June 7th, 2008
POST-ITS AND TITANIC LOVE TOOLS
Friday. The day legends are made of. The day that the working class lives for. I cannot explain the joy I felt when I woke up this day. It had been almost a whole work week since I last had a full day to enjoy Taipei. I would soon have two.
But first, I had to make it through the work day. I continued my work on editing the event film and preparing English lessons. Near the middle of the day, another intern arrived. Marco, like Cedric, was from France. A cool guy, with a legendary fashion sense. Honestly, I would be happy if I could dress half as well as this guy does. Tight fitting jeans, immaculate dress shirts, and perfectly mussed hair. I'm sure this guy has women (and men) throwing themselves at him. The French are just awesome like that.
I met another intern, Lara, from Taiwan. That brought the office total at any given time to about 3-5 Taiwanese, 2 French, and 1 American. Any time throughout the day you could hear Mandarin, French, and English. I was happy to be at an office that demonstrated the mystic "melting pot" America is said to represent. I can't say that I've ever worked at a job in America where I could hear three different languages at once.
Before lunch, Cedric assigned me with another task: managing the company's email. Despite it's small size, the company is inundated with junk mail. So Cedric sat down with me and showed me exactly how he wanted me to sort through the junk mail. For the next fifteen minutes, I had to stifle laughter as he and I read through some very awkward emails together. Some of my favorites:
Swell copies of elite watches
Do not brake, go in a leg in due course
Huge love weapon is never too much
Update your penis
Create a furore in her bedroom
Allow your rod elongate
Get yourself an immense love gun
Blue sexy pill - $0.33
Extra huge proportions
Make your thing as big as life
Immense augmentation of your tool
Immense dimension of your monster
Attain gigantic measurement
Get a rod of colossal measurements!
Immeasurable wand of pleasure
Love tool deserving of a titan
Reading these emails I felt as if I had stumbled upon the government plan for a new war machine rather than sexy-time advertisements. According to these ads, all women really wanted in life was to be destroyed by an immense, gigantic, immeasurable love weapon machine capable of creating hurricanes and consuming planets. You thought Homer's The Iliad was epic? Just wait until you see what a $0.33 blue pill will due to your junk.
With all the inappropriately funny emails sorted, Cedric then went on to teach my about the company's E-Flier. He keeps a growing list of about 8,000 email contacts which he sends out a weekly flier to. It's one of the ways he's explored getting the small company noticed with very little money. It was quite clever, actually. Even if the company does not have an event to advertise, he still sends an email out advertising other cultural events in Taipei. It makes the company seem to be constantly involved in projects and events, giving a good image of the company. As I've mentioned before, Cedric is an incredibly knowledgeable person and is very passionate about his company. He didn't start out as a businessman, but has learned alot in the past five years of his company's life. And I am learning alot from him.
Later Ya Yi and Ya Yun, gave me a brief Chinese lesson about basic words and phrases, mostly pertaining to food. This was incredibly helpful, seeing as, unless I am accompanied by a Mandarin speaker, it can be very difficult to order food. I usually look for a eatery with Englishtranslations below the Chinese characters. Not many places have this though (and English is basically non-existent at night markets), so the next best thing is to point at the pictures of the food and indicate how many on my fingers. But often this doesn't work out, as the majority of restaurants and eateries only have the Chinese characters, no English, no pictures. At a night market, this is survivable by just pointing at whatever they happen to be making and nodding excitedly. Or else just picking a random set of characters and hoping it's not chicken feet or congealed pigs blood. The use of the Two Thumbs has served me well. The universal sign for "good" or "yes", an over excited Two Thumbs up has helped me order many a food item. If, in the future, I'm speaking to you and nod my head enthusiastically and give you an approvingThumbs Up after every sentence you say, this is why. Borat would be proud.
Cedric took Marco and I out to lunch at a hot pot diner. We spent the next hour discussing differences in French and American culture, as well as culture in Taiwan. Since being here, I've had the pleasure of participating in many conversations about different cultures and peoples. It's a topic that never grows boring, especially when everyone I talk to here is so excited about learning about the rest of the world. I've enjoyed hearing more people talk about their travels and experiences in other countries than what happened on the last episode of Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.
With just a few hours separating me from the glorious haven of the weekend, I plopped myself into my chair (every time forgetting its lack of padding and every time injuring my skinny ass). I spent the remaining hours working on my video. It's an interesting experience editing a video in not one, but two languages which you don't understand at all. Since it was footage from the celebration of the French center opening at NTU, the dialogue in the film was a mix of French and Mandarin. My only guidance was whenever the crowd would laugh or cheer, and I would assume that portion was worth putting in the film.
As the hours passed, my eyes began to glaze over and cross. I began to see colors that I didn't even know existed. I noticed a Post-It stuck to the bottom of the screen, reading "yellow jacket". Now this mysterious appearance of this note would be creepy in its own right. I mean, what yellow jacket? Does it belong to someone? Will I need one in the battles to come? Was it code for something? It was creepy to begin. Then add to that the fact that it was written in my own hand-writing. Sometime during the course of the day, I had taken it upon myself to procure a Post-It note, write the words "yellow jacket" on it, and place it on my computer screen. And yet I had no recollection of doing so. I felt like I was in a scene from Memento. I wouldn't be surprised if I started finding tattoos reading "blue jay" and "pancakes with syrup" all over my body. Staring at a computer screen for 45+ hours this week had taken its toll.
One final event of note before the day ended. I experience the Taiwanese public trash disposal and recycling system. As I sit at my desk near the 5 o'clock hour, I heard the sweet notes of Beethoven's "Fur Elise" being carried across the humid air. As I listened, the classical score rose in volume to a resounding bravado, sounding as if it were just outside the office's only window. Upon coming to this window and gazing outside, expecting to see the ghost of Beethoven himself, I saw several large garbage trucks idling on the street. The music had come from the speakers perched on top of the vehicles. Apparently, this was the Taiwanese signal for trash day.
I accompanied Melody as she took a box of shredded paper down to the street. She informed me that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the trucks would arrive, blaring Mozart. I watched as the streets flooded with people carrying trash and recycling. I had wondered about the absence of dumpsters in Taipei. Heck, it often took a walk down several city blocks just to find a trash can. One would think that the absence of dumpsters and trash cans would make the street a mess, as people would just chuck their trash as opposed to searching for a disposal bin. Not so in Taiwan. People are extremely conscious to be clean with their garbage and recycling. I've even seen a woman go running down the sidewalk after a straw wrapper that had blown out of her hand. I've seen people, arms full of trash, arrive at the trash and recycling bins and then take the time to careful sort every bit of waste, no matter how small, into it's correct bins. Taipei may be a polluted city, with the glut of cars and mopeds. But it is possibly the cleanest large city I have ever seen. I honestly have took around the sidewalk to spot a gum stain, compared to the chewing gum mosaic that litters LA sidewalks after years of "artists" have tossed their chew onto the ground. The Taiwanese are proud of their city, and take it upon themselves to keep it clean. This is one of the many things that I admire about the people here. Yeah, they could drop their trash on the ground when no one was looking. But they don't do that, since they feel a sense of responsibility and community in keeping their city, their home, clean. Not only that, but the effort put into recycling as much as possible and wasting little made me wish for a similar effort in the States. I was shocked and impressed to see such individual commitment to the betterment of the community. No one was on recycling or trash patrol, berating people when they wouldn't sort they trash. People made this effort on their own. It is very admirable to see such pride in the quality of community.
We took our box of recycling to some poorer looking folk in the alley right next to our work and gave it to them. Apparently they sell it to the recycling plants, much like in the States. Most of the people disposing of their waste would take their unusable garbage to the trash trucks, and then take their recycling to the poorer people waiting nearby. Again, the sense of community that I felt here was incredible. Instead of being ignored or marginalized, the poor of Taipei were actually helped by other people. Better off people would go out of their way to give their recycling to the poor as opposed to tossing it in the recycling truck nearby. Homelessness isn't really a problem in Taipei, at least as far as I have noticed. I've only once seen a few people sleeping on the street. Maybe its just the part of town I've seen (although at this point I had explored much of the city), but homeless and poverty don't seem to be a major problem. And those that are poor are treated with the respect and dignity that all human beings deserve, regardless of social status. The old woman that we took our shredded paper too was so grateful. The people here are willing to make that small amount of effort that it takes to improve the life of someone else not as fortunate as themselves. The overwhelming kindness of the Taiwanese people is not a myth. It is completely genuine. I see it on a daily basis.
Trash time ended, and I returned to my office to wait for my freedom. It still being my first week at work, I wanted to make as good impression, so I had been waiting to leave work until at least one of the other employees did. This was often after 6:30pm, even though my hours ended at six. 6:30 rolled around...then 6:45....then 7:00...then 7:15...then 7:30. I finally left after Melody at 7:40. Now I would have been fine with this had it not been Friday, with a weekend of fun awaiting me outside of the office, or if I hadn't started working since 8:40am (that's an 11 hour workday). But it took all my strength and patience to hold onto what little sanity I had left and make it out of the office alive.
I rushed home (referring to the hotel), or at least as fast as the bus in rush hour traffic could take. I squeezed my way through the weary and tired people in the bus, rushed to the hotel, stuffed a quick meal of beef noodles into my body in preparation for the trials I was to put it through this night, and threw on some clubbin' clothes, just as everyone else was finishing getting ready.
Not wanting to spend too much NT on drinks at the club, we picked up some sprits from the 7/11. As I browsed the selection, it called to me: from amidst the shelves of liquors labeled in a language I spoke none of, a small glass flask of Jim Beam. Unable to deny this new level of class, I purchased my new friend, and we made our way to the pre-party place: the playground near our hotel. The night had begun...
Up next: EPICNESS DEFINED
No comments:
Post a Comment