1.22.2008 Doctors or pill pushers??? What's up Taiwan?

I love Taiwan. I really don't like to write to dump on Taiwan. After a couple days of knowing me most Taiwanese people will say to me "You really love Taiwan don't you?! More than most Taiwanese people I think". And I do, I love Taiwan... but there are some things I find too crazy, to the point of not being funny anymore.



I wrote before about my tearful ear doctor appointment that resulted in a fist full of pills for an ear infection. Well this time around I had a sore throat. I was given 7 pills. Count the shadows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 pills for A SORE THROAT. Even WITH a Taiwanese boyfriend, who can translate, my medical experiences in Taiwan have been extremely frustrating... one life threatening. I feel like the doctor makes the diagnosis that they want as soon as they see your file (which includes your name and ID number) and then they stick to it. Even before you even sit down to talk to them they've decided how they will treat you.

Last month Han and I were goofing around on the stairs and I started to run away from him with one of my arms full with a coat, my purse, etc. I didn't manage to run for long before I was lunging hand first into a stair that my foot should have been landing on. I landed with all my weight on my hand against the stair in a policeman "STOP" hand motion. After killer pain for about a week we decided to go to the hospital. Even with Han translating the doctor still didn't seem to get until after he diagnosed me that the accident had happened over a week ago, not THAT night. I kept telling him it had happened a week or two ago and he kept telling me the first few days of a accident were called the "acute" phase and I was still in the acute phase. I KNEW my bones weren't broken but I was concerned about ligament damage from what I'd read online and if the doctor had spent more time to find out what happened the x-ray would've probably been completely unnecessary.

Having medicine allergies does not help things. I have a note clearly written in Chinese that I'm allergic to penicillin. I have a boyfriend who can clearly translate that I am allergic to penicillin and even the Chinese word for penicillin sounds like a phonetic translation for penicillin. About a year and a half ago I had a long argument with a doctor who had only known me about 15 minutes that I had such an allergy. His argument was that it is rare. So even after at least 6 times of me repeating no, I really am allergic to penicillin he gave me some form of it and the next morning I woke up like this: (disclaimer: not at all pretty I can't even believe I'm posting it). This is with my eye fully "open".

If being given medicine you are allergic to isn't scary enough (LIFE THREATENING!!!) the absolute abuse of antibiotics in Taiwan frightens me. Co-workers and I have had the same experience of being given only 3 days worth of antibiotics, every time. This goes against everything I know about antibiotics. Some should only be taken for 3 days (bladder infections) but the majority need to be taken for a week+ without interrupting even if you feel better. Three days is usually the point where you start to feel better. Not the time to jump off the antibiotics so that you can create super germs!!

A couple of years ago I had a student who had been on antibiotics for 4 months. FOUR MONTHS!!!! And he was sick *ALL* the time. I look at Taiwan as being advanced, how is it possible for medicine to be so backwards? I don't even like to get the flu shot because I want my body to develop it's own antibodies but unfortunately in Taiwan when I get sick, I GET SICK. For weeks. So I've caved. I take medicine now.

Like my handful of 7 pills for a sore throat. I had a conversation with a Taiwanese co-worker today and asked her isn't this a little nuts??? My blunt and honest boss said in passing "it's so doctors can make money from the pharmaceutical companies". Scary. Medicine is cheap in Taiwan, not that I really have a good gage being Canadian, but I know Americans glow about how cheap medical care and medicine is here.... but doctor's will still dope us out for more money? My ex-roommate told me no matter what was ailing him his doctors always added Valium to his prescription. Valium, which you can also just walk into a pharmacy and buy without a prescription in Taiwan. Wasn't that considered a date rape drug at one point?

I asked my co-worker "why???? why so many pills???". She explained that usually the doctors will give extra medicine to counteract what the medicine for your problem is doing to your stomach. Ok well that explains two pills. The one for my throat and my stomach... how about the other 5?!?!? She said if I didn't like it I just shouldn't take them all, but I have no idea what any of them are for and which is which.

So I'm going to finish off my day and a half worth of drugs tonight. I was staggering and swaying around with eyes about 50% too wide today, I'm surprised to police who are always on the corner didn't stop me. I have this bad dream now that by posting this I'm going to get blacklisted from all the doctors like that Seinfeld episode. So Taiwan what are your medical stories?

1.17.2008 Boo is a girl?!?! And deal with it Amanda, Wario is MINE.

I've hid it long enough on this website. I'm a geek. A total geek. If graduating from Computer Programming and working in IT aren't proof enough, I'm a 27 year old girl who still spends way too much time playing video games, watching cartoons, and buying toys. It's ok I'm at peace with it.

In Taiwan it's heaven. There are lots of girls like me. It's perfectly acceptable for girls my age to buy toys or cute things. I'm really glad I don't live in Japan and only have to deal with the trickle of what is available from Japan around here.

One of my shameful addictions is the 30 - 50NT (95 cents - 1.60 Canadian dollars ) capsule machines. Like any kid I used to love the awful 25 cent ones we had growing up even though the toy would practically dissolve in your hand when you took it out because it was so cheap.



One of my latest splurges was on some squishy foam Nintendo characters. i heart nintendo. Thankfully on my third attempt I got the one I was looking for. Boo. I love boo. Boo first appeared in Super Mario 3 and it was a love hate relationship from the start. As cute as the boo was boo was also TERRIFYING. That menacing smile, that eerie zig zag sneaking up on you, that "if I cover my eyes you can't see me" attitude.... and how many times did I get cornered underneath a staircase by boo. Arrrgghh. I tried to capture of screenshot of the exact moment I'm talking about but found it incredibly hard to play a game with no right arrow key since my right arrow key on my mac stopped working ever since my former roommate's kitten decided to pee and run at the same time while flying by my PowerBook :'(

Anyway my new squishy Boo has been put on my purse strap and as I was leaving school one of the students who is half Japanese half Taiwanese noticed it and started playing with it saying she knew what it was from. I asked if she knew Boo's English name and she laughed when I told her and explained to her why the ghost is named Boo. Then she told me in Japan Boo is called テレサ which in English translates to Teresa?!?!? Teresa??!?!?!?! How feminine and not at all terrifying. One of the most subtly terrifying Mario characters (look at those teeth), the BEST Mario Tennis player.... Teresa. Yea!

In my search I also found you can buy my boo on amazon. I really need to setup my taiwan ebay store. They're selling boo for over 8$ US and I bought him for about 1.50$ US.



Before I came to Taiwan I spent many weekends on Joe's couch. Those were the golden days. Playing hours and hours and hours of Mario Kart 64 with people I loved, and people who could tolerate me. Amanda and I would always duke it out for Wario, because he's the best, and because he has the best catch phrases. Well Amanda honey, he's mine now. I got him on my first try. ooo it burns doesn't it. You'll never have him. Unless you want to fly to Taiwan to visit me and take him by force???

mmmm Nintendo.

Labels: geekiness, Only in Asia

1.14.2008 Idaho? No, Udaho!

Nothing is ever going to top my "I love my hooker" t-shirt but this is pretty awesome.

I didn't buy this one but I kind of wish I had. I also saw a great mustard coloured thigh length hoodie the other night that said "Sienna Miller". Just because I guess.

Labels: Only in Asia

1.12.2008 A blogless 2007, 2008 baby I'm back

2007 proved to be a real test of character for all aspects of my life. My love life, work life, Taiwan life all suffered some major ups and downs. And somewhere in the midst of it I stopped typing. It's really sad because of how much I really got out of my site, how it really kept me moving artistically, and how it kept Taiwan forever new and fresh for me.

At some point this site had regular traffic that scared me, a modest number of visits by some people's standards but much more than I ever expected to get and then I started hearing more and more about how people in Taiwan and their friends were looking at my site. That kind of ruined things for me. As cool as it was the original intent of writing about Taiwan at all was to amuse my family and friends back home as well as other Westerners. I hadn't really thought or dreamed that people living in Taiwan and seeing the same things I was seeing would be spending any time at my site. So I started to worry about everything I wanted to write about. "Too many people in Taiwan have written about this, why blog about something everyone else already has??", "Everyone has already seen this, why put a picture up of this, it'll be boring!!". bla bla bla



Aside from that working 44 hours a week before I went home this summer didn't even leave me with time to check my e-mail.

Now I'm a lot less busy and don't care so much about who's reading or why. I'm grateful for anyone who gives me their time. It's cool to know that people are there. First and foremost I write for myself and for my family. A kind of visual scrapbook since I'm so bad at keeping a written diary or photo album, and why bother?



So where have I been? I spent the summer home in Canada. It wasn't what it should have been, I suffered a major betrayal before heading home and it soured the whole visit for me. I spent way too much time alone and miserable. I'm sorry for the family and friends I didn't see and grateful to the ones who I did see and were able to put up with me.

Since I've been back in Taiwan I FINALLY started taking Chinese classes. It's incredibly embarrassing that I've been living in Taiwan more than 2 years and hadn't studied at all. According to another ex-pat I met this is a very "Canadian" thing to do. It made me cringe but at the same time I can't feel offended. It seems in Taiwan Canadians are at the butt end of the joke and are criticized and joked about for the same things we are guilty of joking and criticizing Americans for back home. There are some nice, wonderful, talented, and motivated Canadians in Taiwan but there are unfortunately a good number of thoughtless, drunk, greedy, horny jerks (male and female) too. I used to feel proud to tell people I was from Canada when I first came to Taiwan until I started meeting the kind of Canadians who will head to work to teach kindergarten kids still drunk from the night before. argh.



Unfortunately my work hours have picked up again so I haven't had as much time as I've wanted to again and I've had to drop the Chinese classes but I intend to start some 1 on 1 classes soon. Having Han has helped me "cheat" a lot and live a much richer life in Taiwan that I could've without him but I'm an independent girl and always have been so it's really important to me.

I'm sneaking up on my 3 year anniversary in Taiwan and with that I seem to have hit a new milestone which involves everyone I never thought would ever leave Taiwan leaving. It's been heartbreaking. Sure I've heard them say they were planning on leaving at some point but denial kicked in and I didn't believe it. It's another reason I've resolved to study Chinese harder. It's great to have other ex-pat friends but in a way I don't want to make anymore friends in the ex-pat community. It becomes too heartbreaking. Meanwhile, I feel like the only thing that's changed about me in 3 years is my hair and everyone back home is having babies, buying houses and cars, and getting married. Thankfully I still have a few friends and a big sister who is content to live outside the norm so I don't feel so weird.



So how about the new year? Han and I decided to brave the fireworks since we've heard this year will be the last year they do them off of 101. I've moved to the Xinhai area and there is a little field of grass we pass sometimes when we are driving towards 101. We decided to try to make it there on the scooter on new year night because it has the most clear and perfect view of 101. Seriously, anyone wanting to get a good shot of 101 should setup their tripod here. If I can figure out where it is on the map I'll post the google map location. I have no idea what the place is called. I'm sure it's called a park even though there is seriously nothing there but a big triangle of grass but even a 6 ping square of grass with a rock on it is a park with an official name in Taipei :).



We never ended up making it to the field. We were so deadlocked in traffic we couldn't move for almost 2 hours. We ended up about 10 meters away from it with the most clear and perfect view of 101 imaginable. I'm glad we didn't make it because if we had we'd be standing with a bunch of people with their arms raised in the air trying to capture the fireworks on their cellphones or digital cameras but elevated on the scooter there was nothing to block our view. I didn't bother bringing a camera because I was lazy and didn't feel like lugging it along and because I knew there would be at least a dozen videos posted to youtube. Here's one for anyone who missed out:



This month also marked or 2 year anniversary together! We had a quiet night and celebrated with our tradition of returning to the spot of or first date (the giant ferris wheel in Neihu). We got in one of the two new ferris wheel cars that have glass bottoms. The glass was so scuffed up it was hard to see through but thankfully the seats were clear too (unnerving when you're in a skirt). It was pretty neat. Worth the wait since it was a special night.



I have some things to write about now and Rafael has helped me modify the template so it's more photo post friendly so I'm hoping to be putting up posts or photos at least twice a week. Kick my butt if I don't, please!

Labels: New Brunswick, relationships, taipei, taiwan