TAIPEI LIFE SEPT 21, 2008

Thursday, September 18, 2008; 1:57 AM


Genghis Khan has officially pissed herself into exile. The real Genghis Khan once had the second largest empire in world history (behind Britain); he controlled 22% of the world’s landmass. This Genghis is different though- no army, no horses, no unification of a continent and-a-half; she is trying to conquer with her pee! After twice on my bed, twice on the coffee table and about 30 times various couches, rugs and items of clothing, this little fur ball has peed herself across my whole house.

The cat had an owner, a Mongolian girl who got knocked up and fled the country, leaving her coat hangers, some instant noodles and a cat named Malaknatat or Ulaanbaatar or something in a language where-too many consonants are shoved together... Apparently, her name translates to “little egg” and (in all fairness) she is about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I want her dead though. I have taken to calling her Genghis Khan, and cannot help but make jokes about how can she can’t even conquer a litter box, or how – I must be the Song Dynasty (or was it the Yuan?) because I’m gonna conquer her little kitty ass.

Recently, I came into my room to find a puddle of cat pee, seeping into my mattress, infecting the lesson plans and spelling tests that were laid out across my bed… I have to tell the kids… In America, we like to say, “My dog ate my homework,” but this time, it’s a little different – this reminds me of a student I had about a year ago named Ella; she was seven and talked only about her pets…

- Hi Ella, how are you today?
- My fish are in love and will get married soon.
- Great… how was your weekend?
- I have a rabbit.
- Cool, go sit down and get your reading book.
- His name is “Little White”

Conversations with her usually went like this. But one day she showed up to school crying. When I asked what was wrong, she held up her grammar homework; It actually had little bunny bite marks around the corners, and in chicken scratch, she had written a note around the bite marks: Sorry tecHer mybabbit eat the hoeworks paper. I almost cried, it was so goddamn cute.

But this Genghis Khan is wearing on my last nerve. My roommate (who is as much of a bonehead as I am) can only guess that she’s doing it for attention… but all she’s done is forced us both to give her the silent treatment.

I dated a girl like this once; she’d send text messages saying, fuck off, I never want to see you again! The next day, she come to me and ask… How come you never called me last night? And if I ever see her again, I’ll call her Genghis Khan too!

So, a few nights ago, she peed on my bed, again. I pushed her face into it and said BAD GENGHIS!!! I repeated this in Mandarin, thinking that she might be more comfortable in that language. She looked up at me, not in anger, not in embarrassment, but with a face that said- What is that disgusting wet spot and why on Earth would you put my face in it?

Naturally, the room smelled like pee, and naturally I used facial soap, body wash, toothpaste and laundry detergent to wash it out. After all of this, the room smelled like flowery, musky, minty urine. The next day, I took a bottle of bleach and poured half of it out onto the bed. Now, my nose was burning so bad, I couldn’t smell a thing!

I quickly got some towels to soak up the bleach. When these towels turned white, I hung them from a bamboo pole on the balcony. Little did I know, that there was a sink under the pole and in that sink was a small goldfish; a fish that was out there, because Little Egg was trying to eat it, when it was in the house. So, today when I got home, I found a towel had fallen into the sink, bleached the water and killed our fish! And now I’m convinced I’m going to hell, for killing a fish, and its all Mlatraskatat’s fault; she’ll surely go to kitty hell….right?

Besides that, life for me is eerily, wonderfully, fantastic!

I went to my second Capoeira (Brazilian dance fighting) class tonight, which is kind of like Yoga, except for- after all the stretching, the people hit bongos and weird single-stringed guitars and do somersaults, while pretending to kick each other in slow motion. The dancing and the music suggest that Peyote (or whatever hallucinogen the Incas were using) made it East into the sugar fields of Brazil. I found the 14-year old Chinese boy who kicked me in the chest and said to him, “Tonight, you can’t kick me in the chest.” He is fourteen and I used to teach fourteen year-olds, so I had no choice but to use my stern “teacher voice.” He looked at the ground.

When Chinese people are confronted or put into an awkward situation, they instinctively look at the ground, knowing that eventually the problem (that being ME) will disappear. I started studying this language so I could order food without onions, mushrooms and MSG (always in that order) and so I could tell girls that they were beautiful.

After learning those phrases, I moved on, and know I have come to the point, where I can share my dissatisfaction with people’ s behavior. This means more often than I’d like to admit, my Mandarin skills are used to make others look at the ground.

Chinese people have real troubles with waiting on line. By “troubles,” I mean… they don’t do it…ever. At least once a day, while buying noodles, rice, tea or ice cream, someone shoves me out of the way so they can order first. Locals speak louder and quicker than me, so most often, this pushing method works… I am put on the back burner, while some asshole (who got there after me) gets their tea, or afternoon treat BEFORE me.

When I was unable to speak the language, I’d playfully shove them back, and they (like the cat) would look at me with puzzled expressions, thinking, Why on Earth is this guy pushing me?

Now though, with my expert linguistic skills, I can say things like, “I arrive number one say noodles, you number two… understand?” or, “You touch me to move, but I talk ice cream, you have given me rude.” Somehow, my disgusting grammar gets across, and they look at the ground.

This occurrence is bound to happen buying food from street vendors or getting on the subway, but a few days ago, I was in a doctors office, with my arm in the table-mounted blood pressure machine when a man barged through the door, pushed me put of the way, bending my arm 180 degrees, to ask the doctor where the bathroom was.

It is so common, no one here really understands any other way of doing things… after the man left, I commented to the doctor that the guy was rude. The doctor looked at me for a moment, “No, he needed the bathroom.”

The other defense mechanism here is for people to just change the subject. I say, “You pushed me and shouted at the noodle seller, that is rude.”

The reply, “It is very hot today.”

Recently, I came to school and entered my classroom to find that all three of my Word Walls (poster-sized lists of the current vocabulary words) were peeled off the walls and sitting on the floor.

My boss came in and I asked if a wild animal had come into my room overnight. She didn’t get my joke, so I pointed to the grounded word walls and shrugged my shoulders.

She nonchalantly nodded her head, “The handwriting was messy, so I tore them off the wall.”

She expected me to reciprocate with a nod and that would be the end. “I think it was quite rude of you to pull the off the wall; you could have told me first.”

This obviously made her uncomfortable… we sat in silent for about 60 seconds. Finally, she replied… “I got a cat yesterday!”

I hope it pees on your bed!

But back to my Capoeira class. Today went the same as last time; my feet hurt, my legs hurt, my back hurts, the teacher shouted about asses and chaking, Arnold talked about powah stomping his feet as he said it. As the class was wrapping up, Cristian (the female teacher) said, “Now we must do da Samba!” A dozen nerdy, skinny white boys and a few equally nerdy Chinese people, one Austrian and the 14-year old kung-fu kicker all got in a circle and shook the asses like something out of Havana nights.

In the movie Fight Club, Tyler Durden has a line where he talks about the duality of each person that attended the meetings… cubicle losers by day, Gods by night… something to that effect.

After the bongos stopped, everyone changed back into their suits and ties, their shiny black shoes and dark-colored socks; they got on the subway and went home, where they’d spend the rest of their nights on facebook or EBay or cheerleader.com. They’d mix back into the normal world, mixing with strangers not knowing that these people could do handstands for 45 seconds or dance the Samba.

My feet still hurt though…

Besides a malicious cat, a dead fish and a bleach-stained bed, my new house is awesome… I live on the fifth floor and am spitting distance to an Olympic-sized swimming pool. After about 2/3rds of a lap, I am ready to pack up and go home… I think it takes me longer to cross the pool than it does to drive to work in the morning.

My home is adjacent to a riverside bike path that goes from downtown Taipei all the way to the ocean. Tuesday is my day off and I ride the path each week, with no shirt on! Yesterday I did it and I rode right into a swarm of grasshoppers or locusts or something.

I am getting to know the local eateries, which include a place called Jake’s Country Kitchen (they sell Burritos, blueberry pie and chicken fried steak), an Indian restaurant (the service is terrible, the food is delicious and laxatives are a part of each recipe… even the tea makes me shit) and a fantastic deli (the owner insists that I all her Jackie-O [because she is elegant] and insists that every sandwich I buy has mustard… each day I tell her that I hate mustard, and like a Jewish grandmother, she says, “But mustard is really delicious with pastrami”).

I live close to a Chinese school and started classes last week. I am in private classes with an incredibly sexy, 26-year-old teacher. Her skirts are short enough to be illegal in most countries on this continent and I don’t really hear a word she says to me.

My school is great. After the world wall incident, the boss is overly-nice to me, I get free lunch everyday and I have my own classroom. My kids are babies (kindergarten and first grade) and are having trouble accepting my highly academic, strictly regimented classroom routine.

All the kids are cute as buttons and I have trouble telling them what to do, because most of the time, when they screw up, it’s adorable. I have a girl named Sami who insists on hiding under her desk, at least 12 times per hour. When I hound her for 3 or 4 minutes, she pops her head up and says… “So funny.” Another girl is named Patty; she is a firecracker and finishes most assignments before I am through explaining them. So, as I am saying, “Please take out your green phonics book and open to page 7” – she interrupts to say:

“Teacher I done.”

I reply, “No Patty, you have to say I’m done.”

This happens 30 times per day, and each time, she shrugs and says, “Teacher I done.”

Another girl named Winnie was given a bootleg copy of Mamma Mia for her birthday, and replies to all of my comments with a simple, “Mamma Mia!!!” When we have silent time, or nap time, I catch her singing ABBA songs under her breath.

For boys, I have a guy named David who loves, loves, loves to hug people. He often jumps out of his chair, hugs me, breaks his pencil and then says, “Teacher can you this (he mimics a pencil being sharpened) for me?” I do it each time, and two minutes later, he breaks it and does the same thing. Just yesterday, I saw him put his eraser in his backpack, walk up to Patty, hug her and ask, “Can I borrow your eraser?”

As far as friends go, I currently have four of them.

One is my roommate. He is from Chicago and worked in finance before getting bored and moving to Taiwan. He hates it here, but when I asked him if he’d leave, his reply was, “Well I can’t leave yet, I bought a bed.” I asked him what he missed about home and he said, “I miss my bears.”

I’m such an idiot, I cocked my head and said… “You have pet bears!!?”

He laughed and said, “It cost like 40 bucks per month to download the games!”

I asked if he liked the girls here and he said, “I often think about putting one in ach pocket and just walking around town like that.” The funny thing is, this guy is so damn jolly and friendly, I just shrugged and smiled… it almost sounded like an OK thing to do coming from him.

My other friends are a brother and sister from South Africa. The sister likes fashion and talks about make-up a lot. She said she would rather be really good at make-up artist than have a face so pretty that make-up wasn’t necessary. Her brother works at a Pizza Hut, but he’s convinced that he’s a chef or a food extraordinaire.

He often invites me over to drink 2-dollar wine and eat American cheese, claiming that it’s a “European custom.” I don’t have the heart to tell him 7-11 wine bottles and individually wrapped slices of “cheese-product” are a white-trash “Fresno custom.”

My fourth friend is a coworker named Leslie. She is in charge of bringing whiteboard markers, textbooks and other garbage to my classroom. She also got a new cat and asked me to help her name it. I suggested Julius because he looked tough and assertive (its actually a kitten who hasn’t opened his eyes yet) and ever since, she thinks I am the cat’s meow (no pun intended). She is teaching me to read and write Chinese, which is akin to studying heart surgery defusing bombs.

I live in a super-rich area, where a lot of the people are foreign nationals or locals who have spent a lot of time abroad. Taiwanese law says that anyone with money or hoping to appear that way MUST drive a black BMW or Mercedes with tinted windows, so I see a lot of those.

Many of the women seem to breathe money, in a gross, “Beverly Hills” kind of way. They wear stupid hats and giant diamond pendants on their shirts and hire Indonesian slaves to carry their groceries or children.

Supposedly people are snobby here, but Taiwanese don’t seem to have a snobby gene anywhere in their bodies. People here can pretend to be uppity or fancy, but a generation ago, their country was a clump of dirt, littered with rice fields and the people haven’t yet gotten a chance to embrace these western feelings of self-entitlement; except when waiting online for tea or noodles of course. I suppose the only snob I’ve met is… myself.

English speakers are definitely more common here, and that means most of the foreigners (white people) can’t speak a lick of Chinese. This makes me somewhat of a superstar wherever I go… foreigners and locals alike, are constantly amazed at my ability to speak Mandarin.

So… this is the life that I’ve built up in about 3 weeks, though it seems like 6 months already.

Leaving the states and coming back to this island last month, I have to say I had my doubts. My heart was stretched across an ocean, not knowing where it belonged; I was in a big disgusting city without a friend in the world. I landed here in a ruthless, tropical rainstorm that didn’t stop for 6 days. My motorcycle was broken and I was sleeping in a hotel where the chambermaids insisted on barging in without knocking, to clean my shower or vacuum the floors at 9:00 in the morning.

I’d wake up startled, ask them to come back later and try my best to look angry. The woman would shrug and say, “Don’t worry, it’s not a problem,” as they continued to push a vacuum over my dirty underwear and candy bar wrappers.”

My hotel was between a huge night-market (like a county fair, without the rides) and a nursing home. I loved to walk between teased-haired-teenagers dressed like Martians, eating fried food on sticks and buying Snoopy toys and dozens of old people in wheelchairs, drinking Oolong tea and playing Mahjong. At night, I’d eat chewy steak and French fries, while mouse-sized cockroaches ate the crumbs and drops of sauce from between my toes.

As the apartment hunt started, things were looking more and more depressing. I got in touch with a bunch of local realtors and my cellphone had more Li’s, Chen’s and Chang’s than… no, I can’t make a Chinese phone book joke here.

I got quite fluent with apartment topics, and leared to say things like:

- I wish live in your house. (I’m calling about the apartment)
- Does it have a place where one cooks rice? (kitchen)
- Is there a glass hole to see things? (window)
- Which hour can I go your there and look look. (Can I come by to check it out?)

One place I looked at (during the long rainstorm) had a basketball-sized hole in the ceiling and was flooded with half an inch of water. Mr. Li assured me that he’d fix the hole before I moved in… Thanks Mr. Li. Another one had tunnels in the floorboards and cockroaches strolling in and out… when I referred to the holes, Mr. Chen said, “If you’re going to live in Taiwan, you have to get used to our ways.”

My favorite though, was Mr. Chang’s apartment. I met Mr. Chang in a Mos Burger (Japanese version of Mc Donald’s). He overheard me talking on the phone to another realtor and asked if he could sit. Mr. Chang must have been 200 years old; he was frail and sweet and nearly dead. When we talked, he liked to hold my hand.

He explained that he had an apartment for rent, and it could be mine for 400 dollars per month. He (still holding my hand) told me about the fans in it, the closet and even the paper towels that he’d leave there, no charge. At times, I’d laugh, but none of this conversation was a joke to him.

He invited me over to take a look, but said it was a little far. He showed me his rickety, tireless, World War II bicycle and offered to ride it, while I sat on the luggage rack. Unsure with his ability to chew, let alone ride me around on his bike, I offered to drive my motorcycle. I had meant that he could ride his bike and I’d follow, but the next thing I knew, he was on the back, holding on to my neck.

He directed me down the windy alleyways of Taipei, reminding me to watch out for cars and stray dogs, while pointing out all the conveniences of the neighborhood. “You can walk a dog in that park!” “That haircutter is very professional.” “In the winter, they sell apples here.”

We were putting along, Mr. Chang was rambling, when all of a sudden a speed bump came out of nowhere! The next thing I knew, my scooter is a little lighter, and MUCH quieter… I looked back to see Mr. Chang on his ass, in the middle of the road. He sat there, completely casually, as if he had planned to get off at that moment… “Sorry” he said, and jumped back on.

We got to the building and Mr. Chang pointed out the ample parking, the security guard (who had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth) and the “functioning” elevator. He repeated this several times.. “It is functioning. Some elevators are broken, but not this one.”

We got to the house to find his wife snoring on the couch. Things work differently here, and realtors seem to camp out at these places when they’re not occupied. He jolted her awake and ordered her to make tea for us.

While she boiled the water, Mr. Chang showed me the bathroom, the kitchen, the handcrafted ceiling and ample closet space. The apartment was a complete dump, but he had tea brewing, I had almost killed him moments before, and he was holding my hand again, so I couldn’t really get up and walk out yet. Then, Mr. Chang got really serious, he gripped my hand tightly and put the TV on mute… “I should also tell you,” he said into my ear, “you’ll have cable, but (he put his finger over his mouth in a shhh) we don’t pay for it.”

Mr. Chang continued, “Cable costs about 14 dollars per month, but we have an illegal hook up.” He gripped my hand tightly, “So, when you move in, you can watch it, but keep the volume very low, so that no one hears it.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it; I looked at Mrs. Chang, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, while washing the tea pot, I looked at Mr. Chang’s dead-serious face, I thought of all the shit-holes I’d seen in the past week, I felt the tight grip of a cable-stealing, ancient Taiwanese man, and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

At that, tea was served and Mr. Chang spoke to his wife in Japanese (because of Pre World War II Japanese occupation, old people here often speak Japanese). He then grabbed my hand again and said, “So, 500 dollars per month… what do you say?”

I started to explain that the previous price was 400 dollars whet he wife interjected… in Chinese now. “The boy is very handsome, let’s give it to him for 400.”

Mr. Chang pretended to think for a minute, though I knew they’d planed this. “Ok,” he said, “Because my wife likes you, you can have it for 400 dollars if you sign the contract right now.”

I told him I’d come back the next day, and after hounding me for 20 minutes, Mr. Chang let me leave, under the condition that I called him as soon as I woke up to give my final answer. I deleted his number and never talked to him again.

Two days later, I found my current apartment, thanked God for throwing me a bone and haven’t looked back since. Things are looking up now; I am not homeless, I am not friendless, my heart (for the time being) is comfortable on this side of the Pacific and my motorcycle is running perfectly.

That’s all I got. Thanks for making it this far.. 12 pages…. Missing you and loving you and missing my Hooty.

-Matto