I Actually Voted for Movable Type Before I Voted Against It…

In true John Kerry style, I’m guilty of a flip-flop. Some of you may recall this article where I mentioned I had switched from WordPress to Movable Type. Well, a couple of days ago, I decided to switch back to WordPress. I find the new version of WordPress (v2.0) makes the site faster and much more manageable. Thus far, I’m very pleased with my choice.

As I did in just after the first switch, I’d like to draw your attention to the subscription text box you’ll find in the menu on the right side of the page. If you’d like to receive updates about this site via email, then by all means, fill that sucker out and follow the directions in the email you receive.

For those of you who have an RSS reader (browsers like Opera and Firefox come with a reader built in) or use an online reader (My Yahoo, My MSN, Google Reader, etc…), you can subscribe to receive updates via RSS by scrolling to the bottom of the menu on the right side of the page. If you’re new to the wonderful world of RSS and have any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments section and I’ll answer them as best I can.

Fire in the Hole!!!

Jim (my roommate), our friend Frikkie, and I went bowling one night. Before we rolled, Frikkie decided to hit up the vending machine for a cold can of Coca-Cola. The vending machine, on the other hand, had different ideas and Frikkie received the following in exchange for his hard earned NT$20.

Somewhat dismayed, he decided to roll the dice and try again. This time, the vending machine was far more kind and dispensed the beverage of his choosing. Being the nice guy that he is, Frikkie offered me the can of sarsaparilla and I graciously accepted.

Upon further inspection of the can, my eyes were drawn to a caveat printed on one side.

After carefully pondering the instruction, I decided the safe play at this juncture would be to heed the caution. Far be it from me to ignore a direct order. I cracked open the tab, took a look around the crowded alley, and did my duty before tilting the bottom of the can skyward. I shudder to think what might have become of me had I not followed the charge placed upon me.

Getting My Ears Lowered

While getting my hair cut today, I was reminded that there are many people in this world who feel that in order to be comfortable in another’s presence, one or both of the parties involved need to be engaged in some sort of discussion. This is especially true when two people are not very familiar with one another. It should suffice to say that I am not one of those people.

This phenomenon is especially evident when examining the barber/customer relationship. One thing I always hated about getting my haircut when I was living in the States was the fact that I would almost certainly be dragged into a rather forced and uncomfortable conversation with the person cutting my hair. Now, I can imagine cutting hair all day can be rather tedious and I can’t really blame people of that profession for attempting to break the monotony. However, if it were up to me, I’d be perfectly happy to spend that fifteen minutes of my life in complete silence.

One of the great things about getting a haircut in Taiwan is the situation described above has been completely eliminated. While getting my hair cut is certainly not one of life’s mundane tasks that I particularly enjoy, I find the lack of discourse between my Taiwanese barber and I somewhat refreshing. It’s rather nice to have that time to sit and think about things I might not normally ponder over the course of the day.

Tina Is Clutch

I was teaching my evening English class the other night and I wanted to make things more fun and interesting. First, I had the students read a story in one of our reading workbooks. To test their reading comprehension, I came up with a little baseball game.

I split the class of eleven into two teams (six boys versus five girls) and drew a baseball diamond on the board for each team. I then alternated asking a member of each team the a question about the story. If they got the question right, that student got to throw a big inflatable die. A roll of one was a single, two a double, three a triple, four a homerun, five a foul ball (roll again) and six was an out.

The game went along quite nicely. The boys fell behind early 1-0 but quickly came back to gain a two run lead. Going into the last question, it was the boys 3 and the girls 1. Christine and Stephanie were on 2nd and 3rd. The only thing that could win it for them was a homerun. I asked Tina the final question and she answered correctly so she stepped to the plate for the final at bat. After fouling off two consecutive pitches, she stroked a screaming liner over the left field fence and won the game with a walk-off homerun! It was a lot of fun to see them get so excited.