Taiwan - The Good

I am citing irreconcilable differences as the motive for ending my relationship with Taiwan. It has been a long, bumpy road complete with high highs and low lows but in the end I can't spend more than five minutes in public with Taiwan before I find myself either seething with rage or on the verge of mental collapse. I have tried to understand Taiwan and even to alter myself to fit Taiwan, but much the same as buying a dress that is a size too small because it's the last one on sale, not only are my attempts at self alteration hopeless but now I am stuck with a frustrating daily reminder of my habit for impulsive decision making.

I wrote a bunch of negative stuff about what I've experienced here and was about to post it when my gen-Y/Lonely Planet brainwashing prevented me from nay-saying any foreign culture. So, with the utmost passive-aggression, I googled “I hate Taiwan”. Not only did the results put my hatin' conscience at ease, but I learned that in comparison to some people who have spent time here I am actually pretty gentle in my criticisms ... http://asian-caucasian.stroke7.com/2006/12/07/things-i-hate-about-taiwan-1-marble-tiled-sidewalks/

To make it clear that I wouldn't go as far as to call Taiwan a “shitty toilet”, as one rather misanthropic poster did, I will expound on the wonderful qualities Taiwan does have. Before dissing everything else.


As soon as you leave Taipei this country is beautiful. There are big-name-resort rivalling beaches on the Southern Coast, dense rainforests, scenic lakes, stunning mountain peaks and breathtaking gorges (I've got more in-flight magazine adjectives where those came from if you can stomach them). You can surf, scuba dive, hang glide, hike, mountain bike, etc. This island isn't the soul-crushing, aesthetically bland industrial wasteland that it is often perceived to be.

The food - It's cheap, everywhere, and deep fried. A lot of foreigners get worked up about the nonexistent health and hygiene standards for vendor food but apparently your body develops a resistance to bacteria over time, so no big deal. Who cares if vendors harvest questionable greens from the edge of a swamp by the dump, wash raw fish directly on the sidewalk gutter or expose room-temperature meat to sun, insects and a steady stream of traffic all day? One incident of food poisoning and you'll have guts of steel.

The rough and dirty Taiwanese dialect, the wife-beater wearing betel-nut chewers getting hammered off kaoliang on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, the kamikaze blue truck drivers ... These are all things that a lot of foreigners or first/second generation Taiwanese can't stand. I actually think this is where Taiwan's only genuine charm comes from, not the watered down aspects of Japanese and Chinese culture that have been adopted over time. My biggest regret is not leaving Taipei more often, because the further away you get from the bland and superficial capital, the closer you get to real Taiwan.

Most days, the make-your-own-damn-rules attitude toward daily living is fun. Traffic rules are always disregarded (http://www.therealtaiwan.com/157/157) and a culture of survival of the fittest (especially in public transit) reigns supreme. Bureaucracy, at all levels, although grandly inefficient is a lot more relaxed and a lot less consistent. Take, for example, the story of a student who overstayed his visa. His friend had done it and hadn't even received a fine at customs, so he went ahead and stayed an extra 60 days or something like that. No phone call, no home visit from the cops. After he had booked his flight back he felt guilty and stopped into a police station to apologize, show his departing ticket and ask for goodwill. The cops threw him in a holding cell for three days, fined him the maximum amount for an overstay, and escorted him to the airport. You might be thinking, wow, that doesn't sound fun at all. The point isn't that one guy got screwed over, it's that the other guy got off scott-free. And everyone knows they will obviously be the other guy.


Unfortunately, these are the only solid reasons I can give for liking Taiwan. This is the good. Next time, I will talk about the bad ...

Manila: Stray Dogs, Cheap Booze and Some Other Stuff

Last week at this time I was kneeling on the floor, dripping sweat and swearing while I coerced a combined 150 ounces of criminally cheap liquor into my luggage. Plagued with guilt every time I left a 70PHP ($1.60CAD) bottle of gin orphaned at the grocery store, I was attempting to adopt as many as possible back to Taiwan. Visa runs can yield far more than a visa.

After a violent yet successful bout with the zipper I collapsed backward onto the floor of the hostel common room, laying my head next to the offensively loud fan hoping to drown out the noise of chickens, traffic and muggings on the street below. All it took was one unguarded, vulnerable minute for the lonely hostel lurker to strike. I had managed to avoid this guy, save for one night when I stumbled in at 2 AM to bust him getting friendly with himself, for the past five days. My luck was not to last. I spent 90 of my final minutes in Manila being subjected to an excruciating slide show of BAD photography and a drawn out, self gratifying yarn about buying cake for street kids ... “It jus' really touched my heart, ya know? These little bits must've thought I was god or something!” (He was from the UK). This guy had been in Manila for 2 weeks and had hardly ventured further than the food vendor across the street because he claimed it was too dangerous without a local escort. I'd call that a bust.

One of the only other people I talked to had been robbed at knife point in the middle of the afternoon only two blocks from the hostel. He'd been crossing a busy street with his friend when two guys pushed him behind a parked truck out of sight. Apparently his friend walked a whole block talking to himself before he realized that he was alone. Turns out the guy had all of his cash, passport and electronics on him when it happened ... Which is pretty dumb, but beside the point.

As he tells the story, after recovering his gusto he ran after the guys but couldn't find them. Instead he was stopped by a group of concerned passerby and taken to the neighbourhood representative who spent the day with him taxiing between the embassy and various police stations. Fortunately for my selfish personal enjoyment the guy had a good sense of humour and included the many oddities and ironies he encountered along the way in his tale.

All of the cops he dealt with seemed to find the incident entirely amusing and referred to him unfailingly as Joe (the Filipino title for any white foreigner, used as either a term of endearment or one of hostility depending on the circumstances – comparable to Gringo or Gaijin). They asked him what the perpetrators looked like, to which he couldn't help but reply, “Like ... You? Average height, average weight, black hair ... Filipino.” The cops thought this was hilarious. Then they asked him to look through a set of mugshots which did not seem to conform to any sort of standard - In one the guy had his arms around two babes while his face was bloodied up so badly that he was unrecognizable. There was an assortment of toothless, grinning culprits in various poses and locations, and most of the shots weren't catalogued but lying about in random stacks. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to identify for certain the guys behind the mugging, he spent a good hour going through the shots for kicks while watching American Idol with the on-duty officers in the staff lounge. He was asked by the cops more than once if he had enjoyed the company of beautiful Filipina girls yet. Cable took precedence over holsters in the budget, and most of the officers carried pistols shoved down the front of their pants. He spotted an AK-47 tossed casually on a pile of papers and other office debris. When he went to the toilet he passed by the only holding cell which had a layer of people on the floor and a canopy of hammocks supporting another layer of inmates above. While passing, the inexplicably cheerful cell occupants shouted to him, “Joe!” “Why so sad, Joe?” “What's the matter, Joe?” One guy started singing Hey Jude, and at this point he claims to have lost his mind a bit.

So, all things considered, I think I was pretty lucky during my time in the Philippines. I left the hostel alone without incident and even avoided being mugged. In fact, going in with a deep, psychologically embedded young-solo-woman paranoia I was proved nothing but wrong, ad infinitum.

With a PETA-sentiment-riling desire to see some cockfighting, I set out on my own to locate the fabled local cockhouse. I had faith in the aggressively efficient Filipino style of direction giving and stopped to ask an old man how to get to the arena. Having barely strung the words together, the man was already hailing a tricycle. He insisted that he take me there, and we squeezed into the sidecar together. This is the point where the various rob/rape/murder (in no particular order) scenarios, which are so deeply engrained in the psyche of most western women in reference to situations with male strangers, began to percolate in my imagination. Fortunately my craving to witness violence overrode my fear of becoming a victim of violence, and I was escorted into the packed arena by my spontaneous guide. As it turned out, this guy was some sort of VIP and not only did he get me in without a cover charge but he brought me to a reserved row of seats in the front, damn near close enough to smell chicken fear. He even convinced the guards to let me take pictures.

As I watched with mixed feelings of horror and morbid curiosity, he patiently answered all of my queries - “Do they eat the dead chickens after?” “How do you keep track of which one's which?” “How much do people usually win or lose?” “... Why are there razor blades tied to their legs ...?!” I was beginning to get on a bit too well with the unruly, drunken crowd around us and he kept my suitors in line with some grandfatherly-sounding chides in Tagalog. In addition to several marriage proposals and requests for cell phone photos I received opportunities to select the winning rooster, making relentlessly poor choices. That day I was wearing a Portuguese soccer jersey and despite my efforts to explain that I was Canadian I left with the nickname Portugal.

After an hour or so of gore I admitted defeat and told my escort (we never did names) that I was leaving. He had a stern conversation with one of the suitors and explained to me that the guy would show me to where I had to go. As we climbed the steps of the arena to leave there was a clamour of guys clapping him on the back, winking at me and shouting suggestive sounding stuff in Taglish. I was beginning to wonder if I had just been auctioned off to the highest bidder. The murder/rape/rob paranoia began to chafe, but again for no reason. The guy quietly led me past the scam artist cab and tricycle drivers, through the suffocating heat and to the appropriate jeepney, wished me well and sent me on my way.

This is only one example of the warmth and hospitality that is the norm. As a foreigner, getting stared at everywhere you go in Asia is expected. In Taiwan, if you meet the eyes of someone staring at you they will almost always look away to avoid eye contact. In the Philippines you are almost always asked how you are, where you are from, whether or not you like the country ... At the very least you get a smile. You could chalk that up to a more intimate history with westerners, or the lack of a language barrier, but I don't really give a shit. It's nice to be smiled at for a change. A girl that I met there gave the example of watching news coverage of a flood on CNN - People's homes are destroyed, some of their friends are dead, but you see clips of smiling people swimming and kids playing in the flood water. “That's just how people are here” she explained. I guess being screwed over in succession by the Spanish, Americans, Japanese and Americans again for a period of over 400 years led to the development of a culture that favours optimism in the face of adversity.

Nevertheless, it wouldn't be fair to paint a picture of Manila without drawing attention to some of the darker aspects. Such as, most obviously, the poverty. Most tricycle drivers, in Manila at least, are basically homeless. They sleep parked along Aurora Boulevard, legs dangling over the edge of a sidecar, inside their only means of income. They have an average income of 200PHP ($4.55CAD) per day.

If you follow Aurora Boulevard into the business district, Makati, you will encounter fully armed guards at every bank, hotel, mall, restaurant or office tower. Most of these guards carry an assault rifle with an extended clip just in case they need those extra 20 rounds to ... What? Quell a surge of desperadoes from the slums? As in any impoverished area the middle class is next to non-existent. In one neighbourhood people are struggling to find clean drinking water, while in another the lawns are manicured, the sidewalks are wide and the gates are high. Oddly enough, despite the added attention to infrastructure this is the only area in which I was ever lost and where people failed massively at giving directions.

I switched my original visa run destination from Tokyo to Manila at the last minute because of cheap flights and because I thought Manila would be more fun than Tokyo alone. Definitely did not regret that decision. Who needs unjustly lauded Kabuki theatre and a mind-boggling metro system when you can watch stray dogs chase naked kids and batter your skull inside a roll cage attached to a motorcycle? Some twisted part of me just found that to be a far more enjoyable experience.

24 Hours in the Arms of Delta

Derek Blasberg, stylist and frenemy to the stars, advises women aspiring to classiness that the only time is is acceptable for a lady to sit next to a stranger for several hours without saying a word is on an air plane. If only it were so simple – Clearly, Derek's experiences are with flying first class.

At the moment I am watching the sunset at Tokyo Narita airport, feeling very much like it is 2AM. Overwhelmed with the onslaught of emotional stimuli (yup, that one's for you) over the past month, I have recessed into a semi-catatonic, grunting, boarding pass brandishing shell of my former self. Faced with six hours of limbo between my old life and my new one, I obviously cannot think of a better way to spend it than regaling you with my woefully standard travel complaints.

On the Montreal-Detroit leg of the flight, I was seated with an ordinary and inoffensive (Read: Of average weight and bathed) man. Behind us, however, was this mean old Southern woman with a hate-on for the lone flight attendant. Before we had even started taxiing, the woman had started in on the attendant about the imagined imminence of missing her connecting flight. We couldn't even make it through the safety demonstration without her chiding remarks and audible sighs, which increased in their audacity to the point where any time the flight attendant spoke, even a request to fasten a seat belt was followed by an “Oh for the good lord's sake, lets get going!” She somehow conned the guy across the aisle into being her fetch-it bitch for the storage compartments - “Hey, grab me ma purse now, would ya?” A demeaning duty to which he was puzzlingly amenable for the duration of the flight. Before the seat belt light was turned off, she was pushing mothers and babies out of the way to be at the front of the plane, bullying the attendant into lowering the ramp faster and demanding an escort.

As I walked the 20 minutes (actually) to my next gate, the only-present-when-in-reference-to-The-States bile of Canadian Nationalism rose in my throat. How many burger shops can realistically be sustained in a 100 metre stretch? Five, apparently. Sorry, I was raised in granola and folk music country, I can't help my nature. This pathological disdain only prepared me for my next seatmate.

By virtue of something akin to bad karma I was in the middle seat, sandwiched between a nondescript yet polite man and a lard-laden, Coca-Cola swilling, snorting, putrid abomination - And that's being generous. He introduced himself with a tactful, “The window seat's mine, can ya move?” And proceeded to plant his generously portioned self at the aisle exit, as if he expected me to levitate out of the way. His in-flight behaviour was nothing less than one would expect from the poster boy for fat assholes everywhere. A relentless barrage of horking and coughing, very circa 2009 Swine Flu. Needing to use the bathroom suddenly and often, screaming, “Gotta get out!” In my ear any time I encountered the briefest moment of sleep. Occupying 1.3 seats, which is a 0.3 seat succession I should clearly make due to the conspicuous lack of Cola and wieners in my diet. And oh, the stench. If the angel and devil on his respective shoulders were waging a battle between showering and fried chicken, it must have been Two-Dollar Tuesdays at Church's.

Unfortunately I could go on, but my battery is dying and it's pre-boarding ... Next time I complain it will be from Taipei, and will most likely involve cockroaches. Here's hoping.

snarkyblogging: Letters of Discontent

Dear Provigo Cart-ee,

Although this may come as a surprise to you, there is still a foot attached to my leg much the same as there was the last time you ran over it with your cart and I gave you a dirty look.

Firstly, you do not need a full-fledged shopping cart for your bag of chips and can of soda. Secondly, ramming into me while there are still two people ahead of us in line will not result in you shoving fistfuls of Lays into your mouth any faster.

Consider yourself warned. Next time, despite the classlessness of such behaviour, I will start a checkout lane brawl with you right then and there, and the cashier will be asking, "Vous voulez un sac?" so that you may have something with which to bandage your bloody appendages.

Warmly,

Provigo Cart-ed



Dear Self Pitying Final Exam Writing Students,

Exams are not an excuse to be flouncing about in public sporting a sweatsuit. In fact, there is no excuse to be flouncing about in a sweatsuit. Hell, its hardly excusable to OWN a sweatsuit. Leave that shit at home, you are tarnishing Montreal's reputation.

*Please note: Ironic facial hair combined with ironic sweatsuit sporting is DEMOLISHING Montreal's reputation. Yeah, I've seen it.

It's bad enough that I have to “consider” functions more than usual this week. Do not make it worse by forcing me to ponder the rate of change of the visible area of thong protruding from your Spaldings. Ach.

Sincerely,

Self Pitying Final Exam Writing Student



I had a third letter in mind but have consumed too much gin since writing the first to remember why I was snarky to begin with. I blame the gin consumption on your sweatpants.




... Ah, I remember now.


Dear Neighbours,

Write another letter to the regie, I dare you. I can't wait to hear you render the painful memories of waking up at 9 AM to the faint sound of CBC or a bloody coffee grinder, or the excruciating memories of the time I had friends over to BAKE COOKIES.

Yes, I had one loud party. And for that I have apologized profusely. That does not, however, justify trying to have me evicted for closing a dresser drawer after 10 PM on a Thursday.

If you want to talk about "frequent late night guests", perhaps I can match your woes with those of my own. Tell your creepy hall wandering boyfriend to get his own goddamn key, I'm sick of hearing you buzz him in at all hours of the night. And yeah, I can hear your music too. The only difference is, yours is CRAP. Oh, and if you're going to leave your stuff in the dryer for three hours after it's finished, clean out the fucking lint trap when you're done. What do you dry in there anyway, because the lint trap is always BRIGHT PINK! Do you have a pink pair of Uggs to match the shitty brown ones that you leave melting pools of dirty snow onto my mat?

The reason I don't report you to the building management or the regie is because when I signed a lease to live on SAINTE CATHERINE STREET above a BAR and beside a WHORE HOUSE, I realized that maybe there would be some dirt, some noise, and some questionable characters in the hallway. DUH. If this isn't for you, you are clearly too fucking boring to live here. MOVE TO LAVAL.


Kindest Regards,

#304

... you'll find it at the Y.M.C.A.

There's some stuff the Village People didn't mention about the YMCA.

It is certainly true that it is a place you can go when you're short on your dough (relatively short, compared to the new young men in town who can afford memberships at private gyms) and it is by all means a place where you can hang out with all the boys (having either a hetero or homosexual agenda), who are in turn being enjoyed by the men (this is not a lyrical misinterpretation). Most importantly, there ARE many ways to have a good time. Observed first hand, these are some of the ways that good times can be had at the downtown Montreal YMCA.



Be nude, station yourself just inside the women's locker room, and start chattin' about arthritis.

Load the thigh machine with the minimum 50lbs, position yourself in the machine correctly ... And take a nap for upwards of 20 minutes.

Place towel and/or water bottle on the only hamstring machine. This is now your personal bench for relaxation and all other desired purposes throughout the duration of your gym session. Gaze at yourself in the mirror, flex occasionally. Pick up the skipping rope and appear as if you intend to use it. Don't. Sit back down on the bench. NEVER use machine for intended purpose.

Hang out with all the boys ... Whether or not you would like to. You grab a medicine ball ... So does the boy. You find a place on the mats to stretch, and the boy finds a place beside you. You book treadmill number 6, the boy books treadmill number 7 and so on.

Have excessive, extensive cellulite? Wear brightly coloured lycra with loud patterns and use the stair master.

“Stretch” on the mats facing the glass-walled yoga studio (only applies to lurking men 50+).

Misread treadmill booking chart. Approach heavily sweating, heavily breathing user on treadmill of choice, and insist that their booking is up. Persist until they stop the machine and get off to show you that they actually still have 8 minutes left. Slouch off. Repeat.

You're a man? You have long, luscious locks? Said locks are grey beyond the point of denoting sexual prowess? Let them flow free and lope around the indoor running track, ogling the women on the stair masters and flexing as you pass. You are Fabio. You are Don Juan. You are the Harlequin hero of the everywoman.

Wash your gym clothes in the shower and dry them with a blow dryer. Create a locker room lake and wet the socks of those changing nearby.

Be the lone man in a posse of no less than 8 women on the elliptical trainers. Wear short jean shorts, pull socks up to knees.



Times have changed a great deal since that song was released. Firstly, the YMCA that the Village People wrote about was not a gym. Secondly, it was not co-ed. Finally, it was run for and organized by Christians. Despite this much of the same youthful optimism remains – You can still have a good time and, apparently, do whatever you feel. Sensibilities of other patrons aside.

Rue Richler

I watched "A Film Unfinished" tonight and definitely would not recommend it to anyone who isn't either Jewish or in possession of a whopping dose of self-loathing. The documentary is comprised of footage from an unreleased Nazi propaganda film that was shot in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto over a one month period in May 1942, survivors' reaction to the footage and an interview with one of the German officers behind the filming. My notion going in was that it would be an average heartwarming Nazi shit-talker of a film, but it was more of an excruciating-series-of-still-frames-featuring-emaciated-corpses kind of film.

With the aid of a couple glasses of wine to soften the blow of non-Jewish guilt, I’m going to enhance my emotional well being by declaring my support for a Rue Richler. As some of you may have heard, some shit-disturbing city councillors have been stirring the French-Canadian pot in the interest of having a street named after one of Montreal’s most prolific authors, Mordecai Richler. Opponents to the proposition echo Richler’s many critics in their accusations that he was racist and anti-Quebecker, and therefore undeserving of a sign with his name on it. Uh, what about Lionel-Groulx station? What about Henri Bourassa?

Obviously being a racist has not been a barrier to having a public place in one's namesake before – What's stopping us now? If we can have a metro station named after an anti-Semitic Quebec Nationalist, we can have a street named after someone who was tarred and feathered by Quebec Nationalists for making accusations of antisemitism. It's a nice balance.

Do it for Dov/Everyone ends up as a fat mess.

Dear readers, please assist me with my moral quandaries.

Someone suggested I be an American Apparel model for Halloween, which would entail wearing stupid glasses and gold lamé, and tying off my arm with rubber tubing - We thought tract marks would be excessive. The only catch is that to get the right look I may have to actually purchase something from said store, which would effectively negate my non-Dov-Charney-panderer cred. It just doesn't seem likely that I will find that token, over-the-top badge of hipster identity anywhere else in a timely manner. So please, channel your heartfelt advice into the poll that outlines my plausible options.

What do hipsters and my next topic have in common? Ray-Bans and waning sex appeal.

I watched Carlos, the heavily fictionalized film on the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez last night. Gangster stuff is right up my alley so I was pretty satisfied with the first 2 1/2 hours of Edgar Ramirez looking pensive, shooting people, and being, overall, dead sexy. Sadly, all it took was 5 minutes of dozing off in the final stretches of the film for Carlos to go from being the chain smoking, leather jacket wearing definition of cool to being a sweaty lipo patient with a kid and a swollen testicle, the definition of washed up.

He is currently serving a life sentence in France. Conclusion? Even the sexiest hipsters end up as fat, desperate alcoholics.