As I write this, I am at the Leader Hotel in Xitou, nestled up against the electric blanket laid out on our beds here after a long day at the Fulbright midyear conference. And it's glorious.
"Wait!" you say. "An electric blanket, in Taiwan? And you're happy about that?"
Why yes, yes I am. As happy as I am about being in Xitou, for a very simple reason: it actually feels like winter here! I've been wearing my scarves. I could see my breath on the way to dinner tonight. Absolutely glorious.
What's somewhat less than glorious is the fact that I'll be spending tomorrow in a conference room, listening to presentation after presentation about what my fellow Fulbrighters are doing here. Granted, much of it will be interesting. But still, we're going from 1pm to 9:30pm, and my group is going last. It's just a bit much.
But we're in Xitou, and Xitou is gorgeous, and reminds me of all my old high school and middle school retreats in the forests of Oregon, way out of the way with nice long walks between wooden buildings with outdated furniture. It's odd the things I love about this place, but I do.
Well, my cozy warm bed is calling my name and my internet here is insanely slow, so that's it for now. Gotta rest up for my big day of presentations tomorrow!
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
What do you write about
...when you do nothing all day?
I suppose you can make a comment on how you want the Taiwanese elections to be over already, so they will stop sending squads of be-vested people all over the city to campaign at your doorstep...
Or you could offer up another ode to Cracked.com, my constant stand-by on days where you do nothing--and they do have a video now explaining once and for all all those impossibly happy traffic cops and sign wavers.
Or you could throw in a clip to something you've recently discovered (or, in this case, rediscovered) on Youtube. Like Bum Reviews (Twilight linked below!) and Sassy Gay Friend (Romeo & Juliet!).
Or, you know, you could do all of those things. Because if there's one thing you're lacking at 2:30am after a full day of doing nothing, it's originality.
I suppose you can make a comment on how you want the Taiwanese elections to be over already, so they will stop sending squads of be-vested people all over the city to campaign at your doorstep...
 |
| From all I can see, they all seem to be from the "obnoxiously loud and constant advertisement" party... |
Or you could throw in a clip to something you've recently discovered (or, in this case, rediscovered) on Youtube. Like Bum Reviews (Twilight linked below!) and Sassy Gay Friend (Romeo & Juliet!).
Or, you know, you could do all of those things. Because if there's one thing you're lacking at 2:30am after a full day of doing nothing, it's originality.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Technobabble and casserole
Considering that I spent the first portion of my day doing very little at school (the result of a combination of my lingering sickness and the fact that, due to said sickness, Maggie had adapted to teaching this particular lesson plan solo), I must look to my post-school day for a subject today.
Except, wait, I did very little in that, too.
Essentially, I got my computer to play DVDs. Which, as it turns out, is much easier said than done. My computer is a netbook, which means it has no internal CD/DVD reader. No big deal, right? I'll just go buy one.
Step 1: You go to Carrefour. You'd seen DVD drives for sale in a Carrefour in Taitung, and assumed their merchandise would be fairly uniform. Nope.
Step 2: Call Fonda. Always the last word in solving problems. :)
Step 3: Go with Fonda and Brittany to get Brittany's iPod fixed (the screen broke this morning at 7:30am--go ahead, ask me how I know precisely when it broke, despite originally being asleep, haha).
Step 4: Go with Fonda to the electronics store and buy an external CD/DVD drive.
Story over, right? Well...no.
Step 5: Take several hours out of the process, so as to put together an incredibly involved Powerpoint of sports from around the world to teach to the 6th graders tomorrow. Promise yourself you won't even try to watch a movie until you're done. Stick to your promise, until...
Step 6: You get hungry and decide to make something resembling a casserole out of leftover cream of corn soup, rice, chicken, onions, carrots, and cheese. It turns out pretty well (hooray!), and you realize that you now have a chunk of free time in which no one would blame you for not trying to type while eating.
Step 7: Attempt to install new DVD drive and discover that neither of the two separate software packages that came with the drive have anything to do with just playing music. Try fiddling with various players, only to discover that Windows 7 Starter doesn't have the right drivers installed to decode DVDs. Go online to discover that, while Vista and XP have plenty of (often free) downloads to fix similar problems, Windows 7 just recommends upgrading to a higher version of Windows 7. The problem with that, of course, is that you have a netbook; there's a reason you only run Starter, and it's that there's not enough space for a crap-ton of programming!
Step 8: Play it safe and save current settings in case of a reboot.
Step 9: Begin downloading random crap from the Internet that says it will fix your problem. Some of it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. But then...
Step 10: One program works. You are happy and watch a movie.
Oh, and at some point, you finished the Powerpoint and sent it to your co-teacher and host mom. So it was a happy ending, with movies and casserole for all.
The end.
Except, wait, I did very little in that, too.
Essentially, I got my computer to play DVDs. Which, as it turns out, is much easier said than done. My computer is a netbook, which means it has no internal CD/DVD reader. No big deal, right? I'll just go buy one.
Step 1: You go to Carrefour. You'd seen DVD drives for sale in a Carrefour in Taitung, and assumed their merchandise would be fairly uniform. Nope.
Step 2: Call Fonda. Always the last word in solving problems. :)
Step 3: Go with Fonda and Brittany to get Brittany's iPod fixed (the screen broke this morning at 7:30am--go ahead, ask me how I know precisely when it broke, despite originally being asleep, haha).
Step 4: Go with Fonda to the electronics store and buy an external CD/DVD drive.
Story over, right? Well...no.
Step 5: Take several hours out of the process, so as to put together an incredibly involved Powerpoint of sports from around the world to teach to the 6th graders tomorrow. Promise yourself you won't even try to watch a movie until you're done. Stick to your promise, until...
Step 6: You get hungry and decide to make something resembling a casserole out of leftover cream of corn soup, rice, chicken, onions, carrots, and cheese. It turns out pretty well (hooray!), and you realize that you now have a chunk of free time in which no one would blame you for not trying to type while eating.
Step 7: Attempt to install new DVD drive and discover that neither of the two separate software packages that came with the drive have anything to do with just playing music. Try fiddling with various players, only to discover that Windows 7 Starter doesn't have the right drivers installed to decode DVDs. Go online to discover that, while Vista and XP have plenty of (often free) downloads to fix similar problems, Windows 7 just recommends upgrading to a higher version of Windows 7. The problem with that, of course, is that you have a netbook; there's a reason you only run Starter, and it's that there's not enough space for a crap-ton of programming!
Step 8: Play it safe and save current settings in case of a reboot.
Step 9: Begin downloading random crap from the Internet that says it will fix your problem. Some of it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. But then...
Step 10: One program works. You are happy and watch a movie.
Oh, and at some point, you finished the Powerpoint and sent it to your co-teacher and host mom. So it was a happy ending, with movies and casserole for all.
The end.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Oh, the Internet
How else can you live in Taiwan, have regular conversations with friends in the United States, and watch British television shows (mostly) at will? The shrinking world is truly a wonderful place.
With that in mind, and given that that's ALL that's in my mind at the moment, a few tidbits.
It's wonderful that many American sites, like Amazon and Facebook and Google, can be accessed here as well as anywhere else. I check Facebook and Google daily; I recently received a lovely package from Amazon containing my new e-reader, which I named Johannes (other options notwithstanding). Skype is a necessity in my life, though I loathe the 15-hour time difference these days.
What's not quite so wonderful, for me, at least, is the inability of sites like NBC, Fox, and Hulu to broadcast to Taiwan. It leads me to other video sources, ones with less-than-savory features like a time-based watching system which, for whatever reason, does not work here. There are at least 3 separate such sites that I can think of which have a 72 minute daily limit--which is reasonable, in theory, and works as such in the United States. Here, however, it doesn't. Rather, I've been stopped multiple times about 28 minutes into an hour-long show, and once 15 minutes into my second half hour-show of the day, with the message announcing I've watched my 72 minutes for the day. Except for the fact that it is impossible to watch 72 minutes in 28 minutes. Also worth noting is that I clear my cookies off my browser whenever I finish watching--so how are they keeping track of how much time I spend on their sites?
And then there's my computer's constant inability to figure out where I am and my language preferences. Despite the fact that I check my Gmail account daily, and Google almost as often, always in English, about 30% of the time, typing in "www.google.com" will yield me "www.google.com.tw". The statistics are worse on sites like MSN, which prompts me to specify my preferred country, Taiwan or the US, every time I go to it. And then there's Amazon, which, even after I changed my location in their system and entered a Taiwanese shipping address, still shows me Kindle results for America which may or may not be available in Taiwan.
So again, I say oh, the Internet. So much wonderfulness and so much annoyance, all packaged together.
With that in mind, and given that that's ALL that's in my mind at the moment, a few tidbits.
It's wonderful that many American sites, like Amazon and Facebook and Google, can be accessed here as well as anywhere else. I check Facebook and Google daily; I recently received a lovely package from Amazon containing my new e-reader, which I named Johannes (other options notwithstanding). Skype is a necessity in my life, though I loathe the 15-hour time difference these days.
What's not quite so wonderful, for me, at least, is the inability of sites like NBC, Fox, and Hulu to broadcast to Taiwan. It leads me to other video sources, ones with less-than-savory features like a time-based watching system which, for whatever reason, does not work here. There are at least 3 separate such sites that I can think of which have a 72 minute daily limit--which is reasonable, in theory, and works as such in the United States. Here, however, it doesn't. Rather, I've been stopped multiple times about 28 minutes into an hour-long show, and once 15 minutes into my second half hour-show of the day, with the message announcing I've watched my 72 minutes for the day. Except for the fact that it is impossible to watch 72 minutes in 28 minutes. Also worth noting is that I clear my cookies off my browser whenever I finish watching--so how are they keeping track of how much time I spend on their sites?
And then there's my computer's constant inability to figure out where I am and my language preferences. Despite the fact that I check my Gmail account daily, and Google almost as often, always in English, about 30% of the time, typing in "www.google.com" will yield me "www.google.com.tw". The statistics are worse on sites like MSN, which prompts me to specify my preferred country, Taiwan or the US, every time I go to it. And then there's Amazon, which, even after I changed my location in their system and entered a Taiwanese shipping address, still shows me Kindle results for America which may or may not be available in Taiwan.
So again, I say oh, the Internet. So much wonderfulness and so much annoyance, all packaged together.
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