Well it's that time again. Time to choose between studying my Chinese or writing about how I'm sitting here not studying my Chinese. The time is right, it's warm, but my A/C is doing it's job, dripping condensation into a little metal pot that I pilfered from the dish rack, having only a microwave to warm soy beans with, I'm not sure why we even have a little metal pot. My room-mate is listening to his window rattling bass thumping music, American R&B mixed with Chinese and Japanese Music, and/or Frank Sinatra. A couple hours ago, I swear to you, I heard him playing a harmonica. I'm not sure why curiosity didn't move me to go take a peak through his open door, to see him playing a harmonica. Maybe take a picture. I never would have imagined such a thing happening.
I should also announce that: I've found root beer. And it's been under my nose this whole time, hiding in the "Family Mart" cooler only a block away behind a lable of incomprehensible Chinese characters. I'm not as obsessed with root beer as I am with cheese, or stinky tofu for that matter, but after a dinner of sheep fried rice and a steaming plate of bach choy, however it's spelled, I was very pleased with myself to walk home sipping chilled root beer from an aluminum can.
I'm a little bit self conscious of my writing style here, I recently downloaded The Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, I believe it was written in 1911, complete with damsels and sword play, same author as Tarzan. The hero, John Carter, is indeed heroic (do I normally use the word "indeed"?) almost perfect and honorable to a fault. He has "honorably slain in battle" close to a hundred red "Barsoomians" and green "Barsoomians" and fallen in love with the most beautiful "red martian" princess of the whole planet (naturally), the language is a little bit archaic, which I love, and I can't help myself from trying to imitate it anymore than I can help myself from imitating British accents when I'm around them. I'm trying not to imitate it, but it just takes over, like a song stuck in your head.... maybe that's a lame analogy.
Anyway, back to present day Tapei, Earth... School was pretty rough today. I was beyond frustrated with my second teacher today, and even more frustrated with myself. There was a little story we had to read, and it just wasn't sinking in, everybody else got it, but I was just staring at it cross-eyed for most of that hour while the rest of the class discussed it. The teacher was getting a little frustrated with me, she kept asking "where do you not understand it?" (repeatedly) I had no answer for her, I didn't even know, I thought I knew all the words, they just didn't make much sense as a story to me. But by the next class I realized that I was dead tired from being unable to sleep last night. To be honest I dread going to school tomorrow, but I hope getting a little more sleep tonight will aid me in appeasing my fast talking teacher, convincing that I can understand at least a tiny bit of Chinese.
I always feel a strong tug of procrastination when I get the idea that I should upload some pictures for this so-called "blog" of mine, the horrible labor of transferring pictures from my camera to my computer, from my computer to the web server, is arduous indeed! (See I said "indeed" again, and "arduous") But here is a picture from last week, after Saturday night meeting, about 8 of us went out to eat, 2 of our companions were locals, so we got a better chance of finding something good to eat. I won't even try to describe the food we actually ate, just a bunch of noodles and junk that two of the sisters threw into a little plastic basket that was cooked for them at a restaurant and given to us on two big community plates. We each had a little paper bowl with chopsticks to devour as much as we could with. Naturally it was good.

Marc and Pu Enjoying Each Other's Company
I thought it was funny when the sisters brought us all chopsticks, bowls, and the food. It was 4 brothers and 4 sisters, I've noticed that the Korean sisters especially have a tendency to automatically set you up with food, chopsticks, plates, napkins. Although they seem to expect you to carry all their heavy stuff for them just because you're male and you're there. I wonder how much food and service I'd get if I carried one of them?
Also, I thought I'd include a picture of a bee colored butterfly that landed on my jacket in the subway on my way to the English meeting on Sunday. It refused to get off with just a shaking, I had to flick it off.

Bee Butterfly It was kinda of like my loyal companion for awhile, with a loyalty not unlike John Carter's six legged Martian Woola.