Saturday December 8, 2012

10:00 a.m. at the 7-11 on Chang-an Road in Taipei

It has been a busy week for me. I went to three different schools and had a ton of recording to do at work. But let’s go back to Sunday. I’m a bit tired right now. I was out until midnight last night chatting with a coworker. He got me talking about my usual topics, and now I’m exhausted. I had more beer than usual and so I didn’t sleep very well, and I ended up with a headache. Oh, well. I’m having trouble focusing. I can’t quite remember where this journal left off and what else I did last weekend that I haven’t written about. Strange. I have no memory at all of what I might have done on Sunday.

I do remember, however, Sunday evening. I got back to the hostel building, and I ran into Mr. and Mrs. Lin – the owners and managers – outside the hostel. The door to the hostel was open and I went inside and checked out the renovations. It is very different from what I expected. It’s nice, though. There are now two large rooms with their own bathroom located at the back. There is a very narrow kitchen area where the old larger kitchen used to be. The washing machine and drying machine will be in the kitchen pushed against the wall at the back. (That’s one very bad design choice they made.) And there are three small rooms and one common bathroom. Plus there is a large common area. All the old dorm rooms and rooms with bunk beds and tiny closet rooms are gone. And the new rooms have nice furnishings, like full built-in closets and drawers. Overall, it is very nice. I think it is a huge improvement. And it could be a nice place to live for people.

While they were showing me the place, Mr. Lin asked me if I would mind switching out my mattresses upstairs for something new. He wanted the small mattresses from my apartment – which he owns – for the new rooms in the hostel. He would provide a single large bed to replace them.

Mrs. Lin also joked about my perhaps moving from Rooftop Paradise into one of the big rooms in the hostel. Plus, Mr. Lin was asking me if I wanted to keep or throw away some chairs and other furniture that I have in the big storage area on the roof. With Chinese New Year approaching, it is time to think about throwing away big items. These are carried away free of charge the city once a year at that time.

All these questions and details made me realize that it was time to tell the Lins about my plans to leave Taiwan and move out of the apartment. So I told them that I would be leaving Taiwan permanently at the end of February. It took a long time to get that information across accurately, of course, but it was eventually done. After that conversation, I checked on the availability of flights with Cebu Pacific. It turned out that flights were getting very scarce and expensive. I don’t know why, but flights to Manila suddenly jumped up in price to around NT$8,000 in the last week of February and the first week of March. Chinese New Year is over by that point, so flights should be cheaper, not more expensive, so I’m not sure what was going on there.

Plus, all the Promo fares were gone – all but one. There was one single promo fare on February 28th for NT$1,200 – about $40 Canadian. If I was looking for a sign about what day to choose for my departure, well, I think I found it. After a long time filling out the forms online, I bought the flight. A lot of people have reported problems with Cebu Pacific Air – particularly with booking flights online and then paying for them, but I’ve never had a problem and my purchase went smoothly.

By the time I was done, the flight was considerably more expensive than NT$1,200, though. Traveling with a bicycle and lots of camping gear, I needed to purchase the “Extra Large” option for excess baggage. That raised my baggage limit from 20kg to 45kg. I think it cost around NT$800. That seemed like a good deal to me. I also checked the box for “Sport Equipment”. This option includes bicycles. That cost NT$700. There was some mandatory insurance and a taxes and fees. The final tally was something like NT$4,500. That’s three times more than the original price, but it still only amounts to $150 US. That’s as cheap an exit from Taiwan as I can possibly get.

So there it is. A done deal. I fly to Manila at long last at 1 in the morning on March 1st – essentially late on Friday, February 28th. I’ve been pondering this flight all week long – like someone constantly checking a loose tooth with their tongue – and it is still sitting pretty well with me. I’m not entirely thrilled by landing in Manila, but I’m happy overall with my decision. I get very excited when I think about cycling through the Philippines. It all comes down to how much it costs in terms of day-to-day expenses. The point is that as much as I love the Philippines, I have been there a number of times already. I’ve been to the Philippines more times than anywhere else in the world. However, I’ve never done an extended bike tour there (other than one month on Palawan), and that should make it quite interesting and new.

 

This week, as I said, I went to three schools as a rep from the company I work for. Not sure I can even remember them all. Let’s work backwards. Yesterday, I went to a high school in Taipei. The contest was originally scheduled for 8-10 in the morning. Then it was changed to 10-12 to accommodate a fire safety demonstration. I was picked up early by the sales rep and arrived at the school quite early to see hundreds of students in the courtyard learning how to put out fires with a fire extinguisher. The fire department was there with a truck, and they lit a fire in a barrel that was cut in half and laid on its side. Students in turn would take the fire extinguisher and put out the fire. Then some teachers did it. It was very exciting for the kids and fun to watch for me. I was chatting with a teacher at the time and I commented – rightly or wrongly I’m not sure – that such a thing would be impossible in Canada. I don’t think any school in Canada could have a fire like that burning right in the middle of a school courtyard. And they certainly wouldn’t have crowds of students standing so close that they were breathing in and otherwise being exposed to cloud after cloud after cloud of fire extinguisher gas and material. It’s a great idea, though, to give the students hands-on experience with fire extinguishers. Fire extinguishers are everywhere, but how many could actually use one properly in an emergency?

The contest was one of the more enjoyable I’ve been to, largely because there were only seven classes competing. The students were very excited about the contest and it was well-organized. They also allowed enough time in between performances for the judges to note down their scores. I managed to make a lot of notes for my speech at the end. I don’t know how well it went over, but I did my best. They had spotlights aimed at the stage and I was blinded by them, so it was difficult to see the audience. However, they all got into the spirit of the thing and repeated my pronunciation lessons after me. It was easy to pick the winners of the contest. I shook the hands of winning students and presented awards. It was all kind of fun. The weather was beautiful and sunny, and I walked from the school to the MRT station. I didn’t tell the teachers that, though. They would have had a heart attack. I pretended I was walking to a major street to get a taxi. Then I just kept walking. I took my time going back to the office. I stopped in the park for a sandwich and to read my book. I wanted to use up my full hour for lunch – in addition to the traveling time. The office is particularly oppressive after being out in the world for such a pleasant morning. I haven’t been enjoying work because I have a ton of editing and proofreading work that I haven’t been able to get started on. It just sits there on my desk making me feel guilty. I’ve been doing more recording than anything else. That kind of work I don’t mind.

On Wednesday, I was gone for the whole day. I took a train from Taipei to Zhongli in the morning. The sales rep picked me up at the train station and drove me to the school. It was a fairly laidback affair. There were about twenty students taking part in a speech contest. Their English ability was not good compared to students in Taipei. The contest was also not organized very well. However, it was enjoyable. My speech felt strange to me, but I did my best. I had tickets for two trains back to Taipei – one at 5:08 and one at 6:08. All the other trains were booked. But the contest ended early and the sales rep brought me back to the train station by 3:15 or something like that. I got a ticket for a local train and it arrived within minutes. It was like a super-comfortable subway car. There were plenty of empty seats and it worked out great. We stopped at all the stations along the way and I got to take in all the interesting scenery while listening to podcasts. I was back early and could simply go home and enjoy myself. It was a good day.

On Monday, I went to Ming Lun High School in Taipei. The contest was at 1:00. There was a speech contest and then a story-telling contest. Another foreigner – someone named Cameron – was supposed to be there as well. However, he never showed up. There was a lot of drama around this, but I wasn’t aware of it because I was busy judging the speech contest. Someone from the company managed to get in touch with another foreigner to go to the school and fill in for the MIA Cameron.

I could write at length about each one of these contests. So much of interest happens at them, but I’ll just leave it at that.

 

Tags: fire, NT, Taipei, Taiwan, train