Month: January 2005

…for making yourself write.

I ask because I’ve got another couple ideas to add to my list of silly business concepts.

Are you ready for it? Yes? Okay.

Gastric bypass surgery for dogs.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I kid you not. Lots of dogs are fat. Why the hell not?

Another entry:

Chopsticks with tiny little forks on their ends.

So as to facilitate stabbing at smallish food items. I use chopsticks nearly every day here and while I love ’em, the design could be improved somewhat. I’m just sayin’.

You laugh. You laugh. But some day, when I hit the jackpot, I’ll be snickering all the way to the bank.

Nick, an American teaching here in Kaohsiung, recently posted a question on the newley.com message board. He wants to know how to go about finding an apartment in the city. Here’s what I’d suggest:

1) Ask around. Here, as in most places, word of mouth is often the best way to find housing leads. Ask fellow teachers. Ask the Taiwanese staff at your school.

2) Check for signs at local foreigner hangouts. Both The Lighthouse (bar and restaurant) and Bagel Bagel (restaurant), in the Zuoying district (near Dollars hipermart), have good bulletin boards.

3) Take a look at the TEALIT (Teaching English and Living in Taiwan) Web site. There’s an “Apartments and Roommates” message board that should be helpful. You might also want to check out the Forumosa message boards.

Happy hunting.

(P.S. Let’s hope your new apartment features a larger kitchen than ours.)

For the person out there–and you know who you are–who recently found newley.com by Googling “kaohsiung 25 year old boy who likes to rock,” I say this:

I do like to rock. But probably not in the way you’re thinking.

This guy has been to a SHITLOAD of Starbucks all over the world. And he’s taken photos of them all. I’m not sure what this says about me as a consumer (or as a person), but several of the pics bring back a flood of memories.

There’s this store, which I occasionally popped into during college in Atlanta. And there’re these two stores, which I ran past in the evenings when I lived in DC.

But my favorite is doubtless the Astor Place store in New York City. Why? Well, in the spring of 1998, I vomited on the sidewalk in front of its entrance in the middle of post-work rush hour. Food poisoning. I was wretching and people were staring and it was all quite embarassing.

The fine folks at Gadling.com, which is an interesting, new-to-me travel Weblog, have some nice things to say about this site and its creator. (Though it should be noted that I am not a woman; my name is gender-ambiguous, yes, but is my prose not muscular and testosterone-infused?)

Anyhoo, they say I should talk more about relations between China and Taiwan. Okay. Here goes. This is the condensed version.

Taiwanese people think of Taiwan as an independent country. China says Taiwan is a renegade province and that it has the right to use military force, if necessary, to reunify the island with the mainland.

But would that ever happen? Would China ever invade Taiwan? It seems unlikely, but analysts say China’s moving closer to launching some sort of attack–mostly because Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, proposes “officially” declaring independence and re-writing the island’s constitution. China threatens to take action if either of those event occur.

Both China and Taiwan, though, are mostly intersted in maintaining the status quo, referred to as “one country, two systems.” This allows the Chinese government to claim Taiwan is part of China (even though it operates as an independent nation), and it allows Taiwan to remain free and democratic.

The best analysis of the situation I’ve read is “Strait-jacket,” an article by by Trevor Corson in the December, 2004 Atlantic Monthly. (Sadly, only the introduction is avaialble without a subscription.)

To be sure, the issue is extremely complicated, and it involves notions of ethnicity, culture, and statehood; I feel I’m only beginning, after nearly a year in Taiwan, to understand it.

“Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature of the Twentieth Century.”

Welcome to Germany’s own indoor tropical island.

“WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?”

…of Things to Do Before I Die is go noodling. And now, thank the good Lord, I shall be able to do it legally in Missouri.