Losing time

I woke up Saturday morning at about 5 AM, which is definitely pretty unusual for me.  I mean, it's not uncommon that I wake up early in the morning and need to go to the bathroom, but then I'm groggy, still mostly asleep, and don't have any trouble going back to sleep for a few more hours.  This time I woke up and felt quite awake, which I thought was pretty weird.  I stayed in bed and figured I would fall back to sleep this time too, but after about 90 minutes of rolling over a couple times and not sleeping soundly, I woke back up again with the distinct feeling that I was going to get sick.  Sure enough, I got up, went into the bathroom, and proceeded to throw up a few times, discharging into the toilet the remains of the apple, salad, crackers, cheese, and wine that had been the last things I had eaten the night before.  Coming 36 hours after the heavy meat meal I wrote about in my last post, with my concern that it wasn't good for me, my first thought was that I was right, and/or that something in that meal had caused a little food poisoning that was now causing the vomiting.  But the delay seemed longer than it should be for food poisoning, so I wondered if something in the tap water that I had washed the apple in the night before was the cause.  I went back to bed confused and surprised -- I mean, I've got a very strong stomach and never throw up!  I can remember only one two other times in my adult life I've done so, and the cause on those occasions was pretty obvious.  :)

It wasn't long before I was up again, wretching a few more times, and then one more episode almost to the point of dry heaves, all with some diarrhea mixed in.  After all that was done, my whole body was aching, I felt miserable, and could do nothing but lay back down in bed.  All day long I would sleep a bit, try to get up, feel like crap, couldn't think, didn't want to be awake (or alive!), so I'd lay back down for awhile to sleep a little more.  By the time night came, my system was nearly empty, I had no energy, I was feeling really hungry but no way wanted to eat anything (I started in on an apple, thinking it would be easy enough on my stomach, but that came back up pretty quickly), so I just stayed in bed and was able to sleep most of the way through the night.  For someone who most of the time has a hard time staying in bed for more than about seven hours at a time, the fact that I had been prone and sleeping for nearly 24 hours seemed kind of remarkable. 

By Sunday morning I was feeling a little better, the rest and a number of aspirin the day before having taken away most of the body ache.  Being a little more alert, I was remembering that Jack had the flu when we had dinner on Thursday, so it occurred to me that that was the source of what was happening to me.  Around midday I shot an email to Yungnane to inquire about Jack's symptoms, and learned that his wife had also come down with the flu, and that Yungnane himself on Saturday had had some vomiting and diarrhea as well, so deduced that that must be what was going on.  By evening, now about 40 hours without any food, totally famished, I walked over to 7-11 to buy some instant noodles, hoping that would take away the pangs and give me a little energy.  I finished about half the cup, felt a little better, and it stayed in my stomach, so that seemed to be a positive sign.  I got another 12 hours sleep that night, and woke up Monday morning feeling considerably better, if not entirely back to normal.

I was desperate for some food but not at all sure what to eat.  Fruit still seemed like the best choice, and since I had been able to drink some OJ even right away on Saturday, I was thinking liquid form would be good and what sounded most enticing was some kind of fruit smoothie.  Yungnane's assistant Charmaine had emailed me that morning to see if I needed anything, and I told her about my hope for a smoothie and she offered to either bring me one or come over and walk with me to a fruit stand to get one.  I felt good enough to go out and thought the fresh air would be good for me too, plus I figured it would be useful for the longer term to figure out how to get a smoothie at the fruit stand, so we went over there together and I got a tasty mix of bananas, strawberries, papaya, a little milk and honey that they blended up for me.  I also bought a little walnut bread at a nearby store where I'd bought bread and rolls on previous occasions, as well as a funky, jelly-like energy drink ("a special drink to supply carbohydrates equivalent to a rice ball," it said on the package!) at the 7-11 that I thought could be an easy source of some calories (haven't actually finished that yet -- not sure I will!). 

Communicating with Yungnane I learned that 2-3 days seemed to be the lifespan of the bug we had apparently contracted, so was optimistic that I was well on the way to being over it.  (He also said that 80 people around the country had died from this round of the flu, although Charmaine said these were mostly elderly folks and babies.)  By late Monday I was feeling better, although as I tried to imagine eating solid food, nothing yet sounded too good.  Still very hungry that night, I decided to go over to a nearby restaurant to order some noodles, since every time I tell someone I eat the instant noodles they tell me they're not good for me, so I decided to try some real ones instead.  I got halfway through the bowl and had to run upstairs to the bathroom where I threw up one more time.  I left the rest of the noodles sitting there and went back to my place, but now felt like that last vomit had removed the bug from my system completely, and pretty much felt back to normal.  I didn't stay up much longer, got a good night sleep, and felt fine Tuesday morning, ready to go to a meeting with Yungnane.  It was time to get back to work, since needless to say I had accomplished very little that was productive during the weekend I lost.

Of course, even during the worst of it on Saturday, and then over the next two days, I managed to get online and check news periodically to see what was happening in the world.  The stories coming across the wire were incredible, and despite my own anguish it was exciting to read about all the developments happening in hotspots around the world.  It's amazing to see that the populist uprising is spreading quickly -- from Tunisia and Egypt into Bahrain and Libya, with protests in Palestine and Yemen and Morocco, and now maybe beginning in Saudi Arabia, and strikes of various sorts going on in all sorts of other countries.  What's also remarkable is that the cabals in these places have decided to respond with force and violence and resistance, in the face of throngs of their citizens who have essentially mobilized in peace and simply expressed their collective desires.  But I guess it's really not all that remarkable that this has been their response.  The dark forces have only one arrow in their quiver, one tool in their shed, and that is through efforts to exert control.  It is in their nature to use violence, to cause pain, to put up resistance, to create chaos.  That's what they do, that is their essence.  Those with power in the world who use violence -- often, repeatedly, on a grand scale -- are the root of the dark forces as personified here on planet Earth.  Darkness works through fear, the primal instinct it naturally produces that leads to all other evils.  Look for those who chose to operate this way, and you will find the heart of darkness on the planet.

The leaders (I use the term loosely) in these countries have relied primarily on fear to keep their people under control, but now the people have had enough, they have overcome their fear and have stood up en masse to proclaim "no more!"   You can bet that TPTB in those countries now have their own fear to deal with, as they realize that ultimately and inevitably they will not be able to withstand the on-rush of the masses, knowing especially that the military personnel they hope will protect them are just as likely to join the citizenry instead.  I've loved seeing stories about soldiers refusing to shoot, pilots defecting to Malta, warship crews choosing to mutiny, diplomats resigning, and cabinet members proclaiming their alliance with the peoples' movement!  The leaders can't decide between running for their lives or sticking around in an effort to maintain control one more time.  Ben Ali high-tailed it out of Tunisia fairly quickly, and Mubarak put up a stoic delay before realizing he really had no option either.  Gaddafi, the crazy one, or maybe the only one with cajones, decides to stick around and fight awhile longer, saying he'd rather die as a martyr, now apparently ready to set his oil fields on fire.  (Ooh, price of gas is gonna go UUUPP!!  Of course, that's good for the oil companies, one of the dark's primary weapons.)  The folks in Bahrain also had a quick first reaction to use violent repression, and we'll see how that works out for them -- I'd say it's not lookin' good at the moment. 

These guys are pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place.  They only know one way to respond, yet their response is making the problem worse.  Every act of resistance on their parts adds fuel to the fire of the demand for change -- it just exposes their true nature now for the whole world to see.  How can anyone really expect to stay in power after they out themselves to the whole world as ruthless thugs indifferent to the humanity of the people they rule?  Nope, way too many of us now, way too few of them. The fire is spreading, and it's already out of control.  So they're all faced with the fight-or-flight choice that fear invariably confronts us with.  The longer they stick around, the more they apparently believe they can maintain control, or that they'd rather cause chaos then abdicate as Gaddafi is being reported as saying.  But just as darkness is all an illusion, simply the absence of light, they are deceiving themselves to think that they can withstand the power of the people!

The president of Iceland was facing his own little dilemma of a different sort and found a clever solution.  The parliament passed a bill (for a second time now) that would repay some of the big European banksters who had lost money when Iceland's economy collapsed.  But rather than signing the bill into law, he decided (again) to offer it as a referendum to the people.  The people there are very clear that they don't want the banksters to be repaid at their expense, so it is sure not to pass (93% voted against it last time).  He is wisely letting the voice of the people dictate this decision, probably knowing that if he passed the bill he would have his own uprising on his hands.  You can bet the banksters aren't happy about this, so now they're threatening to "downgrade" Iceland's credit ratings, i.e., raise their interest rates instead.  But I think this is another battle the bad guys have lost in this war, as the Icelandic people have made it clear they're not giving in.  I'm sure the dark would love to see that volcano blow as a little payback...

Obama's also got his own dilemma now -- Ray Davis -- that has him rather stuck in a situation he'd rather not be in.  So good ol' boy Ray gets arrested in Pakistan and charged with the murder of two Pakistanis, with him claiming they were trying to rob him and he killed them in self-defense.  The US government claims diplomatic immunity since he worked for the US embassy there, and has demanded that he be released and returned.  But now all sorts of information is coming out about Davis that is not telling a pretty story.  I can't vouch for what is and isn't true in all this, but the word out on the street is that Davis is a black-ops CIA agent, or maybe just a Blackwater (oh sorry, XE -- they changed their name so you won't know who they are) contractor, that the two guys he killed were Pakistani ISI agents who were following him because they were concerned about all his contacts with "the enemy," and that documents found in his possession indicated he was working to provide nuclear material and biological agents to the Taliban and/or Al-Qaeda.  If that is true, you can be damn sure that our intelligence folks don't want their intelligence folks subjecting him to the same kind of "enhanced interrogation" (a favorite tactic of the dark) they've gotten really good at during all these years of the "war on/for terror."  But there's no way that the Pakistani officials are gonna release him, 'cause they know that doing that will instigate a rebellion in their country.  The people there are gonna go NUTS if the Pakistan government lets him go, and the last thing the US government wants is any kind of major instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan.  So we'll see how hard Obama fights to get his spy back -- reports are they're considering some kind of rescue mission.  God, it's a real life Bond movie -- can't wait for the exciting finish!

The other "dilemma" -- although I guess it really wasn't -- that Obama faced recently was the UN Security Council vote on a resolution to define the settlements in Palestine as illegal.  Even though the administration supposedly opposes Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and even though the resolution was sponsored by 122 member nations and supported by the other 14 members of the Security Council, he instructed Ambassador Susan Rice to veto the resolution.  Rice admitted that, despite our opposition to the settlements, it was a "political" decision to veto the resolution.  So what exactly does THAT mean?!  I think it's code for they know they can't afford to piss off the so-called Jewish (read: Zionist) lobby that badly -- as it is, some of them are whining that he didn't come out strongly enough in support of Israel, sohow ballistic would they have gone had he actually vetoed it? 

This kind of hypocrisy, this two-faced "say one thing and do another" is just another sign that dark forces are operating.  Darkness avoids the truth, and is very skilled at the use of lies and deception to convince people of that which isn't.  The truth is that the Jewish lobby -- and it's "we must support Israel regardless of anything it ever does wrong" (can you say The Marmara?) attitude -- calls the shots on the Hill, and every politician knows that if they challenge that lobby in any significant way, it could be a career-ending move.  Very few are ever willing to do so, and so the US keeps doing whatever Israel wants us to do, including giving away billions of dollars of taxpayer money to poor little old Israel.  (It's not like we need it at home or anything.)  Anyway, at a time when a significant undertone of the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East is anger at the Zionist domination of the region, it is telling that Obama chose to veto the resolution and essentially add insult to injury at a time when the whole region is already as volatile as it's ever been.  More fuel, expect bigger fire.

The most precious story I read over the weekend -- a sublime example of American hypocrisy in this world of illusion and untruth -- was about a speech Hillary Clinton gave at George Washington University last week.  While she was lecturing about freedom and condemning governments that arrest protestors and don't allow free expression, ex-Army officer and CIA veteran Ray McGovern stood and turned his back to her and didn't say a word.  While Hillary kept right on talking -- didn't blink an eye, didn't skip a beat -- McGovern was removed from the audience by police and subsequently beaten up and left in jail.  Man, you just gotta love the irony!  I guess it's "do as I say, not as I do" for the Amerikan regime.  But of course, it's really been that way for awhile.  Only now it is becoming more and more obvious to more and more people. 

So finally,  finally!, Americans have started their very own domestic uprising, joining the global protest of the people vs. the power.  How exciting -- I mean, you GO cheeseheads!!  Geez, you win the Super Bowl and the reward is you get to start the fire burning for the rest of the US of A, getting large numbers of people off their asses and away from their TV sets to start some serious pushback against the bankster powers that are trying to squeeze more and more of your lifeblood onto their greedy little vampire tongues.  Tell me again why human beings should be expected to make sacrifices while governments funnel their money into bankster coffers?  Here again, it looks like the game may be over, the people have figured it out, the fraud is too apparent, the banksters have been exposed for the criminals they are, and the question is now out there in the public discourse (thanks Matt Taibbi, among others), "Why isn't Wall Street in jail?"  The dam has burst, the tide has turned, the jig is up, the cat is out of the bag -- pick your metaphor, it's looking like Americans are reaching their tipping point too, and are no longer willing to keep getting screwed by the ruling class.  One blogger has suggested that World War III has arrived, a class war of the people vs. the "corpocracy."  It will be interesting now to see how governments in the US respond if/as the numbers swell, the anger mounts, and the demands increase.  Gov. Walker is already acting pretty much like the tyrants in other parts of the world in his refusal to back down or respond to the voice of the people, and his threats to call out the National Guard if the protest goes too far.  The president of a police union in Wisconsin has said the police would "absolutely" use force against their fellow Americans if given the order to do so.  Yeah, I wonder how well that would go over?  Think that'll mellow 'em out?  How would that be any different than Mubarak, or Gaddafi, or any of those other guys?  I for one don't think the American public would put up with it, and if Gov. Walker orders his troops to start shooting people, he may soon be "running for his life" just like the rest of 'em.

There's really to way to know how all this is going to play out, and maybe I'm wrong about the power of the people and the strength of the dark cabal.  Maybe this global uprising is just a brush fire that will soon be extinguished, maybe the controllers will find some clever way to appease and pacify the people enough to be able to maintain control.  But I think not.  I still think we're approaching end game, the collapse of the old system to make way for something new and different.  It really feels like, while I was sleeping so much over the weekend, the people of the world actually woke up. Things are different now than they were last week, and I'm betting that the momentum that is palpable will just continue to build.  The powers-that-be should be running scared, as it looks now like their time is finally running out!

Fireworks

OK, file this one under "things that wouldn't happen in the States..."

Yesterday was the Festival of Lanterns here, a holiday which is apparently tied somehow with the Chinese New Year in that I guess it is celebrated at the first full moon of the first month of the lunar calendar year.  We saw the big rabbit "lanterns" up in Taichung last weekend that were on display in preparation for the upcoming festival, and here in Tainan part of the celebration includes a big fireworks show.  Now fireworks, as I remember learning as a kid, originated in China (as far back as one or even two thousand years ago), and I guess they have been using them ever since in rituals or celebrations to ward off evil spirits.  Marco Polo is credited with bringing the basic ingredient -- "gunpowder" -- back to Europe with him after his travels to the Far East, and sure enough the Europeans figured out a way to use the stuff to kill people instead!

Yungnane asked me if I wanted to go to the Festival of Lanterns fireworks celebration at another local Matsu temple, a different one than the one we visited earlier in the week.  I learned that Matsu is the name of a woman who, as legend has it, miraculously saved some fishermen once upon a time, or maybe even on multiple occasions, such that she is now sort of a deity, or maybe a saint -- his wife suggested she was sort of equivalent to Mary in the Christian/Catholic religion.  Temples are erected in her honor, usually near the coast since she is still revered as the protector of fishermen. 

They picked me up at 5:30 and we first stopped for dinner at a Cantonese restaurant.  Canton refers to the part of China were Hong Kong is located, and folks from there speak Cantonese rather than (or in addition to) Mandarin, which in the 20th century was established as the primary oral form of the language used throughout the country as well as places influenced by the Chinese diaspora.  I learned awhile back that, whereas the same characters are used throughout the various Chinese provinces for writing, the pronunciation of the characters varies.  Thus those who speak only Cantonese cannot understand those who speak only Mandarin, although they could both be able to read each others' writing.  In Taiwan, many people also speak Taiwanese, which is a dialect derived from, I think it is, the Fujian province in southeastern China.  Taiwanese sounds different enough from Mandarin that, if I pay attention, I can usually tell which of the two is being spoken. 

As with the languages, the different provinces of China have different styles of food, and while Chinese restaurants in the US typically mix a few of these together on their menus, I think it is more common here for restaurants to be more differentiated, although Yungnane seemed to indicate that the Taiwanese have created their own style too -- probably a "mash-up" of lots of mainland Chinese styles -- and that may be what dominates the restaurant scene here.  In this case the dinner consisted mostly of a variety of small pieces of meat, not all entirely identifiable, but including some tasty chicken cooked with the dried hot red chilis (my favorite, given my penchant for spicy food), likely some pork, maybe some beef, and a dish of little oysters cooked with thin slices of cucumber marinated in vinegar, which we dipped in a sweet (rather than the clear-your-sinuses kind) wasabe sauce.  A veggie dish, a sort of egg-drop soup, and a nutty-tasting reddish tea complemented the rest of the meal, which ended with the obligatory orange slices and a nice little roll with a lightly-sweet "icing" you could put on it. 

A few observations on eating meat here.  Over the years I've gravitated towards a much less meat-based diet, so while I don't mind eating it here, I'm not really sure it's the best thing for me, in a more metaphysical sense than simply physical.  But so be it, much of it tastes pretty good!  There is, however, for me anyway, the mental barrier that comes with eating meat that comes in very different forms than I'm used to, especially when it's really fatty or it comes chopped in small slices that include bone, ligaments, muscle, etc. and the normal thing to do is to eat everything around the bone.  In Chinese culture, to their credit, there's not much that's edible that goes to waste.  I feel a little silly at how much of all that I leave behind on my plate.  But given that, the one utensil I miss most here is a knife, not a fork.  I can eat just fine with chopsticks, and the absence of knives and forks is the obvious reason why the tendency is to serve meat in small chopped-up pieces.  Fine when all you gotta do is hold a piece between the chopsticks and eat everything other than any bone that's there.  But when you want to separate parts that your prefer not to eat, chopsticks aren't as useful. 

After dinner we stopped to pick up son number two, who's English nickname is Eric, from "cram school."  Both boys -- the older is Jack -- are taking English classes in the early evening, and I guess it is common in Taiwan now for students in such classes to take on English nicknames.  These two tried to find one that approximates their Chinese name.  That process can work in reverse too.  They take my English name and convert it into Chinese characters that sound a little like my name.  Jose did that a few years ago and had a coffee mug made for me at a local pottery place with the three characters inscribed.  I'll be curious to see if Jose's translation matches the one the folks at NCKU have used to make me "official" here.  Anyway, Jack was sick and so was staying home with grandparents, but Eric wanted to come along to watch the fireworks.

Earlier in the day Yungnane had indicated that there was some kind of "risk" associated with this event, so that I should wear more casual clothes -- that was my interpretation anyway.  When they picked me up they started to say things like there could be some danger there from the fireworks so we should wear helmets that night.  I'm thinking, hmmm, that sounds a little weird, what could that mean?  Driving towards the temple, away from the city, the traffic was pretty heavy and they said that it was from all the folks heading to the display.  We got off the main road and headed down some smaller neighborhood streets that were filled with people walking in the direction we were heading.  Suddenly the temple came into sight and it was huge -- much, much bigger than the one we went to on Tuesday.  We parked in a nearby field, and sure enough, the three of them grabbed raincoats and bicycle helmets -- they offered me a helmet that I declined.  Really, how dangerous can this be, I'm thinking.  We then joined the throngs heading toward the temple.

The big plaza in front of the temple was pretty full already, but we made up our way past a bank of loudspeakers through which some guy was yelling something very loudly, to a point where there wasn't much open space in front of us and we had a clear view of the stage.

We got there at about 7:50 and Yungnane then told me the show was supposed to start at 8:00.  Sure enough, right on time, fireworks started shooting off the temple roof into the air, first sort of a short pyrotechnic prelude followed by what they then announced would be a seven-minute display.  My attempts at photos of those didn't turn out so well, but I guess everyone knows what fireworks look like anyway.  When that display was done, we all turned around to watch the big bamboo structure back behind us light up. 

Then the man at the microphone talked a little more, and all of a sudden Yungnane told me we needed to move now, we needed to go further back to a safer place!  As we head back, we see people getting out their gear, lots of big sheets of plastic that they're holding up in front of them, Yungnane points out some fireman as we walk by them, and now I am starting to wonder what's going on -- what could this possibly be?!  Before too long, back in the direction from which we had just come, above the crowd we could see a large box-like structure getting moved into place, pretty much smack dab in the middle of this plaza area, surrounded by people, at least some of whom seemed pretty well-prepared for whatever was going to happen next.  By now, I was guessing there must be at least ten thousand people in the vicinity, and Yungnane thought probably even more.  You could feel the excitement building, there was nervous laughter in the crowd, people were huddling together.  As Chinese pop music began blaring through the loudspeakers, the firemen stepped up to the box to begin the show, lighting the fuses through some slots in the side.

Fireworks started bursting out of the top of the box in rapid-fire fashion, shooting toward the sky, the sharp pop of firecrackers exploding at the apex.  In the next moment, more fireworks started flying out the sides of the boxes just over the crowds' heads at a slight angle, making a sound like a thousand screaming banshees as they whistled by overhead!  While most of them flared out before they could land in the crowd, that certainly wasn't true of all of them.  Yungnane then explained that in a previous year someone had been blinded by getting hit in the eye.  They were shooting out in all directions, and you never knew when one might head towards you, so you definitely wanted to keep a lookout in case one did.  Here are a couple of pictures, to give a sense of what this was like:

For what must have been three or four minutes the box produced a steady stream of screamers coming at us and firecrackers popping above us, with the backbeat of the music thumping away in the background.  It finally slowed to a stop, things quieted down to just normal crowd noise, and we all relaxed a bit.  OK, I'm thinking now, that was a little crazy -- I didn't really feel in danger, but at least it all made sense as to the warnings and preparation.

Four or five more boxes came and went, all doing essentially the same thing.  It became clear that the people with the plastic sheets were standing right up close to the boxes, and given the rather sporadic angle and directionality of the screamers coming out the sides of the boxes, there was some chance that one would aim right at them, and without the plastic it could easily do damage.  One box sent more of them our way than the other ones had, and in fact one of the screamers hadn't flared out before landing, still in flames, in the hood of some guy's hoodie just a few feet away from me.  I finally figured out that the people up close didn't bring their protective gear just to keep them from having any accidental landings, but these were the thrill-seekers who were standing up close for the excitement of having the screamers coming right at them!

The fact that this whole event could happen seems pretty remarkable to me, with people allowed to put themselves at risk this way, with public and private organizations providing the money needed to make it happen, with government employees on hand to literally start the fire, with someone getting blinded and not filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit, with the decision to keep holding the celebration even though someone was injured in the past -- if nothing else it gives one pause as to what we mean by "freedom" in the US.  This celebration reflected a kind or level of freedom that we have lost in America, given our heavily-regulated and even more heavily-litigated society.  Whether that's good or bad depends on one's ideology, of course, but I appreciate having had the opportunity to watch this fireworks display and experience a bit of the thrill of the danger it presented!

Eating fish

Yungnane is working on two projects that he wants me to be involved in while I am here.  One of them is not really related to what I am interested in or have much expertise about, namely, changing NCKU's governance structure by creating a new Board of Governance that will provide oversight of the University's activities, thereby removing it from direct oversight by the country's Ministry of Education, which currently is officially "in charge" of all the National universities in Taiwan (and probably all public universities, which may be an even larger set).  The basic idea is to give the University greater autonomy from the government, which would give it greater flexibility to make decisions and take actions that it believes will enhance its effectiveness and competitiveness.  It would give the Board, rather than the MoE, responsibility for holding University officials accountable, while freeing up the University from some of the constraints associated with being essentially a government organization.  Resistance on the part of some of the faculty stems from the fact that they are afraid of losing some of the benefits associated with being a public servant, which in many if not most countries around the world is seen by people as one of the better job/career options, given typical job security and pension benefits associated with working for the government.  Of course, all that is changing, around the world, now that the banksters have successfully bankrupted most governments, forcing them to reduce their scale of activities and reneg on their pension commitments since all their investments turned out to be the "toxic" securities sold to them by the banksters (among many other problems, of course).  Yungnane is hoping to draw on my expertise in organizational change to help him figure out how to get this plan implemented.  I'm happy to give advice, but I don't anticipate this being anything I'll write about.

The other project is more interesting to me from a research perspective.  Back when the Japanese were in control of the island, starting in the late 19th century and up until WWII, they were operating a plant making poison gas that many people believe were used against Chinese citizens.  After the Chinese regained control, they continued to use the plant site for chemical production of various kinds, the net result being that lots of mercury and dioxin was making its way into the surrounding water and then soil.  Of course, this also means it makes its way into the fish that the people eat, and maybe the air they breathe and some plants that they eat -- in short, their environment became toxic.  Awhile back, information regarding the extent to which the toxins had found their way into the local population began to surface, and once it became clear that there was likely a correlation between the presence of the toxins and higher cancer rates in the nearby communities, a decision was made to set aside 1.3 billion NTD (about $40 million) to compensate people for the damage.  There is also, I believe, another 1.4 billion NTD set aside for some remediation efforts in the area, but not much has happened on that front yet.  It's not entirely clear that anything can be done.

Yungnane has been studying this situation for awhile, and has written a few papers on the case that I've read, plus I've been having some conversations with him to learn more about what has been and is happening in this situation with regards to the citizens being involved in the process of figuring out how to allocate the compensation money or how to deal with the task of remediation.  The bottom line is that the citizens haven't been too involved, even though Yungnane has been working some to try to get them more engaged.  My professional career has been motivated from the beginning by an interest in creating organizations that are more amenable to a broader range of people participating in organizational decision-making, so a relevant question here is why people haven't gotten more involved even when the opportunity to do so was there.  A related question is whether or not the  decisions being made regarding how to allocate the compensation and remediation money are less effective than they might be if the community members were more actively engaged in the process of figuring out what to do.  I will probably end up working with Yungnane to write a paper addressing some of those issues, so now I/we have to figure out more specifically what the focus of that paper might be.

Tuesday afternoon Yungnane took me out to meet Mr. Che-Gin Lin, one of the community leaders who is Chair of the management council at the Luermen Matsu temple located there and is familiar with all that has been going on as this process has unfolded.  Here's a photo of Yungnane (on the left) and Mr. Lin, and one of me in front of the temple.

We chatted for awhile, and Yungnane translated some questions I had, as well as his responses.  It was clear he was frustrated -- Yungnane kept starting his translation of the responses with, "He criticizes..." such and such, going on to explain something the man wasn't happy about. One aspect of the story that we find interesting, and that may be the focus of our paper, is how the stigma associated with the pollution -- both for the community as a whole (lowering property values) and for particular individuals with high dioxin counts -- affects their responses to the situation and their attitudes about being engaged in the process. 

We left the temple and drove around the area a bit, which is fairly near to the Taijiang National Park that I visited with Jose, Yu Li, and Wesley a couple weeks ago.  We drove along the Luermen river and saw all the illegal oyster-farming going on there, and finally came to a spot where I was able to get my first view of the ocean, with the first few hundred yards also filled with the oyster-raising contraptions some locals have built and maintain in an effort to eek out a living.  In contrast to the rich California coast, it was a little weird to see the coastline here inhabited by folks living in pretty meager conditions and struggling to stay alive. 

We headed back into town and joined Yungnane's wife and two boys for dinner at "barbecue" restaurant, which means you have little grills at your table and cook your own meat.  This place was a one-price all-you-can-eat restaurant, and I sat down with a big plate in front of me filled with a few raw, whole fish, shrimp, and squid, the two boys already cooking away on the two grills and a big pot of soup boiling away over a little burner in the middle of the table.  Yungnane asked me if I wanted some beef, and I said yes, so soon there was another plate there with some thin and thicker slices of meat ready to cook.  I had also told Yungnane in the car that, while I was OK eating meat, I preferred having vegetables with my meal as well, so soon there was a little dish covered in tin foil with some leafy vegetables inside cooking away, as well as another big plate filled with an assortment of other vegetables to grill.  Along with some of all of the above, I also ended up eating a little goat meat and even some dove, declining on the oysters (didn't feel up to that after just seeing the oysters being grown in what I presume is a fairly polluted river), the chicken hearts, and a couple other things that I'm not sure what they were and didn't look all that appetizing.  I'm not a super big eater, but felt like I ate quite a bit, yet I was done long before the four of them were.  I was pretty impressed by the volume of food cooked and eaten by the two boys (6th grade and 4th grade) and by Yungnane's wife.  There were a number of times I figured we were done and out came another plate of stuff to cook.  His wife left to take the oldest son to "cram school" for his English class, but she came right back and started in again, and even when Yungnane and I left for him to take me home she and the younger son were still grilling up some more meat.  Yungnane paid for the meal so I don't know how much it cost, but whatever it was I'm pretty sure they all got their money's worth!

Trip to Taichung

I talked to Jose on Friday evening and we agreed that I would come up to Taichung for the day on Sunday.  I had the option of taking the high-speed train (HSR), or the slower train, or a bus.  By the time you take a shuttle out to the Tainan HSR station and then another shuttle into Taichung from the HSR station there, you don't save a lot of time versus the other options, so I decided to go by bus this time, since Jose thought it was faster than the slower train, and the price is right (150 NTD, or about $5).

So on Saturday I walked over to the bus station to make sure I knew where it was rather than trying to find it Sunday AM, and it was a good thing I did since Google maps indicated it was located in a different place than it really was, and so I walked around for a bit before I found my way there.  I took a few pictures in the vicinity which are posted below, to show a little more of Tainan.  I included the picture of the scooter riders since scooters are so ubiquitous here, and to show the masks that probably half the riders use to protect themselves from the smog.  I don't find air quality all that bad here, but I guess plenty of people are worried enough about it that they don't just wear the masks when they're on the scooters, but I've seen people wearing them inside Starbucks and other indoor places too -- even some sales clerks in the deparment store apparently keep their masks on all day long.  Seems a little extreme, but maybe they'll live longer or healthier than the rest of us!

Sunday morning I walked back over there to get on a 9:16 bus to Taichung, using the bus company that Jose recommended since he thought it had nicer buses than the other options.  There were three seats to a row, with the aisle splitting them with two on one side and one on the other.  Jose had told me that each seat came with its own little TV with lots of channels for both domestic and foreign movies and shows, and while he was right about having my own TV, he was wrong about the numerous channels, and with only 3 or 4 to choose from, and only one in English, I decided just to read my book instead.  Taiwan's countryside isn't all that scenic down in the lowlands, although the stand-alone houses that get built out in the middle of all the wet fields can be interesting in their own way.  The highway the bus takes between cities is far enough inland that I don't really understand where all that water comes from.  I guess it's irrigation, and I suppose if they're growing rice they need the fields to be pretty inundated, but it still amazes me how much of the land is covered by at least a few inches of water.

Jose met me at the Chaoma bus station in downtown Taichung, and we first drove around the downtown area a bit where I took some pictures of some of the buildings we passed by.  The Festival of Lanterns is coming up, and there was an exhibition going on in a park downtown, with some kind of show scheduled for that night that we planned to come back for.  Since the recent new year just marked the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit, there were a lot of big rabbit "lanterns" on display.  Jose also pointed out the big new city government building, and I joked that it was definitely the "black box" of government!

We then drove up to Tunghai University where Jose is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy and Management.  We stopped first at his office, where the electricity was out in the building and a loudspeaker kept announcing something to that effect.  Apparently there had been a break-in not too long ago where some had stolen computers out of a number of faculty offices.  They caught pictures of the perpetrator on the security cameras, but they didn't catch the perpetrator, which makes you wonder what good the cameras are!  We then walked up a hill through some trees and out onto a little street with lots of shops and food places where the students can get good cheap food.  We stopped in at a ramen place for lunch, and then did a little more sightseeing around campus, including a stop at the Luce Memorial Chapel, named after Rev. Henry W. Luce who was an American missionary in China in the late 19th century.  We also got some ice cream made from the milk from some dairy cows that the university owns -- they used to provide free fresh milk for the Tunghai faculty back in the day, but now they are used to make the ice cream which generates a little revenue on the side!

Next we headed out to the primary activity planned for the day, a trip to The Sun Hot Spring and Resort.  Jose apparently had just recently learned about this place up in the hills outside the city and had gone there once with Yu Li.  Taiwan has a number of hot springs on the island, and in my various trips here I've had the chance to visit two or three of them.  Sometimes the springs are close to the surface and easily feed the pools used to soak in, but Jose said here they had to drill down a ways to tap the hot springs.  In any case, the facility was very nice.  A 500 NTD entrance fee provided access to the public areas, which included an outdoor coed area that required bathing suits, as well as gender-separated indoor areas where au naturel was de rigueur.  We opted for the latter, and in addition to both a dry sauna and a steam sauna, there were five pools of with different water temperatures -- warm, warmer, and hot, as well as cool and cold (the water temperatures were listed on LED readouts, down to the tenth of the degree C, but we don't think they were necessarily accurate).  We spent a couple hours there, moving between the pools with occasional stints in the sauna (it wasn't appropriate to take pictures, of course).  Jose said that the rooms at the resort also have big baths in them that you can use instead of (or in addition to) the public areas, and I told him that I want to go back sometime when the weather is a little nicer to use the outdoor pools as well.

Once we were water-logged, we got dressed and went upstairs to play a few games of pool before heading out to find some dinner.  It had turned rainy while we were inside, so we drove down the road a bit before stopping for what Jose said would be a small bite before heading back into town, but we ended up ordering what turned out to be fairly big meals.  We got a starter of fried tofu with a sauce to dip it in, and then for my main dish I had sort of a chicken stew, cooked with with garlic, onions, and chilis, along with side dishes of cold scrambled eggs mixed with corn, some green vegetable, some bite-sized chunks of what Jose explained was chopped up fish meat mixed with some kind of powder, a little bowl of soup with a chunks of potato or some other tuber, carrot, and cilantro, and of course some rice.

We left the restaurant around 9:30, and just down the road we saw another exhibit of large rabbit lanterns, lit up in the rainy night, so I snapped a couple pictures before we headed back into downtown Taichung to go back to the exhibit we had seen earlier in the day.  Given that it was now 10 PM, and it was a cold, rainy night, there weren't too many people there, and even though Jose wanted to park the car and walk around a bit, I wasn't all that keen on getting wet, plus I still had a two-hour bus ride to take before getting home.  So we circled around the area for a few more photos before heading back to the bus station where I bought a ticket and immediately boarded the 10:32 bus back to Tainan.  Jose had explained that rain was pretty common in Taichung and the northern part of the island during winter, but that "it never rained" in Tainan and the southern part.  Well, the rain lasted the whole way home, and since it was nice when I had left in the morning it didn't even occur to me to bring an umbrella, so I quickly walked back to my room in the rain and got in by 1 AM.  Still time for a good night sleep prior to meeting with Yungnane at 10:30 the next morning.

Little things

Yesterday was kind of frustrating.  I wasn't in a good mood when I got up.  I was unhappy about the struggles I was having with myself getting into any of the nearby restaurants to order a meal -- the previous two nights had been a little discouraging on that front.  And I was feeling a little weird about the stuff I had written in this space the day before.  I was more direct and explicit about some things than I typically am, and I always feel a little uneasy after I "self-disclose" beyond my normal boundaries.  And especially with a blog, I'm putting stuff in writing, that could have an indefinite lifespan on the web, and I have no idea who might end up reading it nor do I get much feedback as to how anyone reacts.  It's a little unsettling for me, but I've decided that this is a space where I'm going to communicate some things that are important to me, independent of who's listening, and if makes me vulnerable somehow, so be it. 

So I was already feeling some angst, and then as I'm taking a shower yesterday morning, I hear the bar in the closet with all my shirts hanging from it come crashing down again.  This time, rather than the screws coming loose from the wood, a problem I could fix again, a piece of the metal broke off so that I need to actually replace the fixture.  I haven't tried to deal with that yet, so in the meantime the hangers are hanging from a shelf in the closet such that I can't fully close the closet doors, and I keep bumping into the open door whenever I'm going in or out of the room. 

Then, as I was reading the news online, my computer sort of froze up.  Not entirely, but all of a sudden, out of the blue, although maybe due to one particular webpage I was trying to open (the "We are change" link to the right), it just slowed way down to the point that it took 20 or 30 seconds for a command to take effect.  I ended up just shutting everything down and restarting, and the problem disappeared, but two annoying little events like that, on top of my grouchiness, wasn't getting the day off to a good start. To add to my frustration, earlier in the week I developed this little splotch of itchy rash on my right forearm, and it had been bothering me as I was waking up in the morning.  I had something similar between the fingers of my left hand a few times last year, and got some expensive cream from a dermatologist to use on that, so I've been using the cream for this too when it really starts to itch, and that seems to help for awhile.  The rash seems to be waning now, which is consistent with the previous episodes when it lasted for about a week.  The doctor said the stuff on my left hand wasn't a fungus or anything, and presumed it was just some kind of stress reaction.  Whatever it is, I don't like it.

So with an itchy rash, a broken closet bar, and my computer acting up to add to my early-morning consternation, it made me wonder whether this was some sort of "revenge" for "calling out" the bad guys in the previous day's blog entry.  I suppose that's an idea that might sound silly to most people, but I take seriously the possibility that the forces of darkness have it in their power to hassle people if/when they want to, so as to create more negative energy that has the effect of keeping us individually and collectively in a lower vibration and thereby hindering the raising of our vibration to the higher level we need to achieve for the next phase of our evolution.  Surely all these little things could just be random events, their timing together sheer coincidence, but it did occur to me that maybe I was under some kind of little energetic attack by the dark forces because I had chosen the day before to try to shine a little light on them.  Dark doesn't like the light, and I'm aware of other lightworkers out there -- more energetically sensitive than I am -- who are quite convinced that dark forces occasionally mess with them in an effort to impede their efforts to bring light to the planet.

I didn't dwell on this thought too much, but instead got ready to go into the office as Terence, the director of the research center, was taking all the staff to lunch and invited me along.  In addition to the administrative staff, we were joined by an NCKU professor who is involved in one of the Center's research projects (and who I think I met when I gave a talk here a number of years ago) as well as by a Dutch professor who is also doing some research at the Center and apparently has a longer tenure here than I do.  He just started his NCKU position this week, but I think he said he has been in Tainan, or at least Taiwan, for nine years now, and he and his wife are renting a house 30 minutes away that he said he will invite us all out to sometime for a barbecue.  

We had lunch at the same nice (and expensive, relative to all the other nearby options I've found) restaurant that Terence took me to my first day here, and I had a nice meal of salad and warm roll, a sea bass entre with a sauce that included mushrooms, peas, and an oyster in a half-shell, a little red wine to wash all that down with, and then dessert and coffee.  After lunch one of the staff members took me to the post office to get my ATM card for my bank account, then to the Chinese Language Institute for me to sign up for Mandarin classes, and finally to show me where the restaurant on campus is.  After spending a little more time in the office, I headed back to my room.

One of the primary routines in my life, that I tend to maintain to the extent that I can, is that I like to start my day with a cup of coffee and then have another cup in the late afternoon, to give me a little energy to continue to be productive throughout the evening.  On days that I don't have that second cup, I start dragging by 9 PM or so, making it hard to get any work done or even to do things like respond to emails.  With that cup, though, I tend to be good til 11 or 12 if I want to, and in normal life I often get more work done after 5 PM than before.  Awhile back I bought a little French press and some coffee so that I could make coffee in my room rather than having to go out to Starbucks or elsewhere two times a day to get a cup.

So I came back from the office ready to make myself a cup of coffee only to find that, between the morning and the night, a bunch of little ants had found their way into my room, onto my desk, in and around some of the food items I had stored on the shelves, and into the trashbag where I had been throwing garbage since I got here.  Not that I had stayed in a grumpy mood all day, but the funk hadn't entirely left me, so coming back to the room to find the ants immediately put me back into a high frustration state.  I spent the next hour trying to remove as many of them as possible, along with any items that presumably were attracting them there, the whole time just being annoyed at the whole situation, including having to face the fact that maybe it wasn't going to be viable for me to keep food in my room, which would/will end up being a non-trivial hassle.

So finally I got the place cleaned up enough that I moved on to the task of making my coffee.  Now, a little more background here is in order.  Early on it became clear that I didn't really want to have to take a trip to Starbucks (or even other alternatives nearby) two times a day for coffee.  Not just the pricey coffee there, not just having to walk down and up four flights of stairs every time I leave the building, not the extra time it would take every day to make those two short trips, but because it just doesn't seem too much to ask to be able to make my own cup of coffee and drink it here in the solitude of my room!

So, after Yungnane had taken me to the RT Mart the first time to look for a mattress pad, I ended up walking back there a couple days later to get a few other items including the little French press I mentioned above.  (When Yungnane learned I had walked there, he said "Wow-- you are so strong!"  It's really not all that far, but I guess walking a few miles seems pretty unusual to him!)  With new French press in hand and a bag of ground coffee, I started making coffee in my room, either in the morning so as to skip the trip to Starbucks then, or later on in the day to avoid having to go out again.

Now, for hot water, I had two options.  Each floor in my building has a water dispenser, which I presume is also a filter that improves the quality of the water above regular tap water.  Each dispenser has three temperatures you can choose from -- cold, room temperature, or hot.  So I started using the hot water to make coffee, only to learn that the hot water in the dispenser on my floor wasn't really as hot as it indicated (96 degrees C, which should be almost boiling).  After letting the coffee steep in the French press for a few minutes, by the time I started drinking it it was already pretty lukewarm.  Not really satisfactory, or satisfying for that matter.  So I started going down to the kitchen to microwave the water to boiling temperature to make coffee with, but that meant going up and down four flights of stairs to make the coffee, which ran counter to one of the purposes of making my own.  Finally, I tried the hot water from a dispenser on the floor right below mine, where the fridge is that I've been using, and while not boiling hot either, it was better than the dispenser on my floor, so that was the option I'd been living with for awhile.

I decided that to solve the problem once and for all, I would go out and buy a little plug-in electric kettle that would heat water to boiling right there in my room!  I could take water from the dispenser on my floor, boil it, make my coffee, and not have to go up and down any stairs!  So I got Yungnane to take me back to the RT Mart one day to buy the kettle and a few other items, and was psyched that finally I would be able to make myself a cup of coffee to my liking.  I took the kettle out of the box, noticed that the cord had a 3-prong (grounding) plug, and looked around for an outlet to plug it into, only to realize that all the outlets in my room were for 2-prong plugs!  With one exception -- high up on the wall, above the bed, there is a 3-prong outlet made for the air conditioner to plug into.  I could plug the kettle into that, but then I would have to stand there and hold the kettle while the water heated up since the cord wasn't long enough for me to set it down anywhere while it was plugged in.  Not ideal.  In fact, not even worth considering.  Foregoing my perfect cup of homemade coffee longer still, I decided I needed to find either an extension cord or an adapter for the outlet.

So Wednesday I went out looking for a hardware store, or someplace that might sell one of those two items.  I headed out in a new direction, walked up and down a few streets, found a place where there's a little street market with people selling fruits and vegetables, which was good to know about, but after walking around for a couple miles I didn't find any store selling electrical stuff, so I came home and decided I'd have to ask the Center staff if they could help me find what I was looking for.  When I went into the office yesterday, for lunch and to get the other things done, I told them what I needed, and it turns out they had a whole set of adapters right there in their office.  So they let me have one and I took it home with me so that now, finally, I had everything I needed to make my coffee!

Dealing with the little ants delayed that a bit, but with that immediate problem addressed, I took the French press to the laundry room to clean it out before making a fresh cup.  I unscrewed the filter pieces from the little pole to wash the grounds out from between the parts, but in doing so the little screw holding the whole mechanism together fell into the sink and straight down the drain!  Argh!!!  I couldn't believe it!  I screamed, yelled, loudly, repeatedly!  Fortunately there is hardly anyone in my building, so no worried Taiwanese folks came running to see what had happened.  With open windows, I'm sure people outside could here my anguish, and I had the fleeting thought that it was good they couldn't understand what I was saying, but I'm sure most of those words are pretty universal by now!

So, I was foiled again.  The nice hot homemade cup of coffee would have to wait some more.  It was now about 7PM, I still wanted some coffee, so I walked over to the 7-11, which is right next to the Starbucks and sells a pretty good latte for only 50 NTD, less than two US dollars and a buck less than a grande coffee at Starbucks.  I took it home with me and sat down in front of my computer, and drank my latte while doing some emails online and killing more little ants that I swear spontaneously appear out of nowhere!

I've gotten better over the years at learning to just let go of my frustrations, to remember that it's all pretty trivial, doesn't really matter, things are what they are, no sense having a lot of negative emotion about any of it.  So as I drank my latte, and started letting go and just accepting what is, I opened the email I had received a little earlier from Dominique, the staff member at the Center who had picked me up at the train station when I arrived in Tainan and who had taken me to see the campus restaurant that afternoon.  She had taken one of the menus from the restaurant and translated all the items into English!  OMG, what a godsend, I mean, this is a real game changer!!  Not only will it allow me to order from the reasonably extensive menu at that restaurant, but it gives me something I can take with me to other restaurants and just point at the item I would like to order!  I went back there today and got myself a nice big plate of chili fried rice.  I plan to work my way through much of the rest of the menu during the rest of my time here!

So what had been a rather frustrating day came to a much better end.  As I hit the sack sometime after midnight, all the little things that had generated so much annoyance earlier had all but receded from my consciousness, and one simple little act of kindness had put me in a good place and feeling optimistic about waking up to a new day!

Freedom vs. control

I keep thinking I'm in China.  But I'm not, not really.  But kind of.  Taiwan is sort of America, Chinese style.  That's not entirely true, of course, or at least too simplistic.  But if you take the basic elements and patterns of day-to-day life for most Americans, and put them in a context shaped by Chinese history, culture, language, and sensitivities, you'll get something close to what things are like here in Taiwan.

That duality -- the cultural ambidexterity, the ambivalent loyalty -- plays itself out in the politics on the island as well.  There are two main political parties: the KMT (the "blue" party), with its ties back to Chiang Kai-Shek, who set up the Republic of China on the island after he (and two million refugees) left the mainland during the Communist revolution (taking a huge portion of China's artistic treasures with him, that are on display at the wonderful National Palace Museum up in Taipei -- I was told that people from the mainland break into tears when they see the collection); and the DPP (the "green" party), which was formed in the 1980s when the KMT government initiated democratic reforms, and gained power when the DPP candidate was elected president in 2000.  The KMT regained control with the election in 2008 of the current administration of President Ma Ying-Jeou as well as a majority in the legislature.

At least one of the differences between the two parties, maybe the most important difference, is their stance towards their relationship with China.  While the DPP wants independence from China, the KMT is more Beijing-friendly.  And in the context of today's geopolitical circumstances, the massive shift in power taking place on the global stage, and the great uncertainty as to how it is all going to play out as the economy collapses, the question of whether to align primarily with the US or with China may be the most critical question Taiwan (or any country, for that matter) faces.

I suspect most Americans are not very aware of all the smart things China has been doing in recent years to position itself well for the future.  The Chinese government has gone around the world establishing trade relationships with numerous countries, in Africa and South America for example, to insure that it will have supplies of key resources down the road.  This is on top of the role it already plays as a key player in the southeast Asian economy, and even more importantly, its strategic "mutual-security" alliance with Russia and many Central Asian countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.  Most recently, recognizing that -- as the largest holder of US debt -- they are seriously at-risk from any significant devaluation of the dollar (which they are smart enough to realize is very likely given the Fed's strategy of pumping billions/trillions of fiat dollars into the economy), China has started using some of its dollar reserves to buy real commodities, stuff you need to be able to eat, or to make things.  And just the other day I read that there has been a big increase in the amount of gold being bought by the Chinese people.  By building networks, developing mutually-beneficial relationships with other countries, converting relatively useless paper assets into things they need to survive, China has very wisely taken steps that will benefit them in coming years.

America has taken the opposite approach.  We have outsourced most of our manufacturing jobs, we have failed to invest in our infrastructure, we have let our education system deteriorate to the point that our kids lag well behind those of other developed countries, and we have pissed lots of other countries off with our arrogant, antagonistic approach to our relationships with them.  Most of the "wealth" America has been producing in recent years has come in the form of these various paper assets, the infamous "derivatives," that are now proving to be essentially worthless, and worse yet, generated through systemic fraud and corruption.  The "solution" to the problem is to produce huge volumes of more (soon-to-be) worthless paper assets, through a process that essentially transfers billions/trillions of dollars from the already-devastated American middle and working classes into the hands of the banksters that caused the problem.  The future for America is almost inevitably a wholesale collapse.

Given these different trajectories, I'm thinking it makes a lot more sense for Taiwan to stay friendly with China and certainly not to look at America as the ideal it wants to emulate.  I don't know what that says about the issue of independence, as it doesn't seem like the two decisions would have to go hand in hand, except that the one thing that pisses China off is talk about Taiwan being independent  -- they consider it part of China, and want to keep it that way.  Yungnane asked me the other day if I would be interested in giving a talk at the Civil Service Academy for a group of Taiwanese public servants, and since he says I could talk about whatever I want to, I'm considering giving a talk on this topic.  I'm sure my perspective would surprise them!

The collapse of the American empire becomes more and more evident as time and events unfold.  And here I don't just mean the collapse of the domestic economy, and all the internal "system failures" that will result as cities and states face the reality of their insolvency and literally become unable to "pay the bills."  (If government employees stop getting paychecks, do you think they're gonna keep working?)  No, I'm referring to the glaring fact that America's days as a modern version of an imperialistic power are all but over.  (Link to the "Pox Americana" story on the right for a good analysis and discussion of this point.  There's also a brief comment by Rep. Ron Paul relevant to the issue.)  It remains to be seen how much influence we actually exert on the on-going negotiations (in the midst of continued protests) regarding the transition of the Egyptian government, but this whole process has exposed -- again, with the whole world watching -- the fundamental hypocrisy of our foreign policy, the fact that we talk, talk, talk about freedom and democracy and self-determination, yet when the people stand up en masse demanding freedom and democracy and self-determination, we tell them to slow down, they can't expect too much too quickly, and instead we continue to support the dictator the people want removed and the broader regime he has been in charge of.  That hypocrisy, obvious to lots of folks in the Middle East for quite some time now, is undoubtedly an important factor underlying the frustration and anger giving rise to the foment and unrest now threatening to explode throughout that region. 

The question confronting the world now is, who gets to be in control, and the battle lines are drawn in two very different contexts.  On one hand, you have the high-profile populist uprisings that are challenging entrenched regimes in the Arab world, demanding more political access and an end to the corruption that leaves the masses in poverty.  An important part of this story, certainly in the case of Egypt and to some extent influencing the mindset of much of the Arab and Islamic world, is that the regime is widely recognized as a tool of the American-Israeli power structure that has used its military might to maintain control in the region.  The challenge to Mubarak is thus a challenge to the Zionist regime, and the American government's response is, ultimately, a choice to support Zionism rather than popular democracy.  Finally, maybe, hopefully, the American people are waking up to this fact, and starting to question why we have such unswerving support for Israel, why we have to sacrifice our most cherished ideals in order to maintain this support.  I guess Sen. Rand Paul, Ron's son who was elected last year, made a splash recently by suggesting we stop giving such large amounts of foreign aid away, including to Israel, and start spending that money on things we need domestically.  At least someone has now publicly challenged the dominant orthodoxy, so we'll see if that meme catches on among the American public. 

The other, less visible forum in which the battle against the controllers is being enjoined is the decision by governments facing bankruptcy as to whether or not they are going to bail out the bankster creditors at the expense of their citizens.  So far, nearly all countries facing this crisis have done everything they can to protect the banksters (a sure sign that the banksters are the ones really in control), and this decision and its consequences have led to popular uprisings in places like Greece and Spain.  The one exception so far has been Iceland, which decided that they were unwilling to sacrifice the people to pay the banksters, and thus defaulted in a way that other countries have not yet done.  But now Ireland is confronting this issue, people are out in the streets making noise, and a key political party is suggesting that Ireland's debt be "unilaterally restructured" such that bondholders get a "haircut," i.e., take a loss on some of their securities.  If you click on the "No haircuts" link you'll see how the banksters have reacted to this idea!

While these two battles seem very different -- impoverished citizens vs. state security in the first case, government officials vs. high-level bankers in the second -- these are actually two fronts of the same war, and my best guess is that, behind the scenes, the enemy is the same one.  I'm not really sure -- in fact I don't really think -- that the notions of the "Zionists" or the "banksters" really identifies who or what is behind the controlling force on the planet.  Surely there is some overlap between these two groups, as the far-flung Zionist network surely has access to and control over vast sums of monetary wealth.  But in the end, the banking system and the Zionist agenda may both simply be tools or mechanisms that a deeper, darker force is using in an effort to maintain control of the planet and its population.  This is the realm of "conspiracy theory," of course, and most people seem to have bought into the mainstream perspective that such theories are unfounded and such theorists are a little nuts.  But if one doesn't start off with that bias, and looks instead at the evidence, the idea turns out not to be so far-fetched.

It's easy to point to a number of well-known groups or gatherings of elites -- e.g., the Council of Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the World Economic Forum, the Bohemian Grove -- where power-brokers get together to discuss and, presumably, strategize about how best to pursue their interests.  Some think that the Vatican, and key Catholic organizations like Opus Dei and the Jesuits, have their fingers in most of the key decisions made on the planet.  A little murkier, you have secret societies like the Freemasons, or the Yale Skull and Bones fraternity, that elites have been affiliated with throughout recent history, raising suspicions that they provide a forum in which nefarious plans can be developed and a hidden network of players through which those plans can be implemented.  Even more mysterious are groups like the Illuminati, the Committee of 300, or other "bloodline" organizations that are rumored to be dominated by a small number of elite families (e.g, the infamous Rothschilds) who essentially control the world's political economy.  At the most extreme, you have the hypothesis, popularized by David Icke, that an off-world "reptilian" race, maybe affiliated with the "Annunaki," long ago infiltrated humanity and has been manipulating us for their purposes ever since.  Not incompatible with any of the above is the possibility that the halls of power around the world are filled with those who might be called Luciferians or Satanists, and who use occult power to pursue their agenda of complete control of humanity. 

I don't know which of the above are true and which are just crazy speculation, but I will say that, based on my investigation over the last fifteen years, all of those scenarios have some degree of credibility.  One of the reasons I am very excited about living through these times is that I really believe that, before too much longer, like in The Wizard of Oz, the curtain is going to be pulled back and we are going to see just who it is that has been pulling the strings, pushing the buttons, and orchestrating the illusion that has kept the people in fear and under control all these years.  The powers that be are struggling to keep the curtain intact, but the power of the people is building and eventually the truth will be revealed.  Stay tuned, it's gonna be interesting!

Cheers, cheeseheads!

Man, my whole body was thumping.

Roethlisberger's lining up behind center, the Steelers with a first down and two minutes left in the game, needing a long drive and touchdown to win the game.

I've been here before.  Two years ago I sat and watched SB XLIII in a beautiful timeshare near Cairns, Australia.  Arizona had just taken the lead on a long Warner-to-Fitzgerald pass, and Roethlisberger came out onto the field with not much time left and proceeded to quickly move the Steelers downfield for the winning score.  Broke my heart.

He's been here before, I've been here before, I'm nervous as hell, my heart is pounding so hard my whole body is thumping!

I was excited enough about the game that I didn't sleep all that well last night.  I had a nice big dinner with Yungnane and his wife and two boys, and VP Feng and his wife, at a seafood restaurant near Yungnane's house.  Usually when you have a group that size, everyone sits around a big round table, but this restaurant also had some square tables, albeit still topped with the round lazy susan that let's you spin everything around to whoever wants something.  Rather than bringing everything all at once, as is customary in American restaurants, it's more typical here at a dinner like this for the dishes to come out one at a time.  We started with some good fresh sashimi, then a couple of soups, some oysters and clams, a whole fish cooked in some nice flavors, then some pretty succulent pork, as well as some short ribs, and as we were winding down, a plate of snails.  They had a freezer with some cartons of self-serve ice cream, so I filled a little bowl with some chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip, chocolate, and mango ice cream to finish off an excellent dinner.  Then as I was finishing that up, they brought out a plate of what I was told was octopus mouth or octopus nose, not sure which, but they were little fried balls that tasted a lot like fried calamari.  They were quite good, and I would like to have eaten more, but the salty after the sweet dessert wasn't so enticing.  Then as is pretty typical, the dinner was completed with a plate of fresh fruit, in this case orange slices.

Before dinner Yungnane had taken me back to the big RT Mart store, where I bought a nice memory foam pad to put on my bed that will make sleeping much more comfortable.  (I also bought a plug-in kettle to heat water in my room, to go along with the little French press I bought last week, to make it easier to make my own coffee.)  So I was looking forward to getting a good night's sleep, but after coming back from dinner and reading news, doing a little work, playing some spider solitaire online, I still wasn't all that tired, but went to bed at 12:30 since the game started at 7:30 and I was hoping for nearly seven hours of sleep.  The past few days I've been setting my alarm for seven hours after going to bed, but each day I've been pretty tired still when the alarm went off, so I've shut it off and got another 45 minutes or so of sleep.  I set the alarm for 7:15, didn't fall asleep very quickly, didn't sleep all that soundly, and was reasonably awake already by the time the alarm went off, so I got up, made sure the coverage was streaming online, and made myself a cup of coffee to settle in.

I've got two old, wooden chairs in my room, both of them kind of creaky, they've both come apart a bit already, so I'm hoping they last for my three months here.  With the game on the small computer screen, my only real option is to sit on one of the chairs right in front of the computer, so that's where I plant myself for most of the next three-plus hours.  The game got off to a great start for the Packers, better than anyone could have hoped for, but the late touchdown at the end of the first half left one feeling that the game was still pretty tight even though the Pack had just had an 18-point lead.  When I learned at the beginning of the second half, though, that Woodson was out for the game, I started having a feeling of dread.

In liking the Packers chances during the two weeks since the championship games, my rather unformed intuition was that they had the winning edge because of their secondary, and their ability to come up with key interceptions.  When they got two in the first half, including Collins' pick-six to give the Pack a quick 14-0 start, I was definitely feeling confirmed in my suspicions.  So when Woodson went down, the leader of the defense, with Shields hurt also, all of a sudden that advantage seemed to disappear, and there was plenty of reason to be concerned as to whether Green Bay would be able to stop the Steeler offense.  It would be up to Rodgers to score enough points to keep the Packers in front.

So the drama was set, and I was tense the entire second half.  Pittsburgh moved within one score and had the ball back in their hands, driving for what could be the go-ahead touchdown.  But then the highest-profile Trojan in the NFL, Clay Matthews, after being told on the sideline by his coach that "now is the time," lowered his shoulder as he tackled running back Rashard Mendenhall and popped the ball loose, and the Packers capitalized on their third turnover to drive in for a score that gave them a not-quite-safe 11-point lead.  After a quick Steeler score and two-point conversion on a great option play, the lead was cut to three with about eight minutes left, and now anything could happen.

I sat quietly in my creaky chair, taking deep breaths and feeling my heart beat, boom...boom..., and watched Rodgers take his team downfield, unable to punch it in for the TD but getting a field goal that now forced Pittsburgh to also score a touchdown.  They made it harder on themselves with the unnecessary roughness penalty that pushed them back inside the 15, which I didn't feel bad about at all since the refs blew a call near the end of the first half when they called a facemask penalty that wasn't, giving Pittsburgh a short field that helped them get their late score.  So getting moved back for this final drive seemed like poetic justice.

Without enough time left to run the ball, the Steelers were not able to play to their strength, and Big Ben was forced into a passing game.  So it game down to this -- Roethlisberger's proven ability to come through in the clutch, versus a weakened Packer secondary trying to bring the Lombardi trophy back to Titletown.   After giving up some yards, they tightened up a bit, and when a third-and-five pass fell incomplete, the game came down to the next play.  The defense makes the play, Wallace doesn't make the catch, the ball falls on the ground, the refs call incomplete, and the Packers start to celebrate.  Quarterbacks will tell you that their favorite play is taking a knee, so Rodgers got to do it twice before the clock hit 0:00 and the Green Bay Packers had won their fourth Super Bowl!

Out and about

My good friend Jose, along with his girlfriend Yu Li and her cousin Wesley, came down from Taichung yesterday for a day of sightseeing around Tainan.  Jose, or more formally Prof. Chiu-Cheng Chen, is on faculty at Tunghai University in Taichung, having graduated with a PhD in Public Administration from National Cheng Chi University in Taipei, where I had a short appointment as a visiting professor a few years ago.  I've known Jose longer than that, though, having met him first on an even earlier trip to Taiwan when he came up to me after a talk I had given somewhere and indicated that he would like to come to USC to do a year of dissertation research.  I agreed to support and sponsor him in that process, so we managed to get him to LA for a year back in 2006, where his research focused on the process of making plans to redevelop parts of the Los Angeles River.  Yu Li joined him in LA for part of that time, and on one of my trips to Taiwan (can't remember for sure which year that was!), the three of us took a little road trip to go see the Taroko Gorge on the east side of the island, which is definitely one of the most scenic parts of the country.  So it was great to see them again, and since Taichung is just an hour or so train or bus ride away, I hope to get up there soon for a return visit.

Taiwan is a couple hundred miles long from top to bottom, and for most of its length is about 50 or so miles wide.  About two thirds of the width of the island is mountainous, and other than a relatively small number of people who live on the east coast, most of the 23 million plus people live in the north in and around Taipei or down the western strip that is flat and more easily habitable.  But one of the things that has struck me most about this place, as I've traveled up and down the west coast visiting the various towns, is how infrequently one actually comes in contact with the ocean.  For being an island, there is minimal "beach" culture here, and while the ocean is a key source of food, it isn't really a big focus of any leisure or entertainment activity for the Taiwanese.   Part of that, from what I've discerned over the years, is because much of the coastline isn't really "beachy" -- it's rocky up in the north where most of the people live, and while there are sandy beaches on the east coast, with not many people living or visiting there, my sense is that you wouldn't ever find a scene of a beach filled with lots of folks sunning and playing in the water.  The one main beach scene is down south of Kaoshiung, the second biggest city in the country (at least up until recently when -- I learned from Jose last night -- the government turned the former Taipei County into "New Taipei City."  Counties here are a distinct form or level of government, and they exclude rather than include, as in the US, the main cities nearby.  So the old country government is now turning into a new city government, and I guess New Taipei City instantaneously became the biggest, i.e., most populous, city in the country!), where the weather is a little warmer and the culture a little more relaxed.  I've told people that it seems like Kaoshiung is to Taipei like Los Angeles is to New York. 

So our sightseeing trip yesterday helped to confirm and explain the lack of this beach orientation in Taiwan.  I arranged to meet Jose at Starbucks, and from there we headed west, first making what I think was an unplanned stop -- due in part to seeing the big crowd out on a nice warm holiday weekend -- to have a little food and visit the Confucious Temple and the Chihkan Tower/Koxinga Shrine, which commemorates the Chinese general who kicked the Dutch out of then-Formosa back in the late 1600s.  We tasted fish ball soup (ground up fish meat formed into little balls and then cooked in the soup broth) and a tasty drink made out of a large melon (picture a cucumber on steroids -- over two feet long!).  Then we continued west, heading toward the water, and essentially out of town -- that's what's kind of weird, as you get closer to the ocean the urban density dissipates, to the point where there isn't any development along the coast at all.  But as we drove around, it became clear why.  Tainan, and this is probably true of all the major cities here, sits along one of the major rivers emptying runoff from the mountains into the ocean, and the delta or estuary formed makes the coastal area very wet and marshy in its natural habitat, and thus not conducive to building villages, towns, or cities.  What the people on the island have done instead is to convert that land into other productive uses, primarily raising seafood (e.g., fish and oyster farms) and cultivating salt.

So after fighting some very slow holiday traffic, we drove through these developed wetlands to the Taijiang National Park Ecological and Cultural Zone, stopping first at Sihcao Dajhong Temple, where a whole lot of people were lined up to take a short little boat ride out into the mangrove reserve.  We opted not to do that, and instead bought some snacks -- including some large strawberries wrapped in the red bean paste that is used in lots of "sweets" here and then covered in powdered sugar -- and headed to the next destination.  This was a little complex of buildings with information about the wildlife in the area, especially birds and cetaceans (OK, whales and dolphins).  Whales run down both sides of the island, with the west side being the 100-mile Taiwan Straight that separates Taiwan from mainland China.  Wesley told a story about when some folks found a dead beached whale nearby a couple of years ago, and for whatever purposes they were moving it somewhere and driving the dead whale through downtown Tainan when, due to heating up by the sun and I guess the expansion of gases inside, the whale exploded and sent blood and guts everywhere!  Apparently it required some repainting of things in the vicinity...

Our next stop was the salt museum.  Probably most of us learned as kids that sal, the Latin root, is the basis of the word salary, since salt was used to pay people back in the day.  Even in 20th century Taiwan, salt workers would exchange one kilo of salt for one kilo of rice.  In short, salt has long been a valuable commodity, and you gotta figure that the amount of salt consumed around the world on a daily basis is pretty significant, but who's ever stopped to think about where it all comes from?  Apparently it is mined directly out of the rock in places like Poland and China, but here in Taiwan (and I presume other places in the world) they developed a process for extracting it from the ocean.  The museum of course helped to explain the rather lengthy multi-step process it takes to do this (or used to, before the process became more industrialized), and the bulk of the human labor involved entails "raking" the salt into piles after the brine has sufficiently evaporated to leave the salt behind, and then getting the piles of salt out of the "fields" and ready to distribute to consumers.  I guess there was a time when a lot of this area was devoted to salt production, to the point where they even had to create a special police force and build a number of security towers to prevent thieves from stealing the caches of salt at night. 

Before leaving the museum, we bought the equivalent of some popsicles -- Wesley had plum, Jose had peanut, and Yu Li and I had almond/cashew.  Quite yummy, thicker and smoother than a water-based popcicle, more like ice cream but without any dairy -- Wesley thought mine might be frozen almond milk, which seems like a good guess.  We were going to head down to Kaoshiung, 50 kilometers away, but after inching our way back towards Tainan and with the possibility that the road could be pretty busy all the way to Kaoshiung, we decided just to head back into Tainan for a stop at a popular night market.  A night market is a place, usually outdoors, filled with lots of little stalls with vendors selling food, clothes, and a whole assortment of other things.  Jose indicated that the primary draw is the food, that people go to the night market mostly to eat.  In fact, as we had discussed earlier in the day, eating seems to be the primary basis or form of "entertainment" in Taiwan.   In addition to the many  restaurants with more typical sit-down meals, there are lots of little snack foods ubiquitously available in Taiwan, many of them associated with particular places (Tainan) or even particular sources (e.g., the melon drink in the morning -- there was a long line at the place because it is "known for" that drink).  So night markets are filled with stalls with folks selling one or another little type of snack, and you can just sort of eat as you go, walking around shopping or playing some carnival-type games trying to win a prize.

As we were heading back towards downtown, the traffic almost came to a standstill, and at some point we tried to get off the main road we were on to find a different route, and as we circled around Jose realized that we were in fact at the night market we were aiming for (Huayuan), and the reason the traffic had stopped was because thousands of people were congregating there, everyone showing up in their cars and scooters trying to find a place to park.  We managed to find a spot, walked a few blocks to the market, and entered the throngs slowly making their way through the narrow walkways between the rows of stalls.  We stopped first for some little deep-fried cream balls, followed right away with a savory snack that consisted of sort of a thick crepe fried on a griddle then wrapped around some pork and green onions.  Yu Li next got some soup made with chunks of some animal organ, and having made it clear in previous years that I'm happy not to eat the insides of animals, there was no pressure for me to join in!  Instead we tried what might best be described as sort of an omelette, made with egg, and another crepe-like thing, and a few other ingredients mixed in, and then a sauce spread around the top.  While the food was good enough, my experience there was dominated by my amazement of how many people had turned out that night to meander around the market -- Jose and I agreed that there could easily have been 10 or 20 thousand people there, in an area that was about the size of a city block.  Kinda crazy.  But all in all, it says a lot about Taiwanese culture -- no one at the beach, but everyone packed together in the night market to sample their favorite foods!

We left Huayuan and as we headed back to my place, we passed by the Xiaobei night market and stopped there for a look around too.  This place was more like a mini-mall, with covered shops and more traditional stores, and after the massive crowd at Huayuan, this place seemed nearly empty.  Two guys were on a stage playing some music and a few people were listening, but the stores were mostly empty except for a few restaurants that had a number of folks eating.  We didn't stay long, and got back to my dorm around 9:30 PM, as the other three still had a 90-minute drive back to Taichung.  All in all, a good day being out and about and learning more about the area and life in Tainan.