Livin' la vita loca! Yeeeaaaahhh!! (Yeah, I'm drunk)

Hey bro/sis/Mum (have a shot of rum please before you read this)/Dad (start the laughing)/cousins (word!)/aunts/uncles/grandmother (Gran, do not read any further or I shall never get that yellow teacup as my part of the will)/friends (yes, I still exist)/and former girlfriend-who-have-been-tipped-off-about-this-site-through-a-mutual-friend (I can run but obviously I can't hide). Welcome to my blog...A blog just like any other blog I suppose. But I see this as practice before I get my ass in gear (as Mum always said) and finally publish my own website. When that happens...is when I finally get some money dude. So forgive the screw ups and all that...I am relearning the art of virtual narcissism. How am I doing you ask? Well, apart from the flea-ridden cat that we are temporarily (I hope) taking care of and the fact that the local construction crew has turned off the water on our hill for the last two days, things have been okay. Lemmie try and recap all that has happened in the last while. Here we go (this will go in no particular order):

1. The further you go from home, the closer you get. I just recently (as in two weeks ago) got a new teaching job at a CANADIAN school. Yeah, that's right, there are Canadian schools here. Roads Language Center (not the use of the American spelling of "centre") is the name of the place and the owner/other teacher's name is Shane Valair. He's from Hope, B.C. The first two weeks were extremely disorganized, but things are starting to come together. I am teaching 3 children's classes (elementary) a beginners adult class and several private classes (that is classes for one or two people). The hours are sweet since I usually work from 3:30/5:30/6:30 to 10 pm and the company is still getting new classes. Though I am thinking of trying to get another job for the morning. Money money money!The other good thing about this job is the fact that they are sponsoring me to get my ARC (Alien Residence Card/Certificate?Calm-Down-the-Cops). So that means that I can finally get: driver's license, a bank account, a discount card at the local whorehouse down the road.
2. I had to return the scooter that I was using back to its previous owner. Since its departure back to its South African mommy, I have been using the "Lawnmover"...a 50cc scooter that was the former chariot of my roommate's girlfriend. This thing is like "The Little Engine That Could" or even David (as in David and Goliath). Now picture this: me strapping on an awesome looking motorbike helmet that is the fantasy of every 12 year old boy who wanted to ride a motorbike AND look so cool that even the hot moms of the neighbourhood would swear their undying love; then I mount the "Lawnmower"...which looks like a sickly mechanical mule struggling to hold me up. Whenever I ride it I am reminded of Pancho from Don Quixote (the dude on left in the picture). Needless to say, I have a long road ahead of me to get to highway sexiness.
3. My scooter accident. Mom I am alright. Don’t worry, I am not missing any limbs nor am I now sipping Gerber (blendered food) from a tube. Here’s what happened. I was driving down Xitun Lu (Xitun Road) and unbeknownst to me my front tire on my scooter deflated. I decide to turn right…onto a street with a light frosting of dirty (=something similar to black ice on the road in Canada). Flat tire + a powdering of dirt on the road= bike slipping out from underneath me. The bike goes one way and I go the other. I ride out the slide on my arm. Road rash. No big deal…in Canada that is. Here in Taiwan, it is a different story. There are many lovely nasty little critters in the soil that are dying to get into a human body and crash the party known as healthy. Off to the local hospital. Ah yes, the healthcare system in Taiwan. Here hypochondria takes priority and then they deal with the real medical problems. I go into the hospital and see one of the doctors. He says that I need an x-ray to check for broken bones. Now you’ll have to understand that I have been on more severe slide-outs on my mountain bike. The scooter incident was minor in a minor sense of minor. But noooononononononononono, says the doc, you must get an x-ray. We argue for awhile and then he relents and I figure that I don’t have to get an x-ray done. He sends me down the hall…to the x-ray room. Right then. I roll my eyes and think, what the hell, let’s have a laugh and get this finished so I can get home. X-rays are finished and I go back to see the doctor. He pulls up the x-ray images on his computer screen and proceeds to try and show off his osteological skills with lecturing me on the name of the bones in my right arm. Doc: "And here ees da humerus…" Moi: "Yeah, and that’s the radius and that one there is the ulna…I don’t see any fractures. Can I get my arm cleaned now?" Several hours later and my arm is finally cleaned and bandaged and I get a large bill for "doctor services" and the x-rays. Crazy people I tell ya.
4. All the foreigners here are insane...including me. Sage and his manic messiness, dirty ol' Britsh men with their close to underaged wives/mistresses, insane man-children (more often not dudes from California), severely lonely Western women, boys with the Yellow Fever, them Mormons (they think that the Taiwanese are listening to them because they are interested…didn’t they figure out that they are doing out of politeness?!!), and the Jehovah's Witness crew. It seems that there is a higher ratio of artistic minded (insane) people in Taiwan. Lord help us all.
5. All you can eat buffet mega centres. These places are not helping me get back into shape. My former boss, her sister, and my friend Kellie invited me to go to one of the local buffet parlours which turned out to be a sushi Shangri-la. I cried. I laughed. I swam in the endless rivers of ice cream!
6. Tawainese driver. Sigh. Clueless. Absolutely clueless. More on them later.
7. My trip to Hong Kong. I take a bus to the national airport. Three hours later I am boarding a plane to Hong Kong. An hour and a half or so later, I arrive in Hong Kong. I disembark from the plane…and go upstairs to board another going to back to Taiwan. Whoo wee.
8. Love of seaweed. It is the new Triscut crackers for me. I LOVE THE STUFF!

More later...the shower awaits my removal of the layer of smog off my body.