100 Years*

A bit of history to make up for the posting drought? Why not?

As witnessed by TONS of people (just ask Karen) on the streets in Taipei, there were some pretty impressive fireworks to celebrate the opening minute of 2011.

Worldwide, the eve of 2011 was just another night of partying in preparation for another year for failed resolutions.

For some, 2011 was more significant.

Open Heart Nut

In the year and 8 months or so that I've been here, I've been through a lot of "phases." I go through 3- or 4-week spans where I start doing something productive with a head of steam, such as exercise, focus on learning Chinese, writing, reading, doing things on the weekend, etc. It has been inevitable, for the most part, that these runs of productivity come to a end, due to any variety of reasons.

Hello, My name is...

JOHN is the most popular 1.st name in USA (... 1.john , 2.david , 3.michael , 4.robert , 5.james ...). One in every 25 Americans are named as JOHN and popularity of name JOHN is 39.93 people per thousand.

If we compare the popularity statistics of JOHN to USA's population statistics, we can estimate that as of August.02.2010 04:40there are 12,372,824 people named as JOHN in the United States and the number of JOHN's are increasing by 104,925 people every year.

Usage of John as a first name is 72.86% and its usage as a middle name is 27.14%. The sum of alphabetical order of letters in JOHN is 47 and this makes JOHN arithmetic buddies with words like Elated. Add "Courtesy of PokeMyName.com' tag and feel free to distribute, copy, republish this interesting, accurate and also useless report about name JOHN. :)

To balance these statistics out, hardly any Taiwanese people choose that name when browsing for an English name.

Apparently they are sick of hearing the names John and Mary because they are used in every guided conversation in every English text book distributed in Asia. Two times in as many days, I've heard someone mock this conversation:

"Hello, John, how are you... Hello, Mary. I'm fine thank you..." and so on and so forth.

Sorry, Mom. Apparently we have boring names.

(what does YOUR name look like in sign language, morse code, marine flag language, and barcode????)

PS. I'm in Korea!

Starter X

(warning: not for the faint of heart)

My days of 8:30-3:30 are over. The Squirrels are no longer my only students. I now know why teachers stress out.

Without getting way too overly hyperbolic and making a gigantic, unnecessary, blown-out-of-proportion exaggeration, I'll try to explain my new class: Starter X.

Let's start with the name. Each buxiban (in which the variable x=sh) class is given a letter name, based only on the order in which they are created. When I was told that I was volunteering to take a new class, I was ecstatic about the name. How badass. I actually find it hard to say "Starter X" aloud without crossing my arms and getting into a crouched position like I'm bracing for an attack.

Anyway.

On the subject of names, I finally got to name some students! They were all quasi-normal, based on my opinion of normal after having encountered a fair amount of people with English names in the past 22 years. That being said, I take no blame (or credit?) for Bernini, York, Gigi, Pola, Soros, or Vivi, who all signed up for my class with English-ish names.

The class, which I already claimed is not for the faint of heart, can only be described in comparison to my Squirrels. I'm very quick to say that the Squirrel class is the envy of the school, yet I'm just as quick to admit that this was true of them before I took over. They speak incredible English, they have impeccable manners, and a sense of awareness and etiquette that is absent in a great deal of the adult population. Hopefully you're getting the idea of the contrast about to come.

Starter X is on average about 2 years older than the Squirrels. However, the Squirrels have 2 more years of classroom experience (2-0=2). Starter X is hardly a few weeks beyond their first footsteps into a real classroom in Chinese elementary school, so they are lacking the basic knowledge of "sit in a chair and watch the adult in front of you for more than 10 seconds at a time." For me, the gap dividing teacher and student, Chinese and English, is bridged by a puppet. Or an over-sized blow-up dice. This gets them to at least try to repeat what I'm saying. And I try not to say much, because "Okay... say 'pencil'" turns into "okaysaypencil."

I come prepared to class with about 1,000 activities so I can keep their attention at all times by either singing, dancing, hitting myself with a puppet, giving them a hammer to hit flash cards with, juggling, clapping... does the word "clown" come to mind?

Starter X is only 2 extra hours a week, but so far, after 3 weeks, I have yet to come out of that class without sweat on my brow, a hoarse voice and a finger on the trigger. It's a really awesome experience, since this is exactly what I thought I'd be doing over here. Not that I have a problem with how 30 minutes before I step into X-Class I'm listening to my 6-year-old girls explain to me that "A sea turtle's habitat is the ocean and not a pond because they need salt-water to live and will die in fresh water."

What's the soup du jour?

"It's the 'Soup of the Day'"

"Mmmmm. That sounds good. I'll have that."

* * *

As some of you may remember, awhile back I had a post displaying some of the unique names I've encountered here in Taiwan. Fortunately, the fun didn't stop there. Here are a few more:

Soup and Haha from the ticket counter at the movies. Perhaps they are acquaintances of Destroy and Icey from the previous names posting.

Smark is a new student of mine. Why not just drop the "s"? How does someone even come up with a name like that?

Smark's classmates also have some interesting, yet surprisingly more acceptable because they're Asian-sounding, names: Yuki, Momoko, Lulu, and Waylen.

Meanwhile, I've become "Jong" to many (mostly older people) who can't seem to get their tongue off their bottom teeth and behind their upper teeth to get that crisp "n" sound. And my class calls me "Teacher...Superman, Spiderman, Optimus Prime, Michael Jackson, Handsome Man, Roller Coaster, Send E-mails, Eyes, Hair, Koo-Koo Head, Crazy, (insert first word that pops into a child's mind)."

Oh well, it's like I always used to say... you can call me anything you want, just don't call me "Late For Dinner." Har har har...

What's in a name?

"Names are a great mystery. I've never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this -- whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong."

~John Steinbeck

Here is a list of great names I heard on Saturday:

Destroy and Icey: 2 dudes that work at the movie theater where I saw the new Terminator movie.
Liz: the guy that sold Mike a new pair of flip-flops. His name is very fitting.
Cola: an attractive girl that works at a jewelry counter in Ximending. C-O-L-A, Cola.
Skeet: a random guy we met at a grocery store that speaks great English. Wondering if he's aware of his name's implications.
Not Band: a rock and roll cover band consisting of a bunch of 17-year-olds that we met on the train.

Here we are rocking out with Not Band on the train:


Speaking of names, how about these names for students: Legal, Genius, Zero, Lion, Eagle, Apple, Christ... (it's a goal of mine to be asked to help assign English names to our new classes).

Finally, taking the award for awkward naming, here is a picture of me and Mike shopping for new hoods: