top five things i hate about living in taiwan
1. children. unless they belong to friends of mine (and i'm obliged to think of them as extensions of someone for whom i don't hold contempt), i really dont like children. they have little self-control, few to no rational thoughts, and randomly throw up on themselves. if i could make them items 1-5 i would, but that would defeat the point of the list.
2. the price of a good drink. now, ive decided to lay off a little, but come on! $10 for a SHOT of campari! that's highway robbery. a bottle of cheap wine in the states is by no means cheap here, where it seems to me they would need it most. if anyone comes to visit me, one of the best possible gifts you could bring would be a bottle of campari. i cant even find a bottle of it in the grocery store in Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. sigh.
3. smog. i cant believe how dirty this country is. scooters everywhere and nowhere for the exhaust to go. there are over 22 million people on this tiny island (2nd highest population density in the world, after Bangladesh), and you can tell by smog alone. if i leave my bathroom window, which opens to a small hole between buildings only touched by the sun's rays at precisely noon, open for just one day, the tiles on the bathroom wall are covered with a layer of blackish grime. blech. it's stinky, it's yucky, and it's everywhere.
4. sewer gas. in addition to smog, which doesn't smell great, methane and other waste-like scents waft up from the open sewers that run under and aside the streets and alleys, constantly assalting the senses. one set of teachers puts votive candles over the grates in their apartment floor because the sewer gas escapes from them. the smell is unbearable unless burnt off, though this can sometimes be exciting as the gas occasionally escapes in small fireballs.
5. illiteracy. ive been a few places in the world, but never before have i had to be hopelessly illiterate in any of them. sure, i can't read a newspaper in italy or understand the egyptian soap operas on TV in morocco, but at least i could say things, and read some signs and whatnot. in taiwan i comprehend comparatively next to nothing that happens around me. chinese isn't like arabic or the romance languages. it has no script you can memorize and put together using things like grammar and punctuation to create a coherent sentence. you've got to memorize thousands of characters to read, and be able to practically sing to pronounce (it's tonal). oh, and the characters hardly reflect pronunciation, so you've got to memorize that, too. i suppose it's challenging or something, and im taking chinese classes to help me learn it, but good lord. puis-je parler francais?
**honorable mention: mosquitoes.
2. the price of a good drink. now, ive decided to lay off a little, but come on! $10 for a SHOT of campari! that's highway robbery. a bottle of cheap wine in the states is by no means cheap here, where it seems to me they would need it most. if anyone comes to visit me, one of the best possible gifts you could bring would be a bottle of campari. i cant even find a bottle of it in the grocery store in Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. sigh.
3. smog. i cant believe how dirty this country is. scooters everywhere and nowhere for the exhaust to go. there are over 22 million people on this tiny island (2nd highest population density in the world, after Bangladesh), and you can tell by smog alone. if i leave my bathroom window, which opens to a small hole between buildings only touched by the sun's rays at precisely noon, open for just one day, the tiles on the bathroom wall are covered with a layer of blackish grime. blech. it's stinky, it's yucky, and it's everywhere.
4. sewer gas. in addition to smog, which doesn't smell great, methane and other waste-like scents waft up from the open sewers that run under and aside the streets and alleys, constantly assalting the senses. one set of teachers puts votive candles over the grates in their apartment floor because the sewer gas escapes from them. the smell is unbearable unless burnt off, though this can sometimes be exciting as the gas occasionally escapes in small fireballs.
5. illiteracy. ive been a few places in the world, but never before have i had to be hopelessly illiterate in any of them. sure, i can't read a newspaper in italy or understand the egyptian soap operas on TV in morocco, but at least i could say things, and read some signs and whatnot. in taiwan i comprehend comparatively next to nothing that happens around me. chinese isn't like arabic or the romance languages. it has no script you can memorize and put together using things like grammar and punctuation to create a coherent sentence. you've got to memorize thousands of characters to read, and be able to practically sing to pronounce (it's tonal). oh, and the characters hardly reflect pronunciation, so you've got to memorize that, too. i suppose it's challenging or something, and im taking chinese classes to help me learn it, but good lord. puis-je parler francais?
**honorable mention: mosquitoes.
posted by bethany at 01:45
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