Taiwan / Week 12: Time Out — DING!
The computer’s Guardian Angel heard me. It’s been nearly three months since I’ve been in Taiwan and I am feeling lonely for a companion. Yesterday morning I opened my computer and received a message for a Time Out update. I clicked! I had previously had one but it kept ringing when I was sleeping, so I’d turned it off and forgot to put it back on. Ahh, how wonderful that she dings and this one is very unusual because I have no idea when she is going to ding since...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 11: Do You Have a Car?
Responses: ling? Because of a web installation, the blog comments went out for a week and all the comments went to 0. Ling (0). I hadn’t realized it until today but I was daily feeling slightly more depressed. I write the blog because I’m here in Taiwan, inside these moments, trying to move into another consciousness, language, understanding. No prepositions. Subject, time, place, noun, verb. What does this signify when the verb is at the end and there’s no past or present tense?...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 10: Footnote Romances (Unusual Chinese Love Stories)
For the past two weeks, I’ve been working with a new translator of Journey to the West. Vance, a Chinese literature major, a senior at at the University, is always bouncing. At first, I wanted to grab her and tell her to settle down and stop giggling and shaking. But her enthusiasm is contagious and her translating excellent. Last year she studied the ancient Chinese texts, so she often pauses to take time to explain to me small subtleties such as eight tones also means eight different...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 9: Roadblock — Meeting the Dharma Master
People say I am courageous to go to Taiwan for six months. I don’t consider myself courageous to travel. Mostly, I love to discover new cultures, lands, people, ways of thinking. But where I can see my courage was in Chinese grammar class on Friday when I wanted to flee and stayed. Every Friday we have a quiz. Teacher Fong hands out the quiz at exactly 9:10 when our class begins. When I arrived at 8:45 at the bus stop, no bus was waiting. No one informed us that the school bus was not...
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