Life's little ironies

This could explain why many of the Chinese that I meet struggle with English...

Ernest Visits

Our good friend Ernest happened to be passing through Taiwan on a business trip, so we were able to take him out to see the sights and sounds of Taipei. We tried to cram as much as we could into the day or so that we had, so we visited the Shih Lin night market, Sun Yet Sun Memorial, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, and a few places in between. It's always great to have friends over, even if it is only for a short amount of time. 

Couple quick notes

Above are a few pictures taken in the Hsin Yi district last week, showing a few examples of this. Note that the second and third pictures involve 12 foot tall inflatable soccer balls that small people can climb into and give their best impersonations of a hamster in an attempt to score a goal. It looks really tempting, but I just don't think they have these in my size...

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To the right are a couple pictures taken at the new Eslite bookstore - the largest bookstore in Taiwan. This is probably the best place to buy books for foreigners if you are not too concerned about paying full price. It is a spectacularly large bookstore with an extensive selection of books in many different languages. There are sections on business, education, foreign languages, etc. - pretty much everything but comic books (sorry Nel).

While we were walking around the store last weekend, I came upon a section that is a wonderful lesson of unabashed truth (and lack of subtlety and tact) in advertising.

The Secret to German Self-Discipline

NOTE: I know many Germans to whom this does not apply, but felt I owed it the following public service for friends planning to visit for the World Cup…

This is a package of typical German toilet paper.

For those that can read German, you will note that nowhere on this packaging do they make any mention of concepts such as ‘softness’, ‘gentle’, etc. This is mostly likely because nowhere within this packaging are these concepts applied.

Over the past several years, whenever I have come to or passed through Germany, I could not help but notice that their toilet paper is significantly harsher than what I had grown accustomed to in the US. At first, I thought that perhaps my American rear was just a wee bit sensitive from the spicy döner I had enjoyed for dinner the previous night. However, after numerous incidents with the paper products encountered across the country, in locations ranging from private homes to airports to excellent hotels, I had to face the inevitable conclusion that was staring me straight in the …er… eye.

Germans are hard asses.

In the US, this is the type of material that would be used to strip the paint off an old car or file away the bars of a prison cell. Unless there is some unusual trend towards pucker exfoliation, I can only assume that Germans consider the ‘softness’ of their TP to be acceptable.

Any culture that lives with this level of pain on a daily basis (twice if they’ve just had some coffee) simply must have a more highly stoic approach to life. Perhaps they feel that suffering is a path toward enlightenment. Perhaps they feel that this is a good way to harden themselves against the burdens of this mortal coil. Perhaps, after years of numbing, they simply feel nothing at all.
Regardless, the moral of this story is that if you ever plan to visit Germany, and you are not entirely certain of your sphincteric fortitude, then bring your own toilet paper.

Context is Everything

I swear this is true...

BACKGROUND: Singapore is a tiny, sovereign, island nation populated predominately by people with Chinese ancestry.

An ethnic-Chinese Singaporean recently pointed to another asian-looking gentleman and said, "That guy is always walking around talking about how proud he is to be a Honky".

He said this to an older Caucasian, so naturally the white guy figured that he was probably missing something and gently asked for clarification..."Did you just say that the Asian gentleman over there is a 'Honky'?"

The Singaporean replied, "Yep - he is very proud of the fact that he was born and raised in Hong Kong."

Another fine example of how wonderfully screwy the world really is...