Most of the masseuses in Taiwan are blind, and the hospitals, especially those run by a religious group will often set aside a space for them to practice their profession. The other day, I was waiting to see the doctor at the local hospital, and decided to get a massage.

The masseuse realized my English was better than my Chinese and asked me where I was coming from. I replied, “United States of America.” He turned to a seeing woman next to him and asked her what I looked like. Specifically what the color of my skin was (I could comprehend that much despite my poor language skills), then he turned to me and said, “Are you White?” what reply was he expecting me to give? Yes that I was White, so should be treated better. But he already knew the answer, so was he testing the “truthiness” of a non-White person? I told him no, I was browner than the brownest Taiwanese, and that the US had many people of different races and colors, and America should not be equated with being White, it was a big diverse country. I was suddenly in possession of language skills that normally elude me.

These days I have made it a point to say ‘Meiguo’ when I get the ‘where are you from’ question, not because of any perversion of patriotism, but rather to do my small bit in undermining the idea of a monocultural world (Taiwan has immigrant workers who are largely invisible and a huge number of foreign brides from China, Vietnam and Indonesia). I can remember the time when I first saw “Do The Right Thing” at the USIS in New Delhi. It was a revelation, I had never seen a movie where Black people were the main characters, and not servants or completely invisible. This was in 1989, which is not that far in the past.

I was trying to courier something off to my sister in India at the Family Mart, and it proved impossible to do. The clerk kept taking me to the aisle and pointing at envelopes, and I kept saying I wanted DHL, UPS or Federal Express in a mixture of English and Chinese. Finally she produced a form. After about five minutes of trying different phrases, I was able to communicate that I needed to send something off to India and not the US, Australia or Japan. It turned out that they did not serve India, which made no sense to me, but I was too worn out to negotiate any further. I ended up going to the Post Office, where I think I sent the thing off. Time will tell.

I had to get a bunch of pictures framed.  I went to the guy I usually go to, but he was away. After pacing up and down for half an hour, waiting for him to come back, I walked into another framing shop and asked if anyone spoke English, it turned out the lady in charge did not, but somehow she was able to make herself understood. And between us we were able to accomplish the fairly complicated task of picking colors, frames, dimensions and placement. It got to be so, that she was able to ask me how come I had no children, what my spouse did, and if I was coming from the US, how come I was so short. She even took her tape measure and remarked at my amazing height - all 150cms of it, which she had very diligently measured. A gesture, I confess, I did not find offensive in the least. The un self-consciousness of most people in Taiwan regarding physical characteristics is rather refreshing.

I wondered why it was easier to deal with the art store lady and not the clerk at Family Mart. Kerim thinks that its easier to communicate with those who have more cultural capital. I think he is right.  In this case, it almost worked in a motivational way.  If you can ask someone their opinion, about something they are trained for, and care about, chances are they will try and make themselves understood. And both of you will have an equal investment in being patient since you respect  the other’s opinion. Ofcourse it helps that the lady probably owned her own business and I wasn’t going to haggle with her about the price. Something that does not quite work the same way when you are dealing with an overworked clerk at a boring job.

This photo was in the Taipei Times today:

BRAKE DANCING
Volunteer traffic police integrate traffic direction gestures into a dance while performing in the “traffic dance” segment of the first national competition for applied police skills at Taiwan Police College in Taipei yesterday. (Photo by GEORGE TSORNG)

I don’t even know where to begin trying to parse this one.

The police in Thailand has decided to punish officers for minor offenses by making them wear a “Hello Kitty” armband:

“Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offence, no matter how minor,” he (Police Colonel Pongpat Chayaphan) said.

“[Hello] Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

Out here in Taiwan, with its love for all things ‘ke-ai’ this would probably not be considered a punishment. I think all the 25,000 plus items that the Sanrio company sells do pretty well here, and have been since 1974 when they started. Personally I intend to get the pink Hello Kitty scooter myself. And in case you were wondering why Hello Kitty does not have a mouth, the company website says:

Hello Kitty speaks from her heart. She’s Sanrio’s ambassador to the world and isn’t bound to any particular language.

Kerim often complains about how I am bad at posing for photographs and that is why there are more photos of our dog than me in his flickr sets. Here is his narrative about what he is talking about.

This was taken while on a hike in an old Tea estate outside Taipei.

Out here in rural Taiwan, one of the most entertaining things to do is to take bike rides. Which also brings one into contact with the huge variety of dogs in this country. These dogs seem to have a varied social life. Some are loners, and go about their sad mangy business, and avoid all contact with you, others roam in couples or packs. In the couples, I’ve noticed that one member will usually be aggressive and bark at you, while the other waits around for it’s partner to be done, before they get back to whatever it was they were doing. The packs on the other hand, are very much like a gang of teenaged kids, they run up pretending to be aggressive, but really they are just showing off for their comrades benefit, and probably just want to play. Most of the these dogs are probably stray, since the ones with owners are often tied up. The saddest of these being the big guard dogs who are tied up all the time, or put in cages. They just seem like they are going out of their minds.

The other day, a friend from Boston was visiting, and we took a bike ride on one of my usual country roads. There is giant dog, who is tied to a tree in one of the farms, he gets hysterical every time anyone passes. Normally I ignore him, but this time I couldn’t. The beast had somehow come untied and started to run after us. It was like a bad dream, every time you think he might have stopped, he’d just start again, looking very ferocious. Thankfully we were going downhill, and the dog’s chain kept getting in his way. But its been a week, and I haven’t dared take another bike ride.

Looking around the net, it seems we were doing everything wrong. According to the Humane Society:

* Never scream and run.
* Remain motionless, hands at your sides, and avoid eye contact with the dog.
* Once the dog loses interest in you, slowly back away until he is out of sight.
* If the dog does attack, “feed” him your jacket, purse, bicycle, or anything that you can put between yourself and the dog.
* If you fall or are knocked to the ground, curl into a ball with your hands over your ears and remain motionless. Try not to scream or roll around.

I don’t know about you, but when a great big hound comes leaping towards me, I run and scream. Kerim tells me that postmen use a water and ammonia solution to spray a charging dog to disorient it without harming it. Others use pepper spray, though there is controversy whether to use the stream kind or the fog kind. I found other articles on the net, like what the military teaches people, which begins with the reassuring line, “Dog bites hurt.” What I liked the best, however, was reading other biker dog stories from Tyler, Texas, which give you the addresses and descriptions of the dogs and their particular styles of dealing with bicyclists.