Long, hard road out of hell

When I bring my mouse's cursor down to the lower-right corner of my monitor, my desktop flies to the background and up pops my dashboard, revealing a myriad of widgets; weather in four cities, time, conversion thingies for currencies and such. The one I have had my eye on most in recent times has been my countdown clock, and today it reads 155 days, 22 hours. That's how much time I have left on this island, and I'm beginning to look forward to the end.

We just came out the other side of the coldest winter Taiwan has experienced in nearly 50 years. For those unacquainted to spending winter in the subtropics, this means temperatures dropping to 8 or 9 degrees celsius for nearly one month, with no central heating at home or work. My feet were ice blocks for a month, and my room was absolutely glacial, I could see my breath! In my room! Seems little to complain about when some of my friends had to endure -50 degrees or below at times in the prairies of Canada.

I definitely feel as though one must feel after waking from a long, deep hibernation. You know, if one were a bear. I feel like the cobwebs are being dusted off and I'm beginning to discard the cold, bitter shell of a personality I had constructed for myself. In that, I'm beginning to read and draw and paint again, and also take pictures. (see below, some random shots, and my current/last kindergarten class pic ever).

The days are warming quickly, and we have gone from three blankets and a space heater to two blankets with no electric heating in the space of only three days. I'm sure we'll see the end of the weekend with only one blanket, and then it won't be long before we're on the heels of summer, when even a sheet is unbearable in the sticky, humid nights.

Our plans are still to head to England this fall, and most likely we'll still be looking to settle in Brighton, right down on the southeast coast. Rob should have his UK Passport in his hands by Monday, which is fantastic news because it was seeming there for awhile like we weren't doing anything to accomplish our goals; having his passport is one major hurdle cleared. Next hurdle: my visa. Now, this should have been a relatively simple and straightforward process as far as applying for indefinite leave to remain is concerned (Indefinite Leave to Remain is the fancy-pants British way of saying 'settlement').

Unfortunately the UK Home Office is unveiling new plans to make the process of immigration not only more expensive (AGAIN!) but also more difficult. There is no clear plan laid out yet, but it looks like I'll have several levels to complete, including studying and taking a history/general UK knowledge testing, difficult enough that in a facebook test only 14% of British citizens were able to pass, as well as English language testing and having to pay into some sort of immigration fund, which is a glorified umbrella term for what is really just a tax. This in addition to the fact that my visa is going to cost me well over
$1000CDN. Ouch. Will keep y'all posted of developments.

THE PICTURES:

1. Carleton International School, where Rob and I currently work.
2. Two of my brightest students, Isabelle and Yusei, adding the finishing touches to their Mickey Mouse lanterns. Children carry lanterns to signify the end of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations. It's the year of the rat, and Mickey Mouse is probably the most famous rodent and thus fits the bill for most commercially viable mascot.
3. This is not a joke, it is indeed the Taiwanese version of a plus-sized-women's clothing store. The model in the window couldn't be more than a six or eight, but I'm no expert.
4. My current class at the kindergarten. Just lost a student named Wendy, but she was the devil personified and we are all the happier for her departure.
5. Teacher Rob and his merry bunch. That's our boss. Kimberly, off to the left, acting as an assistant after Rob's Chinese co-teacher quit suddenly last week.

Crazy Japs!

Truly, the Japanese inspire me with their inventiveness. Sure, they have some pretty far-fetched game shows and ideas and many of them are failures as concepts, but this made my day!

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This is the funniest thing ever

I love shows where they go into the heart of where stupid people live and get them to talk. Total confidence booster for myself and my country! Wait, nope, there's some pretty dumbass people in Canada, too... but an igloo? Good god, people, read a book from time to time!

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Wow. That typhoon was awesome! I can't believe how strong the winds were and how heavy the rain fell, and at the same time. Usually in typhoons we get bursts of wind followed by torrential downpours, and it cycles like that for the duration. Not this time. There was quite a lot of destruction through the streets today. Many trees had snapped from the force of the wind, and those that remained standing had been stripped of quite a lot of their leaves and weaker branches. In all of the alleys and lanes and streets, people had taken it upon themselves to cleanup the aftermath. There were these little piles of rubbish every thirty meters or so, with leaves, branches, and miscellaneous pieces of life that had been destroyed by the storm. It was umbrellas, mostly. I was dumbstruck by how many people I saw with umbrellas during the storm. I kept thinking, Are they aware that their little piece of nylon on a stick isn't gonna do much good with 225 km/h winds?

Enjoy these videos we took during some of the heavier times in the storm. The eensy little camera we have just doesn't do the storm justice. The wind gusts were so strong that it would turn the downpour of quarter-sized raindrops into mist (that part wasn't at all captured: I just don't have a Hollywood CGI facility to work with). The storm tore trees from their roots and tiles off of buildings. At one point I heard a family of cats screaming, and I have little doubt they were flying past my third-floor windows, paying homage to Dorothy and Kansas, I suppose. 

For a quick visual of what we're going through right now, click this link here.  Then click on the animate button. Oh, so strong wind!

We decided to go for a walk in the typhoon this morning, which was bloody brilliant! 100kmh winds, shearing rain... with the wind at our back the rain was pelting our necks like rice in a wind tunnel. It hurt, and reminded me of an exfoliation treatment gone horribly wrong. There were a few scary moments, mostly when we were walking by trees, because we saw that about a dozen very large trees had broken at their trunks. Some had landed on cars, and there was debris everywhere. We are actually quite lucky, thinking of it now, that we weren't harmed or seriously maimed by flying debris.

We're now safe and sound in our apartment, and I definitely won't go back outside until this monster storm passes over, which should be Sunday night-ish. I think we're going to take advantage of being house bound and catch up on some movie watching and napping and pancake eating. Yum!

Just a quick note: there's another typhoon coming...Jesus, it feels like that's the only exciting thing that happens around here. Well, it looks like it's right on track to ruin a perfectly good weekend. Oh, well, looks like I get to catch up on some reading and painting that I've not had time for recently.

I finally feel like I'm settling in to my life up here in our new apartment. We haven't got the most fantastic view from our third floor walk-up flat, but the view from the roof isn't half bad. One of the pictures is a view of the neighbour's rooftop apartment, laundry and all, and another pic is my view of the street below and the neighboring apartment blocks. The apartment itself is the best one we've lived in so far in our stay in Taiwan. It has all the amenities one could wish for, save for a gym and a swimming pool, and both of those are walking distance. We've discovered our local markets and eating areas and shopping areas, and the greatest thing about living where we do, Tienmu, is that there is a very high concentration of international residents. Not just big fat white monsters like the two of us, but Japanese, Korean, Indians, Europeans... It makes for a more full-bodied flavour to the area. 

Another side effect of having so many international people is that we have more import shops, and they are global. Of course, the dominance is really the Japanese import shops, and I could really care less because I'm not really into seaweed-flavoured everything, but I do enjoy being able to easily purchase just about anything I could think of (sometimes at quite a hefty price; a small box of Rice Krispies, for example, is about ten Candadian dollars!).

Forgive me for the really low-quality images; whoever shot them forgot to take the lenshood off, so we ended up with a shadow at the bottom. Whatever, in the picture of the dining room, I'm stuffing my face with biscuits and everyone else doesn't look particularly enthused. One would never know we were actually enjoying a great conversation about national identity and travel!

More pics to come when get off my lazy butt and fix some up to be presentable...

TYPHOON UPDATE

It's official, we've got an official warning from the municipal government not to go to work or school tomorrow. HOORAY!! Looks like I'll be catching up on some sleep, snacking and painting. 

Awesome!

I'm not sure how much coverage this typhoon is getting in the west, so just in case the international media are over-hyping this one, rest assured we are ok.

Leaving work tonight, my boss seemed sure that we were not going to be hit too hard, that the eye of the typhoon is going to veer northward as it draws closer inland, and that the worst of the storm would be on the sea. That means no day off. Fine for me. I am looking forward to a bit of storm action, though; a few flooded areas, a few broken trees, a few overturned scooters, debris.

If you'd like to track the storm, you can go to http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/index.htm

or http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/wp200713.html

We didn't see as many drunken natives as we thought we were going to in Canada. Oops, I mean first nations. No, what's the pc term du jour? Actually, I was quite surprised going through some of the reserves to note that not all natives have 6.4 vehicles and 2.1 swingsets in their yards! We went to Ksan, which was a longer drive than I was expecting and made us an hour late for something, what I can't remember, so it couldn't have been that important! Anyway, as we were walking into the park there was a sign asking us to proceed to the gift shop to pay the admission fee. WHAT!! To see some freakin totem poles? Not a chance! So we snapped a quick pic and left. 

I still don't know what the big deal is about the carved tree things...