Taiwanese Spork

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The learning curve

When learning a foreign language, I'm certainly spoiled. I was educated in French from kindergarten (grade 0) through grade 10. The first six years of that education were in an immersion program. Half of a day of class was spoken and written entirely in French. My middle school years (grades 6-8) were at a bilingual school that tried to place multi-lingual teachers in common subjects, such as math and science. That's how I found out that the Belgian way of counting is different than French, but only in certain sets of 10 (70,80,90.) The confusion about what to call dinner is another interesting difference. Now, in Taiwan, I see that the playing field of language is even further mingled. The mainland Chinese way of saying 一 or 1 is pronounced differently in some cases than it is in Taiwan, but not in normal counting. I've even heard that 0 is pronounced differently. In Chinese, the number 二 (er4) or 2 is pronounced differently once you count above 100, or when you are a...
Read more

Hemlock Restaurant: Bangkok, Thailand

Image
Our first evening in Bangkok, we ate at Hemlock, a Thai restaurant just north of the Khao San area. With it's dim lighting and white linen table cloths, the restaurant felt intimate yet upscale. The menu was extensive, offering standard Thai dishes as well as some unusual ones. Our food was delicious as well, yet the prices were mid range. Perhaps the most memorable part of eating at Hemlock was the fantastic view we had looking out on to Th Phra Athit Road: In our direct line of vision was the Anal Tour sign. Of course we had our share of laughs and juvenile jokes while nibbling on lettuce wraps and sipping on masala tea, but we found the most amusement in watching others as they confronted this absurd sign. Some people stopped dead in their tracks, while others merely glanced at the sign and chuckled.Others strolled by the sign nonchalantly,  did a double-take, then quickly back pedaled while reaching for their cameras. My favorite was a solo traveler who a...
Read more

So we just got back from Thailand...

Cori and I enjoyed a lovely time in Thailand. We ventured to Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and Phuket. This trip has taught me many things: 1) Buddha, he is taller than you, even when he is not. 2) Thai people are impressed when you can eat the real "local" level of spice. 3) Always request a new credit card when the old one is shut down due to fraud. Always. 4) Do not believe a man who says he is an english teacher if he is hanging out on the street with a towel in the back of his shirt at 11am on a Thursday. 5) Just because a hotel has cleaners doesn't mean that they will follow their namesake. 6) Bangkok is hot. 7) All the hippies in California moved to Chiang Mai 8) Elephants make great gifts. 9) Bangkok is hot, but in the way Phoenix is hot if Phoenix was next to the Ohio river. 10) Would you like that fried? Of course you would. 11) Thai is a hard language to pick up once you start learning Chinese. 12) Just because a sign is in english doesn't mean its in...
Read more