I’ve talked at length in previous posts about myself—ranging from my experiences, to lessons learned, to dissecting the multiple personas I own. But here I’m going to take the spotlight off myself and shine it on those individuals who surround me on a daily basis. Some are fellow foreigners, some are locals, but all are part of the reason Taipei has become my home over the past 7 months. Their faces have become as regular and familiar as those I used to see around SLO or even back home in good ole Willow Glen. To make things easier, this post I’ll focus solely on my laowai (foreigner) companions. I will focus on the locals next time.
I wouldn’t be able to start this post without first introducing my roommate, Ari, the man who’s been my partner in crime since LanguageCorps and the inception of this great adventure back in August. Ari, go figure by the name, is Jewish. And while he is also a big fan of Entourage, he has certainly grown a little tired of people drawing comparisons between himself and the rather infamous Ari Gold character. Ari and I have shared many experiences together, beginning with enduring the noise and ghetto-ness of “Rick’s House” in Cambodia and continuing until now with our shared befuddlement and confusion during Chinese class. Most importantly, however, Ari has proved to be a very outgoing guy who rarely turns down the opportunity to go out for drinks or play the wingman. Over the past 7 months we’ve become pretty close buddies. Admittedly this is due at least in some part to the fact that we share the thinnest of walls between our rooms, one which allows for absolutely no privacy. In fact, I bet Ari can hear me as I’m typing this right now. Farts, whispers, and everything in between are clearly broadcast between our two rooms. When I want to ask him a question, I usually walk over and knock on the door just to make things normal. But of course there’s other times when I’m too lazy, and so a conversation between the walls ensues.
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| "Dammit Lawrence..can't you just pretend like we can't hear each other through the walls?" |
Then of course there are my co-workers. First there’s Lisa, the co-worker I’ve sat next to every day since I started working for Hess. As the two most recent hires (until just a few weeks ago), Lisa and I haven’t had the privilege of sitting with the veteran teachers and having real desks. Instead we’ve been somewhat banished over to the administration area, constantly finding ourselves in a desperate struggle with the admin ladies for space and peace. Lisa and her boyfriend Jack (who coincidentally works with Ari) are both from England, and from them I’ve picked up on a number of different expressions and adages. Things are no longer ‘cool’, they are ‘brilliant’; when something frustrates me, I find myself referring to it as ‘bloody’. When I’d like to borrow or bum something, I ask if I can ‘knick’ it; and finally, my personal favorite, I’ve come to start referring to cigarettes as ‘fags’.
Mark and Eddie round out the group of fellow NSTs at my branch. Mark’s the same age as me, from Baltimore, and the guy who always answered my ridiculous questions about his hometown after I watched far too many episodes of The Wire. Eddie the Aussie is a few years older than the rest of us, having now lived in Taiwan for over 3 years. Both Mark and Eddie are part of my basketball crew—a formidable alliance of white boys if I can say so myself. They’re both also remarkably good at Mandarin, so having them around is normally pretty helpful.
Dennis is a fellow co-worker of Ari and Jack and the reason I was first introduced to the epic hash runs I’ve described before. When it comes to the China Hash House runs in Taipei, Dennis is kind of a big deal. Through him, I’ve been able to go on a number of hashes thus far—brutally beating my body, meeting great people, and of course eating and drinking like a madman after the completion of the race. Dennis is also a fairly accomplished writer, and honestly at times his blog (http://dennissweeney.wordpress.com/) has discouraged me from continuing with my own—making my posts look rather amateurish, like perhaps they were written by the same people who write our reading books for Level 1 Treehouse.
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| Jack, Ari, Dennis and I getting our drink on. No big deal. |
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| Lisa, Mark, and I cruising on a boat on the Danshui River. |
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| Eddie the Aussie, Dennis, and I on New Years Eve playing with fireworks...one of which would later try and assassinate me. |
Of course there are others as well. But this is definitely the main crew. If you’re eager to hear about my local acquaintances, tune in next time.
