I'm a sucker for catchy melodies and Taiwanese pop abounds with such songs. I normally don't like groups like S.H.E., but aaaaaaagh, they have this one song on their most recent album that I'm obsessed with and I don't know why. >_<
"謝謝你的溫柔"
謝謝你如此溫柔 捧著愛靜靜等候
我的雙手 其實同樣在顫抖
但我能給你什麼 我只是一個他遺忘的我
心被一掃而空
我會把你 種再我心中
也許某天 會終於再次長出一個夢
不知道不明瞭不想要 為什麼我的心
明明是想靠近 卻孤單到黎明
不知道不明瞭不想要 為什麼我的心
那愛情的綺麗 總是在孤單裡
再把我的最好的愛給你
謝謝你如此溫柔 點著笑容的燈火
只溫暖而不打擾我的寒冬
還沒決定往哪走 才所以不能答應你陪我
怕你會變成我
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Major events, recap
Down to the penultimate week of ICLP and I have been 相當忙 (really busy). To show the progress we've made, some of the classes are doing speeches that all the teachers and some of the students attend. Today was my group's turn; we decided to do a debate on whether women should continue working or stay at home and take care of the kids after giving birth. 女性生小孩以後, 是否應該在家帶小孩還是繼續工作? I thought it would be a topic that my classmates would at least find a bit interesting and that wouldn't be too hard to cover, but the latter turned out to be untrue. The topic has too many aspects that can or should be taken into account and some of it was beyond the scope of my language abilities. Since the instructor made us write out everything we were going to say, it was an extremely scripted debate. I heard the students start laughing about a third of a way into it. I also started cracking up at how ridiculous we must have seem having a "debate", when really all we were doing was reading off what we wrote in preparation. If the instructor didn't say we had to use the vocabulary and grammar patterns that we've been learning, perhaps we could have had a less scripted debate. But at least it was entertaining.
Other highlights, went to K9, a karaoke place in the Living Mall (京華城) and enjoyed the melodious voices of my fellow ICLP'ers. I tried to sing but I can't for the life of me sing on key in front of people. In the car, in my room, no problem, but in front of people, I start going off-key. I'm just not meant to sing. But it was fun.
Forgot ID so couldn't get into Room 18, one of the popular clubs in Taipei. T_T But two friends of a classmate were kind enough to give me a ride to my cousin's place, aaaaaaall the way down in Da Ping Lin. I don't know if it's a correct observation, but the Taiwanese guys I've run into here are usually really nice and it seems they haven't let chivalry die. Good to know.
I've lost count of the number of people here who ask me if I'm Japanese. Still amusing. I went with the lovely Miss B. to get juice from the lady who always outside the entrance to TaiDa. She pointed at B. and said "Korean" and then pointed at me and said "Japanese". B. and I looked at each other and then looked at her and shook our heads no. Then I broke out the little Taiwanese that I know and said that we were actually Taiwanese. B. doesn't look Korean at all, I'm not sure where that came from. I get the Japanese comment so often now it doesn't surprise me. I still think it's odd, but I don't find it surprising.
Learned a new idiom (成語) today, 相見恨晚.
真可惜....
Other highlights, went to K9, a karaoke place in the Living Mall (京華城) and enjoyed the melodious voices of my fellow ICLP'ers. I tried to sing but I can't for the life of me sing on key in front of people. In the car, in my room, no problem, but in front of people, I start going off-key. I'm just not meant to sing. But it was fun.
Forgot ID so couldn't get into Room 18, one of the popular clubs in Taipei. T_T But two friends of a classmate were kind enough to give me a ride to my cousin's place, aaaaaaall the way down in Da Ping Lin. I don't know if it's a correct observation, but the Taiwanese guys I've run into here are usually really nice and it seems they haven't let chivalry die. Good to know.
I've lost count of the number of people here who ask me if I'm Japanese. Still amusing. I went with the lovely Miss B. to get juice from the lady who always outside the entrance to TaiDa. She pointed at B. and said "Korean" and then pointed at me and said "Japanese". B. and I looked at each other and then looked at her and shook our heads no. Then I broke out the little Taiwanese that I know and said that we were actually Taiwanese. B. doesn't look Korean at all, I'm not sure where that came from. I get the Japanese comment so often now it doesn't surprise me. I still think it's odd, but I don't find it surprising.
Learned a new idiom (成語) today, 相見恨晚.
真可惜....
Monday, July 16, 2007
身體不舒服
I think the fatigue of sleep-deprivation finally brought me down because I seem to have caught a bug. I thought my throat was feeling funny because of all the tea I drank during the tea tasting on our field trip to 文山 (Wen Shan) tea farm. On Sunday I awoke with a minor sore throat, so I then realized I was falling ill. I tried to fight it with orange juice and some medicinal soup yesterday. Today my sore throat has turned into a scratchy, dry throat and cough. I'm hoping it'll be over by the week's end. The good news is that my eye problems seem to be due to the polluted air in Taiwan and not something more serious like a side-effect from the corneal abrasion. Wearing contacts is still a bit painful at times for my left eye, but I hope the problem will be resolved magically when I return to the States. And if a certain someone is reading, this means I won't need an eye patch! Guess my dream of being a pirate will be deferred. =P
Twinnie sent me an interesting article from Slate about being a standardized patient and the experience of being examined by green med students. I really respect standardized patients for giving us the opportunity to learn how to conduct patient exams before having to work with real patients. Props to the reporter who volunteered to be a standardized patient. It seems that people who are standardized patients really enjoy what they do though, which is great. The SPs that I saw at EVMS were a great bunch and I look forward to working with them. I have to pay my highest respects to the SPs who are trained to undergo the gynecological exams or prostate exams. I don't think I would accept any amount of money to allow a nervous med student to conduct a gynecological exam on me, no matter how broke I am. When I'm a poor and destitute med student, I will take to the streets with my violin to pay my tuition.
As mentioned earlier, this Saturday I went on the school field trip to 文山 (Wen Shan) tea farm with a brief stop at 烏來 (Wu Lai) on the way back to 台大. The tea farm was fun though the heat definitely made it a bit unbearable at times. However, since I've been here over a month, the heat doesn't really bother me as much anymore as I've grown accustomed to being in a perpetual state of perspiration. Tea production is a fairly intensive process so after seeing how tea is produced from plant to final product, I understand now why some types of tea seem to be prohibitively expensive. The particular type of tea we learned about was 烏龍茶 (oolong tea). The type of 烏龍茶 that I'm used to drinking is dark brown and has a rather heavy, rich flavor but the kind produced at this farm has a most wonderful delicate fragrance, somewhat akin to jasmine or lily, and is light green in color and has a light flavor. It was really lovely to end the day in an air conditioned room and learn the proper way to serve and taste tea.
At 烏來 we just walked up and and down the old street and sampled various treats like mochi and deep fried pork/chicken from the street vendors. There was a high number of vendors selling mochi and 炒米粉 (chao mi fen), I'm not sure if it's a specialty of the region or not, though I'm guessing it is. Since Hualien is known for mochi, I didn't purchase any since I feared it would be inferior to Hualien's, however the samples I tasted were pretty good. I'm surprised I haven't ballooned due to all the food I've eaten but I think walking everywhere has helped me keep my weigh stable.
Today I had two speeches, one in the format of a debate which the teacher recorded. Her original intent was to upload the video to the web, but I persuaded her not to (er, I think I did), so hopefully no one outside my class will witness my dismal public speaking abilities. The fact I was ill didn't make the situation any better. I don't mind the speeches because it enables me to practice the grammar patterns and vocabulary we're learning. I just mind being recorded with the intent of showing the WWW my Mandarin skills, or lack thereof. In my other class, I talked about the perpetual foreigner syndrome that Asian-American's experience. It's hard to translate terms like "perpetual foreigner syndrome" or "quarter-life crisis" into Mandarin because I usually do a direct translation which does transmit the meaning of what I'm trying to say, but it makes no sense to native Chinese speakers (and probably to non-native Chinese speakers as well). Thankfully, I've had my cousin help with the phrasing sometimes.
Homework calls!
Twinnie sent me an interesting article from Slate about being a standardized patient and the experience of being examined by green med students. I really respect standardized patients for giving us the opportunity to learn how to conduct patient exams before having to work with real patients. Props to the reporter who volunteered to be a standardized patient. It seems that people who are standardized patients really enjoy what they do though, which is great. The SPs that I saw at EVMS were a great bunch and I look forward to working with them. I have to pay my highest respects to the SPs who are trained to undergo the gynecological exams or prostate exams. I don't think I would accept any amount of money to allow a nervous med student to conduct a gynecological exam on me, no matter how broke I am. When I'm a poor and destitute med student, I will take to the streets with my violin to pay my tuition.
As mentioned earlier, this Saturday I went on the school field trip to 文山 (Wen Shan) tea farm with a brief stop at 烏來 (Wu Lai) on the way back to 台大. The tea farm was fun though the heat definitely made it a bit unbearable at times. However, since I've been here over a month, the heat doesn't really bother me as much anymore as I've grown accustomed to being in a perpetual state of perspiration. Tea production is a fairly intensive process so after seeing how tea is produced from plant to final product, I understand now why some types of tea seem to be prohibitively expensive. The particular type of tea we learned about was 烏龍茶 (oolong tea). The type of 烏龍茶 that I'm used to drinking is dark brown and has a rather heavy, rich flavor but the kind produced at this farm has a most wonderful delicate fragrance, somewhat akin to jasmine or lily, and is light green in color and has a light flavor. It was really lovely to end the day in an air conditioned room and learn the proper way to serve and taste tea.
At 烏來 we just walked up and and down the old street and sampled various treats like mochi and deep fried pork/chicken from the street vendors. There was a high number of vendors selling mochi and 炒米粉 (chao mi fen), I'm not sure if it's a specialty of the region or not, though I'm guessing it is. Since Hualien is known for mochi, I didn't purchase any since I feared it would be inferior to Hualien's, however the samples I tasted were pretty good. I'm surprised I haven't ballooned due to all the food I've eaten but I think walking everywhere has helped me keep my weigh stable.
Today I had two speeches, one in the format of a debate which the teacher recorded. Her original intent was to upload the video to the web, but I persuaded her not to (er, I think I did), so hopefully no one outside my class will witness my dismal public speaking abilities. The fact I was ill didn't make the situation any better. I don't mind the speeches because it enables me to practice the grammar patterns and vocabulary we're learning. I just mind being recorded with the intent of showing the WWW my Mandarin skills, or lack thereof. In my other class, I talked about the perpetual foreigner syndrome that Asian-American's experience. It's hard to translate terms like "perpetual foreigner syndrome" or "quarter-life crisis" into Mandarin because I usually do a direct translation which does transmit the meaning of what I'm trying to say, but it makes no sense to native Chinese speakers (and probably to non-native Chinese speakers as well). Thankfully, I've had my cousin help with the phrasing sometimes.
Homework calls!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Please do not feed the toilet
Hello dear readers (should you exist), I apologize for the absence, my head has been happily buried in my Chinese books. The first week or so of ICLP threw me for a loop because the courses were quite intense and I was studying every waking hour to keep up with the pace of my classes. I haven't been in school for two years (the classes at the NIH don't really count in my mind) and so I had to relearn how to study efficiently, which is great since I'll be able to use the skills I've sharpened when I start med school. Now it's week four of eight and I'm accustomed to the coursework and the classes. I'm not circling as many characters when I read my assignments which I take to be a sign of progress because that means less characters to look up in the dictionary. Does that mean I'm actually recognizing characters and remembering them? I don't know, but I certainly hope so. I'm disappointed with my scores on the writing tests so I'm going to work to make sure I get better marks for the remainder of my time.
Sometimes I feel a bit fatigued from all the studying but when I'm about to complain I remind myself that I'm living a dream. To be studying a subject which I find interesting is such a joy, and a rare one at that. In college I had a few courses that really excited me and that didn't feel like work. Sometimes I think students don't take courses in subjects that really interest them because they may not be practical in terms of their future employment. It's unfortunate because the college experience is infinitely better and more memorable when one is studying something one truly finds interesting. So, to have this opportunity to study something for which I have a passion, I feel very fortunate. Not to say I'm not passionate about medicine, but I feel like the stress of grades will take the joy of studying away.
I'm not sure if I wrote about this before, I think I mentioned it in a post about China, but Taiwan is like China in that toilets are not meant to take anything aside from human excrement. I'm always amused by the sign in the bathroom stalls at ICLP that say, "Please do not feed the toilet,' which basically means don't thrown any toilet paper or trash into the toilet. If you do, very unhappy things happen in the bathroom, i.e. clogging.
It is exceedingly hot and humid in Taipei. It's amazing that I survive without using the air conditioning in my cousin's place. To get relief, I usually take cover in a place that will be using air conditioning anyway, so it's not like extra energy is expended for my behalf. Just trying to do my part to stop global warming. I figure, if Starbucks has the air conditioning on anyway, why not use it instead of turning on the a/c unit in the house and adding more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere? That reminds me, my speech topic this week was global warming. I don't know why I choose rather hard topics to talk about since the topics are up to us. But I seem to the unable to write a speech on something simple like, "Why learning Chinese is hard." Instead, I've spoken about the quarter-life crisis phenomenon (青年危機) , the path to becoming a doctor (從醫之路), and global warming (全球暖化). Never fails, I enjoy making life hard for myself. >_< At least I'm learning in the process!
Sometimes I feel a bit fatigued from all the studying but when I'm about to complain I remind myself that I'm living a dream. To be studying a subject which I find interesting is such a joy, and a rare one at that. In college I had a few courses that really excited me and that didn't feel like work. Sometimes I think students don't take courses in subjects that really interest them because they may not be practical in terms of their future employment. It's unfortunate because the college experience is infinitely better and more memorable when one is studying something one truly finds interesting. So, to have this opportunity to study something for which I have a passion, I feel very fortunate. Not to say I'm not passionate about medicine, but I feel like the stress of grades will take the joy of studying away.
I'm not sure if I wrote about this before, I think I mentioned it in a post about China, but Taiwan is like China in that toilets are not meant to take anything aside from human excrement. I'm always amused by the sign in the bathroom stalls at ICLP that say, "Please do not feed the toilet,' which basically means don't thrown any toilet paper or trash into the toilet. If you do, very unhappy things happen in the bathroom, i.e. clogging.
It is exceedingly hot and humid in Taipei. It's amazing that I survive without using the air conditioning in my cousin's place. To get relief, I usually take cover in a place that will be using air conditioning anyway, so it's not like extra energy is expended for my behalf. Just trying to do my part to stop global warming. I figure, if Starbucks has the air conditioning on anyway, why not use it instead of turning on the a/c unit in the house and adding more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere? That reminds me, my speech topic this week was global warming. I don't know why I choose rather hard topics to talk about since the topics are up to us. But I seem to the unable to write a speech on something simple like, "Why learning Chinese is hard." Instead, I've spoken about the quarter-life crisis phenomenon (青年危機) , the path to becoming a doctor (從醫之路), and global warming (全球暖化). Never fails, I enjoy making life hard for myself. >_< At least I'm learning in the process!
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