It has become some sort of tradition that every Tuesday afternoon I have time to answer emails, catch up with friends on facebook and peruse online news. Because every Tuesday afternoon I am privileged to enjoy a class with the opaque name of Ecological Poetics. The readings are basically all from different strands green theory and most of them are fun and enlightening. Unfortunately the discussion of the texts is a less fruitful endeavor. My beloved professor might be a genius in his field (English literature) but I would not know because his three-hour monologue is one big mumble. And quite frequently he reminds me that I am apparently not in an English-taught class but one for ESL. That is when he starts discussing words such as platform, metaphor and red herring in Chinese with the rest of the students, leaving only me and Natalia whom he always calls Natasha dumbfounded. When I finally plucked up my courage to ask him to make his class a little more foreigner-friendly he preempted me, saying that he thought that he should speak more Chinese in class so Natasha and I would get used to the sound. At that point I gave up: Tuesday will stay my email-answer-day.
Recently I have been plagued by a Tinnitus, which increases my already existing insomnia. It could very well originate from the loud puppet show or from the film/art party at the old brewery. But it’s basically impossible to find the reasons. Hopefully it won’t stay all my life, that would really suck. For now I am just taking it easy, since my depressingly small room and school work really stressed me out. I am actually looking forward to a summer without too many obligations. Did I mention? I will spend next year in Berlin!
In the week of May 2nd I fell ill with a cold and spend quite a few hours in bed coughing and sneezing. In this week I realized that I would need to take my social life more seriously to feel more secure in this foreign culture. That means spending less time by myself in my room and more with friends from BOT or my Taiwanese friends. This is also what I did immediately, going out to dinners with friends and watching a great, but very disturbing Ingmar Bergman movie (‘Whispers and Cries’) with Anna (my Swedish friend with whom I have started a language exchange Swedish-German).
Most recently I have gotten a new roomy. Abhilash is from India and studies economics. We get along well, although I have to get used to sharing my tiny room with another person. What also happened lately was that my dorm is undergoing renovation. Without any prior warning we are no longer allowed to use the bathroom on our floor (2nd floor) and now have to use the one on the 6th floor, which means that for each time I go pee I have to take the elevator. IT’S A PAIN! But I am too tired to complain about it. I have already complained several times unsuccessfully. For those people who are wondering how I have been, this is what I mean (among others) when I say that there are ups and downs (these are the down parts I mean).
And all people who say that you would never get something stolen in Taiwan have a distorted image of the realities here. After I lost and never found a pencil case two weeks ago I got my cell phone stolen today. Both are basically worthless but the first contained a SIM card and the latter all of my phone numbers… Bad luck!
One of the most interesting things I heard about Taiwan’s history was the personal account of Lisan. She told me that only a few decades ago Taiwan was an extremely poor country. Her Dad did not even have enough money for sandals when he was a teenager. Then he made a small fortune with steel. And as previously noted: this is what parts of Taiwan still look like today. They look like the result of the attempt to get as many people as possible from slums into houses. But as I will show you in the next post, Taiwan is transforming rapidly!
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