Murphy's Law

I woke up today with simple plans. Here's how things were supposed to go down: 1) Meet Karina to see The Hunger Games in the afternoon; 2) Come home and eat dinner; 3) Meet Mandy, Rachel and Tiffiany to see Brave. Too bad it was one of those days where nothing goes according to plan.

Here's how things actually played out.

1) I rolled over, turned off my alarm, and willed myself into a sitting position. It was time to get up. Wait, when was I supposed to be meeting Karina? How much time did I have to get stuff done before I actually had to go? I shot off a text and drifted almost back to sleep. My phone buzzed: Karina, saying she couldn't make it because she had too much stuff to do. Oh. Okay. Just the one movie today, then. 

2) I had eaten at awkward times all day, so I didn't really feel the call to eat anything until about a quarter till 7. Feeling lazy, and a little Taiwanese, there was only one obvious choice for where to procure my delicious foodstuffs: 7-11. I meandered down, grabbed some frozen pasta and frozen pork buns and some watermelon milk--dinner of champions!--and headed back upstairs to prepare my dinner for eating, (read: nuke it). That accomplished, I was chatting with Rachel when my phone rang. I looked at the screen: Hal, my tutee. I looked at the clock: 7:05. Crap.

Yep, after a full four months or so of having a tutoring session every Sunday at 7pm, never missing a session and never being late, I had completely forgotten about our last session ever. And that, even with the fact that I'd prepared a little gift as a going-away present for Hal, a gift I'd thought about both earlier in the day and earlier the previous day, as I had made conflicting movie-going plans with Mandy and Tiffiany. Whoops. Hal was gracious as I arrived 15 minutes late, and was even willing to put up with my request that we cut the length of our session from an hour and a half to an hour, so I could leave in just enough time to make the movie with Mandy, Tiffiany, Rachel, and Chialing, whom Rachel'd invited. It would work.

3) Partway through my session with Hal, I got a text from Mandy saying that the wedding she'd been invited to (and which had, thankfully, already moved our movie time back from 6-something to 8-something, or my session with Hal would have been COMPLETELY derailed) had been delayed to the point where it hadn't even started yet, so she wouldn't be able to come. Sadface. After I finished up with Hal, I rushed home to find Rachel waiting for me downstairs, lest we miss the beginning of the movie, with the news that Chialing also wouldn't be able to come. Again, sadface.

So Rachel and I jetted off into the night and, after a few quick U-turns, found the movie theater we were looking for, retrieved our tickets from Tiffiany, and sat down in the correct theater right as the movie began. There was only one problem: the movie was in Chinese. Not just with Chinese subtitles, but dubbed in Chinese. And, call me crazy, but when I, as a native English speaker, go to see a movie set in Scotland, it just isn't the same without the Scottish accents. We left within three or four lines.

But we didn't go far--Rachel found an employee in the hall and asked her if they had Brave playing in English (it's really not uncommon here, I promise: most theaters I've seen have popular American movies like this offered in both languages, with Chinese subtitles under all of them). They didn't. BUT, she was quick to point out, we could exchange our tickets for another film playing just then--they had an English version of Men In Black 3 that began in just a few minutes. So we exchanged our tickets and took the elevator to the third floor. They told us it was on the fourth, but when we made it to the third and didn't immediately get off we were met with several employees frantically waving at us to get off here, from which I gather that if we had continued up in the elevator, rather than the stairs they pointed us to, we would have been victims to some sort of Tower-of-Terror-style horrors or something.

We went to see this...

And somehow got this instead.

So, to recap: I began the day thinking I would have a leisurely time of watching two movies, including an animated one with Scottish accents, with five friends, with plenty of time between in which to do nothing, and I ended it having nearly missed a work appointment, and having watched, with two friends, one movie, including not a single fierce animated Scottish girl, but with no dearth of aliens and Will Smith. And, in the process, we all managed to make a little bit of a fool of ourselves in front of everyone. Hooray, Murphy's Law!

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!

If you could do anything...

...what would you do? I feel like this is a fairly common question for people; it's used as a check-your-heart exercise to see if you're pursuing what really matters to you, and as the days of my grant rush towards their termination point, I find myself mulling it over, to somewhat surprising results.

If I could do anything in the world, what would I do? I would be an actress.

Depending on how long you've known me (or if you know me at all), you may know that when I was growing up, acting was my thing. At age 5, my mom tells me, I memorized the lead part's lines in a church musical--before the auditions. Not surprisingly, since I was 5, I lost that particular part to a 12-year-old, but it did little to dampen my desire. From age 5 till age 18, my happiest moments were on stage. Church musicals, a middle-school Shakespeare troupe, a variety of plays and musicals in high school; I couldn't get enough.

Then college hit, bringing with it the realization that, in the real world, you just don't have enough time to act when your hours are eaten up working to pay for tuition, room, and board, and throwing yourself entirely into your studies and preparing yourself for the real world. In the real world, there are very few successful actors; without the perfect cocktail of superhuman talent, beauty, and connections, most would-be actors spend the vast majority of their lives waiting tables. I knew that going into college, and I'm an optimist only up to the point where my in-bred pragmatism comes into play. So, my last performance was 5 years ago.

And, truth be told, I mourn for it. Whenever I go to a play, I ache to be, not just sitting in the audience, but up on the stage. So much of myself comes from my years in the theater: my ability to project my voice when needed (I've refused microphone usage this entire year), my silent footsteps (born from years of creeping around backstage as I wait for an entrance cue), my deep love of Shakespeare. I find myself thinking about the fact that I'm the right age now to play the ingenue roles; I find myself thinking that my lifelong frustration with looking younger than I am would come in handy now if I ever wanted to audition for the role of a teenager; I find myself daydreaming, in short, that I could do this. I long to return to theater.

But, again, pragmatism prevails. Ironically, though, it prevails on a sliding scale. What would I most like to do? Act. Do I think that would actually work out for me? No. What would I next most like to do? Write. Do I think that would actually work out for me? Possibly, but let's throw in a contingency plan just in case. What would I next most like to do? Edit. Do I think that would actually work out for me? Yes, I think it just might. If I work at it hard enough.

But here's the flaw in my logic: editing jobs are still incredibly hard to come by. Publishing, indeed, was cited by the New York Times (in this excellent article) as one of the stereotypical so-called "lottery industries"--fields with any number of applicants clamoring for a shot at a very few spots doing the job they love. Publishing was listed right alongside acting, with the only difference being that those who make it as actors get paid more. Well gee, that's encouraging.

But this is not a post informing you of my new intention to run off to LA or NYC to try to make it big as an actor. (Though, ironically, I may be headed to NYC to do the same thing as an editor.) Because, regardless of my love for it, the reasons that I shelved it as an ambition still hold. I have no delusions of grandeur there, much as I wish I did. I picked writing, and editing, because I think I have a comparatively better shot there of doing something I still love, and getting paid for it--if not as much as others monetarily, at least in the knowledge that I'm doing something I love. Even if that something isn't the thing I love the most.

In the meantime, I'm going to start looking into community theaters. Because if you love doing something, why should not getting paid for doing it stop you?

That moment when...

Life is full of little moments. Usually, they end up in a Twitter hashtag. But I don't have Twitter. So, I give you, live from my blog, the little moments of my day. Including that moment when...

#you wake up with a sore throat, despite feeling fine the day before, and become terrified that you won't be allowed to SCUBA dive on your fast-approaching trip to Australia.

#you find yourself unexpectedly not that sore after a day of dragonboat practice.

#you go to dragonboat practice and realize your soreness was just hiding, waiting for the time when you'd ask the same muscles to do the same thing in front of dozens of people...because that's SO much more fun!

#you get shave ice with your dragonboat team and find yourself wondering how many more shave ices you'll get before you leave...

#you eat your last meal with a good friend who you might not see again before you leave...

#you have to say goodbye to a good friend who you might not see again before you leave...

#you finish writing 150 goodbye cards in just a few hours, and end up with exactly ONE card to spare.

#you actually have the TV on at the moment that the movie you'd wanted to remember to watch is playing.

#your dad is home at the same time that you're awake, and answers Skype, so you can wish him "Happy Father's Day."

#you hear a dog barking out of an apartment window and realize you just walked into a scene from Disney's animated 101 Dalmations.

#you go into a 7-11 and see it being used as a 7-11 in America would be: by big, burly men with late-night munchies, buying food from a bored-looking middle-aged man.

#you realize that writing daily blogs that are actually original and worthwhile is exhausting and impossible.

a poem, lost; inspiration, lost

Today's one of those days when I have neither anything important to report nor any inspiration to write anything else compelling.

And, in fact, even the poem I wanted to share with you, a lovely little gem called "Poem," by Douglas Goetsch, seems to exist only behind the firewall of the New Yorker website. It's great, beginning with an apparently casual discussion of finding the poem's theme (which he 'fails' to do, and says as much) and ends with a note made all the more poignant by the fact that you don't even see him building towards it.

But now, I can't even show it to you. I can just describe it, and urge you to try and find it on your own.

So, again, I find myself with nothing to say. So I'll stop throwing useless words into the void and let you get back to the rest of your lives.

Despite

Today featured an odd but lovely mixture of emotions and experiences. Discipline played a key role, yet I felt calm, not stressed. Homesickness made a cameo appearance, yet today I lived thoroughly like a local. I got a lot done, and yet it felt relaxing.

In other words, it was a good day despite and because of itself.

I made my way back to church this morning, and discovered that large groups of foreigners makes me genuinely anxious now--they were pooling on the sidewalk outside the church as I drove up, and it felt so so wrong for absolutely no reason. Also on the way, I realized that the shave ice place I visited last night with my host family is literally just a few blocks from my church.

In church, my love for being there was offset by my longing to be back at City Church, and the (sorry) horrible music during worship made me miss my bass, which I hadn't thought about playing in ages. For some bizarre reason, I also developed an intense craving for a  pulled pork or BBQ beef sandwich, which of course I can't fulfill here.

Post-church was a stream of errands and duties: I stopped by a Starbucks in a (failed) search for a mug, located and scoured the local 小北 store for a cheap lightweight bag (to send back with my oh-so-wonderful brother who's now in Taipei :) ) and vinegar, then making a second stop at a cooking store when I couldn't find food coloring at 小北. (On a side note, between my stops and Rachel's generosity, we're set to dye eggs at school this week!)

Then it was home to research, plan for and design worksheets for my tutoring session tonight. (Special practice tonight: conditional statements like "If I had a million dollars, I would travel more.") And, once tutoring was over (much earlier than usual, since we both happened to be early to the coffee shop), Rachel and I cornered the 7-11 staff into helping us retrieve our train tickets for this week, with some success, and then were cornered ourselves by a Taiwanese photography teacher asking us to be her models!

So yeah, it was a full day, and one in which nothing, neither my emotions nor my physical self, stayed stagnant for long... and apparently, that's the best way to make an average day great!

Kids and Questions, Questions and Kids

"How old are you?"
"Are you married?"
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Are there any boys who like you?"
"What 'type' of guy do you like?"
"What's your blood type?"

No, this is not a somewhat creepy dating survey I found while surfing the Internet. Rather, these are questions I was asked today--most, repeatedly--by my sixth graders.

Hooray for all new classes at Hanmin!

For the first day, apart from a book-check, that's basically what we did: introduce me, by way of a massive question session which turned often towards my personal life. I was expecting it, of course--this is not my first time being introduced to a classroom of Taiwanese 6th graders, after all--but it never ceases to amuse me the questions they'll ask. This time at least a few tended towards the inappropriate, evidenced by Alison's pursed lips and refusal to translate as the class burst into laughter and I caught the words "ta ting bu dong" (she doesn't understand) floating around as we moved on, but overall it's just fun to see where my kids' curiosity leads them.

And today it led them in some fun directions, as I found myself explaining, not just about my dating life (or lack thereof), but about my family, my hometown, my pets (number, type, size, and, which I found most interesting, age), my favorite sports and teams (Mariners and Seahawk love! The kids all knew Ichiro, which was fun), whether I liked ice hockey (I said not really, then discovered the questioner was a hockey player--whoops!--and changed my tune), whether I'd ever seen a ghost (no) or an elf (no, and here I took the opportunity to tell this particular boy that I hadn't seen a vampire or a zombie, either), whether I had a chameleon (no), whether I liked turtles (yes), whether I had ever been to San Francisco, whether I had ever been to Japan...the list goes on and on.

I liked being back in the classroom, meeting new kids and, this time, putting together what I hope will be a workable system of actually learning their names in a timely manner: I'm taking notes on the location and unique attributes of each class as I go, including a seating chart for each on individually dedicated pages of my teaching notebook. I had three classes today, 6-1 (first class of the day on the first floor, yay mnemonics!), 6-10 (second class, second floor) and 6-9 (last class, highest floor), and so far I can tell you a few kids' names and where they sit, thanks to things like the cluster of Wendys in 6-1 and the Steven table in 6-10, plus fun things like a Quinton in 6-1 who resembles my friend Quinton back home, and a very bright-eyed and attentive front-row sitter named Kevin in 6-10.

The questions were just one aspect of the joys of being back in my wonderful schools; the best part is the students behind them. Having new kids breaks the sting of not seeing the ones from last semester in class anymore; so, too, does the fact that I saw several classes worth of them in the halls, or by my desk as some of my favorite girls from last semester, Lily and Sammi, brought me my lunch.

Really, any of these kids could ask me just about any questions, personal or not, and I'd answer. They're just too amazing to mind it.
---
And now, because I have decided I like recurring themes, I give you another unsolved mystery of Taiwan! This one stems from a seemingly innocuous item: Nutella.

Or, rather, the abcense of Nutella. See, I was craving it the other day at the grocery store, but of course they didn't have it, so I picked up a jar of  off-brand "chocolate hazelnut spread":

 

Except, oh yeah...

...it also had caramel mixed in. Not a huge deal, caramel's a good flavor too, and look at those pictures up there--looks like roughly a 50-50 split, right? Should be fine.

So today, I decide nothing sounds better than a Nutella(ish)-spread piece of bread for an afternoon snack (no judging, you know you want one too). So I go to the cupboard, grab a piece of bread and my jar of handy-dandy Nutella(ish) spread. I open the lid. I peel off the interior seal. And I see....

This.

I'm sorry, but what? Scroll up and look at the label again. It says: "chocolate hazelnut spread." Then a gap. And then, as if it were a bonus, "+caramel." It most definitely did not say "caramel sauce! with a thin streak of chocolate hazelnut mixed in for color!" Nor did the outside stripe pattern give any indication whatsoever as to what was inside.

False advertising: gr. Don't get between me and my chocolate fix! Why do they do this? Probably because caramel's cheaper or something. I don't know. It's a mystery, after all!

In the end, it still tasted okay. But not nearly enough chocolate.

Mundane Living

I hate days like these when I sit down to blog. I don't, however, hate them while I'm living them; they're necessary on many levels.

Today was mundane. I mostly sat around the apartment doing various things, and running various errands as necessary.

I finished re-reading Persuasion (LOVE that book, by the way; go read it if you haven't! That link's to a free digital version, too, so you really have no excuse not to read it.). I watched Vanilla Sky for the first time (Weird movie...still debating how I feel about it.). I chatted with Rachel and her parents.

I chatted with Fonda about our respective vacations and my apartment's bills. I vacuumed my rug; washed my sheets; flipped my mattress (SUCH a difference! I don't think anyone has used this side, ever...it's like new!).

I grabbed a coffee from Donutes, accidentally mispronouncing the word for hazelnut in the process. The green onion pancake place I was craving was closed, so I had dumplings for dinner, to the usual effect (delicious at the time, tasting it less pleasantly for hours afterward).

I drove to Karina's to drop off her camera and umbrella--and somehow left both her camera and her umbrella at home. I chatted with Karina and her mom. I drove home and commenced a huge (and ultimately successful) search for my missing watch.

But mostly, what I did was edit and upload photos, 165 so far today, and I'm currently debating adding ferry pictures to my current album or leaving them for my Koh Phi Phi album. Anyway, here's my link to our explorations of Krabi: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2649873373364.2114663.1451610020&type=3&l=21c1bc4493

So, really, not a lot going on today. But sometimes these days are absolutely necessary, and absolutely wonderful to live through. I'm feeling both relaxed and somewhat accomplished (clean bed, pictures posted, etc), even though I didn't manage to fit in a one new thing today. Sometimes, it's best to stick to the ordinary, tried-and-true, mundane old things for a day.