊嚴的會議，是弊遠大於利，對學校的傷害大於建設性的幫助。
The general consensus of Chinese teachers at this meeting was that the English department is poorly organized, that Nina and I are both incompetent administrators, and that all the teachers in the English department are ineffective teachers of English. 會議中，各中文班導師一致認為外語部沒組織，我和Nina不適任，並且所有英文老師皆無能。
The English Department, including its coordinators and teachers, is extremely frustrated by the constantly changing commands given by Zhongshan’s Administrative Directors with regard to our teaching practices, materials and methodology. Decisions are handed down without any consultation with the so-called experts hired by your school – the English teachers with teaching certificates and educational backgrounds in teaching English as a Second Language. It would appear then, that Zhongshan Elementary School is a dictatorship and when things go wrong is quick to lay blame on its English department for the school’s inadequacies. 外語部全體同仁對於學校朝令夕改的作法，以及由非英文教學專業主導的英文課程均感到無比無所適從及失望。許多英語教學的作法及政策，直接由中文導師或是上級長官決定並規定遵照，並未與學校投注許多人力及財力，精心挑選、聘任的專業英語教師(擁有合格教師證書並且專精於第二言教學領域)討論過。外語部對於各種規定只能遵照辦理，沒有主導權。可是，一旦有任何缺失，責任及過錯全歸咎外語部。
In light of the fact that the top administrators and homeroom teachers at Zhongshan have shown their lack of confidence in my leadership and teaching abilities, I would like my resignation to be effective immediately. While my contract states that I must give 60 days notice, I feel that under the circumstances that would only prolong the already negative attitude I perceive from administrators and Chinese teachers. 由於，中山的上級長官以及各導師已經清楚表達對於我的領導力、及教學能力的懷疑及不信任，我希望這封辭職申請能立即生效，立刻解除我聘約。雖然在我的聘約中有言明，我若要提前終止合約，必須在離職60天前提出書面信函。但，在學校對我以及外語部充滿著不友善以及責怪的情形下，60天的離職交接期只會讓上級長官以及中文導師們對我的不滿更加深，我希望這離職的申請能即刻生效。
I wish you the best of luck.祝 如意
Sincerely,

Donna Quince

Good News for the baby! No Fabry's Disease!

The happy family of BaoDi!

After more testing at NTU Hospital, little BaoDi, the newborn I wrote about November 16, 2006, does not have Fabry's Disease! The disease, passed on by the X-Chromosome painted an unfortunate future for the boy. The blood anylises was correct but the conclusions were incorrect. After testing of the parents it was impossible for the baby to have the disease. The hospital has adjusted its proceedures as a result of this case. BaoDi is very happy that no other parents have to go through this. I think parents rock! How do you do it?

This is what the child would have had to go through if he did have it.

"Symptoms usually begin during childhood or adolescence and include burning sensations in the hands that gets worse with exercise and hot weather and small, raised reddish-purple blemishes on the skin. Some boys will also have eye manifestations, especially cloudiness of the cornea. Lipid storage may lead to impaired arterial circulation and increased risk of heart attack or stroke. The heart may also become enlarged and the kidneys may become progressively involved. Other symptoms include decreased sweating, fever, and gastrointestinal difficulties, particularly after eating."

However, it's a false alarm! He'll be able to have a fair shot at a "normal" life. Whew.

Map of Taiwan via Google

http://www.maplandia.com/china/taiwan/

Bicycle Rides

From left, Claire, Annie and her Aunt planning our bike ride.
Rice paddies on the left. They grow most of Taiwan's rice in this area.

We borrowed a bicycle from her aunt and uncle and had a nice ride around the rice paddies. This area is known as Fuli in Hualien county. It lies between the Central Mountains and the Coast Mountain Ranges.

This is Claire, our good friend, on the left.

South East Taiwan

Annie and her kind uncle giving us a tour. Nice waterfall!
Along the East Coast - the Pacific Ocean!

Annie gave me a wonderful birthday present this weekend - a trip to South East Taiwan also known as Taidong. It's a 5 hour train ride and is remarkably similar to Hawaii and the Great Smoky Mountains.