You can see, I should say hear, some of the craziest things in Taipei.  

A gift I couldn't take

My day went fairly well. I woke up around noon. Did laundry. Practiced guitar for a little while. Wired some money back home at the bank around the corner. Went to my Chinese lesson with Alice. This is when my day went from being pleasant to ... extraordinary. Well, previously I had written that my Chinese teacher is very generous and often gives me little gifts. She had told me the week before that she had a camera from her days in university sitting in her closet and because I have taken an interest in photography, she would like to give it to me. I thought, "Wow, that's awfully nice of her but it probably wasn't a very good one since she didn't even remember what kind of camera it was." The thought quickly retreated to the back of my mind. So today we met in our usual meeting place at Ikari Cafe. We chatted about what I had done earlier in the day. Then, while lifting a large black case said she had brought her old camera with her to give to me. I was a bit anxious to see what make it was but skeptical nonetheless. She gingerly placed it on the granite table we were sitting at and let me take it out of its case. Looking at the back I knew it was an older style SLR; I thought it's probably a Pentax K1000, a typical intro to photography student camera. But as soon as I laid my eyes on the face of the camera, I almost fell off my chair. It was a beautifully kept Nikon FM2. One of the best all manual SLR cameras ever made. I couldn't believe my eyes; I couldn't speak for a few seconds. She insisted that I take it but I asked her if she knew what the camera was worth. She had no idea. I told her I couldn't take such a gift and that I would teach her how to use it again. Refused. Said she wasn't interested. She wanted me to have it. Then, I said I'd give her money for it, buy it off of her and after 10 or 15 minutes of the usual Chinese way of insisting the other take the money, she agreed that she would accept money from me only after I took it to a store to see if there was any damage for it hadn't been used for 15 years. Upon closer inspection, I could see mold not only covering the filter, but inside the actual lens as well. I knew it wouldn't be an easy cleaning job. This is an FM2. I don't care how long it takes to clean it.

I'm at home right now, researching info about the camera and looking up lenses on eBay. The camera is going for a couple hundred dollars and the lens was going for 275 US. I can't believe she was going to give it to me. I'm glad I persuaded her to accept some money or else I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight. I'll take it into Leeta Photography tomorrow to assess the damage and let you know.

Taken at night with ISO 3200. Strange it almost looks like a spotlight is on the bike but actually it was almost pitch dark. Some detail lost in the fence but I like the crossed shadows.  

Tax Season

Yes! It's time to file taxes! Unlike back home it's about a ten minute event to file taxes here in Taiwan. You take your little white tax invoice from your employer as well as last year's receipt and fill out the first two lines of the tax form, give them to the clerk and the rest is done for you. Voila! In three months, you will be receiving 4% of the 10% taxes the government withholds from your income. Why does it have to be so much more complicated back home?
After filing taxes at the Taipei City Tax Office in Ximending, Mal, Eddie, Laurie and I headed to Ikea. I finally got some pants hangers to hang those damn posters I got from the Fine Arts Museum that have been sitting frameless in my room for the past two months. The hangers work like a charm since the posters are double sided and I can easily flip them around in a second if I get tired of that image. I'm actually quite proud of that idea.
Went to my Chinese lesson with Alice. She's so nice. She must like me a lot because she's always giving me things. Today, she treated me to a cup of coffee with the money I'm paying her to teach me Chinese. I tried to refuse but she just wouldn't take the extra money I gave her.
After work, went to a really nice lounge next to Caves Bookstore for Laurie's birthday. I would have never noticed it because the entrance was somewhat hidden. But man, nice place! I wish I had my digital with me because the lighting was beautiful inside.

I was getting a key made and snapped one of this boy who I often see playing in front of the shop.  

Weekend happenings

So on Saturday I met up with my two new private students. The circumstances under which I was hired was a bit sketchy so I took Malcolm with me to make sure I wasn't kidnapped or anything. I had no idea how the woman found my cell phone number or how she knew I was even a teacher. She said that someone from the school gave her my number but couldn't recall the name of the person. It turned out to be a legitimate job and the two teenaged kids along with their mother ended up to be nice people. I said I'd charge them 800 NT per hour because that's what I charged my other private but now I'm having some regrets. I'm thinking perhaps I should charge them more because it's for two kids not only one. On top of that, it's on a Saturday night. (Not that I have much of an active life anyway.) The mother now wants to extend the lesson another half hour because she thinks an hour is insufficient. I said I'd give her an answer next week.
Afterwards Mal and I went to a hot pot place where I almost burned down the shop. I don't usually like to eat soup that is boiling at the time so while Mal was getting some rice, I tried to lift the small pot with some napkins to blow out the fire. The pot was missing a handle but I didn't think it would be a problem. "I'll just hold the edge of the pot. No sweat." I succeeded in putting that fire out but before I knew it, one of the napkins caught on fire. I tried to put batting the napkin with the other napkin and then they were both on fire. By then, I'm screaming and batting this ball of fire in front of me with my hands. It was like a comedy act. Finally, one of the workers came with a wet towel and put it out, ashes flying all over the place, into the rice, onto my clothes. Well, that was dinner.
We went to see A Very Long Engagement after that. It was good. More gruesome that I expected but a really nice story. I ended up crying by the end, too.
These past couple of days have been really miserable and dreary out. Nonstop cold rain. So on Sunday I suggested that we go to a hot spring. Perfect weather for it and we hadn't yet been to one this season. Ended up waiting more that a half an hour in line in the rain to sit in a tiny closet sized bathtub for forty minutes. It was my fault. We should have gone to our usual location with the large interior, shower, and jacuzzi sized tub.
Later we went back to his place because I wanted to scan some slides that I took in Kending. I had never used slide film so I was told to under expose when taking pictures. So what I did was set my camera to 200 speed even though my slide film was ISO 100. After I got the slides back from the shop, I was really excited. By looking through them into the light, the colors looked fantastic but after scanning them at Malcolm's, I realized each and every picture I took on my vacation to Kending was under exposed. It was like someone kicked me in the stomach. This feeling of deep loss. I shot over a hundred exposures. I think some of them can be saved with photoshop but sitting in front of a computer fixing images is not my idea of true photography. I don't think I'll be shooting with slide film too much anymore because of this and also because the stores don't scan the photos for you when shooting slide. I just have to find a film with really deep color saturation.
Work was alright today. M2 went smoothly though we got Andy from half-day class. He's a really annoying kid. Had my oral test with K12. That class is finally over. We got a new student in my M5 class who has some kind of disability. He has a hole in his throat to breath and one side of his head is deformed. I had seen him around school so I guess he failed into our class. I had to stop a game because he was always the last one to sit down. I was getting mad a him because he wasn't following along with the other students when reviewing sentence patterns. And when the students were doing a survey activity, he walked around the class and avoided everybody. I'm not sure if I should yell at him when not doing the assigned work as I would do to any other kid or if I should turn a blind eye when he doesn't pay attention. He won't learn anything if I do that but I guess I shouldn't set the same standard as I do with the others. Hmm...

The creation of this site. Soon to be posted: various photos taken during my time in Asia.