In Taiwan, Everything is Easy

   In a hunk of gossip that shattered miserable expats around the world, Terrible Tom The Expat has officially ran out of stuff to bitch about. He was a shining king of Expats that love to bitch, for over two decades.  Tom has been bitching about stuff since he was less than knee-high. His parents still tell a terrible story about how they worked overtime for three months to buy him a trip to Disney World as a young bitchy kid. Tom returned the favor by spending seven days griping that Mickey Mouse stole his nose. Tom told his Grandma and Grandpa when he returned to his hometown of Bitchville, " If I see Mickey again, I'm gonna sock him a good one. He took my nose, and he won't give it back."    After a lifetime of bitching about stuff that he has absolutely no control over, Terrible Tom transcended himself into the perfect career for people that adore bitching so much. That is  a dead-end career of teaching ESL.    His profound bitching h...

Mark Twain offers the reader such an eclectic variety of Tom Sawyer’s hilarious experiences from the time that first scent of crisp pages enters your aura. Young Tom’s profound ability to torture Aunt Polly will surely remind you of a childhood caretaker of your own that you also may have caused a raucous or two with. His cunning ability to get all the neighbor kids to whitewash the fence that was supposed to be his punishment is another fine example of Mr. Twain’s ability to dish out an over-abundance of tickets down Memory Lane. I’m sure you will remember a friend hoaxing you into doing some of their school or household work for you. Any adult reader with a remaining soul will find it difficult to not be transporting themselves back into those magical times. I would contest that even those with a tarnished soul, and wretched childhood, will still be looking at some strikeouts of childhood as some of the most powerful home runs.   As women, it would be a great injust...

You're never going to believe what happened. I pulled up to the Tao Sing Waterfall parking lot in Yunlin County today.  First, the coffee truck girl was not wearing a shirt. Instead of a shirt, she draped a Mexican flag around her top half. But, she only spoke Turkish. Then, a Taiwanese family arrived for coffee with three kids under five years old. But, the children were driving. Don't worry that they were driving a car. They were driving a plane. I say driving and not flying because their plane was having problems getting off the ground. It was a plane, powered by childrens' farts.  The mother was quite upset, because her son Frank  was constipated. His inability to fart made them late for a meeting later today.  Then, I was forced to play a game of One Shot One Shot,or Walk , The game is a favorite among Aboriginals. You have to take a shot of Gao Liang followed by a shot to the face from the oldest Tribesman, or walk home. I had to call a cab to ...

  Pinky fingers in the classic 'up yours' position have revitalized a Taiwanese seaside town in Southern Taiwan, named Fenggang. This is especially great news since Fenggang only had one birth all of last year.     The up yours craze has even extended to the village elder.  He was rocking on his  gray and yellow rocking chair while half-asleep and pointed his pinky finger towards the sky when he  saw our team's cameras yesterday afternoon, while lipping some indistinguishable noises. A Junior High student at Frank's Aerodynamic English School, the only student in the high level,said he hasn't seen the town united like this since the day that the same town elder taught all fourteen kids in town how to draw stick figures. The hysteria around the up yours sign` began when a foreign English teacher was looking for a way to pass his time at a school of thirteen students, Frank's Aerodynamic English School. He usually spent his mornings try...

The Hong Kong Skyline- Who couldn't stare at this for days? :) Dining And Adventuring in Hong Kong      Day five of my travels to Hong Kong was relatively low-key compared to the previous four days.  I packed as much adventure as possible into the first four days in Hong Kong as I could possibly handle. Some of the highlights included a trip to Lantau Peak (Hong Kong's highest peak) , chowing down on some of the famous Hong Kong dish,  Dim Sum ,  chucking back some cheap beers from 7-11,  performing in a comedy open mic night at Hong Kong's longest running comedy club,  Take-Out Comedy , and not to mention a lot of awe-struck wonder; while checking out the randomness of  Honk Kong  . The final adventure of this fairly un-eventful day was nothing more than a seat on a park bench with a can of Heineken next to  Aberdeen Harbor . ( Aberdeen Harbor is next to a rather interesting floating village ) Aberdeen Harbor off...

Three things you are never far from on this island of Taiwan are; a beach to rock your bikini on, an English Buxiban, and a Zhongshan Road. We must get more serious here and return to this office with a plastic stool outside of it. Others may call this office a box; as it is not much more than a square wall with random blue and yellow Chinese characters littered across the top left wall. Nobody could possibly read those beautifully-written yellow and blue Chinese characters regardless of language ability. This is because of the characters' proximity of being safely out of sight all people with the sight of an ordinary human being.      Amidst the call for the next set of passengers to board the train, the fellow I have never met before begins to grope and fondle my upper back and shoulder areas. A memory lashes in my head from the last time another man contorted my body with my permission. This complete stranger luckily has decided not to make small talk as he w...

Time Abroad in Taiwan: Where Does It Go?  The first ten pages of the Western calendar year of 2018, have already been tacked to the back of a wall for some time now. Well, for those that are still tacking calendars like Grammy, your calendar has been promptly resting on the month of November for twenty two days now. Many of us expats who started the year here in Taiwan have experienced Chinese New Year, and can safely order a coffee in Mandarin by now. Lonely Grandmothers of our Expat and nomadic souls all over the world are mumbling to TV's in empty rooms, "Boy oh boy. Where did the time go this year? It's already Christmas time. I guess Johnny won't make it for Christmas this year.  I wish Johnny never would have even went to that damn China. "  Grammy Smith makes these insight-lacking comments while rest-assured there is a calendar somewhere in her house tacked all the way up to November, 22.  On this Ihla Formosa ,  I do not offer over-whelmin...

If waiting 97 seconds at a stop light on your scooter on Zhonghshan Road in Taipei, to wait 90 more seconds just to complete your three-point left hand turn, has ever triggered your teacher voice inside your head to go, " You can do better  ______ / <--- ( Insert name of defeated Ex-pat soul here )."   Your soul may be inter-locked with thousands of other frustrated English teachers on this island.  Let's talk about other options for living in Taiwan if you don't want to be like your fellow Expats who do nothing about rotting their souls away at stop lights under skies that make the Shanghai skyline look blue. With air quality always in the green, secret surfing coves around every corner, and virtually unexplored hot springs and waterfalls, any vacationer can easily fall in love with Taitung; situated along Taiwan's stunning east coast. Vacationing in Taitung and living in Taitung are two different animals of course. My experience of l...

***CNN Breaking News -- Bombshell Allegations About Trump's Not So Sweet Love Life *** These transcripts were transcribed from CNN' s daily program ' The Lead With Jake Tapper ,' on 1/04/2018. Jake Tapper - " Good evening ladies and gentleman. This, day 339 of the embattled Presidency of Republican president Donald Trump. It was a day that barely passed as believable. The day started with a belch heard around the world from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and ended with a story of the First Couple's marital issues being leaked to the press. It really should have been a routine day for the White House. They only had a few run of the mill items on the docket to attend to. However, the morning presser started in sharp contrast from its usual somewhat monotonous style of beginning formalities. Instead of starting with the usual news and notes, Sarah Huckabee Sanders apparently started with a giggle, a belch, and a wipe of ...