Life

Wow, it does NOT feel like 3am. And that is a VERY bad thing for my sleep cycles. But, also, a not-so-bad thing for my blog.

I had a pretty decent day, all considered. Watched most of a Scottish miniseries starring David Tennant--which, obviously, made me want to throw all my stuff in a bag and MOVE THERE NOW, though I resisted. FINALLY turned in my application for what I might do come September--and then accidentally half-way applied to a job in New York, which was odd. And grotesquely ironic: this job was posted on the website for a major publisher, and was one of FOUR fantastic jobs now posted on that site for which I may actually be qualified. Of course, I found them directly after mentally committing to another program. Sigh. Now to determine whether I should apply to them anyway...probably?

But the highlight of my day was easily my dinner plans. I met up with Tiffiany and our Chinese teacher, Mandy, at a great little Western-style restaurant on the Love River called Sandwich Island (and, stupid person that I am, I completely spaced that the dragon boat races going on would mean parking would be impossible--so I was 15 minutes late). The food was scrumptious, of course (fried chicken sandwich--mmm), and Mandy was so sweet--she brought Tiffiany and I some fantastic going away presents! Cue the part where I wish I'd brought more gifts to give away...

So we had our little meal, and then strolled along the Love River with the hordes of other people, watching dragon boat-ers who DIDN'T suck. And Tiffiany utilized her Chinese to ask a very nervous (but adorable) little girl to take our picture:

Extra smiles for our new 小朋友!

 Next up was some continued strolling and a stop by my personal favorite Kaohsiung gelato place--two scoops for 100NT (~3USD) of some of the BEST gelato ever. Tonight, I went for dark cherry and mulberry (2 separate flavors) and they were to DIE for. Then we kept strolling.

It's so PRETTY when you're not being forced down it with paddles in your hands!

Hey look, they're winning by almost as much as we lost by! (butnotreally)

And, thankfully, this ISN'T actually going to be our last hang-out like we'd originally thought. We made plans to go see BRAVE tomorrow (wow, I'm big on the Caps Lock tonight...sorry about that). Brave, for those who don't know, is this:

All I have to say is: Disney/Pixar? Check. Scottish? Check. Archery? Check. COUNT ME IN!

Eggs in baskets

I mentioned Sunday that I recently made a three-year plan for myself. In a flurry of excitement, I mapped out a potential three years spanning several states and, quite possibly, continents, and which included anywhere from 1-3 grad school programs. It was exciting. It was fun. It was so incredibly unrealistic.

Part of that was implied, of course--I can't seem to help myself from wanting to prepare for every possible contingency. Putting all my eggs in one basket has never been a temptation for me. I know I won't get to do everything on my list; it's physically impossible for me to do so, and that's the way I like it.

But. I now have a separate browser window with five tabs in it perpetually open, daring me to begin. Five tabs, innumerable tasks within: one program application for this year (including 3 recommendations to be gotten, for some of which I don't know whom to ask); one job application for this year (which I really really want, and so am paralyzed from actually applying for, lest I am refused); one scholarship application for next year (read: turn in this year, complete with dozens of essays, responses, resumes, recommendations, and of course transcript-getting, with a very slim chance of success); one grad school-ish program for next summer (applications aren't open yet, but I need to do more research); one page of the top 50 MFA programs in America for next year (to sort through and determine which are worth applying to--and then cue the actual portfolio preparation and application process).

My next step: send a couple of emails. Shouldn't be that hard. Really shouldn't be that hard. But something in me doesn't want to start the process; doesn't want to wade into that pile of paperwork and admit that it's actually time to move forward, time to make another major decision about my life, time to get back to reality. Reality is scary. Reality is scary when you don't have a plan, and it's even scarier when you do, but that plan requires dozens of hard-to-move pieces to come into perfect alignment--or else, failure.

But of course I have to--and I will, if only because failure comes inevitably to those who don't move forward. I'll find a way to move forward, and I'll find a way to make at least one of my contingency plans work, or else I'll invent more until something works.

And in the meantime, I'll sit down and write an email. It's not three years, but it's a start.

The Inevitable

The big events of  today were always likely to happen, though they were never thing I hoped would.

Please note: this does not apply to my school day, which was great as always.

Let's begin with my last night's sleep--an odd topic, I know, but wait for it to make sense. Sometime early this morning (who knows how early), I had a dream that I had finally heard back on the Marshall scholarship (the mysterious application I've referenced on here before), and that I had gotten it. But, it being a dream and all, and dreams being utterly screwy and nonsensical, the Marshall somehow involved me going to India, rather than Britain. Odd, and the excitement of the dream was enough to wake me up and keep me from falling back asleep for a while, or from forgetting those details.

Then I went to school. And taught. And ate. And chatted. And left. And found a great new tea place on the way home. And got home. And sat down to open my email.

And, lo and behold, in my inbox, the long-awaited results from the British Consulate!--but not of the positive variety. Nope, my suspicions of late notification held, and I learned that I will not have to scramble to find and purchase a plane ticket and hotel room before the interviews next week. This part I had begun to regard as inevitable towards the end of last week.

In most respects, the email was identical to the one I received last year, but it differed in three respects: the date (later than last year by about a week), and it was actually addressed to me individually, rather than sent in un-concealed mass format (which, together with the previous difference, made me wonder if perhaps I made it further in the consideration process this year, though I doubt it). The third difference was the name of the British Consulate General, since they recently appointed a new one: and her name is Indian in origin. A glance at the time stamp showed that it was sent at 1:28am Taiwanese time, meaning that it is entirely possible and/or likely that I got a rejection letter from the kind British Consulate of Indian extraction at the same time that I dreamed I was going to India for the Marshall scholarship.

Proof that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. I may have to ponder this coincidence for a while.

The other point of inevitability came after Chinese class tonight.

See, in Taiwan, they say that if you ride a scooter, it's not "if" you get in a scooter accident, it's "when." Well, tonight was my when.

Heading home from class, I was turning left from Zihciang to Mincyuan, waiting patiently in my little scooters-turn-left-here box until the light turned green. I was actually thinking about driving in Taiwan; how much I've learned about it since I got here, etc. Ah, irony. The light turned, and I went--without looking around first to see if people were actually stopping.

And, as it turned out, they weren't. I made it no more than a few feet outside of my box before I heard a horn coming at me from outside my peripheral vision; I hit the brakes and came to a quick stop, but not before a scooter entirely failed to avoid me and hit my front tire, continuing unphased as my wheel turned sharply and made my scooter, suddenly stationary and without a solid base, fall over. I jumped free, accidentally revving the engine as I did so, in time to watch a small truck and several more scooters passing in front of me through the now very red, very stale light.

Ah, Taiwan.

I got back on my scooter and pulled over in the next block to check damages: essentially, none. An almost invisible scuff mark on my tire cover where it got hit; an odd twist in my left foot. Later, I noticed a new bruise on my arm. All in all, I got away scot-free, which is a good thing considering that the other scooter didn't so much as slow down.

So there it is, I have now had my unavoidable Taiwanese traffic accident and it was painless; I should be good for the rest of the year now, right? Knock on wood, I guess, but at least it's no longer inevitable.

Technical difficulties...and spaghetti

As of 3pm here today, I was supposed to have hit 'submit' on my application and have been finished. In fact, my plan was to do it earlier than 3pm (which would have been midnight 9/23 in Seattle--end of the deadline); to this end, I turned on my computer around 10:30am. And when I did, I found...nothing.

I don't mean to imply that my essays were gone. Rather, the website was. I went to log on to discover a page saying it had suffered a fatal error, listing an email address to contact, and a whole host of error messages. I emailed the listed address and got back an auto-answer saying there was a fatal error with that address and listing a second one; I emailed that and got the same answer. Gulp.

So I emailed SPU's liaison, and discovered that people had been having problems with it all day--which was then confirmed by an email from one of the professors whom I'd asked to submit a recommendation for me. Fortunately, though, the liaison told me it would be fine to submit it late--a grace I didn't fully appreciate at the moment, but we'll get to that.

So the rest of the day was spent in watching shows, reading articles, and periodically checking back in with the application web site, to see if it had healed itself. (It never had.)

Then, around 5:30, I went to Chialing's to meet up with her, Samia, Emily and Lydia for a night of Italian food we'd planned yesterday. It was delicious, and such a welcome change! Chialing and Samia--who is pretty much the nicest person you'll ever meet--had pretty much done all of the cooking by the time I got there, so I felt bad that I couldn't participate in the cooking part of the plan, but the EATING part was wonderful!

And as an added bonus, Fonda and her niece, who everyone calls "little Fonda" were there at first, and "little Fonda," who's about 4, wasn't as scared of me this time, and even gave me a high-5! No way not to love that. :)

Emily and Lydia were running a little late because they'd been in Zuoying with Karina and playing with the puppies, and while we ate, Samia and I started chatting about our days, and I mentioned my oh-so-fun tangle with technology. She asked what my application was for, and when I said the Marshall and started to explain, she cut me off with "I know." Turns out, she applied last year, made it to the interview stage, and applied again this year, thinking that Fulbright would have pushed her application over the edge (which I am 100% sure it would have--she is superwoman even without the Fulbright), but her university turned her down because of a missed deadline.

See, I told you we'd get there. And it wasn't even her missed deadline, or the Marshall's deadline, which is still a week away even now. Her recommenders hadn't turned in their letters before her campus (read: phone call in the middle of the night here) interview, so, after the interview, they told her no. Absolute insanity--one arbitrary deadline missed by the applicant's contacts, with a full month to go before the real deadline, and they won't back the person who is undoubtedly their best chance for winning a prestigious award?

Really made me grateful for SPU's graciousness today.

After Italian food, we set out for the movies, where we watched "Crazy Stupid Love," with Steve Carrell, which was brilliantly funny and (at times) poignant, I thought. Definitely worth a watch.

Then it was back to my computer, where I discovered two things: the web site was working again, and I had previously missed several sections I needed to fill in. Good time I waited till I was fully awake and functioning before I hit send! Prayers for my application would be greatly appreciated. And hey, if I get an interview, I'll be back in the States for a few days in November sometime!

Anyway, now that my application is in, my self-embargo on book-reading has been lifted. So I've really got to go. :)

This is a blog post

Which says that I'm exhausted and in the final stages of finishing my application. Therefore, I'm sorry, but that's all I can write today--there is a limit to how much writing and editing I can do in a given period of time at the end of a long week, and I've reached it. :)

Revision(s)

My day consisted of revision. Or, rather, revisions, both of my schedule and within it.

My oh-so-optimistic schedule, as laid out last night, had to do with me making it to the gym today by roughly 11am. That didn't happen. It had me at Brunch and working through my essays the remainder of the day. That did happen, but it also had me finishing these revisions and finalizing my essays before tonight. And that, also, didn't happen.

But I did spend the bulk of my day making revisions, and that was no small feat: when I began, my 1,000 word personal statement was closer to 1,200 words, and didn't have everything in it that it needed; my 500 word essay on choosing the UK was 650 words long and also didn't have everything in; ditto for my 500 word essay on my academic program. So, all told, today I cut roughly 500 words and somehow managed to fit multiple complicated ideas back in. But I'm still not done.

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a writer, or just of the writing process in general, is that it can never truly be done. This is especially true for things like applications, since they are all voluntary writings with high stakes involved--meaning you are highly, highly invested in getting each word and sentence transition down perfectly. If it weren't for institutions' graceful granting of strict deadlines, I'm convinced no application would ever get turned in--or maybe a lack of caring or over-the-top self-confidence would become the new determining factor for who won every competition.

All that to say, I'm still working. John, a former Kaohsiung ETA and current Marshall scholar whom I contacted a while ago, was gracious enough to look over my personal statement and give me a few pointers, which I devoured like a starving man in a desert (sorry for the tired cliche--I've used up my creative juices allowance for the day). Now I'm busy reworking my essay after his suggestions; tomorrow after school, it'll be more of the same. The deadline is technically tomorrow, Sept. 23, but it's due on Seattle time, so I actually have another night with my application if I want it--and, knowing me, I will. Ah, the (occasional) joys of the time difference.

So that was my day. Tonight Fonda and Alex (who's in town for classroom observations) came out to dinner with Karina, Lydia, Emily, Samia and I, and took us to a quite delicious stir fry place on Guanghua, about 3 blocks from here. I've walked past/through (sidewalks are extensions of the inside here, always) it dozens of times, but had never tried it. But we will be back! Absolutely wonderful veggies, fish, chicken and fried rice.

On a final, unrelated note (and because my blog has been sorely missing in photos lately), here's a shot I took yesterday walking towards Guanghua--I think it's adorable. If I submitted it for a photo contest, I'd call it "Training Wheels." Of course, it wouldn't win, but maybe you'll still like it:

Productive Sunday

Wait, productive Sunday? What is this crazyness you speak of?

It's true, though--I got SO much done today that now, as it nears midnight, I can hardly believe it. Typical Sundays here have consisted of lounging about and watching TV, as you may have picked up from my immensely boring typical Sunday posts.

TODAY, however...

• I joined the gym. Rachel and I drove our scooters over to Sanduo, proudly presented our receipts from yesterday's excursion, signed our names a few places, shelled out some more money, and we were in! It was an interesting experience in which I was almost totally silent, since no one working knew English (in stark contrast to last time we went, when at least three of the six people working were essentially fluent), but the woman who signed us up was one of the same people from last time and remembered us, so that was nice. And another major bonus was that, for some reason, the people at the gym took both of our receipts but gave us Rachel's discount--the full discount--even though I spent $500NT under what I was supposed to. Sweet! And now I have full reign of machines, weights, a game room, and weekly Zumba, yoga, and step aerobic classes, amongst others. And, in my ever-growing consciousness about the layout of Kaohsiung, I found out that this branch is RIGHT off my normal route to/from school. Must remember to start packing gym clothes and a shower towel when I go to school...

• I finished drafting my application. (As a side note, I find it ironic that you can tell I'm a writer because I refuse to use the word "write" for this sort of thing--everything is a draft until it's turned in/published, and even then it's not always beyond revisions!) This involved sitting in the Brunch Cafe across the street for several hours and pounding away on my Internet-intentionally-disconnected computer. And, on a related note...

• I ordered at Brunch Cafe--a whole conversation, not just "I want this," but with options and new vocabulary--and the lady understood me, and I understood her! And Brunch Cafe gives numbers for food, which they then call over a 20-year-old-McDonald's reminiscent microphone--in Chinese--and I knew when to go pick up my food! (I think--it wasn't cold when I got there, anyway.) Win!

• I went to church, along with Analicia, her friend Wendy, Karina, and Fonda. Turns out the church is in Zuoying, really close to where Karina lives, actually. Also turns out this will likely NOT be my home church. Analicia warned me that it would be traditional--single hymns interspersed on a printed service order in the bulletin--but in addition to that, I found portions of the sermon iffy, at best. The pastor hit some good points, but for the most part, I think our core theologies differ too much for me to feel like I can learn from him. Here's a (very rough) graphic representation. In this case, deviation from the blue line means I disagree with what's being said:

To clarify my unclear graph, the Scripture part at the beginning refers to the yellow along the blue line.

 So yeah, some things were pretty far off from my own theology, some things were just minor differences or argument holes; and while some parts were right on, I think I'm going to keep looking. I miss the City Church; I was definitely spoiled in Seattle with such a wonderful church and the inspiring and challenging messages of Judah Smith.

• Back at home (and back to my list), I filled out my weekly report, did my Chinese homework, and worked a bit more on my application. It's due this Friday, which is so crazy! It'll be nice to have it in,though.

Now, though, it's past midnight and I have classes at 9:30. So goodnight, world! More productivity to be had tomorrow.

Taxi!

Considering my other non-Taipei, non-USA weekends since I got here, I did a remarkable amount today. But it wasn't quite intentional.

The day began with me looking at my clock and thinking "Huh, 10 o'clock. Not a bad time to get up!" Seconds later, I looked over and saw that it was now 11 o'clock.

Once I was up, though, I immediately set into cleaning mode: our apartment decided to set up weekly cleaning people, rather than divvy up weekly chores like we did at my last house. And this was my week, and I hadn't yet completed probably the biggest and most important of my cleaning jobs: sweeping and mopping all the common areas. It wasn't pretty, and it certainly wasn't fun (take all the joy of normal cleaning, then add 15* and humidity), but it was rewarding to see the outcome: clean floors, for about 5 minutes. Se la vie, I guess.

Anyway, after that, Rachel and I set out to try to find a way to spend $2,500NT. That may sound like an easy task, but ours was actually more complicated--the reason we were trying to spend money was that the gym we're planning on joining, Fitness Factory (for the record, not the gigantic one with the rock climbing wall and pool pictured; we're going to a smaller, cheaper branch off of Sanduo), is having a promotion in which, if you spend up to $2,500NT at once at one of their partner stores, you can deduct that amount from your joining fee of $2,500NT. So, really, it's a question of "Do you want to give us $2,500 and get nothing, or spend $2,500 somewhere else and get something?"

Big surprise, we chose the latter.

But it was not an easy task! We visited Fitness Factory on Tuesday, found out about the deal, and were given a pamphlet listing all the partner stores. It was, however, written entirely in traditional characters, which neither Rachel nor I can read. (We could read "SUBWAY," but $2,500NT worth of sandwiches is a bit extreme...) So we (and by we, I mostly mean Rachel) spent the week asking various Taiwanese friends what the places on our pamphlet were, and where we should go. With the help of Chialing, as well as Rebecca and Karen (Rachel's LETs), we got some translations and narrowed down the list to a few contenders.

And this morning, we clutched our little green pamphlet, grabbed a cab across the street (and down a ways, since the guy in the cab directly across the street was sound asleep in the driver's seat), and asked him to take us to a car store. Now you may be thinking "Cars? But you don't have a car.." which is true. Our thought was that they might also sell scooter stuff, and we have both been hankering for a better scooter helmet.

Turns out, though, that your thoughts were right--nothing doing. As Rachel pointed out, we could have gotten Ferrari bumper stickers for our scooters, but I really can't say that's something I'm in the market for.

So we hailed another cab and asked him to take us to our back-up place--a jewelry store which turned out to be right around the corner from the gym. It also happened to be a tiny little section of a department store, with prices beginning at $40,000NT. Next!

We hopped another cab and asked him to take us to either of two watch stores on the list; whichever was closest. He agreed and set out, but as we looked closer at the address on the pamphlet, we realized that even the "closer" one was in Zuoying--by the HSR station, quite a ways from where we were. *sigh* One $200NT cab ride (spendy for here, but dirt cheap by US standards) later, we finally found the store, and discovered we'd finally found somewhere to spend our money. I walked away with a great watch and a pair of cheap clear glasses (for scootering at night), and Rachel walked away with a pair of cheap clear glasses and a pair of "designer" (we're not sure if they were telling the truth...ever hear of Martini?) sunglasses. I was actually a bit disappointed, though, because they gave me a discount, meaning my total was less than the $2500 allowed. Never been disappointed about a discount before! But now I have to pay a good $420NT to join, which is unfortunate.

Anyway, since we were in Zuoying and I'd promised Karina a visit today anyway--she lives in Zuoying now--we took the MRT down to meet her puppies. They are absolutely adorable! She adopted them off of Cijin Island a few weeks ago, and though she's since discovered she can't keep them--she's taking them to Taipei next weekend to become animal therapy dogs--it was so much fun to see the little pups and watch them play. Their names are MoMo and ChiChi--combined into "Mochi" their names mean "an unspoken deep understanding" in Chinese--and they were born at almost the same time that we got to Taiwan, Karina says. I do wish she could keep them if only for that reason--they have the same amount of history here as we do! In any case, though, it was lots of fun to see them, and to see where Karina and Esther live now.

We then grabbed another cab and went back to our apartment, where Brittany (who had been at a Taiwanese engagement ceremony of the friend of one of her LETs all day) was waiting for us to go to Kaohsiung Sky Tower 85--the landmark building of Kaohsiung, which we hadn't been to yet.

So we hopped in yet another cab and went to the 85, as it's usually referred to around here. At the top (or, rather, floor 74, where the observation deck is), we enjoyed some great views and an....interesting....Tokyo photographers exhibit, before grabbing dessert (caramel apple cheesecake for me; Haagen Dazs for Brittany and Rachel; Karina didn't want anything) and heading home.

For Karina and I, anyway--we walked to the MRT and went our separate ways. Brittany and Rachel grabbed another cab and went shopping.

And that was my day! Did some application work when I got home, which I should have done all day, and now I'm sitting here doing this. At least it doesn't require a taxi!

Distraction

Firefox has a (relatively--like 6 months or so) new feature in which you 'pin' certain web pages to the top of your window so that every time you open your browser, you see those web pages. Mine, for the last two months, have been Facebook, Gmail, and Blogger.

Then something misfired. My pages were missing. And, in re-adding them, I missed Blogger.

As a result, I keep forgetting to post until I'm about to go to sleep. Tonight, I actually got all the way ready for bed--PJs, teeth brushed, face washed, etc--before realizing I forgot to blog. And yet there's no worse excuse for destroying a thus-far daily habit for something as prosaic as 15 more minutes of sleep. So that's why my blog posts have been short lately, for those who've been asking (Mom).

And that's not been my only distraction. It's my cleaning week at the apartment, which has both been a distraction and has suffered from my other distraction, namely, my application to be a Marshall scholar next year.

The application is due in just over a week, and I still have so much to do! And, for most of this week, most of what I did was work on it, sporadically, and try to think of new ways to get my recommenders to respond to my pleas--while they're still on summer break and mostly away from their computers, if not busy with other work, and while I'm 15 hours ahead of them, meaning my waking hours are their sleeping hours and vice versa. Sigh.

At last it worked itself out, though; once I finish my parts, I WILL actually be able to submit. I wasn't sure there for a while, though...and the thought that it could all be for nothing does not exactly inspire an unrelenting work ethic!

In other news: quiet coyote.

So many years of camp experience miraculously confirmed today in my little class of 6th grade hellions--because, to be honest, there's really only the one class that's *really* hard to manage, and *really* full of stereotypical 6th graders. But, as it turns out, they can be ruled with a combination of quiet coyote and a smart board! They were captivated today, and easy as all get out to make be quiet! Night and day difference.

For the uninitiated, quiet coyote is quite simple. It involves holding your hand with your middle and ring fingers touching your thumb and your first and pinky fingers lifted up. The idea is that the kids do the motion (that part didn't catch on today, for some reason) and imitate the 'coyote'--ears up, mouth shut.

Like this, but sans the blond hair, since I'm in Taiwan. :)

And, at the genius suggestion of Patty, we added a "make noise" signal to precede the coyote--and which was, needless to say, insanely popular. The game was the last table to be quiet when I lifted up the coyote lost points. Points, of course, are all but meaningless, except for the kids themselves, but it worked! Amazing how easily kids--even middle schoolers--buy into this sort of thing. And I know I was no different! I wanted to win, even if there was nothing to win!

But let me tell you, on the other side, I'm so glad they do.

The other highlight of my day was a jaunt with Rachel over to Subway, which we discovered is like 6 blocks from our apartment. The plan was to buy a $2500NT gift card, which we could then deduct from our gym joining fee (it's an odd inter-company joining promotion; Subway and a bunch of other companies are participating), but apparently there's no such thing as a Subway gift card here. So I guess Rachel and I will have to indulge in some jewelry shopping. Oh darn.

Well, that was actually quite long, considering how tired I am and the fact that I have to be up in a little under 7 hours. Distracted yet again--from going to bed.