Owl Land [3]

(I think I was punished for threatening the mosquito in my last entry. 10 new bites each averaging about 2 inches in diameter... )

Thought I might introduce you to my new home. Someday I am ever super bored I may endeavor to count all the owls around the place. I would not be surprised if there were over a thousand. The only thing missing is an owl pet.

5/29/2010

1pm My aunt happens upon some notes I had taken in chinese on the road names around the apartment. I ask her if it's like a child's handwriting. She said it's more like the writing of someone from outer space. I'm an alien.

2pm So much yelling at the grocery store... For just the milk section there were three ladies standing and yelling at people to come over and try samples. Imagine how many yelling ladies there were for the whole store.

I enjoy the fact that there is an escalator for shopping carts.

8pm They take ghosts so seriously around here. I guess I sorta believe in ghosts too, but it was strange listening to my aunt and cousins talk about friends who could see/talk to ghosts and discuss when the ghosts would be out the most (dawn and dusk supposedly).

5/30/2010

9am The subway here is so new and oh so smooth. I'm going to have a heart attack my first time back on the Boston T.

There are marked lines on the ground to line up in and wait to get into the cars. I think I butt in front of people at least twice before noticing this fact. Feeling rude.

Tallest escalators ever.

11am Went to church with a friend. Could only understand about half of what was being said.

12pm Ate lunch at some church person's home. They ordered pizza. Different from American pizza mind you. More delicious.

1pm Played mafia in Chinese.

5/31/2010 Tourist

2pm Took a trip to Taipei Main Station to go pick up some maps at the visitor's center.

3pm Brief stop in the Taipei Underground

Began a long but not so long walk back to the apartment. 2.5 hours?

First stop, Peace Park:

Tree with pink leaves! Not sure if that's actually novel or not, but I thought so:

Chiang Kaishek Memorial Complex. There will be more pictures of this when I have the time to actually go in and walk around:

Random building. Reminded me of a boring office building trying to give birth to an Eiffel tower:

Bike Rack at Tai-da University, or at least I think that's where I was:

6pm Back by the Wanlong MRT Station. Dinnertime.

需要學中文~ [2]

Forgot to add the video in the last post:


Haven't taken any photos since arriving in Taipei. Camera was in my suitcase unpacked the first day when most of the family happenings occurred.


5/25/2010
7pm MSG kicks my butt. Mom tells me maybe i shouldn't eat out at all due to my allergy. To be in Taiwan and just eat home-cooked stuff would be a sad situation. I shall eat out and endure the pain.


5/26/2010 Taipei
4pm Feeling much more at home here with the Mandarin speakers.

6pm Fixed Price dinner at a rather nice restaurant with all the Taipei relatives. Menu reading is going to be a problem. Made it even harder to have to pick the six different courses.

10pm Everyone over after dinner. Aunt made me take the English portion of the test the students have to take to see what high schools they can get into, said I would get a spanking if I got anything wrong. No spanking. They put the exam questions and answers in the paper. Seemed odd.


5/27/2010 Orientation
10am Took the bus to my work place to make sure I don't get lost when I start next week. Tried to remember all the surroundings so I would know when to get off the bus. Everything looks the same. Realizing how much being able to read is part of the way I orient myself.

12pm 湯包 'soup buns'. One of my favorites.


5/28/2010
Cousin mostly keeps himself shut in his room playing computer games. Wonder if I'll even get to know him before the end of the summer.

10am Went to contemporary dance class with my aunt. Was fun. After growing up in a home where dancing was not permissible, (conservative Chinese family within a conservative Chinese community) I'm mostly terrified of dancing because I don't know how. Much easier when nobody around knows me.

12pm Taipei Market. The spring rolls here are quite different from spring rolls I ever had in the US. Soft crepe-like wrapper.

6pm Clam chowder?

8pm Learning new facts about my mom's childhood. Enlightening.


5/29/2010
11am This mosquito needs to stop biting me or die.

After a week without internet -- [1]

Summer began with a never ending school year. After final reviews, what seemed like summer began, but I had another review to prepare for my design seminar on informal settlements: four boards worth of information, deskcrits, and workshops to attend. Right after finishing those boards, I was informed that one of my models from first semester had been broken and I would be spending the next day and a half working on rebuilding a model I had already completed. The following two days I helped a friend in thesis with her project, then the day after I was informed that I had been selected to submit more work from second semester for studio works. I took my birthday off... other than studying for the Moneo exam the following day... and worked on the studioworks submittal after four hours of essay exam. I sent a copy of the submittal to my studio critic, received the response around 3 am, continued working on the submittal until around 5 am, and finally... it was time to pack, move my belongings, get in a van, go to the airport, and fly to Taiwan. (started writing a paper while at the airport).

Okay, so it wasn't quite solidly packed. I did a lot of good cooking and eating and also went shopping for the first time all year in between traveling by van and traveling by airplane – Four pairs of shoes and a shirt from Banana Republic for a grand total of $2.50, gotta love birthday coupons.

5/15/2010 Departure

11pm (US) Ran into a childhood family friend on the plane again. Last time it was Eugene Chen sitting three seats away in the same row. I was too afraid to talk in case it wasn't actually him, so for sixteen hours I just wondered. Facebook eventually clarified the issue and we ended up meeting up in Taipei.

7pm (TW) Stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. Kinda wish airports allowed one to experience their locales rather than being non-places. I might as well have been in an airport in Pennsylvania.

8pm Stayed up till eight pm Taiwan time to begin to adjust to the twelve hour time difference. Slept quite soundly the rest of the way.

5/17/2010 Arrival

6am Everything looks older than I remember, or maybe I've just gotten used to how new even the older American cities look in comparison.

7am Taiwanese soymilk with shou-bing you-tiao. First delicious breakfast and many more to come, never want to drink Silk again.

9am I love how everyone rides 'motorcycles'/scooters here including the typical grandmother. There's something somewhat rebellious about it in the States that makes Taiwan's streets seem somewhat comical on first take. Also noticing that nobody locks up their bikes – makes me even more upset about my bike being stolen with two locks on.

11am Spent the morning at my aunt's, apparently they now have a poodle! My macbook has now been licked by both infant and puppy. The two year old is playing make-believe and rather loves eating apples, the puppy should know better.

12pm Went to a Taiwanese buffet for lunch; it couldn't be more different from the Chinese buffet's back home. The typical white American probably wouldn't have recognized a thing. Well, maybe the watermelon.

3pm Headed to Baishan.

6pm Got off the bus and immediately covered myself in deet. Mom gets bitten.

7pm Everyone wants to make me fat.

8pm Showered next to the toilet with a pool of ants.

9pm Went to sleep on a wooden box with a few spiders that, according to the grandparents, I don't want to kill because they'll help eat the mosquitoes and cockroaches. I guess going to bed with a tarantula looking thing is better than cockroaches?

5/18/2010 North Mountain

My grandparent's house is at the same time one of my favorite places on earth and the one that makes me the most neurotic. They live in one of the five houses on an entire mountain. It's a great place for clearing my mind, getting away from things, and just enjoying how absolutely gorgeous untouched nature is. At the same time, nature has way too many biting insects; in the past I would step out of the car and immediately have ten new mosquito bites. This time I brought the deet cream they gave us in Ghana to keep us from all getting malaria.

This video shows the drive down their street. Mountain roads remind me of the winding roads in mario kart – that I usually fall off of – except in real life. The end of the video pans the view over the side of the mountain.

The pictures above are all from around their house. Largest backyard ever. It's basically a side of the mountain. There's a cute little lizard in one of the pictures if you look for it. The first morning my grandparents cut some bamboo sprouts from just behind the house and we had fresh bamboo soup with our congee a few hours later.

The house itself is an interesting reflection of their way of life. The windows and doors are all barred with multiple gates because of the lack of protection from robbery in rural places. There's also large wooden sticks everywhere. I still remember as a nine year old being toured around the house and shown where all the big sticks were for beating up bad men. There are windows between all the rooms of the house – including the bathrooms – to allow for natural ventilation. They also create much less space for privacy. There's much more of a sense of everyone being together here than when I'm back home.

The main reception room is the only thing visible at the entrance of the house and is a relatively large and showy space. At least in older Taiwanese culture there's huge concern with putting on a good facade towards outsiders. My ah-ma (grandmother) was upset when she found out my dad didn't wear a suit and tie on the plane. She has also been picking out my mother's outfits for every time we go out and see anyone. The way she talks about how people look is making me seriously self-conscious for the first time in a long while – Prejudice against the color of skin, weight, age, clothing, financial situation. She specifically directed me to find a rich husband that would get me a big beautiful house so that everyone could see. She even told me what age to get married. Of course, also by traditional culture; I, the younger in the family hierarchy, sat in tacit agreement.

Baishan:: Grandmother's house

Front of property

Driveway up to house. Storage/Laundry building.

Backyard/Forest

Mr. Lizard

Huge Spider in my room #1

Shower with toilet and windows

5/19/2010 Puli

7am After traveling to various foreign countries, I've found that food markets are a pretty defining moment within a culture. America is the most sterile. Kumasi was the most intense. Taiwan exists in a semi-comfortable in between. In Ghana, shop owners would grab onto our arms and tug us towards their shops, constantly telling us to come and see. It took some effort to remove them and keep moving through the narrow four foot wide pathways. In Taiwan, although the markets are still crowded and loud, at least one can keep moving. The fact that one can taste test pretty much anything before buying or move onto the next stand is also a big plus.

Breakfast

Market

5/20/2010 Superstition

12p Found out it's unacceptable to leave chopsticks upright in a bowl. Too much like the offering of incense to the dead.

6pm Ate noodles and fish for my grandfather's birthday longevity. Had to be careful not to break the noodles before they got in our mouths. He's turning eighty for the second time since seventy-nine is an unlucky number.

5/21/2010

7pm Taiwanese delicacy doesn't seem all that different from the home cooked stuff. I'm beginning to miss the diversity of food available in the States.

5/22/2010

7am Ah-gong (grandad) made a juice from boiling the kind of berries that are mostly just stepped on all over Ann Arbor. A2 should make more juice; it was delicious.

11am Ah-ma kept talking about taking us to a some church made out of paper from Japan. Got there and it was made out of paper tubes. Pleasant surprise. Architects know what I mean. Forgot to take pictures of it. Here's pictures from the area around instead.

Grandparents

Parents

Big spider #2, This one was the size of my face...

Elementary School

12pm Education's in a strange place in Taiwan this year. There aren't enough students since people have stopped having children. This elementary school where I used to play only has twelve students now. Students have also begun to protest the amount of work and a record amount dropped out before testing to get into high school a couple days ago. They're now trying to get students from China to come study here.

5/23/2010

8pm Flying ants everywhere. It will probably rain tomorrow.

5/24/2010 下雨天

5am Rain on corrugated aluminum roofing is deafening, can barely hear my music even on the highest volume.

not doing that again..

Arnold Arboretum

Enjoyed a bit of solitude. It's always nice to get away from things. Felt so blissful after an hour or so walking around.


Never quite know what to think of these vine trees. The vine basically parasitically grows up an existing tree and slowly kills it until the vine is the tree. In Ghana there were really beautiful trees where the host tree had completely rotted away and one could stand inside the leftover gap and look up the entire height of the tree. You can see the dying tree in the second picture below.



This tree was a forest of its own. Really amazing. I def have a thing for trees you can get inside. There was a 'clearing' in the middle of its 'trunk'... Something about the reversal of space is just really interesting.


Eventually went and laid down in the grass under some of the blooming trees. The mother bird belonging to that nest kept cooing at me.. Eventually flew from the nest and sat on a branch right over my face.... at which point I became terrified of being pooped on and fled the scene.

Life is a hot shower

A friend was using the shower as an analogy for something the other day, something to do with a project. I don't remember, but I was thinking that the analogy actually works pretty well for the way life works.

A shower has all the appearances of complete control. You look at it and you can say what you would do to get hot water, cold water, change the amount of water, and sometimes even the way the water comes out of the shower head. (The rest of this analogy sort of depends on you being the type that really likes hot showers... which I do.) There's always that beginning adjustment period where you fudge the temperature around until it's just the way you like it, sometimes this takes longer than others but then as the shower progresses, the water will not feel quite hot enough and so the handle gets bumped a little more and a little more to get the heat back where it needs to be. (I remember at home when I used to take super long showers the handle would have turned a good thirty degrees in the time between the initial set up temperature and where it was at the end with me just slowly bumping the heat up.) But after all this adjustment and build up in temperature; once in a while, if the shower lasts too long, other people are using the hot water, or you're at some camp with limited water supply all of the sudden the water goes cold.

I feel like life's that way... With a lot of endeavors you start out not quite where you want to be; it's uncomfortable, but you work your way up to a point where it's comfortable enough to linger in. As time goes on, you might begin to take that stage for granted and want something more or maybe something happens that makes things not so comfortable again and so you turn the heat up and begin to pursue something bigger or just act to get your life back on track. Life never stays comfortable though... there's always things outside of our control, no matter how many knobs we're offered and how much we can plan and see the way that our lives are going to work... do well in school, to get into a good college, to have a good career, to earn a lot of money... and then every once in a while things just go cold. We're never guaranteed that things will go as planned no matter how much we take our independence and control over our own lives for granted. I'm becoming more and more aware of this as an increasing amount of people around me reach points in their lives where they end up hitting rock bottom, often meeting failure in times when it seemed like everything was going alright. It's only in those times that we remember that really we're not in control at all... not even in the times when things seem to be going right. There's so much beyond the small space of our shower that is dictating the temperature and quality of what comes out, a really complex system that is tied into the workings of an entire municipality, country, or (to some extent) world. For Christians this a moment to remember that life is bigger than our own plans, God is in control, and there's someone to trust in who's bigger and more constant than all life's problems. For many, this has been a source of comfort time and time again. Success and personal worth does not need to be defined by success within society, school, career, or relationships... I wonder though, what's the reaction for those without that belief?

What is hope in times when things are out of control?

I miss music.

I guess I still find time to play around now and then, but it's always only with pressure in the back of my mind that I will have to stop soon and get back to work. I still remember when I would just play violin for 5 hours straight without any pressure to stop other than maybe needing to eat. I could lose myself within the rhythms and melodies. Or what about the time to be able to compose. What happened to that sort of time? That kind of thought and creativity is not something that can just be rapidly forced out on some sort of time constraint.

Perhaps I'd say the same about my studio design work. Five days before the final review, my project was turned on its head and I started over. I mean, really started over on this project that should have taken a month to prepare. So maybe I was able to finish the work (with plenty of pain and less sleep than I've ever experienced before), and maybe I had a good review, but is this really the way design is supposed to happen? Architecture culture seems to say so, but at least to me, there's really something to be wanted. When I look at society today, rushing around, always feeling busy, always tired; sometimes I wonder what we've done to ourselves. Somehow I don't think this is what being human was meant to be like.

I look at my professors, pulling all-nighters right along with the students, coming into school drained, frantic, stressed, still around studio at 3 am. In Inge's words "At least we're never bored." It's true. After living this sort of life for a while it seems preposterous for anyone to say that they're bored. How is it possible for one to not have anything to do? But what a painful way to avoid boredom.

I've watched as two of my friends have officially entered into the music world, record labels and all. They record, they sing, they play, they perform, they enjoy every moment of it and it is their life. Somedays I really wish that was me. I guarantee you I wouldn't be bored.