An American makes plans to move to Taiwan.

12.20.2009

Taiwan Dreamin' : Teaching English

For this one I didn't call it episode 2 and just decided to call it "Teaching English." This whole episode focuses on teaching, what you need to teach legally and all that. I brush over a lot of things quickly so it's not really to be used as a guide but just to give an idea of how it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL9HGc9mJO4

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4.27.2009

VLOG

Talking about McDonalds, Taiwanese Money, and my broken video camera.



Let me know if you have any suggestions about fixing or buying a new one.

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3.02.2009

New ARC


My contract has been extended so I am staying at my school for another year. I had to go and do some paperwork with taxes, take another health check, and go to immigration for more paperwork. Yesterday I went to pick up the new ARC, looks the same as the old one.

I bought a new game, Killzone 2, it is pretty fun, but the controls are kind of weird, not sure if I will stick with the online multiplayer, but the game is really pretty, great graphics. Resident Evil 5 is coming soon, can't wait for that!

I started editing Taiwan Dreamin Ep 2 before but I haven't worked on it for a long time, I need to do that some more. These past few days I have been sick with a cold or something, think I have a fever too maybe. Well I will go to work today and wednesday is my day off so I can get a lot of sleep then.

Some friends came down from Taipei to stay with me and hang out. We played a lot Street Fighter 4, and we went to a small concert in a bar, was pretty cool. We also went to an arcade and took some video of us playing the games. Another thing we did was a part of a little skit for one of my friend's Youtube channel, we both like to make videos.

Okay - I will try to keep you guys updated and finish my video - bye bye!

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2.16.2009

Gaming again!

I just got Street Fighter 4 on the 12th - it's a very fun game and highly anticipated. I decided to make a video review for it since it doesn't come out in the US until the 17th. So far it's been about 24 hours and I have over 2,000 views. To give you a comparison, my Da Keng Monkey video has gotten 62 views in the last 2 weeks. Taiwan Dreamin' episode 1 has 435 views and it's been up for 3 months.

My number of fans or 'subscirbers' has gone up as well. Before I started doing video game related videos I had about 20, now I have 72.

Here are the honors for my SF4 video:

#44 - Top Rated (All Time) - Gaming - Taiwan

So as you can see I am very excited about this. What this means is that I have more traffic coming through my page and more people will see my videos as a whole. When I publish my next Taiwan related video many people who are not necesarily interested in Taiwan will get notice of it and possibly check it out. Very good news for me, and for my Taiwan Dreamin' project!

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVSCHbPLOI




Also, there was a big gaming convention in Taipei recently, I didn't go but it seems pretty cool. Here's a page with photos from the event, lots of pretty girls there for advertising purposes, haha!

http://www.mobile01.com/newsdetail.php?id=6995


Okay - I am still editing Taiwan Dreamin' ep 2, so I should be finished after not TOO long!

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2.01.2009

Monkey!!!

When my father was here in Taiwan for his visit we went to Da Keng Mountain. There are 4 trails. My ex-coworker Jen told me that trail #4, which is off in a different direction, had monkeys. She had seen one herself.

I took my dad there and we didn't see any, he also went again alone to check it out.

Well the next time I went I took my video camera and actually saw this large male monkey. So here is the video, I just basically put the entire amount of footage I got of the monkey which is about 2 mins. I whistled at the monkey a couple times, seemed he didn't like that too much. At the end you can see he shook the tree which I think is kind of a warning he is getting pissed off or territorial, that's just a guess though, I decided to leave him alone.

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=2rRRLWap2Iw

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1.07.2009

Richie Post #3: Scooter Rental

We’ve been walking quite a bit actually, just not downtown on the bigger streets. The smaller streets aren’t bad, though you do need to keep an eye out.

Ian and I rode down to the area of the bus station and I was able to rent a nice silver 125cc scooter for $20 a day. All the people I've met here have been very welcoming, and the scooter rental lady was friendly and funny. It turned out my getting an international license was a good idea, and Ian’s Chinese was good enough for there to be no problem. We rode a windy little road into the foothills to the east outside this city.

It's very strange to see bamboo and palm trees growing in a jungle on the mountains. It was also interesting to see how quickly the landscape transformed form city to wilderness with hardly any sprawl or urban transition. The battery in my camera ran down so I didn't get any pictures today. Tomorrow I'm hoping to check out a park a little to the north of where we went yesterday. Ian says there are wild monkeys living there like squirrels, and I’ve got my camera all charged up.

Eating here is cheep and delicious. We picked up some large steamed dumplings, like the puffy white ones we used to get at the Nanking, from a big farmer's market on the way home. They have four different fillings and sell by the dozen for $3.00. They use motorized gizmos like slow moving horizontal fans with tassels over the fish and prepared food to keep the flies off. It works well, and a whole table with fresh fish had none of the little critters buzzing around.

I bought a six-pack of Kirin beer labeled, “Bar Beer”. I think its draft beer, light but good, and also inexpensive.

The picture is of what they call the 'night market', really just a big strange smelling flea market.

It's still hot and a little muggy during the day, but it cools down at night.

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11.19.2008

My Father's Photos

Okay, just posting this up. My father's camera is a lot nicer than mine, check out all the photos we took during his trip. I have to say, some of them are really amazing!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15979413@N02/

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9.29.2008

General Update

Well we just had a big Typhoon, I didn't need to go to work today because of it. Yesterday at one point when i went outside the door was yanked out of my grip by the wind and the door knob slammed into the outside wall. Seems it was damaged a little because now it is more stiff to turn and lock. It was a surprise to me! My scooter was also blown over so I took it inside. Many stores were closed during the Typhoon.

Leah stayed with me and we walked to McDonalds and were well soaked and blown about. Lucky for us they were open. A lot of people were there getting food and staying out of the rain.

I took Leah to catch her bus to Kaohsiung and ended up getting lost on the way home. I still had a general notion of where I was going, and which way was North, but I was getting a bit confused about exactly where I was. Finally I found a road I knew, and followed it to another intersection. Many of the bigger roads are also labeled in English. I am able to read the characters than mean 'Beitun District' as well which helped me at one point. Anyway, I was soaked by the time I got home. During my time being lost, however, I discovered a really cool big temple with a statue of a red skinned bearded man, most likely a daoist god. I think I'll try to go back there to get some footage for my Taiwan Dreamin' program.

Speaking of that - well actually, randomly discovering that statue was really cool for me and inspired me to continue thinking about how I can put segments together to create the first eppisode. It's been a long time and I still haven't gotten all the pieces I want. When my father is here I will be doing more traveling so I am expecting to get a lot of footage at that time as well.

Just driving around in my every day life I see the same things and sometimes kind of forget I am on the other side of the world from where I was born. But when I see something new, like a traditional temple, or a big sky scraper, anything like that, I am reminded and I get really excited. That's when I really want to show everyone else! So I really want to get some eppisodes completed.

My main problem is trying to decide on a production value I am going for. I mean, how 'professional' it needs to be. Basically, shooting video is difficult, but editing is probably twice as hard. The other thing is keeping the editing process in mind when you are filming, make sure you get the shots you want. On some of the footage Ive gotten so far I found that I moved the camera way too quickly, I'll need to slow it down. The thing is, when you are filming, you have an urge to be quick. When you are slowly panning over something you feel it's too slow and might be boring, but that's what editing is for, you need the shot to be long enough and slow enough to work with.

Okay, enough about that... I think my Taiwan Dreamin' questions and comments video has over 200 views now. That's not a TON, but it's enough for me to feel there is an interest out there for the video. Once I actually have some interesting content, I hope Taiwanese and the rest of the world will be interested to watch.

I'll also need some translating done if I am to use subtitles, so if anyone is interested let me know!

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5.31.2008

Console Wars

Once again, this generation, we have 3 videogame companies in a huge sales war. This time though I feel it is more interesting than ever because there is no CLEARLY better product.
The Wii is much less powerful graphically and has less space to work with, however it have many motion sensing abilities and a new balance board periphrial. It's being marketed to kids, casual gamers, and housewives.


Xbox360 is powerful - but uses DVDs, has a lot of storage space, good online components in xbox live, and some good exclusive content.

PS3 uses Blueray DVDs which are the highest capacity out there, it has plenty of storage space, works online well enough, is region free, can play the blueray movies and outputs 1080 graphics which are the highest definition available currently.


My white PS3 - to match the Wii, haha!

I went for the PS3 because of the blueray, the region free aspect, (I can play European, Japaneses, and American games.) Also some of my favorite series are still on PS3, such as Tekken and Metal Gear.

Recently the gaming industry went through a hiccup with E3, the big videogame expo, they cut it down in size and moved to a new location to try to make it manageable. Without going into the details it was a disaster and this year a lot of companies are not interested in going back. The videogame industry is HUGE pumping out tons of games which often beat the movie industry for money earned by the companies.

I am curious to see what happens in the future. People are saying that the wii is too limited and will die out soon, however sales are still going strong and beating out it's more powerful competators. Xbox360 is in a bit of a bind because Sony has the monopoly on HD discs with its Blueray DVD, as well as the fact that the Microsoft owned company is failing in Japan against the home team Sony.

My hope is that the Wii starts to get better 3rd party games, not just Nintendo owned properties. The controller has been proven to be good by various games and is just waiting for a masterpiece to put it all together. PS3 has had a slow start but they are getting rolling now. Once all the japanese companies like SquareEnix, which usually stay Japan focused start releasing their next gen games, I think we will see that because Japanese people don't care for Xbox360, that the number of games for PS3 will surpass Xbox and the once exclusive Xbox games will be ported to PS3. It seems likely to me, but we'll see.

Living here in Taiwan the gaming industry here hangs on the industry in japan. Most games here are just the japanese originals. Taiwanese who wish to play these games must either learn japanese or go online and download fan translated scripts to go along with it. Quite a hassle.

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5.28.2008

Weather - Teaching - PS3

It's getting hotter, I got a small sunburn while riding around on my scooter. I bought the PS3 like I said I wanted, so I have found myself sitting in my underwear in front of the fan playing 'Grand Theft Auto 4' quite a few times, haha! Trying not to use the Air conditioner too much. I bought 3 games, Call of Duty 4, Assassins creed, and of course Grand Theft Auto 4! Very fun! Good graphics! Good controls! State of the art!

It will get really hot, I don't know the actual temperature, and then it will pour down rain for a hour or two and cool it down. Taichung is a very sunny city, I think people are right when they say it has better weather than the others.

On the scooter the highest speed I normally get up to when driving is 80kmh, which is about 50mph. Speed limits are around 60kmh, which is about 40mph. Well I should say I've heard that is a normal speed limit because I've never seen a speed limit sign, or at least I didn't know that's what it was. I also have never seen a stop sign here, they mostly use lights. In small neighborhoods they have big mirrors at intersections sometimes to help you see if a car is coming.

Taiwanese Drivers will often slow down slightly (or not) and honk their horn as they are approaching an intersection to let others know they are coming through. I think the general understanding is that if you are coming to an intersection you may not have to stop but you better be careful! But hey, health care is cheap here, so if you don't mind having all your bones broken in a crash, at least its not too expensive to get your casts and surgery! Weee!

Back to the cram school topic, I will be working all summer, since it is not like a normal school, there aren't any big breaks in the schedule. Taiwanese Elementary School students get 2 months off for summer vacation, and 1 month for winter and a few scattered holidays. Older students, in high school, get 3 weeks summer vacation, and 1 week for winter. During those breaks the students will still be coming to the buxiban. The summer will be hot but luckily the classrooms, and most places here really, have air conditioning!

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4.23.2008

Taipei Trip!

I went up to Taipei this weekend on the bus to visit my friend Nancy. I stayed at her place Friday night and we went out on Saturday. We went around the city on the Metro (MRT) and I saw Taipei 101 for the first time from the distance on the train.
It's so big and impressive in real life. So we decided to go to the Mao Kong Gondola, it can take you up into the mountains where there are many tea shops, then down to the Taipei Zoo. We didn't drink tea or see the zoo but we took a bunch of pictures in the mountains there.


The view from the gondola was great! You can see all the pictures I took on my Flickr page:
You can see Taipei 101 in the background of many of them, so tall it even peaks over the mountains!
After that we went to another part of Taipei to eat and watch a movie - Street Kings, it was pretty cool! Sort of similar to the movie Training Day.

So yeah it was a great weekend, a lot of fun! Thanks Nancy!

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3.27.2008

Teaching English in Taiwan

I have been Teaching for a little while now so I have a few comments I can make.

First of all, every class is different, not just the age level, or the level of book they are in, but also just the class dynamic. Most classes energy focus around 1 or 2 students and depending on how those poplular/class clown/stand out kids act, the rest will follow. Some classes are slow and you will feel they are brain dead, other classes are high energy, sometimes good, sometimes bad. As a teacher you need to learn to adjust to their style, which is really hard.

For example I have one class where I can drill vocabulary in games, the students listen, and they enjoy the games, they make an effort to talk to each other in English when they know the words they want to say. I have another class at the same level who are pretty bad. They are too aggressive when playing games, and mean spirited, sore losers to boot. They also constantly speak Chinese, including foul language in Taiwanese and Chinese. Nothing much I can do about that, because this is a buxiban, a cram school. I can't send them to the principle, I can't kick them out, or really punish them in any way so the only way I can motivate them to listen is with rewards. Some people will tell you that this is a good system, but really, sometimes punishment is called for I believe.

The actual material is not too hard to teach, the books are good in general, although some days you don't have too much to work with. The tests are easy so any student who has been paying attention should pass. It's rare for a student to fail because the school wants to keep pushing the kids along to the next level. I think thats how my bad class got so high, just got passed along.

Most lessons go like this: First we have a spelling test, maybe 6 - 12 words. THis takes about 10 - 20 mins depending on the class. Next I have the kids open their books and we go over the written material, the different books can vary greatly on how much material is presented. After this, with younger groups we use flash cards to drill vocab, older kids we need to read or play a game that allows them to write, or speak, or in some way identify new sentence structures or vocabulary. Younger groups also need to work in a phonics book and a printing book as well.

It's much easier to make games out of flash cards than it is to do something with writing or speaking, but those are also more valuable sometimes. I can talk more about games in a future post. So generally the teaching is going well and I am enjoying it. The week goes by quickly and I fell happy after teaching my good classes, and after the bad ones, just relieved, haha!

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2.10.2008

FEB 09 - Ian's Birthday!

A while ago I told my MSN friend Cher that I was trying to think of something to do on my birthday. We came up with the idea of going to Taipei and meeting up with her friend. So yesterday I woke up early, got a taxi to the high speed railway station. Sadly the time it takes to get there and the price of the taxi is really disproportionate to the HSR fare and speed.

So I managed to buy a ticket, instead of using the automated teller things I went to a real person, which took much longer. Later I found that the machines seem to have and English option, I need to try that next time. The train came, it at about 10:16, and I was off to Taipei! They don't call it high speed for nothing, I think the top speed I noticed on the indicator was 286 kmph. When it got to Banciao I thought maybe we were halfway there but it only took about 10 more mis from there. The whole trip takes 2 - 3 hours on a normal train I heard, HSR is about 50 mins.

So I met Cher and her friend Joy at the Taipei station. We went to a big mall, Breeze Center, I think, and ate a good lunch. Then it was off to Danshui, which was even colder and rainier. We took the MRT (Metro) this time. Cher and Joy were both really funny and sweet and getting to know them and making jokes was really great. In Danshui we walked down some night market streets and then up to Fort San Domingo. The signs were a little confusing to me, but it seems the fort was used by the spanish (hence the name) but later was used by the English. There were some other sections discussing the Dutch's occupation as well.

After this we went back down by the water, it was a very dark day but the view was still fun. People were still setting off fireworks over the water, CNY celebrations won't stop until Monday the 11th. We played some little games at the night market and then headed back into Taipei. There we went through another night market, ate some shaved ice dessert, and took some silly photos.

In many Asian countries it is popular to go to these crazy photo-booths. In America I have only seen the old style which quickly takes 4 photos. This kind lets you choose all types of backgrounds, and you can go out and write on them too. Then the machine lets you print them as stickers of all different sizes and even e-mail them to yourself. So then we were pretty exhausted, we had been out playing for almost 12 hours. I got back on the HSR from the MRT, and went back to Taichung, took a Taxi home, and my legs were aching!

Somewhere in there I also bought my favorite Taiwanese artist's (Chang Chen Yue's) CD, an older album called "Useless Guy." I took a good bit of video too so I will edit that together, maybe with one of his songs, so you can see the trip.

So thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes and greetings, and thanks to Cher and Joy for a really memorable birthday trip!

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1.30.2008

Feng Chia Night Market

Jess came from Taipei today and we went to the night market. I felt bad she needs to travel so long just to see me for a short time. She told me my house is a garage and looks silly. I guess so but actually I like it. Anyway she showed me some new foods and fruits so I can eat them again in the future.

Maria has been looking for jobs for me a lot I think. I still need to print my scanned diploma, and now I think I need my transcripts too- not sure if I can have them sent here directly or if my mom will need to send it.

Well I think my internet and phone should be installed on Friday, thats good. I plan to meet another friend on Friday evening, maybe go and eat something close to my house. I saw some nice looking restraunts when I was walking around, wonder how good is the food.

Okay, I am going back to MSN now - post more later!

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1.10.2008

1 Ping = 3.5 sq. Meters = 36 sq. Feet

Well I think the title says it all. Many of the rooms I found were about 10 Ping. The place I have reserved is 50.
Thats about 175 sq. Meters or 1800 sq. Feet. I need to ask my parents what is the size of their homes so I can compare. Anyway, I know its not small, haha!

On another subject I need to have a card made up to express my allergy. My friend Kevin wrote it out for me in simplified chinese, but in Taiwan they use traditional. Here it is:

I am allergic to 'legumes' and beans.
我对豆科植物以及豆科植物所作食品过敏.

This includes peanuts, tofu, and soy.
这其中包括了花生,豆腐,大豆等食物.

I can have the oil, but not the protein.
我能食用豆制油类,但是不能食用豆制蛋白质.

I need to print this out I guess. I also need somebody to type up my full adress where I will be staying so I can show it to Taxi drivers and such people.

When I arrive in Taiwan I will take a bus or the High-Speed Train from the airort to Taichung. There are places to buy bus tickets right inside the Airport, for a 2 Hour ride to Taichung it's about $7 US. For the Train its about $30 but takes like 40 mins, something like that. The bus terminal is open until 1:00 am.
Taiwan is practically a 24 Hours Open culture so I think I can travel easily in the night.

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11.12.2007

Photos of Taiwan.

I've been looking around online and there are some really great photos of Taiwan out there. If you look in a travel book it's likely they will only show you resorts and things that look like Hawaii, but thats not what most of Taiwan looks like. These Flickr users will help you see Taiwan from their perspective:

Paogao
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poagao/

Paogao's photos are are very artistic, well composed, great subjects, wonderful lighting. Even grimy city streets look beautiful through his lens.

Michael Turton
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelturton/

Michael Turton is primarily a blogger, and a good one at that, but his photos are fun to see as well. They are more 'what you see is what you get.' He travels all around Taiwan to many different cities, museums, parks, and beaches and is always documenting as he goes.

Alidarbac
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alidarbac/

Another artistic photographer giving his insight on Taiwan. From photos of people to landscapes, all his work is impressive.


There is a lot to see on those three pages, but keep in mind they travel to other countries too so not EVERY photo there is Taiwan. Here are a few others to check out, just regular users taking photos of their daily life:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandman1/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frostfox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucybabewho/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83102412@N00/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lupillus/

One last thing! On YouTube, and LiveVideo, check out the Motorcyclin' Mordeth13. He basically drives around Taiwan interviewing himself equiped with his trusty Helmet-Cam. Pretty interesting way to see Taiwan and he has some funny storys to tell as well. Here are his pages:

http://livevideo.com/mordeth13
http://youtube.com/user/13mordeth

I hope that when I get to Taiwan I can get a camera and take my own photos of the island! Okay, so take some time to look through those, leave them comments, and leave me comments too, tell me which ones are your favorites!

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