Yoda, The Computer Cat

Yoda as a kitten last year

I discovered that Yoda is the culprit.

She is responsible for switching off my computer. It’s happened a few times and my desktop is always on. It turns out that she played with the cables a bit. I have to admit that we have a cable mess between the sofas.

I gave Spike a well needed bath and played with them a bit while I relaxed on the sofa. I haven’t updated my reading series since I arrived in Taiwan. June was a slow month, but I’ve started reading heavily again in July. I’ll post updates today.

Almost Caught Up Blogging Backlog

It’s my first morning off in a while and I finally managed to almost catch up on my blogging backlog. With freelancing, working and training, there isn’t much time left at the end of the day. I’ve got to manage time more efficiently. It’s TGIF and tonight, I’m going to be off.

Someone mentioned a music festival, though I don’t plan on going. I’ll probably go running and biking instead.

On The Great Silk Road

Kristen Hoggat, of the Ask a Poet column at the Smart Set, gives us a glimpse into her life when she volunteered for the Peace Corps after recovering from a tragic car accident that killed two of her closest friends. She went from Arizona to Uzbekistan, hearing of Tamerlane and visiting Samarkand. It’s a beautiful story. I loved it.

TGIF My Daily Routine in Taiwan

Today is Friday and I have the morning off. This schedule will be mine for the whole month of July, so that’s pretty sweet. I’ve kind of dropped into a routine that fits me well. I usually get up at 7:30AM, feed the pets, do some paperwork, drink tea, and read a few feeds before heading out to walk the dog at around 8AM. Right after, I hit the shower and go to work. I arrive at work shortly before 9AM and get a free lunch there, which I’ve ingested at around 11:50AM. I don’t do breakfasts.

I come home for a midday break and take it easy, tying up some loose odds and ends. I spend some time with the pets before going back to work in the afternoon at a different school. For the month of July, I finish at around 4:30PM, which is early. Last week, I finished at 6:15PM. Last Monday, I finished at 9PM.

I expect to get more subbing gigs to fill the evenings, but I don’t want to do too much. For the last few days, after a few hours at home of relaxing and reading, I have taken naps. Since I’m still a bit injured, I figure that I need the rest. This would be the optimal time for me to go out for a nice long bike ride. On Tuesday, I tested it out, but it wasn’t meant to be. My left knee’s scab kind of interferes with the motion of riding a bike. Also, since I post my articles at around midnight local time, I tend to go to bed later than I should.

After the nap, I wake up and walk the dog once again. Spend some more time with the pets and start reading feeds earnestly. I get into a groove and write my articles, usually stopping by midnight or 1AM. I relax for an hour and hit the hay.

A Day of Firsts

Well, Sunday marked a day of firsts.

It was the first time I was in an ambulance, the first time in my adult life that I lost consciousness, the first time in 9 years that I got stitches. It was also my first bicycle accident.

I remember fidgeting with my watch on my bike. That’s the last thing I remember because I must have crashed a few moments later. Thank goodness for helmets. To be honest, I don’t really like wearing helmets and I have at times thought about not wearing one. Thank God that I just wore it, day in and day out, without any complaints.

I woke up in the hospital or the ambulance. I was asking if I was in Taiwan. I couldn’t remember if I was an ESL teacher. At least, I knew my name, but I didn’t know what happened. I have three cuts on the left side of my face with a few stitches, I don’t know how many, and I have abrasions on both arms and knees. Thoughtfully, the paramedics brought my bike with me to the hospital and it was fine.

I recalled my own cell phone number and my home number after I woke up and my wife was on the way. I was discharged as soon as my wife arrived at around 3PM. I had left the house at around 11:30AM. From my guess, I had my accident at about 12:30PM. The exact memories of what happened are a bit foggy, but I guess that I need to buy a bicycle computer. That would have probably avoided the fall. My watch wasn’t fixed on the handlebars, but on my wrist.

It’s the day after and my wife got me a whole bunch of treats yesterday. It felt like Christmas. I told her jokingly that I should get injured more often. Nope, I don’t want to fall down again. Ah well, with my using the bike this much, as much as I used it back when I was 15-17 when I was seriously training, it was bound to happen. New bikes are lighter, stiffer and have new technologies in them that take a while to get used to. I think I was distracted and then fell down. The good news is that I’ll be getting a new helmet this week and that I’m fine. The Scott jersey that I was wearing was a bit torn up on the shoulder, but I can still wear it. Still, I’m totally miffed at having torn that. It was a birthday present from my wife.

Joe’s Twig-gate

So there I was, minding my own business and teaching a buxiban class. It’s a “homework” class for grade school students, and I’ve got kids from 3rd to 6th grade in the same classroom. This means that some of the kids can get easily bored. They are of too different levels in my opinion and the class should be split.

After having told Joe to stop playing with his toys for the 4th time, I told him to give me his little twig. This happened right after I confiscated a blown up rip-off Rubik’s cube. He didn’t want to hand it over, even when the Chinese teacher confronted him. He hid it behind his bag and said he didnt have anything. I looked around on the floor and found his little twig. He took it up and tried to put it in his pencil case. I told him to hand it over. He didn’t comply and threw it in my general direction. I took it in my pocket and took his pencil case from his desk and put it on mine. By this time, he was bawling. I guess that he’s about 10. He was making a big deal and most probably saying bad words about me. I talked to him in English. I didn’t swear, but told him that I didn’t care. He should have handed it over. I didn’t care that other teacher might indulge him. He was totally freaking out and the teacher had to take him outside. Before she did, while he was crying loudly, I resumed class and spoke over his attention-seeking.

A few moments later, I broke the twig in small pieces. During break time, I threw it out. I noticed that when Joe came back into class, he was looking all over the place for his twig. He even checked out the garbage. Towards the end of class, he started crying again. He couldn’t find it. I told him that I had destroyed it and that he shouldn’t have played with it in class. Too bad so sad. If he would have just handed it over, I would have probably just put it on Teacher Kay’s desk, but no, he had to make a giant deal about it.

Later, Kay tried to explain that it was a special twig. I wanted to know more, was there a religious significance, was it valuable or a shoot of some sort? No, she said, it was just a twig. She apologized for him and I said not to worry, I’d seen plenty worse in my time. From what she said, I understood that she didn’t understand why Joe was so enamored with the twig.

ADHD Howey

I’ve got this exhausting ADHD kid in my K1 class named Howey. He can’t help himself from talking very loudly at every opportunity. I first scolded him slightly for always interrupting before I knew of his condition. Now, I just tend to ignore him. This seems to settle him after a while.

Actually, he’s more funny than exhausting. There is this constant stream of words coming out of his mouth. Sometimes, you engage him and it leads to even funnier places. It’s my first full week of teaching kids again in almost a year. I have naturally caught a cold. It was to be expected. I teach 45 different kids from the ages of 4 to 12.

First Week Back in Taiwan

And it’s like I never left. I go to the same places for breakfast and lunch. My dog gets his walks and my wife tells me that it’s like I never left. Taiwan is a place of contrasts, of loves and hates. I enjoyed my first long ride on our scooter, Old Nancy, which, despite having remained completely stationary for 9 months, is up and working again after having a short check-up at our local scooter place.

This time around, I’ve decided to try and interact/integrate myself as much as possible with Taiwan. It’s not even been a week, and I already got invited to a dinner with some locals. I’m using some of the people I know in our neighborhood to show me around, to find the places to run errands. I don’t really want to drive into Taipei each day.

Old Nancy… She’s old, but I still managed to rack up 10,000NTD worth of speeding fines. That’s only about $300, but that’s a lot in Taiwan. The year before, it was 7,800NTD. This time, I managed to get all of these fines in a very short amount of time. 2 months I believe.

It’s started raining earnestly. I was about to head out for a bike ride, but decided against it when I saw the weather forecast. I had a nice 13.5 km ride mapped out. I hope that it won’t be raining tomorrow morning. I can then head out. I wonder why I didn’t do this before. I could also run that. It’s not that long and I think after two weeks, I can probably swing that distance easily.

Back in Taiwan

After a very long flight, I’m back in Taiwan. The EVA airways flight was uncomfortable to say the least. It was a lot better than the last trans-pacific Northwestern flight that I took. But still, the Air Canada trans-pacific flights are more comfortable because they have those new Airbus planes. At least that’s what I remember.

I arrived at around 5AM, cleared customs and immigration pretty quickly. By 6AM, I was on a bus to Banciao. Incredibly, when I first arrived at the Quebec City airport, I was only charged $50 for my bike. The bike wasn’t that heavy, but I already had my full quota of luggage. Two big bags, plust a backpack filled up to the brim with an Xbox360, laptop, D200 and SB800 flash and books, as well as another carry-on bag filled with a bigger laptop, jeans and books.

Zonked Out

I’ve been up since 9AM on Sunday. I managed to sleep from 2:30PM till 5PM. I had an important exam this morning. It went well, but it’s left be a bit knackered.

I plan on staying up another half hour to complete my work and then hit the sack. Tomorrow I can sleep in, but I’ve got another exam on Thursday. I’ve cleared my schedule on Thursday, so I should be able to study hard for that exam as well. I’ve been using Red Bull on this end of semester and I have to say that it works well when used in moderation.

My exam went pretty well. Otherwise than obsessing on the Li-Yorke Theorem, I’m sure that I did pretty well, a lot better than the last exam. Li-Yorke is really useful for demonstrating that a function is chaotic. All that you need to find is a 3-periodic point. Once you have that, it implies that f is chaotic. It’s a lot easier than showing that all periodic points are dense, transitive and that f is sensitive to initial conditions.