I try to keep up with scores and highlights of various sport franchises. The guys and girls at my alma mater did pretty good this year in basketball. The guys lost in the 2nd round to perennial powerhouse UCLA which is in the Final Four, again. The girls ended up going their farthest ever, to the Elite Eight and lost to Tennessee (which has the best women’s program in all of NCAA history).
Anyways, I’ve also kept up with some of the professional leagues like the NBA (growing up in Dallas, I’d like to say I enjoy the Mavericks, but Mark Cuban annoys me most of the time).
Look at the current standings: the East versus West rivalry is totally lopsided and has been for about a decade (ever since Jordan retired). And to think, Miami had the best team 3 years ago. What are they drinking out there?
My advice is that we let the bottom tier teams on the East just play each other on the Xbox for the rest of the season. Let Detroit and Boston rest for the next 10 games. Allow the AND1 team to join a round robin-style tournament to determine the Eastern victor. Then the day before the final game, let Wade and Shaq duke it out for the 6th man position on the Eastern bench (because Phoenix will have lost by then). Let Kobe ref the scrimmage. Loser has to chauffeur Phil Jackson for the summer.
Win-win-win situation.
In continuing my catalog of sights and sounds that strike me as odd:
Ghost money — everyday you can zig zag down the perpetually busy streets here and witness an interesting site: flames on the side of the road. Practicing Buddhists will take a metal canister and burn paper. The paper is actually “holy” ghost money (kind of like kosher food) that people buy huge stacks of. They then spend a 20 or so minutes saying prayers and throwing sheets of it into the metal cannister.
Some of the paper has incense so it smells decent, but the subsequent ash that becomes airborne lands on everything and certainly doesn’t help the dirty polluted boulevards. Also, while you may see monks in their traditional garb, you don’t need to wear anything special when you burn the paper.
Feral dogs — I’ve mentioned this briefly before. And based on my conversations with other friends and coworkers out here, this is not an issue endemic to Taiwan. Semi-domesticated dogs roam around scavenging for food. You’ll be standing in line for a box lunch and the dogs will stand next to you looking for scraps to fall. At night you may also see entire packs of 10 or more dogs running throughout neighborhoods. All of them are very friendly and will let you pet them. And while this may seem unsanitary (especially since many of them carry and spread various illnesses) just imagine how much food is hastily thrown out on the streets for them to continue living.
Garbage pickup - there are few, if any dumpsters around this part of town (in fact, I can’t say that I’ve seen one anywhere in the metro). As a result, residents come downstairs and partake in an eerily communal ritual in which they stand on the sidewalk and wait for the local garbage truck to swing on by at prearranged times. Talk about a waste of time.
The truck (which looks identical to the big blue or brown ones in America) is painted yellow and has a red flashing light affixed to the top. And the way you know the garbage truck is nearby: it plays a catchy ice cream tune over and over.
I can’t imagine how the driver does not go insane… I wonder if the ditty plays in their sleep too (it does appear in my dreams!)?
Tans — while I hardly have Yellow Fever all of the hottest Asian girls I knew growing up were tan… or at least not pale. Too bad they didn’t get the memo here. Being tan or any shade of brown is stigmatized here because culturally people believe that if you are pale, you have a white-collar job and can stay inside all day. Conversely, if you are brown, people typically believe you do some kind of manual labor outside. It is a status symbol.
Thus you never see tanning salons anywhere (nor are they in Seoul), which is to their detriment… because Thai and Vietnamese women are so much more attractive because they have darker skin. Consequentially, Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese chicas would probably look a darn sight better if they stopped walking around with an umbrella and got 15 minutes of Vitamin D everyday from Mr. Sun.
Not to belabor the point but this reminds me of the first televised presidential debate in 1960 between Nixon and JFK. In the days before the debate Nixon supposedly spent day and night cramming and studying every kind of question that could be asked in this format. In contrast, JFK went to the beach and got some rays. And when Americans turned that knob, those with color TVs saw a pasty, seemingly unhealthy Nixon standing opposite to a golden, youthful JFK. Here are more details to that story.
[As an aside, one of the reasons body builders get that oompa loompa shade of orangishness is because it helps define and articulate muscle definition. You don't see albino's grunting and flexing in Bowflex commercials, but you do see 50 year-old MILFs that are tan]
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge — if you have never watched MXC on Spike TV you are either a Risk Management bureaucrat or eat babies. It is a Japanese game show that takes place with dozens of contestants running through a myriad of obstacle courses. The show is redubbed and edited for all sorts of nutty laughs. And believe it or not, but in both Korea and Taiwan there are several shows that showcase westerners in similar light (like a 24 hour station just for stuff like Candid Camera).
It certainly beats watching yet another Jeanne Claude Van Damme flick that chronically appear on every movie station.
Chinglish — I mentioned Konglish when I was in Korea (mixture of English and Korean) and a similar phenomenon exists here, although it seems to a smaller degree. The one you may encounter everyday is when you call a friend and they don’t pick up. Instead of going to voice mail (which no one on this tectonic plate has) an automated message is played. Usually the script that is read has a number of grammatical errors… which is just weird because the telecom firms here make money hand over fist. You would think they would have better quality control than the local tshirt shop that sells the “Juicy Girl” and “Go Eff Yourself” shirts to little toddlers (they really do wear them to school too).
Things I miss:
- Believe it or not, but I do actually miss Walmart. It’s cheap, has a gazillion products and is open 24 hours a day. And as a tangent, the company that commies love to hate might be up for a Nobel Peace Prize.
- Guacamole. Being raised on Tex-Mex food is bittersweet because all of the cuisine I was used to eating every week is nearly impossible to find. That includes everyones favorite avocado which is non-existent in this part of the world.
- Mosquitoes that die. I don’t care how many times you seal the door or window, these mother fuckers end up eating you alive every night. Okay, so it’s not quite sub-Saharan bad, but you’ll wake up because they’re buzzing around in your nose or ear. And then play Houdini with your fists of fury as you try (in vain) to hunt them down. Please send me more Tabasco.
[Note: yea, all of the images come from a simple search for "bowflex" -- sue me]
