October 30, 2012

Have been unusually busy last few days so haven't posted as much as I'd like to lately.  Took my first "Survival Chinese" language class yesterday, and it was quite interesting.  We are learning using the mainland Chinese version of pinying that I detailed in the last entry.  My teacher was saying that this version came about when Mao Tse Tung decided that the complexity of the Chinese language was a main cause for them to be culturally behind the world and directed a simplification of the language...that fits in with others that have said this simplification if far less elegant than traditional Chinese.  The new teacher started off by telling us how easy Chinese is to speak.  There are only 5 tones to learn, there are no articles, there is one pronoun for he/she, only one tense (no past pluperfect thankfully), and you can do just about anything using only a total of 3000 characters (as opposed to over 1.5 million words in English).  It helps me that the vowels are pronounced the same as in Spanish as opposed to English.  I think the hardest part will be that the sentence structure bears no resemblance to the Romance languages, but there is hope.  The class is only three people, all having arrived in Taiwan within the last three months.  There is me, a lady from Wales, and a Grandma from San Jose.  I can already tell the Grandma is going to be a problem...she is obviously here against her will and seems to be throwing up a mental roadblock to all things Chinese.  For example, the word for he/she is ta (pronounced 'tah"), but she will go through 1/2 a dozen other pronunciations (tay/toe/too/tea/tie/tung) before throwing up her hands and saying "I just don't understand".  Reminds me so much of my mom and trying to teach her how to use the computer (I know she reads this on occasion...so sorry Mom). 

One thing I didn't bring up was my idea of giving Westerners Chinese names like the Asians give themselves Western names.  My favorite from work was always Winky Ho, but there are a lot of funny ones out there that are not coming to mind.  I am thinking that I'm the first Westerner to adopt a Chinese name...Pin Pin.  I told our cousin Sharon about it and she wasn't impressed adding that I already had been given a Chinese name by her family...Pon su, which translates into Fat Ass.  Since I don't trust my family implicitly, will ask the teacher about it at the next class. 

In the The More I See The Less I Believe file this week are a couple observations from the Costco.  First...why do people who leave their carts in the middle of an aisle and then wander off for a food sample or examine some item for 5 minutes bug the crap out of me?  Happens all the time, and not just in TW, but happened almost constantly to us yesterday and it nearly put me out of my mind.  By the end of the trip, I was just banging into them to push them out of the way...don't think the little kid the parents left in that cart was amused.  I know its cause people don't have a sense of their surroundings and are so wrapped up in their own world, but when you're amongst the masses, take a second to think about space and your place in it. 

The other thing that blows my mind here is how the condiment trough contents are considered free to take home.  Was talking with some Russians the other night about Costco and they found this habit amongst the locals to be the most unbelievable.  I had not noticed myself, but made it a point to observe on my next visit.  I go to Costco a lot, mainly since I pick Betty up from work a few times a week, and just go a bit early to pick-up the essentials...milk, eggs and whiskey.  You can see the food court while standing in the check-out line, and damned if I didn't see at least one person loading up on ketchup, relish or onions three times in a row.  They will take their empty hot dog wrapper, or just a pile of napkins, crank the handle till it's full, and put it in their purse or bag.  I asked our Costco friends what they thought about this practice.  They know about it, but don't want to hassle the customers and just let them have at it.  I thought there would be a view of it on YouTube for sure, but all I could find was this dope. So SoCal.

 
Finally, it was the International Food Fair at the kids school last Saturday.  Was a very hot and humid day and I was grilling hot dogs (provided by Costco) for a good three hours.  Not a pretty sight.

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