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March 17th, 2005
March 16th, 2005
12:24 am - Babel and the Cosmic Shephard
 The owner was in today. I'd gotten used to not seeing her around. She was taking an interest in the kids, which is always cause for alarm. I did my best to avoid her, making it halfway through the office before hearing her bark out my name. "Hut-Sen!" that's how she says it. "Hut-Sen!" every time.
I just say "What?" now. Once, we were able to communicate with each other in a civil sort of manner.
She's at her green desk. She's got this brown plastic visor on her head. She's got one of the brothers opposite her, he's driving his feet into the metal drawers of the owner's desk. He's one of the twins who co-invented a private language. The smaller one. She wants to know if he's in my class and I tell her no. She tells me the kid can't read. A year ago he was afraid of writing utensils. I tell her he's not my student and whether he can read or not isn't my problem. Then she asks about his brother. His big brother, my student.
I tell her proudly that he's one of the best readers in my class. She tells me to fetch him. I flick a switch next to the bookcase and an old grandfather clock, stolen from the Japanese occupation seventy years ago by the owner's grandfather, swings around. I move down the dark, narrow hallway to the play area. My student is pushing a big ass, yellow Tonka dump truck around with its wheels to the ceiling. I lead him by the hand back to the office, to his brother, to the owner.
The boy sits down next to his bother, who puts his arm around him and kisses his cheek. My hand slips into my sidebag and I hand him one of my books. The owner's eyes narrowed, she leaned ( forward. )
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March 15th, 2005
12:27 pm - Burn, baby, burn!
 Here's a link to today's Taipei Times. The big story is The CCP's passages of the Anti-Secession Law, yet another timid, passive aggressive step in a tragi-comic history of harassment and intimidation.
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March 13th, 2005
March 9th, 2005
12:15 am - And That's What Happened
Today, the class and I were going through our social studies books. We get to this one totally assinine page. It's basically the "foster nationalism" part of the book, and the idea is to get the kids--aged eight to nine--to sign this bullshit pledge.
The pledge is supposed to get the kid to consider what he or she might be able to do out of respect and love for his or her country. I defy anyone who had anything to do with the publication of this sub-par primer to come forward and assert that this bullshit was concocted with a straight face.
It's bad enough that the degenerate assholes at Harcourt Publishing dish out this crap--year after year after year--but what the students fill the empty lines with is so much worse. And ultimately, it's the kids who don't put much thought into their responses that suffer.
Case in point:
The second line of this farce of a promise reads something along the lines of "One thing that I can do to show that I love my country is. . ."
I call to N.. She says "I can go to park and pick trash."
"Time well spent," I say. "M?"
"I can *not* throw garbage on the ground," she says proudly.
"Right. C?"
"I can recycle."
And there he was, slack-jawed, lower lip resting comfortably on his chin, eyes not quite certain of the package of kleenex closing in on his pudgy little face. It hit him square in the forehead, between the slants of his upturned eyebrows and the dark of his widow's peak. Right there on the midsagital plane.
The kid got the highest score on the last comprehension test. He liked The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Roy Buchannan records I played for him.
I expected so much more of him.
To his credit, he did throw the kleenex back at me. To my shame, I did not say "Recycle this," before throwing it.
My only consolation is that somehwere, right now, someone on Harcourt's payroll is contemplating suicide.
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March 7th, 2005
01:11 pm - Nothing like the smell of burning nylon on the mountainside
 A brief mention of an earthquake, and a closer look at the impending passage of The Anti-Secession Law, courtesy of those Salty Dogs at The Taipei Times.
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February 28th, 2005
February 27th, 2005
February 26th, 2005
09:29 pm - Smoke 'em If You Got 'em
I went to The Wall with Cindy, last night. We were invited by this guy we know from work. I'm sure I've not done a thorough job of trashing Taiwan's local music scene. In fact, I've so far kept silent about the whole mess. My silence was, in part, based on a professional courtesy. Something rarely observed among musicians nowadays, I know, but something that I tried to maintain.
The guy from work said we'd be seeing a Taiwanese rockabilly act, and that we did. We saw a Taiwanese rockabilly act. Perhaps THE Taiwanese rockabilly act.
Myself, I was anticipating something along the lines of the hamfisted fury of Guitar Wolf meeting up with the heroin-induced psychosis of Speedball Baby piggybacked with the tight, polished edge of Hi-Standard. That's what I was expecting.
As you might know, the Taiwanese go apeshit for amphetamines. You can buy Betel Nuts just about anywhere—sold by these grade-A skanks who deck themselves out like raver chicks. These nuts, totally legal, are said to be some kind of stimulant. I've never tried this shit on account of my distrust of and distaste for uppers. But everyone else seems to get off on them, and some asshole who writes for POTS (the indie-asswipe rag for those "in-the-know" foreigners in and around Taipei) can't pen one article without mentioning the fact that he's chewing on ( one. )
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February 25th, 2005
01:19 am - And Blurrier Lanterns
Previous Entry
More images and information to be found here, in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) woquinoncoin's journal. She contributed more than a few images to these posts.
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February 23rd, 2005
10:33 pm - A Bleak and Urine-Soaked WInter in Taipei
We're doing "COLOR THE SQUARE RED," this morning. And one of the kids drops his book. Smacks against the floor, there it sits. The kid doesn't move. Class continues, I'm the only one who notices. I answer a question. I tell another kid to shut his mouth and open his ears. I tell another to put his Taiwanese knees under the red table. He's frozen.
"Hey," I tell him. "Pick up your book."
His mouth. It's just hanging open. Eyes are so wide, his eyebrows disappear behind his bangs. He manages to make one syllable. . . sounded of kind of like an "I," but he wasn't quite there. Just little gust of air in his ( throat. )
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