I suspect one or two people may be a little confused with the title of this post. You’re confused because your are culturally ignorant and too lazy to embrace other tongues. Only kidding - learning Chinese is like trying to map the human genome, not the easiest of challenges I’m sure you’ll agree. I reckon even Keegan would struggle with the intracacies of DNA.
If you can’t read these Chinese characters, go to the toolbar and select ’View-encoding’ and then choose something that will allow you to view them. I can’t be more specific since I am using Windows ‘Taiwan style’ which means nischte Angleeski.
Anyhoo, the title translates roughly as:
“600 days, 70 posts, a new job and a new girlfriend”.
First, the girlfriend bit:
So, this is Chen Zi Ting, my new squeeze. We recently had the ‘Are we actually girlfriend and boyfriend now then?’ converstaion. I capitulated and reluctantly conceded my single status (I wasn’t THAT reluctant). Zi Ting is 27, from Cigu, Tainan County, Taiwan. She tells me she is 155cm, 46kg, 32-23-33 (I don’t really know why I remember this information - the last bit looks like my bank account sort code). She works at Salt Mountain near Jhongliao Village and also does a turn at the local night markets. She supplements her income by occasionally doing brides’ hair and makeup for their weddings. All in all, she is what Geordies would call a ‘reet canny lass’. Very sweet. We have an additional reciprocal arrangement whereby I am her English teacher and she is my Chinese teacher. For me it is cheaper than Cheng Kung University in Tainan and for her it is cheaper than the English school she used to go to - it’s a win-win situation - ha!
As 2008 appears to be a time for new things, I thought: ‘Why not try and get a new job too?’ So that’s what I did. I have procured employment in a school in Jiali. I turned up and asked if they needed a native English speaking teacher. They asked me to do a one hour lesson as a kind of interview. They said I did very well which was encouraging (so 3 months in Shulin was not a complete waste). They asked me to start immediately but I explained about my visa situation and we agreed that I start 19th February.
Now that I am wiser to the ’Teaching in Taiwan’ system I explained how I only want part-time work (so I can have free time to study), older kids (the young ones……well, not for me) and evenings only (this is when wor lass works so it makes sense). I negotiated a decent hourly salary of 600ntd/hour (just under 10gbp) and a schedule of only 8hrs/week in the evenings which all suits me fine. They will also help me obtain a Taiwanese residency visa again. Also, because this is the ’sticks’ and there aren’t too many foreigners around here, they didn’t once mention that I speak with an ‘English’ English accent as opposed to a stupid Septic English accent. This is a big issue in Taipei. I can’t believe I’m doing all this again but women and love can turn your head to shit!
On Thursday I will be in Manila contemplating how I left the secure, cosy environment of England and home 600 days ago. Quite staggering really to think I have being ‘arsing’ (can’t think of a better verb) around Asia for 20 months now. My current Taiwan 30 day visa expires on Wednesday so I have booked a return flight to Philippines (again) where I will spend 3 weeks applying for visas, drinking and chilling on beaches before returning to Taiwan for work, study and a bit of companionship which was really lacking in my life the last time I was in Taiwan.
For this 3 week trip to the Philippines I have loosely planned: Manila (stay there until I get Taiwan visa sorted) - Sabang again - Roxas for ferry to Boracay - Palawan - Cebu - Bohol - Manila for return flight. Whether or not this happens is another matter. I am not exactly very good at sticking to plans lately.
Another job teaching English eh?
Other news: I have finally acquired a new watch. I think this is a hang-up from my military days on submarines, but, I feel naked without a watch. I always seem to WANT to know the time even when I don’t need to!
This time last year I was kayaking around Pangkor Island in Malaysia, cooking freshly caught squid, fighting monkeys and trying to recover from copious amounts of leech bites. It was gorgeous!
Also I have managed to configure this Taiwanese peice of junk computer to type Chinese pinyin style. However, so far, I have only managed to achieve this by typing simplified characters so not quite out of the woods yet on that one.
再见 - Zaijian.
你先起床 - Ni xian qi chuang - You get out of bed first.
我爱你- I love you.
你疯了吗 - Are you crazy?
工手- Handmade
Three of these symbols are simplified Chinese characters. Five English pounds goes to the first person to spot them.
