Robber Zhi and Batbean, Placement Test, New Room

After three full days of being completely asocial, yesterday afternoon I met up with my grad school classmate "Liuxia Zhi" and her husband Batbean. We had Japanese food at a restaurant called Totoya. I had rice with sliced raw tuna on top. Here are Batbean and Liuxia Zhi with their meals.

I forgot to take a picture of mine, oh well!

After lunch we went to Ikea. They are not in Taipei all summer, but will be here for a while. In the end, only I bought stuff, though. I knew I would need sheets and a towel. I ended up buying a soap dish also. I mean, it was only a dollar, eh?

(Now I realize I will also need some soap! And pillows! Oops.)

After we came out of Ikea, we went to the Sogo department store and had cold desserts at the food court in the basement. I had bing 冰 (shaved ice) with brown sugar syrup, mung beans, and some kind of thing I'm not sure what. A really big sort of barley maybe? Protein! It ended up being dinner.

We chatted for a long time about this and then. Then I headed home. It's funny how spending time with people makes time go fast, while being alone makes time go slowly. Actually it's good to have a mix of both.

More street scenes for my bro:

This one was taken on Korea Street. The thing that's weird about it is that these look like people, don't they? Crowding around to look at what's in the store? Except they are standing in a weirdly orderly fashion? Of course they are actually mannequins...

The evening was totally uneventful, since I opted not to wander out like a hungry ghost again. I went to bed early and actually got almost a full night's sleep. I mean, I still woke up at three, but I had gone to bed at 8.

Proof that you can walk the same street many times and keep seeing new things, as I was walking to the MRT station in the morning I heard a loud cheeping. It was these guys! Up under the eaves of the sidewalk overhang. Could their parents have possibly made such a fancy nest for them, or this is manmade? I am completely unsure. Anyway, a few steps down there was another nest with a similar complement of little nestlings. I am impressed that the shopkeepers tolerate them. I don't think of either Chinese or Korean people as being particularly sentimental about animals...

I had to get to school by nine for my oral placement test. The written test was at ten. I left my place early-ish and tried out one of the school cafeterias for my breakfast. It was great and reminded me of Hawaii. In the foreground is my breakfast, which was doujiang (soy milk) and danbing (fried egg in rice crepe with hot sauce). I was so bewildered about how to pay. No one was asking for money and there was no register. Then I realized there was a machine kind of like on a bus where you just put the coins in a slot. This breakfast was 30 NT, less than a dollar. And really delicious! The foreigner in the background is, I believe, one of my future classmates.

I had forgotten to bring my map and sadly got lost on the campus. However, I eventually found my way back to the building with all of four minutes to spare.

The first part of the placement test just involved having a conversation with one teacher, while another made notes. My body made a half-hearted attempt to get nervous, but failed. I have been on the other side of that desk. I tried to just be polite and conversational, and talk around whatever I got stuck on rather than falter and stammer. My brain switched over to Chinese mode with a little clunk. My Chinese self is less subtle. It annoys me. But can still get the point across. I liked how they led the conversation, just asking me about whatever struck their fancy partly, but partly with types of vocabulary in mind. They also asked me in detail about my goals for being here, which I particularly liked. Clearly they were trying to decide how to place me, and they were putting some thought into it. I was able to explain that I didn't want to do classical Chinese (yet again) since I do that all the time, and I am here to work on speaking fluently, writing in a culturally acceptable manner, and reading faster. They asked me if I'd rather study literature or newspapers. I said I found literature more interesting but had less familiarity with newspapers, so either would be okay.

Later I got a further interview with the placement coordinator. She was even more thoughtful and detailed in her questions. (This was all in Chinese, but I'll put it in English here.) "So," she said, "you want to work on social interaction, how to make friends with people, and moreover, how to make friends with educated people" (交流、交朋友，而且跟有學問的人交朋友). I thought that was a very smart and concise way of putting it, after my somewhat flailing and verbose explanation. It did leave me a little worried that I might be too advanced for the program, but hopefully that will prove to be mere hubris. I know there are a lot of holes in my Chinese language education. It's just that by disposition I gravitate toward certain things and ignore others. Hopefully these guys will force me to do the things I wouldn't do on my own.

In between activities, I stood in the hall and chatted with people. Everyone was at the stage of wanting to meet everyone, sizing them up. I always feel like there's something I do wrong at this stage (or maybe one stage later), so that when everyone falls into groups I usually end up without one. Like musical chairs or duck duck goose or... fruitsbasket (I am the onigiri). But I made better efforts. I actually did meet a postdoc who is at a similar career stage as I am, and a book editor who is roughly my age. That was cool, and maybe one or both of them will end up in my same class, or at least we can maybe hang out a bit. I gave some people my card with my cell phone number on it. We'll see. I should be more optimistic that my social skills are maybe improving.

The written test was terrifically tedious. I realized it has been a long time since I have taken a written test of any kind! Poor students. Now I feel bad for them. Also there were definitely some questions I got wrong, vocabulary I didn't know, things I missed on the listening comprehension. We were instructed not to guess, so I did leave some blank. Others I guessed because I could kind of narrow it down to two... it seemed only fair. I had planned not to try very hard on the placement test to avoid having to do too hard a class... but of course pride won out. The last reading comprehension passage was in classical Chinese. You'd think I'd ace that one, but actually it was not fully classical, just high level literary speech, so there were a couple questions I was unsure about.

Outside it was brutally hot. I got lost on the campus again, but found my way out and had a watermelon juice. Then I took the MRT back to the place I was staying. I finished up my packing and moved out. All very well organized. I had been going to walk back to the MRT (half a mile), but my suitcase was insanely heavy and unwieldy and it was just so darned hot. So when a big clot of cabs came by (on a really small street too), I just hailed one. I remember reading in my Rough Guide that taxi fares are reasonable in Taipei. Are they ever! What would have been a $10-15 ride in Chicago (at least) came out to NT 115 (a bit over $3) and there's no tipping here either. I mean, that's only a little more than taking the el or the metra at home. So even though I am planning to live economically this summer, I guess the cab ride was worth it.

I was able to find my new abode with no difficulty. The property manager let me in and we signed the contract. The place is smaller and less luxurious than the one I moved out of, but has roughly the same amenities. And of course is much closer to school. Here are some photos:

Looking in from the door

Looking back at the door--bathroom at right

Bathroom, Weird Taiwan Minimal Shower

Laundry and water station in common area outside my door

A somewhat frazzled me, internet up and running though!

There is no drier, but there are two little partial balconies for hanging clothes. They remind me a little of fire escapes like in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Except not a functional fire escape: no ladder. Also, I'm not actually sure they're meant to be weight-bearing. I will cautiously investigate this later.

I have to pay extra for electricity and am responsible for my own trash (so I'll be joining the crowd at the garbage truck, 10:38 PM, stay tuned). Now I am going to go out and buy some housewares and see about dinner. I didn't really have lunch, since I was too hectic with the moving.

Oh, quick reader poll: I'm sure we can all agree that this clock is absolutely hideous. Here's the question, though: is it ironically hideous? Is it so hideous that I should actually use it rather than sticking it in the back of the closet? Using it would require me to buy a double A battery and (oooh, wait for it...) a small light bulb. Because, you know, it also lights up. On the downside, the 9 o'clock whelk is missing. On the upside, one of those scallop shells is actually a pendulum.... Readers, send in your votes now, either on the comment thread or by e-mail!