Tuesday, Aug. 03, 2004 - 12:30 a.m.

Trying to downsize my Taiwan notes, still have loads of random jotting downs that I have not talked about here yet. Whew. Here are some random thoughts and observations.

Packaging here seems to be a serious business. Everything from cute, cartoony bags in the stationary stores to take away food cartons are fancy and cute. The thing that strikes me as funny here is that with all this over intensity on packaging, why there is NO glue on the inside of envelopes of any size. I was told by a long term foreigner that no one would lick it if there was, so its not an option. Instead, everyone uses stick glue on all envelopes.

Even when the cash register is a computer, cashiers use big sized calculators to add up the items you are buying.

Common additions to almost any and every food dish are eggs and corn. On pizza, crepes, burritos, you name it.If there isnt corn, you are probably not in Taiwan.

One thing that puzzles me is this. Since Chinese is a tonal language, 5 tones in all, 4 commonly in usage. Why do my students sound like drones when reading English? Shouldnt I have to be stopping them from over rollercoastering the rising and fallingness of it all? Hmmm.(Oh, and I give them such shit for this, and some of my classes actually use inflection and such when they see certain punctucation now.Its the little things about my job that I like.)

Its not common to drink with a meal here. Any fluid. If you are in a non-western rest. and order a drink, you will get it AFTER your meal unless you request it otherwise. And that will get you some odd looks, too. haha. I am guessing on this one that no one does because 1. they consume so much iced tea every other time of day that they dont have time to get thristy and/or 2. Taiwanese food is generally VERY liquidy/soupy in nature. So why would you ever need a drink?

Thats it for me. Think I have made up for my over emphasis on mememeME in the past few days. lol.