Letters From The Monday After

Dear Weekend,

Thank you for the good times with my friends in Jhongli, also thank you for providing a forum for me to:

1. be involved in a never-ending round of shots resulting in slurred speech and inappropriate comments. 

2. be slapped in the private parts by a friend resulting in a cool new walk reminiscent of John Wayne. 

3. have the capacity to misjudge the distance from where I was standing to the bed, resulting in a bruised forearm and a 20 minute whinge about the pain. 

4. pick up a dirty cold. 

5. still be very tired on Monday morning. 

I miss you, but I am happy in the knowledge that it will only be four and a half more days until we are reunited and sharing good times again. I hope you roll around quickly, this week. 

Love, 

Lipsty

Dear Bus Company,

Thank you for providing a very cheap and convenient service. I use your bus often to travel between Taichung and Taipei. In all my years of depending on your cheap and reliable service I only have one complaint to make. It would seem that the bus journeys are always incredibly smooth unless I find myself in a position needing to use the bathroom. Of the approximately 3 times I have used the toilet in the past few years, each and every time we have hit a pot hole right at the crucial point resulting in all sorts of problems. 

I would appreciate if you could bring this up at the next staff meeting and try to do something to change it. I don't know if the driver is having a laugh or if it's just bad luck but if it's possible to fix it, I'd love it if you did. 

Thank you in advance for your serious consideration of this matter.

Best Regards,

Lipsty

Dear Ex-friend,

Thank you for having a wonderful birthday party again. I was glad I could be a part of it. That is until the point in the evening when you wanted to demonstrate how someone had accidentally slapped you in the groin. Given the fact that the 'slapper' involved in your incident did it completely accidentally, I find it very difficult to believe that he used the force and the full weight of his arm (swinging from right behind his back) to execute the maneuver, in the same manner that you did.

Although I am quite comfortable with my new walking style, I would have appreciated being given the chance to DECIDE that I wanted to start walking like John Wayne. I am left feeling resentful and a little irate by the fact you took my right to decide away. 

When I left my house on Saturday, I was completely oblivious to the fact I was about to become a victim of a copycat slapper. As a result I feel a deep sense of shame, fear and overprotectiveness towards my groin. 

In future, if you have to mimic such a terrible act, please do it with equal velocity and power to the original incident. 

I appreciate your reflection on your actions and your impending written, formal apology which will hopefully be published in the local newspaper.

Yours painfully,

Lipsty

Time Out

Wooooaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Been a long time between blogs. It's not that my blog-steria has already dwindled. It's more that between updating my Facebooking and Tweeting my Twatter or whatever, I've hardly had time for work let alone blogs. I'm trying to maintain that I haven't been sucked into the vortex that is cyber space, but I don't know if I believe it myself anymore. 

000100010011111001010000010101010111000101001010111100010101001111000001101001000001010010010. Whoops, there I go again. Writing in binary code. Trust me, that's not half as bad as speaking in binary code...particularly when you're supposed to be lecturing a group of year 12 students about the virtues of being an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. It's bad enough that I'm supposed to be teaching a group of native Chinese speaking teenagers about Social Studies in English, but then when I crack out the binary code...you can imagine the results. 

It's amazing how quickly one slinks into the bowels of computer-geekdom. One day I was an average Australian lady doing her thing, the next thing I know, I'm asking students why they need to see the school nurse by saying things like, "what is it? Do you have a problem with your mainframe?"

Anyway, this is proving to be almost a full time job now. Luckily I'm not actually too worried about people reading any of this. I'm quite content for cyberspace to suck it up and dispose of it accordingly. I suppose my impending fluency in binary code talk might even come in handy one day. 

Student's homework task: Write a sentence for each new vocabulary word. 

Student's homework quote of the week (for the word 'boss'): My boss tried to take some the pressure off me, HOLY SHIT! 

Homework grade: A+ - grammar could use a little work, but she's proving wise beyond her years. 

Don't forget: Oprah has the answers and he who laughs last...looks like a tool. 

Good day! x 

 

An American is Stealing Our Dog

Imagine this. You're an older, retired Taiwanese man, happily sailing through life, living in a small alley with your wife and pack of dogs, minding your own business, when one evening you hear a commotion outside your house.

You venture out to see a blonde, curly haired foreigner (automatically assumed to be an American) trying to coax one of your numerous dogs onto their scooter. When she sees you, she politely says in Chinese, "Sorry to bother you, I'm trying to catch my dog." You immediately turn around, open your front door and call out to your wife, "come here quickly, an American is stealing our dog."

To fill in the gaps in this story, I had fleetingly glanced at a group on Facebook that had been set up to help another foreign teacher find her missing dog. So, on my way home from a class I saw 'the dog' that had been in the photos on the website. After debating whether or not to make it my business, I decided to lure the dog onto my scooter and deliver it back to the distraught owner.

My biggest mistake was that, during this thought process, I neglected to address the fact that I'm notorious for crossing wires.

So to cut a long (and as usual, embarrassing) story short - I chased the dog for 25 minutes, up and down a park, until we finally arrived at the owner's house. The owner, loving the drama started playing a creepy mind game with me, giving me the dog, then taking it back, then putting it on my scooter, then taking it off. All the while cackling away, breathing his betelnut breath into my face and shouting in Chinese about having his dog stolen by an American. After a heated exchange, escalating to the point of me pulling out my mobile phone (proof that I'm not an American - no cellphone here!) and threatening to call the police.

What was I thinking? It wasn't even my dog but I was so hell bent on getting it back for this foreigner (someone I don't even know). The whole drama ended when the man kindly set his pack of 6-8 dogs on me (who's to say how many there were?), at which point I gunned my engine and flew up the street screaming, "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YYAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Which is Chinese for (I don't want). Style and dignity! Some people have it all!

The whole exchange left me a shaken wreck for the rest of the night! Throughout the ordeal I had been calling some friends who knew the foreign "owner" but they had all been in class. When they finally got back to me I received the inevitable news that the foreign "owner" had already found her dog.

Furthermore, when I got home and checked my Facebook, lo and behold, the dog in the photo couldn't have looked more different from the dog that I tried to kidnap. They were as different as a chihuahua and a Great Dane.

A lesson was learned! Don't count your stray dogs before they hatch...or whatever.

Short Term Memory Loss and The Obvious, Stated Clearly and Served for Tea

Maybe I'm giving too much away here, but has anyone ever noticed that policemen always speak in the past tense? 

Policeman: Miss, did you realise you were driving through a red light then? 

Policeman: Did you realise you were doing 60km/h in a 40km/h zone? 

Me: Yes sir, I did. AND I STILL DO! YOU'RE GIVING ME A SPEEDING TICKET NOT AMNESIA YOU BLOODY IDIOT! 

And my favourite: 

Policeman: Did you realise you just drove through a stop sign? 

There are two things wrong with this statement:

1) Whose car or motorcycle can jump high enough to go through a stop sign in the first place?

2) It's physically impossible for the particles of the stop sign to disperse to allow your car to go through it anyway. 

Infuriating. Can anyone spell customer service training? Or whatever. 

In other news, I've realised that I'm one of the Heroes. You know, like off the TV show. I understand that it's a strong assertion to make and that some people with think it's rather conceited, but I'm not messing around here. Over the past two weeks, I've felt different. Like a change has swept over me, like I'm unique. 

You see it all started when I tripped over the sliding door threshold at school the other day and one of my students said, "Teacher, you fell down." I was a bit shaken by the ridiculously obvious statement but I decided to brush it off as a one-off incident. 

But then the very next day something else happened. I went down to the local market to buy some lunch and I asked the vendor what she sold in her pots. She opened up a very large pot of noodles, watched me look at them for a couple of seconds and then said, "they're noodles."

My initial reaction was shock, particularly when I allowed my mind to flit back to the previous day's incident, then I felt sick and just jumped on my scooter and got the hell out of there as fast as I could. Later I just felt plain, old-fashioned anger! 

The final example that I'll burden you with (there are hundreds) happened at school, again. I asked my colleague to have a look at the school's schedule for the year and he passed it over to me. After watching me scanning it for a few seconds, he leaned over and said, "it's in Chinese." Do you see? I have the power! I am the final Chosen One. I have the uncanny ability to make everyone around me assume I'm simple and therefore point out the obvious to me. If you're not convinced, don't worry! I'm intending on publishing a 2,000 page novel full of other examples!

Above all, don't worry. I haven't let these powers go to my head. If you see me around, come up and say "hi". I'm still the same old Lipsty. 

Please remember: Peter, Paul and Marys in glasshouses shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth or kill a mockingbird...or whatever. Also, no matter what life throws at you, copy Oprah. 

What Goes Around...

The only appropriate ways to convey the raw emotion of this exercise in karma are either through interpretive dance or a third person retelling. As a consequence of limited time (and a strained hamstring from a previous attempt at choreography), I will opt for the third person retelling.

Modern Day Taiwan

Having woken up on the ecstatic side of the bed, a humming and skipping Lipsty mounted her scooter and made her way swiftly to the high school she calls home. As a new member of the team, she couldn't wait to see how her new students did on their mid-term exams. She quickly gulped down her oats and seeds (all the while still singing, clapping and cartwheeling through the office) so she could resume the wonderful joy of grading papers.

She maintained her chirpy mood throughout the morning while seeing her students kicking academic goal after academic goal until SUDDENLY BAM!!$%#!!!! She turned over a test paper and was smashed in the eyes by A MASSIVE LIFE-SIZE, 3D MALE ORGAN! Complete with veins. It was so life-like in fact that she threw it on ice and started running for the hospital.

Of all the nerve? Which student would have done such a thing? How did they get to be so good at drawing THAT...??? Despite having previously thought she was rather unembarrassable (real word check?) - Lipsty found herself sitting at her desk with a red face. Then like a bolt of lightning the karmically-linked incident slapped her in the face.

CUT TO COLONIAL AUSTRALIA (well around 1992 or 1993 anyway)

A young Lipsty enters the playground of her conservative Catholic primary school (let's call it St. Dude's for purposes of anonymity). She is armed with nothing but schoolgirl innocence and a posse of dirty, scratched up, wise-beyond-their-years school boys. The posse's eyes (every single last one of them) scan the playground until they fall on their unsuspecting victim, Mrs. Sausage*.

Gathering around Lipsty like a hungry pack of seagulls, the five 8 year old boys put forth their challenge. Lipsty was to approach Mrs. Sausage, her favourite teacher, and tell her this great joke. Rising to the challenge, Lipsty fearlessly strutted across the playground towards her target.

The exchange went a little something like this:

Lipsty: Hi Mrs. Sausage. Would you like to hear a joke?
Mrs. Sausage: I'd love to Lipsty.
Lipsty: Ok! I'll say a sentence and you repeat it but add the word 'debating' to the end.
Mrs. Sausage: Sounds wonderful.

Mrs. Sausage plainly had no idea what she was getting herself involved in. Nor did Lipsty!

Lipsty: I like science.
Mrs. Sausage: I like science debating.
Lipsty: I like english.
Mrs. Sausage: I like english debating.
Lipsty: I like history.
Mrs. Sausage: I like history debating.

And so it carried on until they came to a critical point. Not understanding the punchline and therefore its detrimental effect on Mrs. Sausage's opinion of her, Lipsty bulldozed through to the finishing line.

Lipsty: I like maths!
Mrs. Sausage: I like maths debating!

As Mrs. Sausage's face quickly flushed crimson, Lipsty looked to the skies to see who had dropped the bucket of red paint on her favourite teacher's head. Shaking off the confusion, she bid Mrs. Sausage farewell and continued on with her lunch break.

CUT TO 17 YEARS DOWN THE TRACK

Karma has settled the score Mrs. Sausage. Here's to many more incidents of student-induced embarrassment. I get the joke now and I'm very sorry. A red face for a red face!


*Mrs. Sausage's name has been changed to protect her identity.