Land of Oz

Bizarre Dreams

This dream took place last night. Probably one of the strangest I've ever had. Not really scary though, just odd. I'm not really sure what set it off, but the evening wasn't the best. Obviously I didn't really sleep too well - kept waking and tossing and turning (no surprise). Had a crappy dinner, some fried bologna and onions that I tossed in the garbage after a couple of bites and had a bowl of cereal instead. Later I took a hit of generic Nyquil an hour before going to bed. I did watch a pretty good Chinese gangster movie with Eric Tsiang and Daniel Wu. All of which probably had some bearing on the oddness of this dream. I'm not putting the description in any kind of logical order, just basically what I remember of it:

Friend brought me to theater. He had daughter with no bones in a bag. Really looked gross in the bag, but I tried to hold her up and talking with her without her collapsing, somewhat attractive when you could keep her upright and not collapsed. Had to squeeze her shoulders so her head would expand enough to see her eyes. multiplex Theater for kids, with sci fi show. One theater with lots of tables with kids eating and raising a ruckus. Multiple snack areas like a food court. One place with soft candy all over the floor. Old fashioned pinball machines in another room, mostly not working. Trying to buy ice cream in odd shapes from vending machine, huge black morel mushroom looking ice cream on cones, but with not enough real coins, had strange shaped coins, US coins that were thick and shaped liked flattened hearts and ovals. Lots of tattooed people with no shirts. Dry dusty desert-like room where a murder (my friend did the murder?) took place the murdered person's partner was setup for a suicide by choice with some weird metallic contraption to make it possible. Worried about police finding out who did the murder, but saw lots of people cutting their hair from their arms to complicate forensics issue. Watching bits of movies in some of the theaters.

I'm finding that bits of this dream keep coming back to me as the day goes on, so I'll add the extra bits as I think of them.

Eva

You may remember from an earlier post how I talked about meeting my new family in Taiwan. All those brother and sister-in-laws and nieces and nephews. One of the nieces was Eva. A really nice girl. She worked in an English language school and had gotten a promotion over the Chinese New Year's holiday. She was always happy and laughing. The first time we met, she showed me Shrek, her pet turtle, who proceeded to pee all over the kitchen table. For the rest of the two weeks I was there, Shrek spent about 23 hours a day snoozing under a heat lamp and the remaining hour eating leafy leftovers from dinner.

While I was there I helped her with pronouncing the school on her sweatshirt "Duke," not "Dukie" and let her know it was a school famous for basketball. She spoke excellent English and most of the time you didn't even notice an accent. The picture here shows here enjoying a cup of coffee during our big family Chinese New Year's reunion. This is how I remember her - always happy and laughing. At least I got to meet her - for you see in one of life's trials, she passed on the week after I left - much too soon, but I'll always remember her with that big smile on her face.

New Definitions

Have you noticed how the new world uses new definitions for old worlds? Sizes are a good example. Restaurants don't have smalls anymore. Usually a small is called a medium at best. They don't have large - they have mucho grande or some such. I don't get it. If you have three sizes of drinks, there should be a small, medium and large. Try buying a small drink anyplace. Many places will refuse to do it. Their smallest is a medium, unless you want the kid's size or some such rubbish. They have to have a drink that contains less liquid than any other - that's what I want, the small one.

On the other hand, unlimited has taken on all new definitions. If a company offers you unlimited anything, you can pretty much bet that you can't get all you want. Netflix has been in the news for this recently. In one quote I saw the company said you shouldn't expect to get 10,000 DVDs a month should you? Actually, as long as I meet their requirements in all other ways, why shouldn't I? It seems that once you get above a certain level a month, they will drag their feet on delivery times. So what they actually mean when they say "3 at-a-time (Unlimited), you can rent as many DVDs as you want for just $17.99 a month plus any applicable tax" what they really mean is that if you try to get more than around 12 a month, they won't send them to you.

I noticed the slow down, but what can you do? It's like Blockbuster and their no late fees. There may not be any late fees, but if you return a DVD after it's supposed to be returned (late) there are extra charges (fees) you have to pay. Somehow that's lawyer talk for no late fees.

I used to have a dialup Internet account that allowed unlimited access. The thing was that you couldn't stay online constantly and you weren't allowed over a certain bandwidth. I had a site shut down because there were too many visits to my site. I tried on several occasions for them to tell me what my unlimited limit was, but they would never tell me.

Have you ever noticed how a 5 year/50,000 mile warranty on a car or car tires works? Pretty much the only thing covered is stuff that doesn't go bad. If something breaks it's not part of the warranty. If something wears out it's not part of the warranty. You can try to get something fixed under Volkswagen warranty and they'll fuck with you and not fix stuff until the warranty is passed. Then they'll charge you for the same problem that they allegedly worked on when they weren't supposed to charge you.

Basically it's all a scam and you can't trust anyone. Company pensions last just long enough for the company to go into bankruptcy where the executives get their bonuses and the workers get crap. Life time medical care lasts until they close enough of the VA hospitals so you have to travel a few hundred miles to get an appointment six months (if you're lucky) in the future. Free checking is free until the bank sends you the bill - or they make you close your account because you don't use it enough.

USofA and Taiwan

I hate to say it, I really do, but it was obvious the first time we returned to USofA soil. We touched down in Anchorage, got off the plane to process immigration and customs, and the grouches appeared. The first was a security drone about 5 by 5 by 5 feet - tall, wide and thick. All she could do was yell, "US passport holders over there" and do the two handed point. There were several older Asians of whom you could tell were completely befuddled by what was going on. Like a plane full of Asians from Taiwan wouldn't understand English - go figure. Like a Asian hub airport would have people who didn't understand English.

When I finally got to New York's JFK airport, it was more of the same. However, I will be the first to admit that the Custom's guys were really nice about the whole thing - polite and smiling - I thought I'd warped back to Taiwan for a minute. However a walk outside the secure area fixed that. First there was a horde of gypsy-taxi drivers offering rides like a pusher would sell you drugs and in the background a PA system telling you not to accept them. A quick sandwich in a snack shop would set you back $8 and a soda almost $3. Skipping that, I hit the vending machine which ripped me off for change so that was $3 for a bottle of iced tea. Luckily I had a couple of breakfast bars in my bag.

I had a long wait for the next flight, so settled down with a book. Every hour or so, I'd get up, walk a bit or take the elevator down and visit the bathroom - nice place that. Finally it was time for the ticket counter to open. They had the signs up for eticket logins and when I went to follow them, got my head chewed off by some admin drone telling me they weren't open and for me to remove myself from the area and go away -- waving off yonder someplace. Ultra-grouch number 2.

Finally some others show up and open the area. I figure out the e-ticket sign-in process and sign in. Only to be told to get back in line to be checked-in. OK, I'm not a frequent-flyer, more of a barely-flyer, but why force an electronic check-in to save time when you have to get right back in line? I wait for several people to go in front of me before I muscle my way into the counter (it's the USofA right?) and ask what's going on. The clerk asked if I e-signed in and I show her my e-boarding pass. When she asked why I didn't tell the e-check-in machine I had luggage I told her I did. She double-checked and told me, "Oh yeah, it often doesn't print that out." So I wait while she reprints out the e-baggage tag that my e-check-in machine neglected to print out for my e-boarding pass. Then I find out it going to cost me $25 extra because while I'm allowed 100 pounds (I think) each bag is only allowed 50 pounds and mine was 60. She asks if I have change for a $20, since they don't. And naturally my first credit card doesn't work. The second one does, but then she has to ask the next attendant what the codes are and of course he has to look them up in a paper notebook. What an e-pain in the ass back in the USofA. And so finally I can check in my bag and head for my airplane, where by the way, the crew looks all of 16 years old - sigh...

The buck stops ... over yonder someplace

You may have heard that the vice president shot some guy on a hunting trip. The poor guy isn't dead, but is in the hospital. Seems he "he got peppered pretty good with a spray of 28-gauge pellets" [that] "sprayed him across the right side of his face, his shoulder, his chest and along the rib cage area..." The poor guy is "The person who is not doing the shooting at that moment in time is just as responsible and, should be, as the person actually shooting," Armstrong said. Armstrong by the way, was a member of the hunting party and is part of the family who owns the ranch. You can tell she's well rounding in hunting customs since she recognizes "28-gauge pellets." (there ain't no such animal). So remember folks, even if you loaded the gun, aimed it and pulled the trigger, the guy you shoot is at fault because he shouldn't a been standing in line of the muzzle.

I got a letter from my fund today. Seems they made a teensy bitty mistake and sold a slight 8,613,843.599 number of shares they didn't really have. The excuse is that they got too much cash coming in. Someone gives you cash to buy something so you gotta sell them something even if you don't have it - right? They sent me an 8 page booklet (pages numbered 1 to 5) on recycled paper (they're environmentally conscious you see) explaining the little mistake.

I'll be damned if I know exactly what it means, but it seems to say in specifically uncertain terms that if anything bad happens to me about taxes or losses or anything else - too bad, it's not their fault. And if I choose the wrong option and lose money - too bad, it's not their fault. And if it causes me to pay more federal income tax than I would have if they hadn't fucked it up - too bad, it's not their fault. How much you wanna bet "they" get off scott free and no doubt with a hefty year-end bonus.

A judge just approved a $28 million bonus to the executives of Delphi. You've heard of Delphi - they've gone bankrupt and now they're offering their workers a 50-70% cut in pay - at least those workers that they haven't laid off yet. How can a company go bankrupt without the leaders of the company being the ones who fucked up the company? The workers are just poor dumb blue collar wage slaves - they don't make contracts and decide how the company going to be run. I guess no one does that anymore.

I've also heard rumors about another company that went bankrupt and zeroed its value - but then who hasn't. But, no more said about that...

Food

I'm back to the subject of Taiwan again. Food in Taiwan is interesting in many ways. First, it's surprisingly cheap. We had one lunch at a pretty nice restaurant called KiKi for 15 people that came to NT$3400, which while at first intimidating is actually just a smidgen over US$100. And yes, by the way, that is a clothed picture of Hsu Chi on the website who is one of the owners. Located in Taipei, it has pretty good food in a spicy, Schezwan style. You can probably feed an average group of four in most Taiwan restaurants for US$30-40.

Probably the most amazing is the unbelievable number of small restaurants (4 - 6 tables maybe) and vendors (just a grill) that sell food. You can get a complete lunch for one for no more than a couple of bucks. Now I don't really enjoy seafood that much which really limits Taiwan's cuisine for me. I think anything that's in (or even near) the water can be bought to eat. One big treat is BBQed cuttlefish on a stick which my wife loves. Clams are everywhere and fish comes in more styles than I can even imagine. Seaweed (algae, kelp, whatever you call it) is used for everything from wrappers to sidedishes - some of which aren't too bad.

A lot of Taiwan style is cold marinated side dishes. We went to one little hole-in-the-wall restaurant near my wife's home that is a famous and renowned second generation noodle house. The tables are just barely standing and their tops are worn almost through while the seats are cheap plastic stools. And the place is LOUD and busy with almost always a line. You see people wearing everything from upscale suits and dresses to kids in bluejeans and folks in work clothes eating there. We went up the counter to pick our dinner and I started panic. As much as my wife sold the place, I didn't see anything I thought I could possible eat. There were three shelves with assorted Taiwan style food - tea eggs, assorted tofus, some pork that might have been an ear or jowls??, some beef that was WELL marbled and other stuff that I couldn't even recognize. It turned out you could order other stuff as well. I did have some excellent noodles along with some cooked greens and shrimp.

When walking on the residential type streets - the residences are at the back of the first floors and second floors or higher - almost every 20 feet brings another vendor cooking and selling something. I think we went to four different bakeries within two blocks of my wife's home. There's probably two coffee shops and four 7/11 style stores on the same block. I had to walk all of 30 feet to pick up my morning paper (English language) or late night munchy.

And the western style places are there as well. Macdonalds is about as common - if not more so - than in the US. I did try one. I had a Big Mac combo - the fries were identical and the only difference in the Big Mac was not as much sauce - which made it better. They were pushing a new seafood burger on a rice bun while I was there. There are Pizza Huts, TGIFs and KFCs just to mention a few. The Big Mac and a corn dog on the first day were the only real western type fast food I tried while I was there. I tried to enjoy the local food as much as I could, but unfortunately, I'm just a little too picky for my own good. I did enjoy most of the veggie dishes I ended up with.

Just as a last note - flying China Airlines, you're offered a wide assortment of special meal choices. Flying in I opted for the regular meal - nothing too special, usually a choice of fish or chicken in mystery sauce with noodles, rice or potatoes. My wife had the fruit plate (which I chose for the trip out) which was really excellent for flying food. A plate of assorted fresh fruit - melons, grapes, kiwi, oranges, etc. that hit the spot.

Power!

When you ain't got it, you ain't got it. The power company tells me they will send someone out - eventually. They can't even tell me if it's going to be hours or days. So I decide to start my car that's been in the garage and wait for awhile - guess what. I turn the key and and all I get is that sickening err-err-err. The tell-tale sound of a barely working battery. Finally, just before the last err, it starts. I send my friend home with thanks and she offers to let me stay the night if nothing gets fixed and the icicles on the bed are a bother. I'm not the only one of little faith in big business.

Actually it's fairly quick when a power truck stops by. I point out the dropped wire and he checks it out and says he'll need to call in the tree trimmers before he can work, but that they'll get it fixed before the night's out. Great - so I drive off to get something to eat and decide to stop at the office for a few hours to do some catching up.

I get back later (of course it's dark) and find a torn up yard and a couple piles of hacked off tree limbs and still a cable sitting on the ground. However, I do notice the heat is sort of running and most of the circuits are working in the house. Basically I'm running on two lines of my three line input. I make another call and after traversing the voice menu system looking for the correct follow up connect decide to make another cable down call. Another guy shows up and he seems to really knows what's going and lets me know he'll shut the power off and reconnect everything. At least the house is in the 50s now, so I grab my oil lamp, sweatshirt, stocking cap and book and camp out in the mostly dark kitchen reading the book I hadn't quite finished on the airplane a dateline and who knows how many time zones ago.

Finally after a few tentative flickers, all the lights come on and the furnace kicks on sounding like it should. I do have a pretty beatup backyard and piles of branches to take care off, but I have power. Thankfully the yard was frozen so I don't have a lot of deep furrows and ruts. I finally do take my long hot shower, thank the stars nothing froze, and get to bed about 1030pm.

It's Over

Well, vacations never last and this one's no exception. Friday (Taiwan time) I lifted off from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. The two weeks went by so quick, it seemed like a couple days. My wife did a great job of planning everything from tickets to food to places to visit (and I'm not just saying this because she reads this). She even got me home the day before the first major east coast storm that trashed air and ground travel yesterday. Everything really was nice - her family (now my family) and everything else. I'll be adding more of my observations in the next few posts (jet lag is a terrible thing).

But when good times come to an end sometimes they really crash and this was no exception. First I finally picked up Taiwan bug that my immune system couldn't handle and was really sick on Thursday. I couldn't keep much in and had a feeling like a cold. Finally around 6 that night or so, I had a temperature of 101. They had a great going away meal cooked and I had to just to sit and watch them eat. I did manage to eat a small bowl of steamed rice while looking at my favorite home-cooked shrimp, long bean and vegetable dishes sit on the table.

I went to bed around 8:30pm and piled on the blankets and the fever broke about midnight - thank goodness. I found out they don't let you board the plane with a fever over 100 degrees - all those strange and deadly flus that seem to sprout up in Asia. There are temperature scanners all over the airport to find folks coming in or out sick. I can't say I wasn't worried at least a little about being stuck in some Taiwan hospital fighting off the latest version of Asia's prolific and aggressive virus population.

The morning came and while I wasn't feeling great, I wasn't on death's door either. The fever was down and all I had left was a stuffed head - which by the way, isn't the best thing to have when flying. That caused me some problems as we traversed 35,000 feet over the Pacific and North America over the next - sigh - twenty-some flying hours.

A friend picked me up at the massive Saginaw airport (all one gate of it) where I actually arrived on time and even more surprising with my baggage. I still had a stuffed head and it sounded like I was listening from the bottom of a barrel but I was near the house. I couldn't wait to get home turn up the heat, take a long shower and get to bed.

HA! We pulled up to the house and I noticed a power line sitting in the backyard - not good. Power lines are supposed to be in the air. It's buried under the snow, so I know it's been down for awhile. I gingerly make my way into the - guess - COLD house. It's 33F (just a smidgen above 0C) but luckily not quit frozen yet. I turn a couple of taps on to leak some water and make a call to the power company. And that will be another story.

Of course I'm up at 7am this morning - jet lag's a terrible thing - and the Internet seems to be down, so I'm doing this on my text editor (NoteTab Standard - great program) and will post when I can.

Crowds

People mountain - people sea. This is a Chinese phrase to talk about crowds. And boy are there crowds. You have to remember that we were down here for Chinese New Year. That's when everyone in Asia goes someplace else. The people in the south go north, the people in the east go west and people from Hong Kong go to Taiwan and people from Hong Kong go to mainland China. Mostly to visit family and friends. When I got married I went from only one brother to a wife, her mom and dad, and four sister and brother-in-laws, plus assorted nieces and nephews. And we all came to visit each other.

To top it off, it's a week long holiday where most people don't have to work and have also gotten their end-of-year bonuses. More money to spend and to travel. In the first week, we went to some tourist places - along with half of Taiwan. One day we went south to Taichong and stopped at Lu Guan which was an old fishing center with many Buddhist temples - and half of Taiwan. Most cities have an "old street" which you'd recognize from the US. The little shops and places that sell souveniers and food - a lot of food. And to me, pretty strange food. Since these are old - hundreds of years old - they are narrow. A pea in a pod has more room that a big strange westerner walking the aisles. I just kept my arms against my side and tried not to push too many people out of the way. The one good thing was that I could see over probably 70% of the folks in the crowd.

We went to a couple cities like this. And of course half of Taiwan has to get there somehow, so the roads are packes. But surprisingly, rarely at a stand still. The bus ride to Taichong took about three hours longer than normally but for a 5 hour ride was still only less than US$15 for the both of us.

And I have to mention one kind of crowd - the bus riding tourist. There are ugly tourists from every country. We were at the Matyr's Shrine in Taipei getting ready to watch the changing of the guard - similar to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington D.C., when some idiot Japanese tourists in their 20s showed up. Laughing and making faces and acting just like what you'd expect from a twenty-something American. The place has signs all over in English, Japanese and Chinese calling for quiet and restraint and those four idiots had to ruin it. They did finally quiet down, but I was really hoping one of the Honor Guard would loose his cool and smack one in the head with his Garand.

Taipei 101

The building can be seen from almost anywhere in Taipei. At night it's lit with 8 bars of varying colors depicting a bamboo motif and at the top there's often the ideogram for Spring in brilliant blue. One third of the way up there are circles - supposed to signify money - lit up. It would be nice if each side had a different design or character so you tell what side of the building you were on.

508 meters. That's how tall the building is. We went to the top - or at least the 85 floor observation center. It was a bit smoggy/cloudy, but you could still see a long way. The elevator is pretty amazing - 80 floors in 37 seconds and smooth as could be. While we were up there looking out the window, two guys in a little basket went by outside the window - now there's a job I wouldn't care for. How you'd like to be out in the wind, almost 500 meters from the ground in something about the size of a bathtub.

Inside the building design varies between old mechanical art deco and the latest in clean design. The stores are mostly high end and there's an open cafe area that is about 8 stories high with some coffee shops and ice cream stands and small cafes scattered around. Right across the street is the Warner Village where western tastes hold sway. This building is pretty cool (and TALL).

If you wondering why these posts haven't been showing, I had some problems finding the language switch. I lost a couple of posts guessing at the Chinese prompts and decided to wait until I could get to the English version.

Traffic

Traffic is crazy here. It's a little like a cross between Mad Max and Bladerunner. I read in yesterday's paper that Taiwan in the second most densly populated nation on earth - second only to Bangledesh. And most of those folks seem to be driving either cars or scooters. The scooters here are like a cloud of mosquitoes at every traffic light. They have their own lane (a tiny one on the right) and their own space at the front of the line at traffic lights, but they tend to fit where they can.

I still haven't quite figured out left turns at traffic lights yet. It's kind of cross between "if you see a space take it" and "my car is bigger than your car" and then go. Right turns aren't a whole lot more controlled. Basically if you can find a space, you take it. The strange thing is, it seems to work. I haven't really seen an accident in the almost two weeks we've been here.

Emergency vehicles here don't have any specific priority. They have lights and sirens, but have to make their way through the traffic. The other traffic doesn't move, slow or otherwise get out of the way.

There aren't a lot of really tiny vehicles here - other than the scooters. Most cars are the larger Toyotas, Hondas and Mitsubishis with a fairly large assortment of 200 and 300 series Mercedes. There are many SUV style vehicles - not the huge American styles, but still large and a lot of minivan types. I've seen a lot of Fords but only 3 GM cars - a big Chrysler, a Firebird and a beatup rusty Cavalier. No wonder GM is tanking in the states. In fact, I've seen more VW New Beetles than GM cars in total.

The biggest surprise is the price of gasoline. It's around NT$24 per liter which works out to be a bit cheaper than Canada and about the same as the US. (32 New Taiwan dollars NT$ = 1 United States dollar).