Infrequent Nights

Today I went to the zoo. I’m normally not a big fan of zoos. I don’t like seeing all those animals caged up. Some I don’t mind. I couldn't care less if a fish or a turtle is in a tank, but I don’t like seeing owls stuck in little rooms where they can’t fly around. However I’m a big fan of monkeys. I find them endlessly entertaining. My favorite, for obvious reasons, was the Crab Eating Macaque. Not obvious you say? Try pretending you’re a French tour guide pointing out monkeys to your guests. Now say this three times with a really thick French accent: “There’s a crab eating macaque.”

This just goes to show that puerile humor is funnier with a French accent.

Posted by Ryan at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pork is to Taiwan as Beef is to America. Its What’s For Dinner. They love their pork here. Some people have strong feelings about eating Pork. I’m open-minded. I think bacon is the candy of the meat universe, but besides that I don’t eat much else from the porcus corpus. The other day I was walking downtown, very close to the National Court and the Legislative Yuan. I saw an animal on the sidewalk chained to a pole. At first glance I thought it was a dog. It had a long hairy tail that wagged like a dog’s tail. Then it snorted at me, and went about munching on some apple bits. I had a closer look and noted the snout and trotters of this, someone’s pet pig.

I’m willing to bet that this pet pig isn’t just the family friend. I reckon it’ll also grace the family dinner table, and possibly turn up piece meal in a local market. I could of course be wrong. I’m not overly familiar with the pet keeping practices of the locals. However I am familiar with some of their meat procurement habits. In most Western countries the slaughter of animals, and sale of their meat is fairly well regulated by government authorities. Taiwan is the same, ostensibly at least. There are a certain number of licensed abattoirs at which all saleable meat is to be slaughtered. However in practice much slaughtering is done outside of the regulated system, and meat makes its way to market uninspected. This wouldn’t be much of a problem if one could always count on the honesty of his fellow man. Unfortunately however, the poor regulation of the system leads to diseased animals making their way to the nation’s dinner tables.

Put yourself in the shoes of a farmer with some pigs. You put a lot of care and feed into those pigs, raising them up to a marketable size. Then one day one of your pigs gets sick and dies of some disease. "Damn" you think to yourself. "I just lost out on all that investment. I can’t take poor little Babe to the state run abattoir and sell him. Whatever will I do?"

Well I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You’ll butcher the diseased carcass and sell it at the market. When food safety regulations are laxly enforced, it is a certainty that food will make its way to the marketplace that otherwise shouldn’t and wouldn’t. It is in the economic interest of individual farmers to see that it does. I’m not saying all farmers, or even a majority will do so, but some will. It’s human nature. While the Taiwanese authorities undoubtedly have bigger fish to fry, they should work on the domestic food inspection system. It is in the best interest of the country for innumerable reasons. Public health is important. Animal disease outbreaks such as avian influenza are easier detected if animal slaughter is regulated. Furthermore, I don’t want to eat diseased pig flesh.

Posted by Ryan at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taiwan, like many Asian countries, is seemingly obsessed with English. Originally I wasn’t going to bother commenting on the often ridiculous English usages here, as it is so oft commented upon by others, I’m rather bored of it as a topic of conversation. However I am still entertained when I see a particularly good misusage, and I do let it affect my purchasing decisions (my newest notebook cover reads: A popular bear boy bear lives with his many friends in an old toy shop in fairyland. Most advanced quality give best writing features). Recently I’ve noticed a number of fake university shirts around town. The other day I saw a C.O.U. (or Canadian Ontario University, which most certainly does not exist) sweat shirt. My personal favorite and the one that convinced me to comment, was a Corn Laws University shirt. I assume it is meant to look like the sort of shirt a law grad would wear. Upon sighting it, I wondered whether or not the designer was familiar with the historical importance of the British Corn Laws and their abolition in 1846 which her shirt, knowingly or not, references

Interestingly, the repeal of the Corn Laws symbolically marks the beginning of the free-market system which Taiwan would later use (along with copious American assistance) to such profit. As that shirt and others like it are emblematic of the global reach of English, which goes hand-in-hand with the free market capitalism exported by the British Empire and later the USA. It seems only fitting to have a tribute to the early days of that free market movement on shirts worn by the youths whose lives are so impacted by it. And while the wearer was likely ignorant of the statement made by his shirt, he was proclaiming by both his usage of English and tribute to the Corn Laws that the movement towards freer transit of goods, culture, people, and ideas begun in Europe in the 19th Century is alive and well in the Taiwan of the 21st.

Posted by Ryan at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm soliciting rat killing tips. I was recently up all night chasing one of the bastards around my bedroom. For quite a while we've known that we've got a friendly rat who visits our kitchen in search of snacks. I don't mind provided he doesn't eat my stuff. But I do mind him monkeying around in my room. It's noisy, obnoxious, and I can't keep my inner hypochondriac from worrying about bubonic plague and the like. I bought these sticky rat traps, but they're crap. Either that or I'm crap at strategically placing them. I think he comes in through the window, so today I put one on the outside window sill. I envision him stepping on it, getting stuck, and then disloding the trap from the sill sending it plummeting four floors to land rat and all on one of my neighbour's head's. That'd be sweet.

Posted by Ryan at 01:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nobody else seems to find it bizarre that there is a statue outside Taipei Main Station which, when viewed from the right angles, appears to be a tribute to pederasty. The inscription below reads: Loving Father. I suspect the artist might mean 'Loving Priest' or possibly 'My Time as an Altar Boy'.

I don't think there is any chance the artist made this work and didn't realize that it looked a bit funny from about 40% of the viewing angles. Furthermore I'm surprised whoever commisioned the work didn't raise the issue: "Ummm...is it necessary for the boy in the statue to appear to be fellating the man? Do you think we could...I don't know...maybe move the boy? Or add six inches to his height?" But I suppose that would be impeding the artistic process, and God forbid civil servants should get in the way of public art displays of pedophilia.

Posted by Ryan at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've recently turned myself on to the CBC archives: archives.cbc.ca. I applaud the CBC for actually utilizing the potential of the internet in this useful and well-designed web page. I was doing a bit of reading up on the Chinese diaspora in Canada and ended up at their archival timeline: archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-69-1433/life_society/chinese_immigration/. While there isn't much there I've not read in other places, it is great to be able to watch contemporary news reports about an historical topic of interest. Furthermore the site allows you to not only chart the changes within the Chinese Canadian community, but to see how they have been perceived by the mainstream media and how those perceptions have changed over time. Just click the little 'timeline' at the top and you're offered all of the clips available. The clips have background information available in a handy little box beside them, and are well arranged. There are hundreds of these timelines available, and the archives are highly searchable allowing users to view a timeline of all archived material available on the web separated by category. Timelines with similar topics are hyperlinked together, and it is all linked to Radio-Canada's French archive site.

I love this site, all I want is more material. I want older radio archives up there. I want more archived news footage. In my dream world I want to click on a calendar and see a news broadcast from any day of any year since the CBC has been in existence. And there is no reason they can't give me my dream world. All that is required is a lot of storage space, significant bandwidth, and some people to digitize the content and get it up on the web.

Posted by Ryan at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was talking politics with an American friend the other day. We got onto the topic of a potential invasion by Mainland China, and began trading scenarios. He was of the firm belief that America would step up to the plate to defend Taiwan, and that once America’s mighty army becomes involved in a conflict the outcome is determined. His argument was that American military spending eclipses China’s (their closest rival) by a factor of over 5. This chart may help you visualize the differences. While this is true, at least approximately enough as PLA expenditures and profits (they have numerous business interests) are hazy at best, I exhorted him to recall that a billion dollars goes much further in China than it does in the U.S.A. This is often forgotten by individuals throwing around military expenditure figures. I’ve no idea what an average American soldier’s salary is, but if we attribute it a value of the U.S. GDP/Capita ($44 000) and multiply this by the number of active troops (1 427 000) we get the princely sum of around $63 billion. In China’s case the GDP/Capita is about $5600 (I doubt soldiers make anything close to this amount) and the number of active troops is 2 250 000, which puts their sloppily estimated payroll at about $12.6 billion.

These very rough numbers, meant only to give one an idea of the discrepancy between the two country’s military payrolls, do not include administrative personnel. While this difference is in and of itself huge, there exists a large acquisition cost differential for each country. America’s military procurement policy encourages huge R&D grants to private companies. For instance those provided to Beoing corporation which the Europeans always bring to light when attempting to justify their own loan guarantees to Airbus. China’s military does much of their procurement in-house or by buying ready made goods from Overseas suppliers. Furthermore the Chinese focus more of their procurement dollars on practical items such as new nuclear submarines. The United States on the other hand, in order to maintain their relative military might, spend a lot of money on speculative technological development, for items which may or may not ever see practical usage. The end result is a military dollar that goes much further in China than it does in the United States.

I’m not suggesting parity between the two militaries or even an approximation thereof. I’m simply pointing out that one cannot judge by the numbers alone, and that America’s huge military expenditure does not automatically grant it a preponderant status.

Posted by Ryan at 01:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been following the unstable political situation in Ottawa fairly closely from over here. There is much talk of a non-confidence vote, and speculation as to whether or not Jack Layton and the NDP's threats to side with the Bloc and Conservatives are genuine or not. See this story for an example. The NDP would be fools to dislodge the current government. Why would they? So they can change from being a minority party in a Liberal-minority dominated house to a minority party in a Conservative-minority dominated house? The thought is laughable. Why would the NDP want the liberals to lose seats to the Bloc and the Conservatives? The only reason they hold such political sway right now is precisely because of the current precarious political balance in the House of Commons. If the NDP do decide to vote down the Liberals (which they won't unless it becomes very obvious in the polls that that is what the people want) they had better pick up at least a few seats in BC to make up for switching from a Liberal to a Conservative dominated house.

Posted by Ryan at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the other day, while in an MRT station, I walked past a bow-legged midget. And I thought to myself: “Oh look, a bow-legged midget. Wait a minute, ‘midget’ is out. They like ‘little person’. OK, so she’s a bow-legged little person.” Then I started to wonder, is there a politically correct word for bowed legs? Should I have been thinking “a little person with parallely challenged limbs?’ Or ‘curvilinear appendages?‘ I rather like “a little person with excessively curved propulsion protuberances.” But it is a bit of a mouthful. When I develop a handicap (or is that disability?) as most of us will someday, I will insist others refer to it with a bizarre yet evocative euphemism.

Posted by Ryan at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I live very close to a night market, in an area of town densely populated by students and the like. Its a pretty happening place until late into the evening. Nonetheless the most happening place in my neighbourhood isn’t a food stall, restaurant, bar, or shop. No, the place that really attracts droves of patrons is a doctor’s clinic. Its a dermatology clinic right around the corner from my house which has people lined up down the street until 1 in the morning. Gaggles of people hang about near the entranceway, chatting on their mobile phones. I’m always tentative to walk through the crowds as I envision every individual has a dermatological ailment of some sort which I might catch if I get too close to them. If I do have to walk through the crowds I hold my breath so as not to inhale any potential rash causing germs. God forbid I should get a rash on my oh-so-pretty lungs. I don’t know what the incredible popularity of this clinic has to say about the Taiwanese, apart from the fact that many of them have dermatological ailments and stay out late. What I do know is that the place has the outward appearance of a nightclub. All they need is a red velvet rope, and some big-necked male nurse checking people at the door. Come to think of it, I reckon a medical themed night club would go down like gangbusters in some cities. Patrons would wear med-fetish wear, or adopt ailments for the evening. A whole slew of thematically named drinks are made possible, as is intimate booth style seating in 'examination' rooms. I give free reign to any enterprising entrepreneur to pursue this further. I just want complimentary entry when you open for business.

Posted by Ryan at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)