Hiya,
Mentioned last week we had a few different groups of people over for dinner type things. At each one, people went into our refrigerator and had the same comment...'who drinks all the milk'. Me of course. I love that stuff and have guzzled it straight from the container for as long as I can remember. Betty will put some in her coffee or cereal, but she could 'milk' a 1/2 gallon for several weeks. I polish one off in at most 3 days. We like to buy the stuff at Costco here cause it is imported from the States and I need me some steroids. Plus, Betty has been to dairies here and says the conditions the cows are subjected to due to space issues lead to all kinds of horrific things that I don't even care to imagine. With the disruptions to the global supply chain, the American milk at the Costco isn't in stock all the time, so we will horde it at home and so have 2-3 gallons of the stuff on hand most of the time. That everyone finds this habit of consumption weird, and I've read things about how old people should stop consuming milk cause it causes all kinds of issues, have begun to question this habit. But who's kidding who...I'm gonna drink this stuff till the cows come home
Another habit of mine is to walk around the house at all times in bare feet. We started baseball last week and I went pretty hard at practice. Way too hard than I should have and in addition to aggravating all the usual aches, my back has been outta whack for days. Our cleaning lady was over and she wanted to break down the dining table to take out a leaf and make it smaller, but I begged off as not only did I screw up my elbow on the damn thing a couple years ago, but I didn't want to wrench my spine any further. I told her that my back hurt and she pointed at my feet saying that the floor is cold and that is what is causing my back pain. I know this has to be some Asian chi thing, and while I am certainly not anti that form of medicine, thought that diagnosis was voodoo. She is Filipina and I called her a bruja. With the echoes of Spanish colonialism still resonating in their language, she thought that was hilarious...have never seen her laugh so hard. I have found that the word bruja always gets a laugh.
Another local custom that intrigues me happens at the local schools. I have reservations about the way they teach, which I am led to believe values learning by rote over critical thinking, but the aspect that I know they do right is to have the kids clean up the school. Chinese New Year break for them ends on Monday, but last Friday the students were required to come in to give the school a nice cleaning. I will watch them and individually their efforts are mixed, but it is the spirit of working together for the good of your school that seems like it should be done everywhere. I advocate for this at our fancy expat kid school and get laughed out of the room as they say the parents would never stand for that kind of thing. Seems like a missed opportunity to show some humility and camaraderie if you ask me.
One more Taiwan thing. I went to a talk about the legal system in the country, and there was a statistic on one of the slides that said the number of lawyers in this country of 23 million people was 8,500. Doing the math, that is one per 2,705 people That struck me as exceptionally low and while this wasn't the point of the slide, I raised my hand to confirm that number. The speaker confirmed it so and could see my disbelief. My Canadian friend sitting next to me said to never mind him as he is American. A good line by her that drew an appropriate laugh Half-assed internet research shows that in the US, that number is 295 people per lawyer Wish I had know it was 421 in Canada so I could have gone back at my friend. The speaker added that only 7% of law students pass the local bar, which is an exceptionally high/low bar. The society seems much less litigious here and things are mediated at a much higher rate. It definitely feels like a better system but would make for an interesting study one day.
Like I said, baseball is in full swing and I got stuff 5-6-7 days a week for a couple months. So great...being on the field with the boys, parents and coaches brings me all the joy. Am lucky that I get to work with two coaches that not only love and know the game as much or more than I, but they are both teachers so know how to instruct a kid in their mechanics in ways that I envy and try to incorporate. I can look at a kid and know what is wrong, but these guys have drills and words to correct those flaws. I know I am a much better coach now because of them. What they can't do that I have more leeway to impart to the kids is the irreverent part of the game. Baseball is a lot about the mind and taking yourself out of your own head or addressing a problem by making fun of yourself. It is a a fact that the best hitters fail 7 times out of 10. No one wants to fail or should meekly accept failure, but if you can't laugh at yourself and just get into self loathing mode, it'll destroy your soul. Humor doesn't work with all of them, but what does. A couple examples from this week. We had a kid come out to tryouts that was on the end of the bench of JV last year. Our program is getting a lot better and we have a bunch of Freshman that came up that are real baseball players. For years, we have taken kids that were decent athletes, but not baseball players. Who's kidding who, we've taken shitty athletes just because they liked baseball and had a glove. There was a kid last year that was a disaster throwing the ball. He made the team cause he had a decent swing, but when he would throw, I'd say it went straight maybe 10% of the time at best while it'd spray all over the place the rest of the time. It was comical until you had to play catch with him. When we said goodbye to him last year, we gave him instruction and drills to help with his accuracy to work on in the offseason. He shows up for tryouts this year and he and another boy are doing warm-up tosses. After a minute, the kid throwing with the returnee asks me to warm up with him cause he is sucking so bad that he isn't able to get ready and is getting frustrated. I start to play catch and it ends up me playing fetch cause his balls are going all over the field. He hasn't improved a lick since last season and might be even worse To show how mental these kids are, he comes up to the head coach and I after the tryout and says he should start throwing with his brother. He is totally oblivious to the fact that there is no way he makes the team. Before Coach can say something nice to let the kid down, I interject that he should have done that 10 months ago. Mean, funny to me, and hopefully demonstrating to this kid just how messed up his thought process is.
I know they don't always get my style, which is OK cause that is why we have multiple ways of teaching. For example, there is another kid that is a Freshman...a decent player that could be quite good if he corrected a lot of mechanics. It's gonna be tough for him cause his skull is thick and things take a long time to get through to his brain. Whenever anyone says that something hurts, like 'dad, my knee hurts' or 'coach, my elbow hurts', I reflexively say every time...'your face is killing me.' Every time. So this Freshman kid complains about his elbow and I react as I always do, and he just looks at me. I ask him, do you understand what I just said and then spent 5 minutes explaining the joke. At the end of it, he says he gets it, but am still not sure he does. That kid now comes up to me at every practice and gleefully tells me something hurts so I will comment on his face. I have broken through with him and now he listens to the other stuff. Like I said, it doesn't work with all of them, but you never know what will and you have to keep searching.
We got a bunch of new balls before the season and we have a bucket of old ones and one for the new balls. After throwing, coach yells 'balls in the bucket' and then adds that clean balls in the clean ball bucket and dirty balls in the dirty ball bucket. In the pile of kids putting them away I said, 'that was my nickname in high school'. One of the kids says what was that coach, to which I say 'Dirty Balls'. One of the kids nearby, one that I have coached for 3-4 years now and rarely ever have gotten a reaction from, nearly split a gut cause most teenage boys, and men of all ages, like a good balls joke. That kid is now talking to me like we are related. There ain't nothing like baseball
sweet story at the end <3
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