Need to take a couple week break from the diary as we are on the road the next two weekends. Headed out to Australia for 10 days...3 in Sydney, an overnighter to Uluru, three days in Carins (actually Port Douglas) exploring the Great Barrier Reef and then a couple days in Brisbane. Looking forward to sharing it in April.
When I get hurried, these posts get kinda messy and noticed that I missed a couple of important things from the Vietnam write up . First, when detailing how far we took the boat up (down?) river to see the Hoochie-coo tunnels, I said 17 miles. Of course I should have said in my best Martin Sheen voice, "17 clicks". Also, when tooling around on the motorbikes, we would stop at traffic lights. At traffic signals around the world, often times there will be a countdown clock and have always wondered why some countdown to how long the light will turn red when it is green, and why others will count how long until a red light turns green. Have looked up studies that debate which one is better, but the ones in Vietnam do both. Simply genius and tip my driving cap to them for the simplest of solutions. See, told you they were important.
It is Babydolls birthday next Friday...the big one-four. In my mind, the most unusual thing about her is that she has never burped. Weird, right? I have never encountered a single person where this is a thing. I know many that get offended by burps, and those people typically have tons of other issues and weird hangups, but never burping seems like a curse. What an enjoyable thing to do? I tried looking it up but medical sites are inconclusive...what the hell is a Schatzki Ring? It doesn't seem to bother her and she is not alone as this stupid '19 struggles for people that can't burp thing from Buzzfeed will attest. Embarrassing confession...I do look at Buzzfeed and take a bunch of the idiotic tests they give like 'We Can Tell You What State You Live In Based On Your Choice Of Sandwich' or 'Your Pizza Preferences Will Reveal A Thing You Do But Don’t Tell Anyone About'. I feel stupid after doing them yet still take the bait. By the way...California and 'You need to watch something happy/funny after a horror movie even though you’re an adult'
The good thing about not burping is that is sounds like it will only be of mild discomfort in life. I did get a tad freaked out by a talk I heard last week about Third Culture Kids (TCK) and the negatives that arise from being one. Have probably mentioned that one of the things I do around here is to arrange for a monthly coffee morning at the Community Services Center. We get a speaker to come in to give a talk on something (hopefully) of interest to the expat community and provide coffee and snacks to the guests in hopes of driving more exposure and interest in the things the Center does. As the curator, I tend to prefer to book speakers on topics that I am interested in (although will have ones on things I can't stand...like running) and we are friends with a guy that just got his PhD on the topic of TCK. A Third Culture Kid is one that is from a certain country that spends many of their formative years (11-18) in another culture. That person then is not a product of their origin country nor are they totally of the one they are living in and they have found that these kids develop their own identity, or a Third one.
There are a ton of benefits and you can probably guess most of them. They are able to adapt to new situations well, are more empathetic to other cultures and people, etc. As our kids will definitely be in this demographic, I wanted to know what some of the potential challenges they will face once the time comes to re-integrate with American culture and hopefully learn how to mitigate those. An interesting trait is that while they are very comfortable meeting new people, they tend to have problems making a lot of deep long term relationships and most end up marrying people with the same life experiences. Feelings of disconnection seems to be the biggest worry and it can range from small things, like not being able to drive when everyone else can, to big ones, like profound loneliness. The speaker said that 40% of TCK girls in college had some thoughts of suicide. Not many acted on those feelings of course, but that number was shockingly high. It is good to know this and there were some tips on how to identify these traits, what to do when you do see them and ways to encourage more activity at the start of the re-integration process to smooth out the ride. We also were recommended some books to help us understand things in advance. I know a bit about it first hand having lived a bit overseas in high school and my biggest hole was not knowing/understanding what people were talking about culturally, but it seems these days that the web has blurred those lines pretty effectively. I did feel saddest for the Korean and Japanese parents in the audience as the speaker said that kids from those cultures have the toughest time as the homogeneousness of those societies ostracize the 'foreign' the most.
Will be keeping an extra close eye on Babydoll when her turn to go to college comes around because of this information and will do the same for the Boy next Fall, but he doesn't strike me as the type to have issues like these. I haven't mentioned his application process much as the big dump of acceptance/rejection letters are due end of March/beginning of April and don't want to jinx anything. Things are way different with the application process these days than they were in mine, almost to the point that they are unrecognizable. That everything is on-line alone makes it so much easier and they have really nice counselors at their school that know the process intimately and did all the heavy lifting. I feel for my Seattle friends in this regard. Was talking to some of the ones whose kids go to the high schools Boy-o would have attended and the topic came up. They seemed very interested in picking my brain and as you can tell, it is slim pickins'. I said that we get a ton of info from our schools college counselor (they have several of them at the school whose sole job is to assist kids with the process and the ratio is like 37 kids per counselor) and our friends just sorta looked like I was speaking in a different language. Seattle Public does not have a single college advisor in their entire district. I cannot imagine how one can sort through all of the options, figure out which schools would be good for their kids and know they are missing on some opportunities.
Regardless of where he goes, am really gonna miss that guy. Thought about that at dinner last night as he eats a ton and will have to alter the quantity and type of foods that get to the table. Will probably be easier, but still. I know he won't but I hope he shares stuff when he's gone. I say I know he won't as he doesn't share it now and that I have to drag whatever info out of him, It is all the little stuff that drives me nuts that I know I'll miss most. Him swearing at his friends when they are gaming, the BO smell in his bedroom...maybe I'll just start swearing more and bathing less. Will also miss being involved with baseball.
Last weekend, Betty and I went down to Taitung for the school's team only "away" games. Am not going to get into the quality of the school's baseball program as I know some local types read this space and my disappointment with the way the school has handled his class is beyond measure and I my rant would be so caustic as to warrant some sanction or discipline. I will say that the coaches, particularly the Head Coach, is a great teacher and leader who has made the most out of the situation. Anyhoo, we flew to Taitung, which is a city of 110,000 on the sparsely populated SE coast and is the heartland of the Taiwanese baseball culture. It takes an hour in the air on one of these...not a big fan of the prop planes.
As it is not as cosmopolitan, the opportunities for the young there are less than in the urban centers, so athletics and the potential to make it out of there by playing them is higher. Our kids practice for a couple weeks and play a total of 6 games, so we are not good. The kids down there go to baseball schools and we were told they go to class till 1p, take a nap then go out for 3-4 hour practices every day. The teams our high schoolers played then were of middle school age and they kicked the crap out of our boys. It was still a great trip, the fellas bonded and we saw some baseball. Boy-o is #24 on your scorecard.
The ceremonial bow to each other post game is lovely one although I prefer the line-up high five 'good game' ritual mainly out of personal experience.
On our one night in Taitung, the hotel was on the street in the middle of the towns night market. The Taiwanese love them some night markets and I liked this one better than the ones in Taipei as it was way mellower/less crowded. They still had all the lame crap to sell, which is 50% cell phone skins and 50% knock off footwear, and the highly touted but universally awful local street food. One of these has to be dick.
Had not seen blow torch beef before...
The fellas spent a few minutes together playing the dopey street carnival games. TCK kids are simultaneously world wise and painfully innocent.
Betty even got in on some of that sweet mah jong bingo action. Can easily fast forward seeing her getting banned from the retirement home bingo game for being too aggressive with the other players.
Then the obligatory game of grab ass in the pool.
This is pretty much the entirety of our teams cheering section on day one. Was tough to get a wave started, but our effort was strong.
A good thing about Taiwan is that no one hassles you when you want to have a beer in a public place.
Two polls of expats from 2016 have been making the rounds here that claim that Taiwan is both the best place to live for expats with regards to quality of life and with the friendliness of the locals towards them. As our only recent experience with this kinda life is being here, can't compare, but have to say that it is surely an easy place in which to dwell. And these days, feel fortunate to be at arms length from the insanity.
Haven't ranted about politics much in this space lately cause it'd be pointless, know I wouldn't be converting anyone and might piss off the few of you that feel differently than I. That said, what is going on in just two months of this regime is stunning. The whole love affair with Russia from the right side of the aisle makes zero sense. Think I have come to a conclusion as to what went down there...Russia thinks they are a great power and knows that the thing that will restore them to their previous "greatness" is a weaker America. Side note, they have never been a great power, not even when Communism ruled the world. They are big and have been blessed with a population that has uniformly accepted their shitty living conditions so accept these dictators without complaint (even to the point they admire their "strength"). So Russia needs to knock the US down a peg and they know (first hand in Putin's case) that Hilary is a ball buster, They do this hack job on her cause they know Trump is a dolt who will be incapable of forging a coherent plan to roll them back. No 3D conspiracy by the Trump gang cause they are obviously incapable of that high level of thought. The old adage to 'never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity' seems apropos.
Trump is not an effective manager as his choices of the best people's performance so far proves. And he doesn't seem to be a very deep thinker. I mean take your pick of awful tweet or lack of any original thought. It is obvious that he has no clue what is in the health care bill ("who knew it was so complicated") and you absolutely know he couldn't possibly have read or understand the budget proposal from this week as it goes against everything he said on the trail. His greatest gift is setting everything up so he can put the blame on someone else. He has hired and listens to the radical side of the Republican party that knows all government is bad, so let's get rid of all of it. I am totally conservative by nature and am well aware there is waste in government, but what I want, and think any critical thinking person would desire is for our government to work to streamline programs to make them more efficient. That goes equally for the military by the way. Yes, socialism alone would be incredibly inefficient, but this reliance on the belief that the "market" and the wealthy will take care of our societies ills alone is just as inconceivable. Rich people are great...they have clever minds for the most part and have figured out ways to make money, but that doesn't make them philanthropic or even nice. And I believe that a good reason that they were able to get rich is that they operate in a country that affords them the ability to make money. There are healthy people that buy their shit and infrastructure for them to get it into the stores, so it is their obligation to pay it back to keep those things going. It is astonishing that there are so many dumb asses that buy the no tax argument and that so many of them are poor people. I make it a point to read things from the conservative or alt-right side and do it every day. It is hard to do cause it is so pessimistic and hateful...I read this thing by Ann Coulter yesterday defending the Russia love affair by railing on the "historic" weakness by liberals against Russia since Lenin. I mean, forget that Truman and Johnson went to war over Communism or that W looked into Pooty Poots eyes and shit. But what is just so soul crushing is going down to read the comments. I don't recommend you do it unless you are the type that likes to pull off band-aids, but the spew that comes out is truly hard to believe and that it likely comes from a person that has a mother or child. I understand that anyone that comments on a Breitbart Ann Coulter story in the affirmative is the lowest kind of human that we make, but they are the tip of this movements spear, and if you align with any of what is going on...makes my heart sink that someone I know has that kind of hate in theirs. And where it worst is the immigrant thing. Again, I don't agree with embracing illegal immigration and am OK with enforcing the laws on that, but let's be fair and punish employers that hire them too. Doesn't that seem fair? That people forget, or are just to fucking stupid not to realize that immigrants are what made America the greatest society in the history of mankind is a testament to something. So they are ignorant or are racist, cause those are the only two choices. Take your pick...I feel sorry for the ignorant ones cause they are suckers to the highest degree. We are all suckers in some way and know we are embarrassed by something where we have been duped into being taken advantage of, but critical thinkers will reflect on their own gullibility and vow to learn from it. There is this vein of the suckers doubling down on their stupidity by continuing to believe they are right when all evidence points otherwise which is why they swallow all the lies as truth. For the racist ones...I would say I was done with you, but then you'd get off easy. For the racist ones, I'm coming for you.
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