breaking news from Taiwan

Well, I managed to do what every young person is supposed to do while abroad: I lost my camera. I'd gotten a free pass on study abroad during my junior year, if only because I didn't actually bring a camera, but it seems you can't outrun fate. Rather than just stewing about it, I managed to come up with some kind of humorous responses, which I hope you'll allow me to share. Even if they aren't actually funny, hopefully reading this post will remind you when you think to yourself, wait a sec, Sam didn't post any photos from Taiwan! Did he even go? So, without further ado (and, roughly, in order):

-From the circumstances, I knew I couldn't say my camera "was stolen". That suggests scenes of robbery at gunpoint, or someone lifting it off my wrist as I pushed through a crowded market or something, both of which are just grossly far from the truth. Basically, I was in the train station by the lockers, switching out dirty clothes for clean ones, and I took the camera out of my day-bag to pack stuff in. When I remembered, hey, I never re-packed it, it was like ten minutes later and of course, no camera. I don't even think I could say "someone took my camera" and feel honest about it. This cannot be foisted off on anyone -- it's an "I lost" all the way.

-This is why I can't have nice things!

-I'm only really sad I can't share the food photos with everyone. I've thus far photographed everything I've eaten here (which, frankly, is rather a lot for like four-plus days), but I haven't kept a food journal, so I know I won't be able to remember *everything*.

-Oh, and there are a couple of just-ridiculous photos from Kaohsiung that I wish I could share as well. But that's really it as far as essentials. Everything else is Blurry-Night-Shot-of-Building, Strangely-Lit-Self-Shot, Stuff-That-Made-me-Think-of-Something-to-Say (like signs) -- replaceable/retakable/nothing I would call "unique" or "momentous".

-Susan Sontag (and Scott) will probably approve of how I take my trip to a greater extent now. I was guilty of "using photos as a shorthand/replacement for memory", which allowed me to basically run through everywhere and take a few photos instead of really experiencing it, of "using the camera to make vacation more like work", which forces one to be always looking for image-ready moments and better angles/technical conditions thus avoiding actual relaxation (which Sontag considers the subconscious bane of people from places like Japan, the United States, and Germany), and finally of "using the camera to place a filter between oneself and lived experience", which I think we all know what that means. Anyway, I guess I'll have to slow down a bit for the last couple days, which is probably for the best, anyway, right?

-Parting shot: so, actually, there are already a couple highlights from the trip which I failed to photograph. Like I forgot, or it seemed rude or weird or uncomfortable or the lighting was bad. Mostly it seemed rude. But, anyway, since I was going to tell you about those times anyway without photographic evidence, you were already going to have to rely on my faulty descriptions + your imagination, anyway. Just think of the whole trip like that.

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Camera-loss aside, (and now by writing about it I think I'm letting it go a little bit, so aside like for real) it's been a really good trip. I've been from the north end of the island to the south, tried almost every different type of night-market food stand, run around a bunch of train stations, had to improvise (I do love improvising), hot spring-ed, laughed out loud a lot, smiled at those people STARING at me like they always do (un-self-consciously? un-guiltily?). Also, actual breaking news from Taiwan:
-elections are soon, and all sorts of places and things are being politicized (more on this later... you know I love this stuff)
-the Kaohsiung MRT has one line open (except for the showpiece downtown station), and will be FREE to ride until early april

Taiwan!

I'm leaving for Taiwan tomorrow for a week of vacation! Plans are, at best, vague -- a couple days in Taipei, hot springs, train to Tainan or so, probably one or two other cities, meeting up with Cathy and Tom in Taipei next week -- but I have my library copy of Lonely Planet and I plan to get a SIM card for my phone, at which point I guess I'll be pretty set. Definitely exciting, definitely a demonstration of an aversion to planning (alluded to by a personality test I took last week). Hopefully I manage to hit that perfect balance of "relaxing" and "active/adventurous"!

experience, reduced like the sauce we put on chicken that time

Things I rarely say outside of Hong Kong:
"Can I pay and you give me change? I only have hundreds."
"I'll meet you in front of 7-11."

Things I rarely say inside Hong Kong:
"Oh, no, plenty of legroom."
"Yeah, I might be hard to spot."

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I like using errands as an excuse to explore places. Yesterday, I went to Aberdeen (adorably called 香港仔 (very roughly, "little Hong Kong" or "Hong Kong's son") in Cantonese) for the first time. My excuse-errand: I want to save about US$30 by checking the Taiwan Lonely Planet guide out from the library rather than buying it. Although other, closer libraries had older editions, the Aberdeen branch had the 2007 version in stock; the hold-placement system didn't appear to distinguish between editions, so I figured I should just go in person.

While I was there, I managed to find a bakery with "Little Mexican Yogurt Buns". I'm at best an amateur when it comes to the diversity of Mexico's cuisine, but I'm pretty sure these particular buns were not invented anywhere near Mexico. And, indeed, I have no idea what part of them, exactly, could be considered Mexican. But they were delicious: little baked buns, fresh from the oven (I was lured by smelling them from across the street), with some kind of creamy yogurt-tasting filling and frosted with a light coating of condensed milk-frosting, like on lai wong bao, the baked custard buns that are common dim sum food.

I was wandering around a bit later when I saw a father walking with his six-year-old-or-so daughter, and she was holding what was unmistakably a Slurpee. Now, HK has more than its fair share of 7-11s, but until yesterday, I had never seen one with the distinctive frozen treat that made 7-11 visits a highlight of my American childhood. Once the initial shock wore off and I could think clearly again, I looked for the nearest location, and verified that it, in fact, had a slurpee machine with both the Coca-Cola and strawberry-kiwi Fanta flavors. I bought a cup, mixed the two flavors together, was briefly disappointed at the lack of special slurpee lids or straws but got over it, and walked out, happily.

It was a good day.

the pace of things is picking up

Dependably, hope-full-y.

I'm going to Taiwan in a week, and will get to meet up with Cathy and Tom in Taipei.

I'm teaching myself a little html, with the intention of moving on to object-based programming, which replaces unproductive-feeling downtime with productive-feeling skills acquisition (even if the skills themselves are rather rudimentary--the book I'm using begins chapter one with Step 1. get access to a computer 2. connect to the Internet).

I'm reading some good stuff, and a mix of genres and styles, which is important because I have a short attention span.

I'm making peace with my attention span, among other things.

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Ruminations:
It probably takes more computing power to run Free Cell than they had in the Apollo modules.

Stephen Chow makes really really excellent movies. Although, like Woody Allen movies, I spend every minute knowing I'm grossly underqualified to fully appreciate them.

Although I'm still partial to bookstores, there can be no replacement for the old Tattered Cover. It wasn't so important to me when they announced they were moving, because I guess I thought the mystique would somehow transfer along with the inventory, but it didn't couldn't of course and now there's not even a close facsimile in HK. Unless I just don't know about the *perfect* place in Stanley or somewhere (in which case, that would be information worth treating you to dinner).

Girl scout cookies herald the coming of spring.

links! yay!

And by "links", I mean "link". But, srsly, it's really good.

and it's about Wikipedia(!!!1!11), and it's quite long, but it makes me feel a bit better about those "quick changes" I sometimes feel like I want to make that turn into hour-plus quests for (citable) evidence.

So, please, humor me on this one.

Also, the article is mysteriously post-dated to sixteen days in the future. The future is always exciting! Which must mean I'm an optimist.

I've continued to sleep much, much more than any reasonable person needs to sleep (and it's not as if I'm living a particularly active lifestyle right now to justify it). Hm. We'll see what this week holds on that front.

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What I really wanted to write about is acronyms. When I interned that summer in DC with Justice (or DoJ, if you prefer), we were told frequently that government runs on acronyms. There was certainly no shortage in my office -- from the software to other divisions in the Department to the government agencies we represented, long and awkward Official Government Titles were abbreviated. Conversations with friends working for other agencies or, worse, Congress, were often confused by acronym-dropping, which was then followed by attempt-to-remember-what-it-stands-for-so-as-to-explain-it-ing.

One of the Things I Learned This Year is that no job is safe from acronyms. The bureaucracy of higher education means that, in addition to a confusing and convoluted organizational chart, my job can best be described as the locus of overlapping acronyms: the departments to which I am responsible, the tasks I perform, the spaces I am assigned to work in. It took some learning when I first arrived to get everything straight, and even now, every so often I mix up the folders on my work computer, saving a CLE document in an LLC folder or searching for a JCPS template amidst the JCSQ files.

I have been (amusedly) surprised, however, that those, wait-I-should-explain-that-acronym moments from the hot sticky summer of 2005 have not disappeared with my co-workers and my increased age (and maturity?). I do my best not to throw around three-letter combinations ("WAP!", which, seriously, is one of my job requirements) in front of people who don't already know them, mostly because I hate being put on the spot and trying to remember what each letter stands for. I usually try to adapt the jargon of the job to common-usage terms, which, though approximate, keep both parties to a conversation on the same page, more or less. Like I say "class" instead of "module", or "language lounge" instead of "CIEd". But there have definitely been meetings when co-workers have just slung acronyms around with no regard for listeners' comprehension. It's ok to say, "I just feel like the balance of my responsibilities between the CLE and the LLC isn't very transparent," at a staff meeting, but a casual listener can only nod along and hope you explain yourself at some time in the future. Which may happen eventually, or the point may be dropped, lingering in the other party's mind only as an open question, maybe an admission of a little piece of ignorance.

Acronyms are funny that way. They're also funny in Chinese, where a phrase made up of multi-syllabic words (and thus several lexican units which each have more than one morpheme) can be abbreviated by taking the first character from each word. It's, I suppose, fundamentally the same process as in English (or the closest possible analogue). But an English acronym often forms its own word, if the title so-abbreviated was judiciously chosen, whereas a Chinese acronym becomes a string of characters that, when placed next to each other, confuse the heck out of me. Basically, most individual characters have some kind of usage or meaning on their own, as well as being parts of other multi-syllabic words which are usually related in sound or meaning (which is where you get compound word translations like "rickshaw = cart's child" or "Mister = first born"). But when you get two characters next to each other that don't seem to have anything to do with one another, I get lost. Example: Sun Yat-sen University = Sun Zhongshan Daxue ~ "zhong da". So.

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Also: how is it already march?!?! I feel like I didn't do *anything* in february after Chinese New Year. And now, seriously, the urgency of my weekly to-do list tasks like "find job" should be hitting home and motivating me. Right? Please?