Current mood:	tired
Current music:	The Boy Least Likely to - Be Gentle With Me

Formosa with Love and Squalor
Man, as soon as that allusion came to mind and I noticed it was actually relevant for once, I've been dying to use it. That was like six days ago. If only I were more of a camera person since I even came across a couple of perfect visual representations of it... I was partial to the broken plate glass of some posh looking housing complex's entrance. There was only an opening about the size of a manhole cover-- or a chair I suppose-- but I was surprised that everything else was intact despite the fact the whole thing looked to have been shattered. Alternatively there were lots of pretty new fancy buildings amongst older style ones that'd fallen into disrepair. Or things between the two times that simply rusted really quickly due to the weather. Or the betel nut Plexiglas cages for young girls in skimpy outfits to sell things to oogling men. Moot point as I can't get lappy to recognize my high capacity SD card and didn't bring my camera's USB cord. Or even my camera phone's computer cord, though I have the useless abroad thing.

Anyhows, I had an orientation thingie that lasted from early last Thursday to Sunday evening. While I didn't learn anything and my group really only got pretty chatty on the last day or two, it was pretty decent. Like despite the tedium. On the first day I again turned into an awkward preschooler who was unnerved at the prospect of having to meet strangers independently under the watchful eyes of those acting as guardians. Unfortunately I'd established a precedence of not saying anything by the time my uncle and aunt left and missed most openings so not much by way of chattiness happened. There was one really rather cute guy and I'm sort of confused as to the fact that he came across so flamey by the time I properly spoken with him Saturday evening but I didn't really notice this the first day. Or maybe I did to some extent, I dunno. Rainbow buttons as I saw on two or three guys' backpack is totally handier shorthand since one guy I never would have guessed.

Erm, anyway, somewhat more to where I originally meant to go with the theme, I really do rather like Taiwan. On the other hand, listening incessantly to "<i>ilha(?) Formosa, <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gAmnitVzsgY">Taiwan will touch your heart</a></i>" and all the other propaganda throughout the orientation really sort of bothered me and was off-putting. Now that A-Mei version I found is actually not that band and that may be since I'm inclined to like her--even though she may not really be an aboriginal Puyama Taiwan tribal princess as I originally was led to believe-- I got really sick of the guy with a guitar version I watched on the bus. Not only watched, but was subjected to for several hours over a period of about three days. On Thursday they left the propaganda DVD in the player and it automatically looped, and on Friday when I was on a different bus there was an audio CD version of it apparently. This is in addition to the first day where we learned-- if we knew Chinese, which, I apparently don't-- about Taoyuan's pride and joy of an airport, Sun Moon Lake's mythic history involving white deer as a tourist trap <font size="-2">(a very pretty one)</font>, the uncanny growth potential of even bankrupt companies in Taiwan, and general foreign policy from a possibly racist speaker.

Ah, yay for conundrums. I'm inclined to suspect that she may not be traditionally racist, so much as a typical Chinese/Taiwanese/Asian person fond of overly broad generalizations, but OMG, that means I'd potentially be proving that very point. This was a very involved "joke" that may have involved the child Model UN or UNIT or something and a survey asked for "your opinion on the lack of food in the rest of the world." The punchlines are as follows in varying orders according to the telling. The [Western?] European children didn't answer as they didn't know what is "lacking." <font size="-2">(Note: Seriously? Inaccuracies abound... Especially if that "western" modifier weren't present)</font> African children didn't answer as they didn't know what FOOD was. <font size="-2">(Note: Wow, possibly even worse)</font> American children didn't answer as they didn't know what is "the rest of the world." <font size="-2">(Note: Oh snap yos. Especially for a room mostly full of Americans)</font> Latin American children didn't answer... since they were outside playing soccer instead? And Asian children didn't answer as they didn't know this idea of having their own opinions. I'm slightly proud that it was so poorly received by most of the people but am slightly pitying the speaker since she was kinda thrown to the wolves in trying to theoretically maintain the interest of about 200 college students being treated like children, and since she was willing to actually speak in English most of the time.

I'm getting blogged out as all my lingual facilities are sort of burnt out. Burned? --And my uncle is watching some sort of movie that I think is about evil realtors being staved off by beautiful female ghosts and a giant room sized rooster/cock. Erm, skipping to the end, I shared an amazingly posh dorm room facility thing with flamey guy and discovered that he's also a pretty big Neil Gaiman fan and slightly fortunately creepier than I am as I think he's long-distance dating some kid he's known for about three months who's barely 18 and doesn't even attend his college yet. And I think he's going into med or grad school or already graduated so about four or five years older but I honestly dunno since we didn't get to talk. We were however part fo a giant group of around 20 people at the peak who constantly tried to escape the corporate dormitory grounds to make it to a 7-11 for snacks and/or alcohol and I admired his flip-flopped tenacity and willingness to leap fences and brave the stray dogs.

As the actual internship goes, I'm still not certain. We got paid already for 18 days, and that was weirdy satisfying since I've never actually held money I've directly earned because of direct deposit at work. This continues to be true I suppose as I haven't worked that length of time yet, but whatever. My Chinese sucks and while I'm practically certain I didn't over represent myself in the application, they seem to have missed the fact I understand about 60 to 70% of whatever they say--not the important vocabulary-- and that I'm illiterate and functionally mute. It's a pretty neat group that I rather like though, with only about two that I'm less chill with <font size="-2">(Taiwanese girl I've spoken nary a word to even though she seems rather kind and selflessly/needlessly watched everyone's stuff rather than coming to lunch with us, and the guy from Portuguese but I like to assume it's mostly my personal failure to really get where he's coming from conceptually rather than the group having basically elected to "shun the non-believer!" or whatever)</font>. I <i>may</i> be a bit further awkward with the cute artist boy. He's got "sensie" hair, music tastes, knows models and dresses fairly decently aside from his tendency to sketch rather airy and coutere fashions, and hasn't really dated any girls... but goes to church and was not handily decked out with a rainbow button on his personage anywhere.

I guess it's rather neat though and kinda exciting despite the ghetto building. It's also the studio where they film 模范棒棒堂/mó fàn bàng bàng táng, which I thought meant something like "lollipop" but may in fact be "emulate cudgel cudgel exhibition[hall]" or "model hall of the smart and capable strong", and  黑澀會美眉/hēi sè huì měi méi which I still can't quite figure out but is something along the lines of "Lil' Blackie's Society of pretty younger sistas". ...Which isn't as racist as it sounds...  I more or less made it up and honestly can't figure out if the last character represents "upper margin" or "eyebrows". Have yet to encounter any celebrities though, and even if I did I probably wouldn't recognize them as they're both I think reality TV talent/performance shows loosely affiliated with existing bands, but the latter seems to be an ever growing group of 60 girls, some of which get promoted to the representative fellowship of nine.

Evidently we're easily star struck or distracted since we get frequent breaks. I've been sort of desperate to go "oooh yeaaahhhh... back in the day I once served Charlize Theron alcohol..." as celebrity encounters go, but instead I went with the kinda loserly "I spent five hours in the cold waiting to see Rainn Wilson lecture at my school" upon determining that most of the others were fans of The Office and the girl from UBC rubbing in the fact that everything films in Vancouver even if it's meant to be set in Seattle or even at UW. Which, as I learned, is also the institution of higher education of Wilber Pan's brother as it turns out. Yay for that?