Classes and Houses
Class was intense. I gather that is why they refer to it as the ‘intensive Chinese’ lessons. I’ve been put in a ‘slightly beyond beginner’ class. There are six students and one teacher. We meet at 2pm until 5pm daily.
We started our lessons on Chapter 13 of the ‘Practical Audio/Visual Chinese 1’ textbook. Today I have a test covering the first seven Chapters of the text book. This wouldn’t be much of an issue, as I’m familiar with most of the material, but for the traditional characters. Essentially I had to memorize 140 Hanzi this weekend to prepare for the test. How effective I was remains to be seen.
On Saturday I went apartment hunting and came home with the goods. I found a nice place very very close to school. It is just off Shi Da road which is very near NTNU (colloquially referred to as Shi Da Da Xue or Shi Da University because of its location). I’ll be sharing with three other fellows. One is an older South African gentleman who works as a teacher here. Another is an anti-social Irish-Pakistani who apparently is always either working or shut up in his room. The third is moving soon, so I will get a new roommate within a few weeks. I don’t move in until the 25th. I will stay where I am in the interim. It is convenient enough.
Taipei has an interesting apartment deposit scheme. There is conventionally a deposit to be put down on a room or apartment of two months rent. However this deposit does not go to the landlord. It instead goes to the person who is vacating the room or apartment. One gets his own deposit back when he finds someone to replace himself as he leaves. Therefore as I leave Taipei I’ll (hopefully) get my deposit back from the person I find to replace me in the apartment I’m currently living in. I guess it makes the landlord’s job easier as departing tenants have a pecuniary interest in keeping the place rented, thereby discouraging unwanted vacancies.