Well, Hello Again

Oh?! So soon! That’s what happens when I indulge upon a mid-week update.  A few days later and I see nothing has progressed (either positively or negatively) with my neighbor and the ‘internet fiasco’.  I’ve gotten a lot of advice over the last few days about how to handle the situation, ranging from childish notes, to stolen modems, to discussions with the landlord (in Chinese) to blasting loud music late at night, but I’m hoping an unspoken compromise will work temporarily, so I’m keeping my router unplugged when I am not home so that if, for some strange reason it is affecting her, it isn’t a constant nuisance.  The strategy has worked for 3 days, but I was gone for two of them, so it is too soon to really say how it is going.

Speaking of being gone for two days, I’ve done a really good job of having weekend adventures lately, so I spent this weekend in a back-and-forth between Taichung (central Taiwan) and Taipei (northern Taiwan).  On Saturday, in the afternoon, we bopped around Taichung from the train station, to my friend’s house, to the Chili Cook-Off competition, to the High Speed Rail Station, all within a few hours.  It was a lot of fun.  There was good conversation, enjoyable (and not so enjoyable) music, and lots of chili (which I acquired a taste for somewhere through the years, after avoiding my father’s chili for my entire childhood). 

The Chili Cook-Off crowd, enjoying some music on a warm November afternoon.

That night I had the treat of watching one of my friends perform in a stand-up comedy show in Taipei.  Your initial thoughts are probably either: “but Kaitlin, you don’t like stand-up comedy” which is still true, but I like to be there for my friends, or “Do you understand the language well enough to be enjoying jokes in Mandarin” to which the answer would be ‘no’, but thankfully it was an English-based comedy show for a primarily foreign crowd.  There were 7 performers throughout the evening who performed short stand-up sets about a range of topics relatable to our lives here as teachers in Taiwan, and poking fun at the language barrier, the cultural differences, and of course, the crime circle more commonly referred to as ‘kindergarten education’.  The weird thing about hanging out with the Taipei crowd last night was being around so many performers, I haven’t been around so many stage people since I was in high school, but so see a room full of comedians, magicians, singers, it was a reminder of the kind of platform Taiwan can provide for performers, and how much you can do here besides just teach.  Don’t worry, I’m not saying I’d like to get on the stage, I got enough of that for the year at the Halloween Extravaganza.

After way too late of a night, too early of a morning, too little coffee at breakfast, and everything else that caused functioning to be difficult this morning, it was time to catch the train back to Taichung.  Essentially every fiber of my being was screaming ‘go home and sleep’ but there is nothing like a night club in the middle of the day to turn your mood around.  Lucky for everyone, specific memories of the day have been lost in a haze of the Filipino’s strong 7% beers, pasta, mirrors, sweat, and the Macarena.

I discovered one of the greatest a worst things about Taiwan this week.  Years ago, inspired by Halloween, I discovered a listing of some of the most unique abandoned (and thought to be haunted) buildings in the world.  In this list was a 1970’s village of futuristic pod shaped houses.  Each set of pods consisted six pods connected by a central staircase, and they were constructed in a line around swimming pools with the intent that the area could be used as a resort.  Unfortunately for those involved in the process, the resort never made it to its opening day.  The project or land was thought to be cursed and several people involved in the construction, or just people driving along the road towards the construction site died.  So, sad and abandoned, the site began falling apart and was good for little more than pictures.  It wasn’t until this week that I rediscovered this pod city, and learned of it’s location: San Zhi, Taiwan, just outside of Taipei, in a convenient location for tourists or Military personnel staying in the northern part of the island.  The heartbreaking news for me is that the city was fully demolished in 2010, leaving none of the pods in tact (despite petitions to turn one into a museum). Now where will I go to get my creepy building fix?

A few of the pod structures I will never have the joy of photographing by myself.